Sometimes the view from a distance is clearer. David Rowe, watching the latest scandalous behavior from Dear Leader and his disciple, declares them to be digging their own political grave while Harris and Walz need only watch them self-destruct.
There’s plenty of reason to assume it, and to assume that, if nothing else, they’d obey the old folk wisdom, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
Yet the dirt still flies.
There are so many cartoons on the topic of Dear Leader’s exploitation of the dead with whom he refused to serve that I had to narrow it down not because they were repetitious but because there were just too many.
David Horsey does a good job of capturing the moment, showing Trump’s camera crew treading over the gravestones, and recalling the insults Trump leveled at the war dead in the past — “losers” and “suckers” at the dead of Belleau Wood, and, while standing at the grave of Gen. John Kelly’s son in Arlington, asking the bereaved father, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Kelly has confirmed that, plus that, when they visited the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Trump asked him “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?”
If anything, Horsey goes easy on the visit, not indicating that the cemetery official shoved out of the way by Trump’s camera crew was a woman.
Well, whatever. We’ve plenty of other evidence of how Dear Leader thinks of women.
And we’ve also seen how Dear Leader feels about himself, which Nick Anderson (Tribune) illustrates, showing him using the graves of dead soldiers as props for his relentless self-promotion.
It could have been worse, Clay Bennett (CTFP) assures us, depicting the cheerful graveside scene as another place for Trump to stage his absurd middle-aged-dad-dance.
And yet it was worse, because Bennett captures the jolly attitude Trump exhibits, giving his trademark grin and thumb’s up gesture …
The one he uses when posing with his heroes, like Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban …
… or when consorting with his North Korean boyfriend.
But Bennett shows the families of the dead Marines reacting in disgust and horror, and if it were that simple, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Trump was invited to the cemetery by two families of the dead, and those gathered with him around the grave of Nicole Gee were smiling and happy, though members gave “hang loose” shaka signs in place of mirroring his thumb’s up.
Same diff: They were absolutely thrilled to be there!
Gong Show creator Chuck Barris used to talk about an imaginary TV show in which he would bring out a small child holding a puppy and offer the audience a million dollars for anyone who would volunteer to come down and shoot the dog on camera.
Then he would progressively lower the offer, and fewer hands would go up, until, finally, someone would kill the puppy for free, just for the opportunity to be on television.
Well, here we are.
They got to meet the president, and all it cost them was the life of a 23-year-old relative.
Ask yourself who they’re going to vote for on November 5.
Don’t bother asking yourself why. Chuck Barris already explained the answer.
But speaking of pointless questions in our siloed world, Gary Varvel (Creators) suggests one: If you get into a conversation with someone who decries Democrats as “socialists,” play dumb and ask them, as innocently as you can, what a “socialist” is.
Or go for the harder question and pretend you don’t know what is meant by “communist.”
I promise you, they can’t define either word. The two terms are all-purpose insults that have been used for more than a century against anyone who proposes to help the working class and the poor.
Even people who seem to understand this will post angry statements on social media, insisting that Social Security is not an entitlement. They’ve paid into it, they say, it’s part of a bargain they made, they say. How dare you suggest they’re entitled to it!
Because the people who don’t want them to have it have completely perverted the term “entitlement.” Just as “literally” now means “figuratively,” “entitlement” now refers to something you aren’t entitled to.
If you find yourself in a conversation with someone who hates socialism, ask them if they plan to accept their Social Security checks when the time comes.
That’s before we discuss the roads they drive on and what happens if their house catches on fire.
Juxtaposition of the Day
David Rowe did well to include JD Vance as one of the gravediggers in his cartoon depiction, because every time JD opens his mouth, he alienates additional people.
Rogers is treading on thin ice in comparing Vance to the Taliban, whose latest ruling against women is beneath contempt and goes beyond what they had decreed when they were sheltering Osama bin Laden at the turn of this century.
But there is more to Vance’s off-putting attitude than just the “childless cat owner” label. Now he’s come out against female teachers who don’t have children of their own, which is more appalling than his ludicrous inability to order donuts without making an ass of himself.
But so what? The women who feel insulted weren’t voting for him anyway. Others would happily stand grinning beside Dear Leader at a young relative’s graveside.
Vance may be the most unpopular vice-presidential candidate in modern history, but if Dear Leader asked him, he’d shoot the puppy. Loyalty is all that matters.
Oh, but it was disgraceful for Kamala Harris to bring her runningmate along on that interview. Nobody else has ever done such a thing!
Well, not this week, anyway.
Ted Rall drew this piece for Counterpoint, but he’s also drawn for the Russians at Sputnik, and his contrarian view of history isn’t required to meet the standards of an American eighth grade social studies curriculum.
Boss Tweed famously said that his followers didn’t read but couldn’t help seeing Thomas Nast’s pictures. However, in our siloed society, people hear only what they want to hear, they see only what they want to see, and they believe only what they want to believe.
You’d better vote, because they will.
Ted Rall spent a good part of the ’00z attacking the families of 9/11 victims. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/mar/07/pressandpublishing.terrorismandthemedia
If trump was really there to “honor” those who died in the service of their country, why didn’t he visit the graves of those who died while he was CinC? Their graves are in the same section.
I really hope that that guy’s recent antics will finally start to drive home to voters that the Republicans don’t get to have a monopoly on patriotism and “supporting the troops” anymore. They lost the claim to Christian behavior and “family values” when they nominated him, in my mind, but that doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet.
Vance, in a letter to his trans college friend shortly before throwing them under the bus, justified his actions by claiming he was representing “normal Americans”. As if Peter Theil is “normal”.
Chuck Barris was but a cynical product of his cynical times. Today he’d still wind up with way too many people eager to come down and shoot the puppy for free. Today, he’d then have to ask “Okay, now who’s willing to shoot the kid?”
A particularly fun exercise is to challenge folks to define “woke”
In their attempt to define it, assuming they’re able to at all, it’s amusing watching them come to the slow realization that maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.
Personally, I would define “woke” as “being aware that other people exist”
This may be hard for some to grasp, but the universe does not revolve around you.
A lot of the anti-“woke” crowd seem to think it means being asked to be polite to someone they don’t like.
If I could ask J.D. some questions, it would go something like this…
If women without kids can’t teach in our schools, does that mean only women with kids can teach? Then who takes care of their kids? (I assume it can’t be women without kids.) Or can only men teach our kids? And what the heck are Catholic schools supposed to do? Do you ever think about the things that you say?
How long has this donut been working here?
what, no political cartoon responses to ““Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently.”? i’m surprised at the relatively mild media reactions to this unprecedented vulgarity by a Presidential candidate.
It’s the equivalent of the “alarm fatigue” that hospital workers complain of—it happens so frequently that it’s just background noise at this point.
I linked to it, but it’s hard to specifically react without just spreading the scum. I don’t know that there’s anything to say beyond “How dare you?”
Dunce said on CNN that we should all lighten up and “have some fun” with some “jokes”. I’m looking forward to seeing how much JD “laffs” at the inevitable appearance of the “funny joke” memes suggesting how he orally pleasures DFT.
thx for the feedback. much appreciated.
The hand gestures by the Gee relatives look more like the “hook ’em horns” sign of Univ. of Texas, or the “rock on” sign of heavy metal. I’m pretty sure its not the shaka.
Well, she was from California and went straight into the Marines from high school, so she has no connection to Texas or its uni. And shaka gestures no longer have any connection to Hawaii, though California has a surfing culture (perhaps not in Sacramento).
In a recent column, Lee Judge related he grew up in Sacramento and when he told people in KC he was from California, they’d ask if he was a surfer. The point he was making is that people form generalities about states, not realizing that just as there’s a lot of California that is not coastal (Sacramento being 200 miles from he ocean), not every Californian is a liberal.