I was going to skip politics entirely today, given that some races remain up in the air as I’m writing this and most of the editorial cartoons are either wrong, damned lucky or lukewarm expressions of “Isn’t voting wonderful?” or “And now on to 2020.”
There are things we do know, including that a whole load of women have gone into the House, which we can hope means the above photograph depicts something headed for the scrap heap of history.
My father-in-law got four votes each Election Day: His own, and then his wife’s, his mother’s and his mother-in-law’s, since they all came to him for advice and he would fill out a sample ballot for them. Fortunately for the nation, he was a good guy, but, of course, he wasn’t alone in this practice.
However, it was hardly the rule. One of the arguments against women’s suffrage was that it simply doubled the franchise for married men, but it was a stupid argument then and it’s an even more foolish argument today and maybe that guy in the picture isn’t checking up on his wife but cheating off her ballot.
The only political cartoon that really caught my eye and got a laff was John Cole‘s, which brought up a question I’ve wanted an answer to for a long time, which is “What’s wrong with Nancy Pelosi?”
The answer to which, of course, begins with that XX-chromosome thing, and now won’t screwball radio have a lot more targets to pick on?
Some of the pioneering women like Bella Abzug were prone to intemperate — though true — statements that the He Man Woman Haters Club could hang around their necks, but Pelosi seems politically astute and relatively moderate or, at least, pragmatic.
And yet, as Cole says, the HMWHC dragged her on out as an election issue, and, what made the cartoon resonate this morning was that I’d already been over in Google News to catch up, and one of the top stories at that early hour was a Fox News piece warning Democrats against making Pelosi Speaker of the House.
Which I didn’t read, so I’m still in the dark about what is so wrong with her.
Apparently, so are the residents of California’s 12th District.
Pretty impressive, considering that Bernie Sanders only got 67% of the vote against a guy who had so few yard signs locally that I had to Google to find out who he was.
Meanwhile, there’s still plenty of whining from the other side of the aisle: The lib’rul city slicker response to not regaining the Senate is to complain about how our bicameral legislature is like every other bicameral legislature in the world, except that our “deliberative body” is elected, not appointed.
Hey, don’t get your bespoke silk undies in a knot: You’ve still got a disproportionate number of Starbucks.
We could all use a little more civics and history in our schools, but, in the meantime, if you want to see some cartoons about last night, check out Clay Jones’ site, since he was up sketching and posting in real time.
Meanwhile, in things that matter
I’m not sure why Heidi MacDonald featured a review of this book in “Comics Worth Reading,” since it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with comics, but if she can feature it, so can I, and it certainly makes a good segue utlizing the topic of issues that have not been resolved because they aren’t issues.
I’ve had musician friends who liked certain things Brian Wilson did, but, then again, I’ve had musician friends who knew that Buck Owens developed much of the Bakersfield Sound from listening to the Beatles, most of whom figured it was really Don Rich, and I’ve never quite grokked why they like Paul Simon’s Graceland album so much, but I think a lot of it falls under the general category of “Parts of it are excellent.”
As a whole, however, among the many ways my generation can be divided is “Beach Boys” vs “British Invasion,” and Beach Boy fans were guys whose parents bought them cars and whose sisters helped them bleach their hair and the answer to “Why the Beach Boys Matter” is that “Surfer Girl” was the only slow song on the jukebox at the youth center.
I promise you, if American Graffiti were set three years later, Bob Falfa would have been listening to Ronny and the Daytonas, or maybe the Rip Chords, but not the freakin’ Beach Boys.
And speaking of kids with more money than taste, The Joy of Tech takes a look at new expensive phones and asks why.
That’s only the first part — I’ll let you discover the total answer at their site.
And the final disgrace
After a night of finding out who we are, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereals reminds us of our eternal quest to be someone else. And to explain it to others.
I don’t believe the stories about Chinese and Japanese tattoo artists purposefully putting insulting tattoos on pretentious Americans, but I’m sure willing to believe there may be some giggles over the occasional cultural disconnect.
I know I’ve certainly heard enough explanations of Celtic symbolism from people who don’t realize that most of what we know about the ancient druids and wiccans and Celts is 20th century horseshit dreamt up by Aleister Crowley and his merry band mostly to get girls to take their clothes off.
And one of our professors brought a Navajo elder to class one day who, after taking a few questions about peyote and such, asked us why, instead of trying to identify with the mystical significance of a culture we had not grown up in and so didn’t understand to begin with, we didn’t probe the deep and largely forgotten mysticism within our own.
Which I thought was a helluva good point. I may have it tattooed on my arm.
With, like, a dreamcatcher or maybe kokopelli next to it.
