CSotD: Regrets and the Regrettable
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When I heard Tony Bennett had died, I thought it was too bad, but, then again, he was 96 years old, at which point you’ve got the right to check out.
I was confident that political cartoonists would be all over the topic, obituary cartoons being something that editors can understand and thus will purchase.
I’m giving Bramhall the edge in this Juxtaposition because both the tear and captioning the cartoon were gratuitous and Bramhall simply dropped the mike.
A host of cartoonists referenced “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which was his signature tune but hardly his only great piece .
As long as we’re talking about someone dying at 96, let me add that I can’t afford to live that long.
I see a lot of ads on daytime TV that try to persuade older people to cash in the equity in their homes and, more recently, to cash in their life insurance.
I suppose it’s okay for old people with serious bills to pay, but, if they’re using that money to visit Barbados, I hope they know that, in 30 states, nursing homes can charge your children for the cost of your later care.
You don’t have to leave your kids an inheritance, but you probably shouldn’t leave them drowning in debt.
If you pissed away your financial safeguards on a cruise ship, you damn well better die suddenly, at 80.
Bramhall tackled a more immediate issue in pointing out the utter hypocrisy of Republicans complaining about conservatives being canceled and “censored” when Kevin McCarthy was proposing that Trump’s impeachments be stricken from the record.
McCarthy may have been making an empty promise, knowing that, while Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik were promoting the idea, the rest of the Go-Along-Gang in the House weren’t having any.
The notion of expunging a record in which their hero had prevailed seems silly anyway, but there are any number of other cases in which the GOP is working to cancel and censor reality to fit its own vision.
The fun side of slavery and so forth.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The rightwing is sure that the Bidens are corrupt, even though they can’t quite come up with any proof.
Benson says the White House is keeping it all under wraps, while, as Kelley points out, the Department of Justice is not interested in further investigation of rumors about stolen pick-a-nick baskets.
The Freedom Caucus held hearings, despite their star witness having gone on the lam as a Chinese spy, but, despite calling in a couple of IRS investigators who had apparently also heard the rumors, the only thing they were able to conclusively prove — thanks to Marjorie Taylor Greene — is that Hunter Biden has a penis.
Which, as far as I know, is legal, even if not everyone who has one uses it.
Perhaps I need to do further research on the topic.
There are matters of corruption that can be proven, and John Auchter points out Michigan’s decision not to roll over and let fraudsters get away with attempting to misrepresent their election results.
Fani Willis seems to be going after the Big Fish in Georgia, as she should, but Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel may have an easier time picking off her state’s fake electors, and the effort fits in with my oft-expressed thoughts that the Green Party and other optimistic objectors might do better to recapture school boards, take over city councils and run for state legislators before they try to take the White House.
Optimism and dreams are lovely things, but practicality has its virtues, and Auchter’s cartoon points out that, in both FIFA and in governing the state of Michigan, women are kicking some serious ass.
I did stay up last night to watch Sophia Smith and Lindsey Horan and Alex Morgan and Naomi Girma, but I’ve also been enjoying watching Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel and Jocelyn Benson and Mallory McMorrow.
I’m capable of admiring people in all sorts of contexts.
Mark Anderson drops some media commentary over in the funny pages with this Andertoons (AMS), and hit me squarely.
He’s right on about the need for print, if it’s going to survive, to come up with stories and insights that haven’t already been thoroughly batted around on TV and in social media.
My hands-on-the-keyboard workday is from 4 to 9 AM, but I spend much of the rest of the day tracking news because I’m a relentless news junkie.
By mid-afternoon, claims of “Breaking News” on cable new channels have become farcical, and they’re just nattering on about stuff we all had heard four hours earlier. For magazines, it’s stuff we heard about last month.
The world has gone electronic. Living in a tall, narrow state, I have a choice of New Hampshire or Vermont‘s NPR stations, while those to my East can choose New Hampshire or Maine. All three offer excellent, in-depth coverage of regional news, plus we’ve got a good non-profit on-line news source, as does Vermont, which also has a print/on-line combo source.
Anderson is right: There’s really little left for print newspapers to offer beyond super-local daily coverage, but they persist in eating up space with last night’s wire service stories.
Which, as a former editor, I realize is because they can’t afford enough staff to fill their pages every day with fresh local copy.
But that’s no excuse for cutting the number of comic strips they carry, is it?
Tjeerd Royaards (Cartoon Movement) offers this view of Emo’s dilemma, which I thought was both funny and apt.
But, while I try to shy away from paranoid conspiracy theories, when I see people talk about how much money he’s lost in this lunatic venture, it makes me wonder if it’s really his money and if he’s actually losing it or working to transform Twitter into a form of Truth that actually works.
Not that it matters, because it isn’t working. As said before, I just block the people I don’t want to hear from, while others are leaving the platform entirely.
Oh well. It could be worse. He could have bought a newspaper.
Then he’d never get his $44 billion back.
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