Marty Two Bulls leads off today with a particularly fine spin on Joseph and Mary as homeless travelers in a hostile world.
He’s not the first cartoonist to compare the Holy Family to the needy, which is hardly surprising since that is a large part of the point of the story in the first place.
Nor is he the first to place them against a wall: I remember (but can’t find) a cartoon that did that when Israel walled off the Palestinians some two decades ago and there’ve been no shortage of such parallels since.
But his contrasting of the Star of Bethlehem with the tear gas loosed upon refugees on our southern border is brilliant both in concept and execution, and it brings fresh life to the entire cartoon.
Of course, the Holy Family would not become refugees fleeing a murderous tyrant quite yet, but they will, and how different our world would be if Egypt had turned them back and Herod had had his way.
Well, not all that different, I guess, if you look at the difference between what the kid preached and how his self-proclaimed followers live.
That is, after all, the problem with religions and moral systems that appeal to the poor and outcast. By the time they gain any foothold in the greater society, they’ve been rehabilitated and retailored past all recognition.
Still, we should aspire to be better, and Two Bulls paints a nice picture of the difference between who we say we are, and who we are.
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. (Luke 9:58)
Adam Zyglis goes more directly to the moment in painting his Jeremiad, as the last of the babysitters departs and leaves the would-be “Strong Man” to play dress up.
If the prospect of the Star of Bethlehem exploding into tear gas isn’t depressing enough, we have here a level of blowhard incompetence that represents an even more astonishing turn of the screwup.
We can hope for some relief, perhaps in the form of a more courageous Congress or in a Mueller report that manages to avoid being snowed under by talkshow host denials.
There are significant and genuine reasons to hold out hope.
But in the meantime, we’ve got to remember two things that are very important:
A. Compliment his art collection
B. Don’t mention his scar.
Ah, well. Life imitates art, and Señor Pepe is now chief of staff and maybe Secretary of Defense and Attorney General as well.
And, if you laughed at that frightening parallel, go have a look as Kal Kallaugher offers a whole potpourri of grimly hilarious predictions for 2019 if we don’t find a way out of this bizarre situation.
Or, if you don’t find impending Armageddon a laughable fate, take some comfort in this: Even Fox and Friends have begun to stand up to him, while, as Mike Luckovich points out, advertisers are pulling away from the most outrageous of his enablers.
If that trend continues, if people continue to speak up and shake the rafters, a general abandonment of the creeping meatball might even inject some spine into a few Senators so that, besides wringing their hands in public, they would actually vote those values on the floor.
Stranger things have happened.
Meanwhile, for the next 48 hours at least, I suggest we follow Mo’s lead:
After all, it’s not like it won’t all still be here Wednesday. You can deal with the wrapping paper and the dirty dishes and the impending doom then.
For now, let’s draw a map on a napkin, split a case of us for old times and then go get a little beach tar on our feet.
Serpentine! Serpentine!
Merry Christmas Mike.