CSotD: Fools and Grifters

A lot of stuff to catch up on today, but I can’t hold back on this Arlo & Janis lest they no longer be first.

And if this blog weren’t dedicated to saluting good work, I’d start a counter to track the number of masked jack-o’-lantern cartoons to follow. But I won’t.

Though it’s okay if you do.

On to the serious stuff:

Juxtaposition of the Day

 

I alluded to this the other day: When the Texans played Kansas City Thursday night, they began the game by linking arms in a gesture of unity and anti-racism. And the crowd booed them.

Michael Ramirez makes a note of the poor sportsfan who only wants to watch a game and doesn’t mind Colin Kaepernick going down on one knee as long as the song playing is “My Mammy” and not “the Star Spangled Banner.”

At which point we get into that thing of “Is it racism if it doesn’t involve the N-word?” and the answer is that it depends.

On how stupid or dishonest you want to be.

There is, of course, active racism, which involves making hateful remarks or refusing to hire a minority or declining them as tenants or punishing your child for dating outside the genome.

But remember that Jesus guy a lot of people claim to follow? He was asked “Who is my neighbor?” and responded with a story that condemned people not simply for overtly expressing hatred but for failing to help a person who needed their assistance.

It is racism to invent reasons to pass by, to not care, and social media is full of lies about how, if you simply obey the police, you won’t have problems.

In order to innocently believe this, you would have to be completely shut off, not just from minorities, but from the news.

It’s easier to believe it as a racist: You just have to assume that all those people who are brutalized by police deserve it.

At which point, whether or not you actually use the N-word is irrelevant.

The other side of this issue is the foolishness of whining over how nobody wants politics at a football game.

Maybe I should repeat that for the benefit of anyone who couldn’t hear it over the pre-game military fly-over or the flapping of the ginormous flag being held over the entire field.

A GF who was majoring in PoliSci wrote a paper for a course on propaganda about the pregame activities and the halftime show at Super Bowl XXV in 1991. It was particularly powerful because she wasn’t a sports fan and wasn’t numbed to the normal level of patriotic rah-rah at such events, so all the Desert Storm cheerleading struck her particularly hard.

Point being that there’s plenty of politics at sporting events and that’s not what you’re objecting to.

Don’t pretend it is.

 

The Losers and Suckers controversy seems to be fading away like the pussy snatching, Mar-a-Lago profiteering, revealing top secret information to Russian operatives and all the other things that would have ended the career of a politician in a functioning democracy.

But I don’t want to leave it behind without noting this Dave Granlund panel.

There were a kabillion cartoons of Trump defacing the Tomb of the Unknown or the Vietnam Wall, and at least half a kabillion playing off the Iwo Jima memorial, but Granlund combined the insult to American warriors with the sheltering of Confederate traitors.

Trump not only declines to comment on reports of Russian bounties on American servicemen, but refuses pressure to take rebel names off our military bases.

There are sins of commission and sins of omission and Granlund managed to tie up that package with a bow.

 

And while various newspapers and magazines are publishing long analytical thumb-suckers about how the political parties are working to win the Undecided White Woman Vote, Mike Luckovich boils it down to the question of how hard the choices really are.

For the answer, see my rant on football and politics, above.

Or read a little something from David Sedaris.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Ed Wexler)

 

(John Deering)

When Warren Harding died, it didn’t take long for the dogs who had been sniffing around Teapot Dome to close in on the perps.

The degree to which Harding himself benefited from the scam is for historians to sort out, but things seemed to fall apart quickly once he was out of the way, and, whatever his level of personal involvement, he wasn’t the last president to surround himself with grifters and bozos.

Wexler notes that Bill Barr has far exceeded the normal job description of the Attorney General, becoming Dear Leader’s personal lawyer and declaring that, not only can you not indict a sitting president, but that things he did as a private citizen before he was president are now part of his official duties and responsibilities.

Bringing in a certain dress being a brilliant reminder of the days when presidents submitted DNA samples even when there was no criminality and the events in question had taken place not only while he was in office but while he was in that very office.

And Deering brings together the traditional posting of wanted posters in post offices with the fact that the Postmaster General, before he was tasked with screwing up the USPS, had made some extremely dubious political contributions and forced his employees to participate in the fraud.

Birds of a feather, and there’s gonna be quite a plucking if these mooks don’t manage to hold on to power.

 

Finally, Clay Jones comments on the self-absorbed twits who touched off a major fire with an over-the-top “gender reveal party.” As in the best they are.

I’ve always thought the police should ticket people who flaunted “Baby on Board” placards when they had no baby on board at the moment. (As the father of a first responder, I’m only semi-kidding.)

You can imagine how I feel about the kind of people who up the braggart factor to include explosives to announce something nobody but them cares about.