CSotD: Tuesday is Guest Star Day

 

Today’s guest star is Rembrandt van Rinj, whose The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp provided Morten Morland with inspiration for his own dissection of Liz Truss’s failing (or flailing, take your pick) tenure as Prime Minister.

Readers in the UK will, no doubt, recognize the gathered students, but it’s enough to note that the lecturer is newly appointed Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, whom, as explained yesterday, cartoonists insist has taken the lead role, and Morland makes his point not only with the addition of a severed leg but the fact that the corpse is not quite dead.

You can almost hear John Cleese’s voice declaring “I feel happy!”

 

And as long as we’re flogging poor Liz Truss, here’s Steven Camley making much the same point about Hunt’s assumption of control, but in a way that provokes giggles. The missing shoe and largely accurate overbite are almost cruel, except that (A) if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and (B) she really did spook the markets.

Plus the term “almost cruel” is hardly a compliment for British cartoonists, who have an admirable sharpness of edge not seen half so often over here.

 

Keith Knight makes some not-so-gentle mockery of Herschel Walker, with a Blazing Saddles reference and a tad of vulgarity, and his pun on the name of the show is a nice play on all the joking memes about Chuck Norris’s alleged superpowers, contrasting them with Herschel Walker’s utter incapacity.

It’s not as direct as Morland or Camley’s cartoons, but the simplicity masks a depth of criticism, with little bomblets rather than a single explosion, and, while several cartoonists have made fun of Walker’s obvious unfitness for office, Knight focuses rather on the fear of the onlookers that this fool is going to make it into the Senate.

To which I would say that, as one of the on-lookers, I have noted that attack ads on Maggie Hassan here are often based on her having voted in favor of Biden policies “95% of the time” while the same Republicans are eager to put numbskulls like Walker, Boebart, Gosar and Greene in office simply because they’ll vote in absolute 100% party lockstep, even if somebody has to show them which end of the pen makes the mark.

 

And a big thanks to Man Overboard for this transition to humor, because I really don’t feel like dwelling on politics today.

This is a lovely segue, given all the people who would rather bow down to the Golden Calf than do all the heavy lifting and who, you’ll note, have begun complaining 22 minutes into the 40 years.

Though I’m complaining that I hope we don’t really wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

We’ll see in November.

 

Anyway, we’re done with politics for today. This Monty isn’t political, mind you.

Not in the least.

 

While speaking of having more money than decency, editorial cartoonists have been coming after Alex Jones with great glee since his loss in court, depicting him as all sorts of nasty reptiles and other slime, but Paul Noth spins it in another way, using New Yorker dry understatement.

There really is something more horrifying here than in direct attacks, given that Jones wouldn’t have influence and power if there weren’t people like this pair, listening to him and taking him seriously but not literally.

This in a world in which the same people who agonize over his loss of freedom of speech have supported Trump’s push to make it easier to sue news organizations for libel.

Dammit. More politics!

Okay, here’s another New Yorker cartoon, this one by Theresa Burns Parkhurst, and it’s not at all political, though it does draw me back to the days when, unlike Alex Jones or little Montague or, I suppose, most New Yorker subscribers, I was half of a young married couple with no money at all.

We would swap dinners with a similarly young scraping-by couple, in which we’d take turns making spaghetti or chicken and pool our money for a jug of cheap wine, then play Monopoly or somesuch.

However, one thing then-wife and I had in common was not particularly liking to entertain or even to be entertained. We would host maybe one party every three or four years, which really doesn’t land you in the center of the hospitality racket.

The joke here being that, if you did reciprocate with the cash equivalent, you’d just get invited over again and the cycle would never end.

And then you’d have to go on Facebook and whine about the hardships of being an introvert.

Grasp the nettle. It only stings if you fail to embrace it.

 

I’m not a fan of jokes about kids staring at cell phones, but Madam and Eve got a laugh with this one, mostly because it didn’t have to be kids. The kids are simply Mother Anderson’s long-time antagonists.

It’s certainly not just the kids.

I’ve stood on a crowded city sidewalk while a friend searched on her phone for someplace we could get a cup of coffee, until I pointed down the street and said, “How about that place with the sign that says ‘Coffee’?” and, even closer to this gag, I’ve watched clouds gather overhead while adult friends searched to see if it was going to rain.

What is happening to our brains?

I can still recite my childhood phone number, but I don’t know anyone’s number today, and I wonder how long it will be before we can’t find our way around the block without consulting a GPS app?

Earlier this month, I sat in airports wondering what we used to do while waiting for a plane before we could yap on a phone or play endless games of Candy Crush.

Not me, of course. I was reading a book.

Well, not a book exactly, but a Kindle.

We’re about one app away from not being able to find our ass with both hands.

 

A salute to guest stars, and to my mom

Here’s the inspiration for today’s headline, and I’ll add that my patient, long-suffering mother waited until I was an adult before telling me how much she loathed these pathetic, over-programmed little plastic robots.

Bless her heart.