CSotD: Sanity retention
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Nick Anderson captures the moment, and I would add that not only has Facebook (and Twitter, for that matter) become a seething cauldron of coronavirus stupidity but seems to be ramping up the political idiocy as well.
And while I chuckle, too, at all the cartoonists saying they’ve practiced social isolation all their lives, part of making a living without seeing anyone involves using social media as a promotional device.
This makes leaving Facebook sort of like quitting your job: Not perhaps very practical.
In my 20s and early 30s, I’d dream of opening a small restaurant, but then would realize I’d need a liquor license to make it work and that this would mean serving people who should probably go home to their families or who would bend your ear with endless nonsense.
I never opened that restaurant, but here I am anyway.
Being on Facebook is not unlike tending bar, in that it can be a severe test of Proverbs 26:4, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”
Which I repeatedly fail.
Speaking of ignoring stupid opinions on the topic, John Branch nails the bizarre nature of Presidential briefings lately.
We should, of course, be grateful that Anthony Fauci appears undaunted by having to gently steer things towards rational science, and that he apparently never got the memo about stroking Dear Leader’s ego and not contradicting him.
I suppose, too, that we ought not to point out his disloyal tendency to deal in facts, since he manages to do it in a way that apparently goes unnoticed.
An advantage of working with someone who doesn’t listen to anybody else: As long as you don’t start sentences with “Actually …” or use phrases like “you’re wrong,” it all just drifts by unprocessed.
Kevin Siers wins the competition among cartoonists to compare presidential leadership with vacuous, childish refusal to lead at all.
Everyone seems to have picked their jaws up off the floor and begun furiously drawing the other day, when Trump scolded a reporter for asking a legitimate question about his having dismantled our pandemics team, and then declared that none of this crisis was his fault.
Several noted FDR’s admonition that fear is deadlier than the crisis itself, and certainly Truman’s famous desktop slogan was cited, but Siers keeps it simple and sometimes less is more.
Truman wasn’t terribly charismatic and I doubt many thought of him as “Dear,” but he was a “Leader” and the contrast speaks for itself.
And, by the way, there is humor, or, in Alex‘s case, humour, to be found in the midst of the crisis.
The punchline here is doubly funny because of a sort of bathos, given that Alex is normally steeped in technical business jargon, and you don’t anticipate it would end in such a mundane Ralph Kramdenesque gag.
And, speaking of large things turning into small crises, the AAEC and Canadian editorial cartoonists have postponed their joint convention, and, aside from not getting to hang out with that self-quarantined gang, it meant canceling my dog’s reservation at the kennel.
Whatever solutions anyone comes up with for impacted businesses had better not be too specific, because I doubt they’d think of “boarding kennels” as something to include on the list.
But, damn, they’ve got to be hurting.
Meanwhile, over at Reply All, Donna Lewis provides a bit of synchronicity, since I’ve just pretty much nailed down my retirement date from my main job.
The good news is that I’ll be making about the same amount on Social Security that I made when I first started the job a decade ago.
My only problem then came when the client didn’t pay on time, and Uncle Sam coughs it up on a regular schedule.
On the other hand, starting in 2022, I’ll have to begin drawing down my IRA, even if I don’t need the money, and thank God I’m not 72 already, given what Dear Leader and the coronavirus have done to retirement accounts.
Ann is right: I should just move ahead with the lunch order now and ponder the financial stuff later.
Que sera, sera and wotthehell, wotthehell.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Having noted some unfortunate issues of lead time and current events yesterday, here are a pair that more than mesh well. Hilary Price was up early enough this morning to report that she and Rina Piccolo came up with that gag six weeks ago, and I’m quite sure Hoest and Reiner didn’t put that panel together since the lockdowns began hitting restaurants yesterday.
Well, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and this time they came up winners.
And now for something completely different
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir playing “Battleship,” the rest of which you may read at Existential Comics.
I was originally put off by their playing the computerized version of a game we used to play on graph paper, though they both lived long enough to have had the electronic game.
However, the gag is silly enough that I’ll forgive them, even if it would have been easier for JP to pull it off on paper.
And, in honor of the (canceled) day …
Today’s Free Range is the only St. Patrick’s Day gag that made me laugh, since I consider the annual event to be a Steppin McFetchit minstrel show.
I’ve no idea how stepdancing worked in those days except that I suspect people who dressed nicely didn’t do it at all, nor speak the language nor wear nationalistic colors.
And, a century later, their grandchildren booed Synge for portraying the Irish as, well, Irish.
Martyn Turner doesn’t appear to grieve the loss of the day, and it should be noted that hilarity and parades and that damned green beer are imports from America.
Traditionally, and until relatively recently, St. Patrick’s was a solemn feast day in Ireland for which people didn’t break their Lenten pledge.
My Irish pub band hated the day but loved the money we made. You can read about it, and hear a playlist here.
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