CSotD: Not with a bang

I was thinking of using the headline “WGASA Forever,” but several of today’s cartoons are about things we really should care about.

Not this one, but I gather a lot of people in Britain besides Christian Adams are steamed by the fact that The Prince Formerly Known As The Prince and his wife have made a documentary about their lives and it’s about to stream on Netflix.

If there were ever a time to ask “WGASA?” this would seem to be it, but I’ll confess to some interest, given that I thought Charles and Diana’s stage-managed fairytale marriage was a horror from the start, and my later sympathy for their boys was colored by my status as a divorced dad.

Which leaves me thinking Harry is well out of it. I’m glad that he found love from outside the royal bubble, someone who didn’t just scurry off in horror but helped break him out.

It’s kind of a reverse-Cinderella, in which the scullery maid rescues the prince.

Except that, if she were a scullery maid, they could open up a restaurant. As it is, her background is in film, so they made a film. And if nobody cares, it will flop, but, then, a lot of restaurants close soon after opening.

Life is full of risks.

 

Back in September, Aiden Cooney — who is Irish and may have more of an outsider perspective — drew this picture of Dear Old Dad, who, like the rest of his family, has been carefully trained to wave and cut ribbons but waited a long time to use that training for real. By contrast, Harry was, at best, fated to be an Assistant Waver and Cutter of Ribbons.

In any case, people seem highly exercised over Harry’s escape and will hate Meghan forever but, honestly, WGASA?

 

Though we ought not to feel too superior over here.

As Mike Luckovich notes, Elon Musk is having a festival of self-destruction and every foolish thing he does draws fawning approval from the army of bootlickers and bots who follow him on Twitter. One of the perils of fame is that, even when you are behaving like a complete ass, there are plenty of people who will assure you that your critics are idiots and that you’re the greatest person who ever lived.

Hence the triumph in that final panel.

However, while Harry and Meghan’s documentary will have no real impact on the world, Musk’s elevation of rightwing voices and suppression of dissent will contribute to the division in this country.

His foolish, self-indulgent shenanigans have consequences.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Ann Telnaes)

 

(Pat Hudson)

Similarly, the idiotic question some Kiwi reporter asked the prime ministers of New Zealand and Finland could be dismissed as pointless stupidity, if it didn’t provide such a stark insight into how little some people have advanced since 1950.

It was so monumentally foolish that neither Telnaes nor Hudson were able to do much more than replicate it and add a ridiculous bit of exaggeration.

They weren’t helped in their efforts by the fact that Ardern and Marin kindly and gently eviscerated the jackass on the spot.

No word on whether said jackass — Joey Dwyer, Newstalk — will get more punishment than universal mockery, but the answer to WGASA in this case should be “all women and any men with mothers, sisters, wives or daughters. Or who exist in the 21st century.”

Or who are intelligent enough to see past one stupid question to grasp a more widespread, corrupt vision.

 

I had to take a second look at Scott Stantis’s cartoon, because he’s been Chicago-based for so long that it seemed odd to have him comment on a Dallas city ordinance. But his signature here says he’s expanding his market, and good for him, though several Chicago suburbs are also moving to squelch leaf-blowers.

I’m all in favor of the move, but I’m not sure it’s fair commentary to pair a city ordinance with a problem more efficiently addressed by state government, and you may ask New York City about that issue.

However, as an overall critique of priorities, I’m in agreement.

 

By contrast, I’m completely flummoxed by Chip Bok (Creators)’s commentary on the bill to avoid a rail strike, given that it was Republican senators, not the president, who shot down the amendment that would have provided rail workers with sick leave.

Perhaps there’s something called “Biden Derangement Syndrome,” but there are also newspapers, televisions, radios and the Internet, any one of which would have provided the facts on how the sick leave amendment failed and who killed it.

Well, assuming you use them to develop your opinions and not simply to confirm them. Note that, when Ye appeared on Tucker Carlson, they edited out his anti-Semitic rants to give the lad a clean slate, and Fox barely covered the dinner in which Trump hosted a pair of white supremacists and openly anti-Semitic bigots.

Editorial cartoonists are supposed to be journalists, and, while spin is at the heart of commentary, fair commentary begins with facts.

 

This doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit of fun in the process, and, while many cartoonists have suggested that the GOP is pursuing Hunter Biden’s laptop because they have no answers to all the purported crises they’ve been blaming Biden for, Mike Peters (KFS) takes the opportunity to spoof their apparent willingness to let the rest of the world fall to pieces while they focus on this trivia.

 

Which he does with an homage to one of Ron Cobb’s most famous cartoons. The crucial difference is that Peters is blaming the Republicans for letting everything fall to pieces, while Cobb was pointing out the hopelessness of those who would rather veg out in front of the TV than stand up and question the status quo.

Not that there aren’t a lot of moderate, sensible Republicans tolerating internal destruction rather than standing up to it.

 

And speaking of both classic illustrations and dubious achievements, Wall Street has had a delicious feast of journalistic layoffs in keeping with its mission of placing profits over quality. Reliable Sources totes up a ghastly butcher’s bill for CNN, Gannett and other media.

As another source explained

Or, put another way,