CSotD: As The Follies Pile Up
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Time Person of the Year cartoons are piling up, as are social media posts pointing out that Adolph Hitler also made the cut, but I think Dave Granlund hit the combo with this collection of Dubious Heroes.
Though he missed this one from 1979.
It’s not intended as an honor. It’s supposed to reflect the person who had the most impact on the world in the previous year.
Well, it’s intended to sell magazines and always has been, but the racks at the grocery store are full of “special issues” that are intended to do that. And I’ll repeat once more that, in the summer of 2002, we were asked by Corporate how we intended to duplicate our one-day sales from September 12, 2001. I suggested to my boss, “Well, we could rent a couple of planes … “
To which I will add God help the circulation manager whose local team wins the World Series or Super Bowl, because Corporate will demand equal sales the next year when the team is in the cellar.
Anyway, Time Magazine likely gets good sales of its Person of the Year issue just as Sports Illustrated does well with its annual swimsuit issue.
Though here’s the picture of Donald Trump that I wish they were using.
Speaking of scam artists, Dave Whamond points out that Trump and Sorta-Vice-President Musk are a whole lot better at tearing down than they are at explaining their rebuilding plan.
The latest folly is that Musk and Ramaswamy are apparently thinking of doing away with the FDIC, which is similar to their wish to defund the ACLU in that the FDIC doesn’t get any government money either. It’s supported by participating banks.
Killing the FDIC wouldn’t save any taxpayer funds but it would allow bankers to go wild and risk bankruptcy, which is important because it’s part of the plan to Make America Great Again like it was in the Gilded Age when, if a bank failed, depositors were out of luck.
And if you want to kvetch about people making Luigi Mangione into a hero, bear in mind that bank failures and the way the Depression screwed little people were the reason that criminals like “the Great Alphonse Capone” may have seemed like heroes.
Desperate times produce dubious heroes.
Instead, let’s focus on Chip Bok (Creators) and his attempt to turn Pete Hegseth into a hero instead of a drunkard and a lecher. The anecdote about Grant might even be true, but Grant was winning after a succession of Union generals who weren’t.
If you want to draw a parallel, compare Hegseth to McClellan, who had a concept of a plan of victory, though he never asked Lincoln to pardon anyone guilty of war crimes.
Steve Kelley (Creators) makes the point that “They All Do It,” which, if true, is certainly an excellent reason to put more drunken rapists in office.
After all, why turn them away simply because you wouldn’t accept this argument from a seven-year-old?
Ann Telnaes has a problem with a political party that demands purity of its opponents while repeatedly soiling its own bed. And speaking of recalcitrant seven-year-olds, she captures Mike Johnson’s blank, vacuous stare so well that she doesn’t need to add any labeling.
Max Espinoza lays things out in the form of a dialogue-rich argument, but I question his hopeful approach in which the elephant sputters while the donkey remains calmly dominant.
While a lot of the polls that have emerged since the election are selective and dubious, I think it’s clear that Trump and his cronies are quite strong and gaining support from their fellow plutocrats. Meta and Amazon have each pledged a million bucks for the inauguration while Patrick Soon-Shiong has killed another editorial in the LA Times and is promising a new editorial board that will be more fair, balanced and submissively obedient to Dear Leader and his oligarchy.
Matt Davies questions whether a cabinet full of billionaires can really relate to consumer concerns over grocery prices, but Trump was elected on his promises to bring those prices down.
Though now that he’s won the presidency, he is walking back that promise and explains “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
Graeme MacKay notes that bringing down the prices of much of anything is going to be difficult as long as Trump maintains a policy of not only imposing major tariffs on our two largest trading partners, but of purposely insulting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by calling him “governor” and referring to Canada as a state.
Not only do we get a fair amount of eggs and dairy products from Canada, but increasing the tariff on lumber will not lower housing costs here.
And we get even more groceries from Mexico, which is within a hair of tying Canada as our largest trading partner and is no more pleased with Trump’s announced intent to set off a trade war.
Though as Lalo Alcaraz says in this La Cucaracha (AMS), we did it to ourselves. (And BTW, the gun smuggling goes the other direction, but who’s counting?)
But not to worry: We’ll still have domestically produced groceries, at least until Dear Leader succeeds in deporting the people who pick the fruits and vegetables, cut the meat and work in the dairies.
Victory gardens and backyard chickens are starting to look like a pretty smart investment, assuming you’ve got a yard to put them in. I really doubt Bostonians are going to once more be seen leading their cows to the Common to graze.
Though maybe city folks will start referring to pigeons as “squab.”
While out here in the country, we’d better start wearing blaze orange all year ’round, not just in the fall.
Or perhaps, as First Dog on the Moon suggests, we might see people in his country and in our own take a break from their daily struggle to survive and do a little group lobbying.
It would sure beat waiting for Ned Kelly or Jesse James or Luigi Mangione to straighten things out.
(Dick Turpin to Jack Sheppard: “There’s no use talking about it. To them goes the palm. They’ve completely outdone us.”)
As Nast observed, they used to hang highwaymen, not put them in public office.
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