CSotD: This Boot Was Made For Walking
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So Joe Biden was playing with one of his German shepherds and managed to break a small bone in his foot, which would be small potatoes if it were one of us, but matters because he is (whether or not you accept the fact) the President-elect of These United States.
And also because we are all tired of cartoons of a crying baby in soiled diapers, so thank goodness the cartoonists have eagerly responded with fresh commentary, Jeff Stahler (AMS) offering the most straightforward piece, in which the boot adds to the list of appointments facing the incoming president.
But “straightforward” isn’t the same as “simple,” and Stahler does use the misadventure to make note of that growing list.
We can’t know at this distance whether, a generation ago, he’d be put in a plaster cast or simply handed a cane and told to take it easy, but we can be pretty sure this isn’t like Reagan’s bullet wound where, some time down the road, we’ll learn that Biden was on death’s door but nobody wanted to frighten us.
Though if we do, Chip Bok (Creators) will be able to say he told us so, since he not only depicts the foot in a far more serious cast but declares that Lady MacBeth is waiting to take advantage of the fracture, though the 25th Amendment was birthed in response to both Ike’s heart attack and the prospect of what might have happened if JFK had somehow survived the assassination attempt.
Not to mention Wilson’s stroke, which continues to dwell in a muddled corner of uncertain history — we knew about it at the time but it remains unclear, even now, how disabling it was.
But it was more than a hairline foot fracture.
Bok is not alone: While Stahler passes it off in the way we might have seen a sprained shoulder played after one of JFK’s football games on the White House lawn, Ted Rall (AMS) trumpets it as proof that Biden is, indeed, on death’s doorstep, adding this caption to his speculation:
Largely unspoken by Democrats is the open secret that Joe Biden is suffering both physically and mentally from the effects of aging. He seems unlikely to finish his full term and vice president Kamala Harris is an extremely ambitious person. How long will he last?
I suspect that this is largely unspoken by Democrats for the same reason they leave “Al Gore is a liar” largely unspoken and “Kerry lied about his war record” largely unspoken: Because it’s a load of horse manure conjured up by political opponents in the course of the campaign.
Anyway, Rall doesn’t make clear why a doddering old man keeps jogging, riding bicycles and playing enthusiastic outside games with his dog and even adding a second rambunctious pup to the family mix when, dammit, he should be sitting with a blanket on his lap drooling into his Metamucil.
While apparently he and Bok share a suspicion of ambitious women who, after all, should never be given shoes or trusted outside the kitchen.
I have no idea, BTW, if Major is, indeed, rambunctious, and I may have been unclear in declaring him a pup, since he is two, but that’s who Biden was playing with.
Champ is 12, which means we should keep him away from Rall and Bok lest they decide to perform pre-emptive euthanasia on him.
Jack Ohman (WPWG) capitalizes on the minor nature of the injury to take the opposite tack, showing a genial, smiling Biden not only fit but unperturbed, shrugging off the frenzied efforts of an unnamed dog with a shock of obviously fake blonde hair.
Which is certainly a partisan take (In a political cartoon? Horrors!!!), but is also in line with the genial, smiling and unperturbed way Biden carried out his entire campaign, while his opponents derided him as being afraid to come out of the basement.
Oh, sorry! I seem to have accidentally posted a strip from the current Vintage Rip Kirby (KFS), in which dapper, gentlemanly Rip was forced into a bareknuckle brawl with a vulgar, blustering bully.
In any case, Biden seems to have survived the broken bone, which required an MRI to even be diagnosed.
Joel Pett (Lex HL) reaches into the bag of familiar symbols and emerges with an impressive fit, Italy having been one of the more hard-hit nations in the Covid crisis and that crisis being at the top of Biden’s aforementioned to-do list.
Dealing with the pandemic is an unwelcome task, and Italy’s rugged coastline, tall heel and pointy toe make the allusion even better, since it’s a far cry from a clumsy-but-comfy walking boot.
But, then again, it has been stretched, this being one of the few times a label really is necessary in a political cartoon.
Finally, Kevin Siers (N&O) steps away from the walking boot to a different boot entirely, making it an appropriate commentary on the failing/flailing attempts by Trump to overturn reality.
This preposterous, degrading game of “let me up, you’ve had enough” would be hilarious if Dear Leader were apt to fade from the scene, but he is not.
Leaving us with the matter of his loyal, and perhaps violent, followers.
Much of Trump’s appeal has been to people who are angry because, all their lives, they’ve felt sidelined and dismissed as “stupid.”
The problem being that, while they might be forgiven and sympathized with for believing in promises to revive the coal industry or vague assurances that their lives would otherwise become prosperous, there are increasingly fewer reasons, as he advances more and more ridiculous explanations and is laughed out of more and more courtrooms, to continue to believe in him which do not call their intelligence into question.
Which you must not do in reasoning with them, obviously.
It is going to prove to be a genuine problem for the nation.
Oh well.
We can at least look forward to the day his family divides things up and moves out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, and pray it entails one more boot joke.
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