I don’t know if Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereals is a “political cartoon” or a “funny cartoon” but it is certainly an “on-target cartoon” today.
There’s an old wisecrack about how every time you come up with something foolproof, they invent better fools. Well, we’re mass producing them on-line, and it’s not so funny.
But it sure seems to be political.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I could have pulled any number of cartoons on this topic, but Jeff Stahler states it most plainly, while Nate Beeler represents conservative cartoonists who are becoming critical of the GOP’s reliance on Trump and the fraud he represents.
We’re in a difficult period at the moment, because there’s a tendency to point out that people are falling away from the Republican Party and there are polls showing that the general population is skeptical of the Big Lie and the policies and proposals based on it.
Which is encouraging but perhaps not indicative of What Happens Next, because, to start with, we all laughed when Trump was nominated back in 2015.
Well, some of us laughed.
If there is a division between political cartoons and funny cartoons, maybe we should reserve our laughter for the latter.
Bill Day, a Floridian, notes the joint appearance of a sexual predator and a delusional nut job in his state, and, while the Villages was certainly a safe place to get a positive response, the fact that this pair is being highlighted rather than hidden by the GOP is still significant.
Note: Their rally was at “The Villages,” not “The Village.”
The external was the symbol, but it’s within us all I think, don’t you? This surrealist aspect; we all live in a little Village. … Your village may be different from other people’s villages but we are all prisoners. — Patrick McGoohan
Not only does there remain a lot of support for the Big Lie, but there are new laws directed at lowering the number of dissenting votes, and — thanks in part to the monkeywrenched 2020 Census — new congressional districts, plus there will be gerrymandering to keep those dissenting votes from disrupting the Plan.
Yes, some of those barriers will likely be declared unconstitutional, even by Mitch McConnell’s custom-stacked Supreme Court.
But the 2022 midterms will have happened before that happy outcome can occur, and, once the Big Liars are back in power, how they got there will be immaterial.
And just as Day gets to comment on the rally in his state, so, too, Jeff Boyer gets to draw this portrait of Elise Stefanik, the new darling of the Trump Party, who represents, if not Albany itself, the area north of it, much of which is in the Times-Union’s circulation area. (Disclosure: The district also includes my childhood hometown and Plattsburgh, where I lived for 13 years.)
It has been pointed out by numerous commentators that Stefanik came to office as a moderate, as someone critical of Trump who represented a potential for young Republicans to bring the party back to its true conservative roots.
But that’s past tense, because she has joyfully abandoned her previous positions to embrace the Big Lie and the Big Liar, and now represents the pure, pragmatic push for power at any cost.
Which perhaps we should have known, since, when she first ran, she lived outside the district but, as Brian Mann reported at the time, claimed a family vacation place as her residence.
She has since bought a house within the district, but Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a schoolmate and friend with Stefanik at Harvard, now calls her a “craven and soulless” sell-out. This whole clip is interesting; the part where he reveals his opinion that “sedition is bad” and denounces the new Darling of the Denialists begins at the three-minute mark.
In any case, she has always reminded me of the prim, priggish little honor student, the insufferable teacher’s pet who raises her hand a moment before the bell to point out that we haven’t been assigned any homework.
Which makes Clay Bennett (AMS)’s take on the whole thing that much more delicious. This is the punishment for those who refuse to be obedient little cogs in the machine, and whose Classroom Participation consists of asking the teacher uncomfortable questions.
On a related matter, here’s our
Other Juxtaposition of the Day
Another case where I got to choose from an array: There has been a deluge lately of cartoons complaining that extending unemployment under the pandemic has made it impossible to hire.
I was pleased yesterday to see Biden declare, and repeat, that people who turn down appropriate jobs will lose their unemployment benefits. Now, that needs to be tracked and enforced, but that’s true of all our laws. Don’t hate the players — pressure the refs.
And bear in mind that there are people who go to hockey games just to pound on the glass and scream, regardless of what’s happening on the ice.
Bok targets the immigrants who should do jobs that good, real Americans won’t.
First of all, he should know that the ones who do the jobs white folks won’t are not eligible for government support because they’re undocumented. Benefits for illegals is one of the fundamental lies of America Firsters.
His prospective employer should hire some good, real Americans instead, but he can’t, because he doesn’t pay enough, conditions suck and he offers no benefits.
And, yo, dude, Varvel perpetuates a different stereotype, that minimum wage workers are kids, and sloppy, lazy kids on top of it.
Barely half of minimum wage workers are 24 or younger, and I’d also point out that 20-24 aren’t teen years but may well be “parent of small children years,” particularly when some conservative busy-bodies work to defund family planning programs.
And then fight against support for the post-born children of struggling parents.
In fact, a lot of the damage of their judgmental programs injures very small children because even 20-24s who rise to the middle class often start at the bottom.
And they can’t climb that ladder unless the bastards at the top get off their necks.
Too bad the loyal opposition isn’t loyal to workers.
Be seeing you.
You touch on a myth that runs deep and perniciously: that undocumented immigrants cross the border and immediately sign up for Welfare, food stamps, unemployment benefits, free housing, etc. It seems to be something that “everybody knows.” My wife, who was the head of our California county’s social service department, confronted it often in her own family. No matter how many times she explained that it just ain’t so, and she ought to know because she’s the one who (metaphorically) mailed out the checks, she’d get back a dismissive hand wave, a “Yeah whatever,” and a smug wall of certainty unperturbed by facts.
Now, it’s true that the children of those undocumented immigrants who are born in the U.S. are often eligible for government benefits. We call those children “American citizens.” If you want to change that policy, that’s a different argument you can take up with the Constitution.
Kudos for references to “The Prisoner,” one of my personal Top Five TV series ever, and always sadly relevant.