Comic Strip of the Day: Friday Funnies & NotSoMuch
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If you came here for refuge from the storm, apologies, but, since I’m locked into CXC coverage starting tomorrow, we need to look at yesterday’s weirdness a little today or it’ll be totally outdated. We’ll get to to the funnies in a minute.
Adam Zyglis takes the prize for this cartoon that wraps up a very weird and unsettling day. The Republicans promised fair play and equal treatment but, after realizing their designated questioner was actually going to quietly and professionally attempt to elicit facts from each of the two witnesses, they dumped her for the second half.
It’s interesting to see which cartoons were done in advance and which reflected the actual hearings. Some of the the advanced pieces made reasonable philosophical points, some pushed partisan talking points, but all fell short of capturing the alarming, bizarre event.
The GOP did well to allow the expert to conduct the first half of the proceedings, because badgering that shy, gentle woman would have done them in.
Then, the second half combination of Kavanaugh’s complete meltdown and their furious attacks on Diane Feinstein, paired with their apologies to him for having to go through a confirmation process, likely drove the morning’s calm discussion totally out of the public mind.
Though one can hope that Andy Marlette is right and that most women were not going into “Poor Baby” mode as Kavanaugh swung back and forth between weepy little victim and furious frat boy.
(Tip from one Catholic to another: You’re supposed to cry while you’re being baptized, not while you’re being confirmed.)
His refusal to answer questions, his bizarre rudeness to his interrogators, his obvious partisan political positions and his insistence against all logic that he was only a moderate drunkard should have sunk his nomination, but, then, I didn’t call the presidential election very accurately.
Meanwhile, when I was 12, I disabled my brain-to-mouth filters and drove a long-time, notorious bully to tears at Camp Lord-O-The-Flies, and, while it got him off my back, it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as you’d expect it to be.
Watching an arrogant, entitled frat boy fall apart — even one who had been part of the Starr/Scaife mudslinging crew — was similarly unsatisfying, and less so since there remains a good chance he’ll be confirmed anyway.
But I’m gonna do what he should have done: Shut up and let the women finish speaking.
Well, after I quote a little John Ciardi:
I wish I could teach you how ugly
decency and humility can be when they are not
the election of a contained mind but only
the defenses of an incompetent. Were you taught
meekness as a weapon? Or did you discover,
by chance maybe, that it worked on mother
and was generally a good thing …
at least when all else failed … to get you over
the worst of what was coming. Is that why you bring
those sheepfaces to Tuesday?
They won’t do.
It’s ten month’s work I want, and I’d sooner have it
from the brassiest lumpkin in pimpledom, but have it,
than all these martyred repentences from you.
We now join our regular Friday Funnies, already in progress
Alex has the happy combination of being timely and penetrating on its own and also of triggering a memory from the depths of my freelancing days.
First of all, I’d rather have Beanie Babies than bitcoins. At least Beanie Babies might someday be fun to play with if you have a little terrier who enjoys flinging stuffing around the room.
Can’t do that with bitcoins.
Anyway, as I was on the verge of divorce in the early 80s, a buddy popped up with a connection to a job writing movie reviews for a company that had the innovative plan of delivering videotapes like pizza, with people ordering from a monthly catalog which I would write.
They couldn’t actually pay me in cash, but they would pay me with stock in the company. I’m not sure they ever issued any and, of course, the stock wouldn’t have been worth the paper etc etc
Difference between that and Alex’s friend’s arrangement is that it cost me nothing to get involved, I got to watch all the free movies I wanted and, when they crashed, I kept the machine.
Plus the ridiculous memory, of which I have an impressive collection.
They’re like Beanie Babies: Worthless, but real.
Meanwhile, back in 1935 and also right now on Vintage Kingdom, Popeye is starting a new adventure and the last panel demanded to be passed along.
And as long as we’re dwelling in the past, Red and Rover addresses a bit of bogus history to which I will add that I watched “Lassie” religiously, and I don’t ever remember his falling into a well even once.
I’m not arguing with Brian Bassett’s history here, but I would note that the episodes in which Timmy got into physical peril were secondary to the many in which he ended up confronting some more interesting issue.
Though it was Jeff who, in 1956, had a rock thrown through his window because his family had a Japanese boy visiting.
“Get that Nip kid out of town by midnight or suffer the consequences” isn’t quite as silly as “Timmy fell down the well,” but, then again, Beaver getting involved with a down-and-out alcoholic doesn’t fit the mold of the Happy Cleaver Family that never faced social problems.
Oh well. My mom’s generation has to live with the idea that they listened only to the Andrews Sisters, never Artie or Benny.
Finally, Reply All got a laff because it took me two weeks to get rid of Sirius, after they sold me a basic package on the promise that it had features it didn’t, but which the cancellation guy told me it would if I had their cheap-ass radio which didn’t have speakers but I found an old stereo back in my storage area only it turned out I still needed the more expensive package and wasn’t that a big surprise?
Second time with the cancellation guy, I was not as accommodating.
Nor was he this creative in his argument:
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