CSotD: Complaint Department

I’m done with the Dilbert thing, which makes it frustrating that there are suddenly a boatload of editorial cartoons popping up, many of them very good . . . but a little late. I like Lee Judge (KFS)‘s because, yeah, the guy has gone off into the sunset.

I’ll grant you that things happened fast. DD Degg began our coverage Thursday and Dilbert was history by Sunday. We were scrambling to keep up as things cascaded, as was the mainstream media. I was quoted in the Washington Post and by the Associated Press on Monday, which was flattering, yes, but the extensiveness of the coverage was proof that, indeed, Dilbert was effectively dead.

A few cartoonists had also scrambled during the weekend, but others either didn’t or got caught in bureaucratic scheduling such that their work is only appearing this morning, after the ship has sailed, the train has left the station, the horse has escaped the barn and, as Judge says, Dilbert has wandered off into oblivion.

A word about that bureaucratic scheduling: You can’t expect commentary on breaking news in the Sunday paper because it is standard industry practice to print the Features and Business sections at some point on Friday so that only they only have to run the A-section and Sports on Saturday night. This translates into a Thursday deadline for those advanced sections, or early Friday at best.

Which makes the Sunday editorial page tend to be long-term in its vision or, to put it another way, plain vanilla.

But there ought to be more live coverage on Monday, and, for editorial cartoons, Monday is a desert. I track over 100 editorial cartoonists each morning, and few of them are updated on Monday. Many of those who are, are Brits, Kiwis or Aussies, which didn’t help much with Dilbert coverage.

I’m mostly just bitching, but it does seem a shame that more political cartoonists can’t come out of the gate faster.

Juxtaposition of ‘And Another Thing’

(Alex)

(Tank McNamara — AMS)

As long as I’m in complaint mode, let me offer a smack upside the heads of the people who said Dilbert was never funny. Some of them seemed to be youngsters who hadn’t come upon it until it had begun to jump the shark, but others apparently had never worked in an office.

Here’s a bulletin: Not every comic strip is aimed at you.

F’rinstance, Alex is aimed at a level above the middle-managers targeted by Dilbert. The British strip appears in the business section of the Telegraph and a lot of the humor requires familiarity with both the practices and laws that impact the top echelon, the folks who go to grouse hunts and cricket matches, and, as in this example, are able to do significant personal and business favors for each other.

It’s specialized, sure. But so is Tank McNamara, which is aimed at sports fans and presumes knowledge not only of the games but of the news about players and specific developments.

There’s a reason smart newspapers carry a variety of strips. You don’t have to like them all, and, in fact, if you do, it’s probably a poor mix.

Meanwhile, out in the larger world, Gary McCoy echoes the speculation by Ted Cruz and others on the right that air raid sirens during Biden’s visit were fake. It’s not impossible, but if he’d sailed in and received a 21-gun salute, it wouldn’t have been a fake attack.

It’s not a bad segue, however, for McCoy to tie in Putin’s threat of using nuclear weapons, though I suspect that’s where the real fake comes in. Surely other world leaders have let Putin know what response that would trigger: Mutual Assured Destruction remains a good deterrent, and, to twist the old punchline, Putin may be crazy, but he’s not stupid.

Clay Jones offers a rebuttal to conservatives, including, specifically, McCoy, who complained about Biden’s trip to the war zone, which does appear to be a masked complaint about his mini-summit with NATO leaders in Poland.

Not to overdo the parallel, but Lincoln did visit Richmond, the captured Confederate capital, while the war was still ongoing, and, as seen in this contemporaneous print, even brought his son, Tad, along with him. And this excerpt from a biography on the Daily Beast includes this moment:

Mind you, 10 days later, John Wilkes Booth demonstrated the lack of harmony and union in our house divided, and we’re still dealing with the failures of Reconstruction in a country that didn’t seem to want to be reconstructed.

The Dominion Voting System lawsuit continues, as Ratt points out, not needing a whole lot of spin or exaggeration to make his point, since his point is essentially to point out their point.

With the Watergate hearings, we learned of overt actions of which we hadn’t dreamt, which not only answered Senator Baker’s question, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”, but offered shocking details of the extent of the corruption.

However, the revelations of what Fox knew and when they knew it and how they purposefully, deliberated chose to circulate lies is more like the revelations of the Church Committee, because, just as anyone who cared already knew the Feds were tapping phones, reading mail and playing dirty tricks, so, too, anyone watching this story already knows Fox has been deliberately spreading disinformation.

The difference being that everyone who watched the news during Watergate got the news.

Today, there are many people who rely on Fox for their news, and so they aren’t hearing any of this.

As far as they know, Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Americans deserve to know the truth, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy declared, but, as RJ Matson points out, McCarthy then decided the way to spread the truth was to hand over the Jan 6 tapes to Tucker Carlson.

Yes, this Tucker Carlson:

If his naughty language is what most offends you, you weren’t paying attention to his content. But, as the K-Tel pitchmen say, “Wait! There’s more!”

I prefer to take Tom Tomorrow‘s cartoon as a warning rather than a prediction, but I guess that’s up to the people. Bear in mind that about 49% seem to be enjoying the ride.

But that still leaves a majority, if they want to be one.