CSotD: The Song That Doesn’t End
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Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) not only points out the bizarre self-inflicted punishment the GOP is laying upon itself, but her stack of round cards demonstrates the challenge of keeping up with a story that seemingly has no ending.
As of this morning, we’re up to 11 rounds of pointless posturing, and even if they resolve things today, the GOP has left a lot of dignity and credibility on the canvas, and it’s entirely their own fault.
To add insult to injury, the Washington Post is reporting a compromise, or, at least, what passes for a compromise under current circumstances:
This sounds a lot like the compromise in Titanic: He gets to cling to the door a while longer before admitting it won’t hold him. The idea that “it will show considerable momentum for him” would be a funny line from a comedian but isn’t much of an insight from a journalist.
Clay Jones questions how many of these compromises you can make and retain any sort of actual control in the position, or why you would want to? Putting the Poo-Flinging Caucus in power simply guarantees more poo, and he suggests that these holdouts have no goal beyond that.
In that essay, Jones also calls out the use of other people’s metaphors, saying he hesitates to use something the news anchors are already saying. I’ll add to that with a caution to cartoonists:
We’ve all got Twitter. When some wiseguy tweets a joke about Groundhog Day or Monty Python’s Black Knight, you are not the only person seeing it. Don’t bother drawing it.
It’s funny when Mr. Bean does it. Not so funny in real life.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The point that matters is this: What on earth did the Republicans think was going to happen, when they chose to make common cause with anarchists, white supremacists and delusional screwballs?
Britt points out the foolishness of the question, while Luckovich notes how easily the pending disaster could have been foreseen.
Someone, for instance, might have called out the paranoid idiocy of the QAnon conspiracy, if not when it started, certainly when some ammosexual shot up a pizzeria in search of pederastic cannibals, or cannibalistic pedophiles or whatever.
But, certainly, there is no excuse for the disloyalty of politicians who feared for their lives during the attempted coup, but then turned around and denied what we had all seen happening on television. Their refusal to stand up against the renegades gave credibility to the effort, and to those who inspired it.
At which point, if you’re going to borrow a meme for the conversation, here’s an oldie-but-goodie that has gained in relevance and credibility over the past year:
It seemed a lot funnier back in 2015, before the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party came to power and commenced their policy of eating people’s faces, to the shock and bewilderment of the people who had elected them.
The power of the joke, as with Britt and Luckovich’s cartoons, is the complete lack of subtlety and the unforgivably obvious intentions that people chose to ignore.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Kelley takes the Will Rogers approach, cynically deriding government to get an easy laugh.
When I lectured on political cartooning in schools, I’d tell the kids that anybody could draw a cartoon about cafeteria food and get a laugh, but the real humor would come from a cartoon about something nobody over 17 even knew was going on in their school.
The important point was not my comment, but the knowing nods I’d see in my audience.
Similarly, we’re all getting laughs out of the disarray in the GOP, and I’ll certainly admit I’ve not only laughed but have cracked jokes.
A day of nonsensical infighting might have been funny, but, cheap shots aside, there is a purpose to government, even if the Poo Flinging Party and the Leopards Eating Faces Party never get around to their announced project of reading the Constitution aloud from the floor of a Congress they do not respect and cannot control.
Bennett, however, is right to reference Longfellow rather than Rogers, because there’s nothing humorous going on.
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Though perhaps those dissidents would prefer Longfellow’s original ending to the poem, which he decided was too dark and pessimistic:
But, alas! oh, what and where
Shall be the end of a thing so fair?
Wrecked upon some treacherous rock,
Or rotting in some noisome dock,
Such the end must be at length
Of all this loveliness and strength.
RJ Matson leaves us with the only really funny issue in this situation: When will McCarthy either give up on trying to reach the gavel, or recognize that he’ll have to insert his entire head and shoulders to make the stretch? And even that isn’t particularly funny.
Meanwhile, he’s leaving the rest of us with a handful of purple berries, asking “Who won?”
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