CSotD: Mopping up

I was thinking of employing a “You snooze, you lose” policy to Chauvin Trial cartoons that came in a day later, but Matt Wuerker (Politico) offers as much a reaction to the reaction as to the verdict itself.

There is much wisdom in the quote often misattributed to Voltaire, “Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.”

It was expected that racists and authoritarians would deny or downplay the verdict, but a lot of people on “our side” are also complaining that it didn’t include a shower of magical pixie dust ending all racism forever.

 

Nor did the Wright Brothers’ first 12 second flight lead immediately to the 39 second flight of the Ingenuity helicopter, and neither of them will take you from New York to Los Angeles in less than seven hours.

We still celebrate it, and Wuerker (and MLK) are right to salute a single stone carved out of the mountain.

The next step — the longer “flight” — is to have another case where it works for good cops to step forward, and, while it’s good that Merrick Garland will be investigating Minnesota, I think that second case needs to happen somewhere else.

And then a third in a third place, until it becomes a given thing for good cops to feel confident that they will be heard, not retaliated against.

Here’s something else: As with Rosa Parks, Darnella Frazier, the young girl who shot the video of George Floyd’s murder, was the right person doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.

In Parks’ case, she knew the local NAACP was looking for a chance to challenge the bus company, and that they’d dropped an earlier case because the young woman involved didn’t have a simon-pure background.

Niether Parks nor Frazier intentionally set up the opportunity, but they each accepted the moment when it came.

The Tik Tok army, however, is going to have to recognize that not every tragedy caught on video is going to produce the outcome they want. It has to be the right set of circumstances.

The hope is that, eventually, the set-up won’t have to be perfect for justice to prevail, and that, as more chisels dig in, we’ll start seeing larger chunks come out of that mountain.

 

Meanwhile, I got a message from this Bob Gorrell (Creators) cartoon that I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend.

This dweeby little guy is, indeed, all those things, but he doesn’t intend it and he’s not aware of it..

It doesn’t help to shout in his face and accuse him and call him names, because that just makes him defensive. He honestly, sincerely doesn’t get it.

He needs to be shown, he needs to be led to the mirror.

As anybody with experience working with horses knows, if you face the horse and pull on the rope, he’ll dig in and you won’t move him. If you simply turn around and walk with the rope in your hand, he’ll likely follow you to the trough.

Whether he then drinks or not being, of course, the source of the maxim.

But give him a chance: This is also the guy whose point of view changes when his child comes out to him or his spouse gets Alzheimers or his daughter brings Sidney Poitier home for dinner. It’s not hypocrisy; it’s experience.

I hated that movie, by the way, but I was 18 and impatient. I wanted her to bring home Stokely and really put those liberal m-f’ers to the test.

I still find it cringeworthy, but I now have a greater understanding of Stanley Kramer’s intentions:

Lead them, don’t try to drag them.

 

And speaking of people who just don’t get it, I laughed out loud at Paul Berge‘s depiction of the Bachelorette’s latest Big Reveal.

I guess I should laugh quietly, because Berge is gay and gets to laugh out loud while we straight guys have to just silently ponder the reverse gaydar so many women seem to possess.

That cameraman’s “Not again” reverberates through a long, long, long list of heart throbs who turned out to be playing for the other team.

Amusing half-relevant sideline: Valentino was apparently straight, but (spoiler alert) the conclusion of “The Sheik” was Adolphe Menjou’s explanation that it was okay for Agnes Ayers to fall in love with her abductor (!), because he wasn’t an Ay-rab after all but a Spaniard who had been adopted by the Bedouins.

So there ya go.

 

And Now The Sports

In case you missed it, the football (futbol) world was turned upside down last week by the announcement that the 12 most powerful teams in Europe were going to form their own league.

This would effectively kill off the rest of professional European soccer by draining it of sponsors and backers, and Morten Morland mocked the projected outcome in this cartoon.

David Squires also spoke up …

 

… with a lovely, detailed, long-form attack on the concept (read the rest here), but just about the time he got it into print, one of those aforementioned sponsors weighed in with this ad:

 

Which wasn’t the only pushback the idea received, so all six British teams withdrew and the whole thing comically collapsed, leaving poor Squires to mourn:

I would add that “before the drink had dried” is a wonderful twist on the usual term and at least lives up to the spirit of political cartooning, if not the far less flamboyant reality.

 

Tank McNamara (AMS) seems to be weighing in on the side of the “Shut up and dribble” approach to sports and corporate outspokenness, though it’s sometimes a little hard to tell when Tank is expressing opinions and when he’s mocking them.

An occupational hazard for strip cartoonists.

 

But Kirk Walters (KFS) seems clear: He won’t be hoisting any Heinekens, since he’s against corporations getting out of their lane to weigh in on external issues.

It starts with letting Those People vote, and then — as he says — you risk coming out publicly against beating them up and shooting them. A slippery slope indeed!

Better stay safe and not drink Budweiser, either.

It only encourages the bastards.