CSotD: The Children’s Hour
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Joe Heller is out in Wisconsin, where they have some pretty fabulous autumns, but his cartoon works equally well here in New England, though our heat wave was nothing like what I sweated through in Columbus this past week.
However, I came home to find sweatshirt weather and a lot more color than I had left. I’d say Columbus/Indigenous/Whatever Day Weekend should be worth coming up here and driving around, and I’d remind you that a lot of tourist places shut down thereafter, so don’t put it off.
But I also came home and ran into what Steve Benson depicts here. I haven’t had a chance to fully catch up on all the details, but this part is pretty clear: The dude is in full blowout mode.
And the 25th Amendment is really intended for comas and heart attacks, not for cray-cray breakdowns. While the GOP eventually abandoned Nixon, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and the current crew is not going to walk away from something that is working for them.
Which is not just them. There was a time when businesses looked to future years. Now they’re considered far-sighted if they look to the next quarter.
But, again, I’ve only seen headlines and snippets, so I’m taking the following attitude for the moment:
I find it interesting that this dialogue is not put in the mouth of one of Edison Lee‘s regular characters. It would be problematic if his remark came along with the sort of backstory it would carry as the opinion of a regular character, and is much better coming from an anonymous figure.
BTW, when “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” first started, little Edison made a lot of political observations, but as the characters developed and the regular flow kicked in, his observations were much less political and much more broadly social.
This makes an occasional political commentary much more powerful, particularly since Edison’s response is so downbeat: It’s neither a cheer nor a feet-in-the-air-as-I-faint response to a punchline.
Gary Cooper couldn’t say “Yup” any better.
Meanwhile, getting away from politics and focusing on young people and their responses, the current Luann happens to hit just as I had been remembering a college near-girlfriend, which is to say someone really fun and cute that I dated for a few weeks.
I broke it off not because of anything she did but because of what I see in the current Luann: Her friends’ endless tittering and gossiping and obsessing over the fact that we were going out. They were practically measuring each other for bridesmaids’ dresses when all I wanted was a pizza.
Okay, that’s not all I wanted. But it was clear they were a helluva lot more interested in our getting together than I was and it creeped me out.
Wherever obsolete cartoon characters go, Aaron Hill is nodding along.
Today’s Pajama Diaries also takes me back.
I was in the opposite situation with SATs: I test high but grade low, but that put me in the same position, and I was lucky to get into the “college of my choice” which was probably a bad choice because I was wait-listed and maybe should have gone someplace where my mediocrity would have been better appreciated.
Even then, a half-century ago — twice as long ago as Jill’s days — my father groused that too many kids were going to college who didn’t need to and wouldn’t benefit from it.
It wasn’t just sheltering from the war, though once you were in, your professors were loathe to flunk you out and drop you into a rice paddy.
But the “college of your choice” party line was pushed on us even before the war was under way, and well after the war, in the era when Jill would have been looking at colleges, I remember my own boys being disgusted that their guidance counselors were more obsessed with getting kids into college than with intervening in abuse or depression crises.
There seems to be a shift, however, with more kids not just taking gap years but looking to get into jobs and improve their skills from within, whether that means college or some kind of voc-tech learning.
So now, combining youth and politics, we’ll continue that thought in our
Juxtaposition of the Day
After a spate of Greta-bashing from climate deniers and petroleum puppets, Michael De Adder’s cartoon is a delight and would make a great poster.
Zyglis is more to the point, answering the aforementioned bashers but also everyone who has been sitting back waiting for someone else to solve the problem, and Rogers expands the concept to bring in the Parkland kids as well, and to point out the moral mandate to do something.
I’ve gone out of my way in recent weeks to spend more time not with Millennials, but with the next group down, which probably has some Madison Avenue Commercial Demographic Title but who are almost defiantly not Millennials.
Not only are they active and impatient and intense, but they remind me of the days of the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, because, despite the media glomming on to an off-the-cuff remark about not trusting anyone over 30, we listened to Dr. Spock, to Bucky Fuller, to Mitch Goodman, to other wise elders, mentors and leaders.
And the Parkland Kids, and Greta’s fans, are willing to listen, to learn and then to dig in and work.
BTW, I had to skip a reunion of my guitarslinging coffeehouse pals last week, but the notion that we all cut our hair and sold out is bullshit: They include several teachers, including a statewide Special Ed administrator, a retired EPA administrator, a doctor or two, a fellow who works in affordable housing, not to mention a teacher at the Berklee School of Music, the owner of a jazz club and a Grammy-winning producer.
I don’t think Greta or the Parkland Kids are going to sell out, either.
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