I noted yesterday that I could have done a full day of nothing but “Ted Cruz in Mexico” cartoons, and, as it turns out, I’d have still had enough left over to do it again today.
Someone complained that people are forgetting the far more significant horrible things he’s done and maybe so, but I used Teddy’s foolish face in my promotional snippet on Facebook and Twitter and the posting got more likes and shares than average, so here’s Harry and Meghan, as seen by Ben Jennings (Guardian UK).
Sure, it’s just gossip, but I like Harry and Meghan and I like this cartoon, because, while Queenie has reportedly relieved him of all his official duties, I think he’s done more to make Meghan a real princess than if the two of them were running around snipping ribbons at shopping center openings or whatever.
Everybody got all misty-eyed when Edward gave up his throne for the woman he loved, but that was just an excuse to get the dim-witted Nazi sympathizer out of the way and if Princess Michael of Kent were any more prominent, they’d have to disappear her, too.
Meanwhile, the tabloids hate Meghan for not being properly upper-crust and caucasoid, and I admire Harry’s response that they killed his mother and he’s goddammed if they’re going to have his wife as well.
Every husband should make of his wife that kind of princess.
Meanwhile, that link to Edward VIII’s Nazi connections was from a newspaper on the Forbidden Continent, to which I can only add, “Up yours, Zuck.”
Though I’d quibble that, if the Australian cartoonists really couldn’t “have imagined their next big threat would come from a boardroom,” they’d better keep their head on a swivel.
On a related note, I’m not sure what got Peter Schrank hopped up about Amazon all of a sudden, but here’s a reminder to readers that I’ve begun linking book mentions to Bookshop.org except when there’s a free or $1 Kindle version available.
Bookshop lets you designate a local bookstore to get a piece of the action, and it’s not quite as financially beneficial to them as if you actually went down there and bought the book in person, but you’ve always been free to do that, even when I was linking to Bezosville.
I mean, jeez, you want me to read it to you, too?
Juxtaposition of the Day
So Mike Luckovich suggests that, what with rejoining the Paris Accords and the World Health Organization, seeking to revive the Iran Nuclear Treaty, extending aid to Texas, jump-starting the coronavirus response, adding more women and POCs to his cabinet than either Trump or Obama, changing directions on immigration policy and so forth, cartoonists are having trouble finding fault with Joe Biden.
To which Darrin Bell says, in the cliché du jour, “Hold my beer.”
He may be right. It’s possible that the “What’s in it for me?” crowd will happily return the Senate to Mitch McConnell if they don’t get their checks. And political cartoonists are not here to wave pom pons.
Still, it seems a bit like the woman in the old joke whose young son was plucked from a storm-tossed ocean, spared from drowning at the last moment, and whose response to his weary rescuer was, “Where’s his hat?”
And in case you’ve forgotten just how storm-tossed that ocean was, Tom Tomorrow struggles to make reality any more horrifyingly absurd than it was in reality.
Tom the Dancing Bug, meanwhile, has to go back to 9/11 to come up with enough sarcasm to show how deeply degraded the GOP party loyalists have become.
But, getting back to “Where’s mine?,” I never got my $600 check and now the word is that I’m supposed to take it as a tax credit instead, and I don’t know how that works if the next $1400 is approved before April 15, but, as the old saying goes, I’d have just pissed it away on groceries anyway.
As for student loans, it’s a complicated mess and we have to do something.
But I’m sympathetic with the need to compromise there if it makes other things possible, like help with rent and extension of unemployment.
When I was looking at colleges, I had done well enough on some test — SATs? — that I could have gone to any SUNY school tuition-free or taken a comparable scholarship at a private college within the state. I don’t remember which test, but it wasn’t a massive barrier.
Today, that once-generous scholarship wouldn’t cover your books.
I think we ought to offer free in-state tuition at public universities, but also split our high schools into the academic/technical dual tracks most other nations follow and stop the elitist myth that smart kids go to college and dumb kids learn trades.
Meanwhile, I think we should bail out the kids who fell for that lie, but, geez louise, if you piled up $50K, it better not have been for what the crusty old head of mechanical operations in the mines back home called “fucking around with them literal arts.”
Though, going forward, what if we paid for college, only the school got half of it up front and the other half when you graduated?
Maybe we’d see less splendiferous food courts, fewer climbing walls and a little more intensive tutoring.
I like Jeff Stahler (AMS)‘s cartoon because, rather than celebrating an individual’s death, he comments on the response, which has, indeed, included an order by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to lower flags in the state to half-staff.
If I were governor, we’d have dropped them to half-staff whenever the bastard was on the air.
But his radio show is over, and, as Darrow said, rejoicing in someone’s death is a small step from ordering it.
However, de Santis is alive and in power and deserves a kick in the ass.
Finally, with Harry gone, Princess Ann will reportedly become Captain General of the Royal Marines, Honorary Air Commandant of RAF Honington and Majestic Royal Gobshite.
Which is just asking for this oldie:
If they’re going to lower flags to half-staff when something like Limbaugh stops breathing, they shouldn’t stop there. They should take it all the way off the pole and ritually destroy it as a way of honoring what it used to stand for.