Andy Marlette (Creators) begins our Halloweeneen celebration with a reminder of what scares at least some of us.
The weirdest part of this is that these people are more scared of precautions than they are of actual danger.
Wait, no.
The weirdest part is that they don’t want to do what experts tell them because they’re following the lead of populist propagandists who have no idea how it all works.
Granted, as Mike Luckovich explains, part of their fear has been ginned up as part of Rupert Murdoch’s campaign in support of white supremacy.
Apparently, there is some sort of caravan wending its way up through Mexico, but unless you’re terrified that somebody is going to pick lettuce or carve meat or (gasp!) make beds at a motel, it’s kind of hard to figure out the menace.
Even before the Big Resignation, Americans didn’t want those jobs, and that’s not just theoretical. Before farms are allowed to bring in legal foreign workers, they’re required to advertise those jobs. On the rare occasions somebody takes one, they quit within a few days.
Well, if them furinners don’t want our jobs, then they’re comin’ for our wimminfolk. A woman was raped on a train in Philly recently, and the anti-immigrant crowd is going nuts because apparently the rapist didn’t have a green card.
No word on the immigration status of the other rapists arrested in the past two or three months.
Which brings us to Jeff Danziger (WPWG)‘s riff on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which the scariest monster of them all, an accredited virologist, attempts to explain reality to an empty-headed prop.
And it was a prop: There was no “Headless Horseman” in that story. Irving’s tale is about a bully who terrifies a timid schoolteacher with stories, then impersonates the fictional monster, frightening the teacher into leaving town and never being seen again.
Which has little to do with Danziger’s cartoon but seems particularly relevant at a moment when bullies are using threats and fear to intimidate and drive out teachers and school board members and election officials and elected officials.
Over at the Bulwark, Amanda Carpenter writes about how Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been pushing back at the bullies of Fox News, though Kinzinger has now decided not to run for re-election.
I particularly liked this bit:
I wish all the Ichabod Cranes would take a lesson from her.
Brewster Rockit (Tribune) further probes the way people fear what they don’t understand, and this one is particularly apt, given that yesterday was the anniversary of Black Tuesday, when the stock market crashed in 1929 after a period in which a flood of people who didn’t understand stocks put their money into them anyway.
The value of anything is subjective: A twenty-dollar bill is only worth $20 because we agree it is, while $20 is only worth what it’s worth based on consensus.
For that matter, if I have a bowl of stew, its value in barter likely depends on how hungry you are and your alternatives.
But stock values and prices are particularly subjective and cryptocurrency is even moreso.
A share of a corporation has some real world existence, even if its value is theoretical, but cryptocurrency is the equivalent of buying stock in an imaginary corporation.
Or perhaps it’s just part of a system for laundering money for criminal enterprises.
Juxtaposition of scary, scary things!
We like to be scared, at Halloween and at other times, and, if there’s nothing to be scared of, we’ll find something.
Ed Hall is correct that there are a whole lot of one-time-use masks lying around out there, but the idea that people are purposefully throwing them on the ground is as silly as the term “one-time-use,” given that I don’t think many people really only use them once.
The problem is that they weigh almost nothing, and so can fall out of your pocket, or an open car door, without you noticing.
There is no motivation for people to intentionally throw them on the ground, while, if people did that, they’d also be throwing store receipts, tissues, paper cups and other used items around.
Sure, some people litter. But not many.
And here’s what they particularly don’t do: They don’t carry around scissors so they can cut the strings of their masks before intentionally throwing them on the ground, so that they can enjoy littering without the risk of entangling wildlife.
Meanwhile, Price and Piccolo made a joke about artificial spider webs, but there are people on social media who are genuinely frantic about not using them because they also entangle wildlife.
On your porch.
Over the course of a week.
Scary! Scary!
Almost as scary as the warnings we had some years ago that, if you threw rice at newlyweds, birds would eat it, it would swell in their bellies and they’d explode.
Hence all the little burst birdies you see around churches in June.
Save the birds! Play it safe, like Dennis.
Juxtaposition of Good News
There is some genuinely good news, as vaccinations for kids have finally been approved and will begin roughly next week, depending on supplies and logistics.
Even better news in South Africa, where, as Zapiro reports, kids 12-17 don’t have to get caught up in their parents’ foolishness.
Though if you want “scary,” imagine if they made that the law here.
Never mind rice-eating birds — the ground would be littered with exploding conservatives.
Juxtaposition of Boy Am I Old
I see we have yet another sequel to 1978’s “Halloween” out there, while Geico is joyfully running their riff on stupid teens in peril, so maybe that stuff is as timeless as Santa.
But nothing is as terrifying as the idea that Johnny Depp might take on another beloved children’s story.
As with Nate’s neighbor, that scares the hell out of me.
Finally, Andertoons (AMS) not only made me laugh but made me admire a color-based gag in a grayscale cartoon.
Now, for those who only know the Marcels’ trick version of that song, here’s a treat:
Every year I am impressed by the inflection the Geico actress gives when delivering the line “Why can’t we just get in the running car.” It is perfection.