CSotD: Homework Assignments
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I don’t necessarily admire Amelia’s lack of patience or occasionally unpleasant ways of expressing displeasure, but I agree that it’s tough watching geniuses craft the voice of a generation.
There’s room for debate and disagreement, of course. That’s been a fundamental part of democracy since the days of Athens.
Whamond raises a good current example: I’m hearing people say we shouldn’t dwell on Trump’s promise to lower the price of eggs, because there are so many more important things happening.
Those who want to stop talking about eggs remind us that Trump campaigned on a lot of other things, including some promises that threatened democracy.
But I’m inclined to agree with Whamond that we should continue to point out the price of eggs, because if people had listened to those other threats promises, Dear Leader wouldn’t have won the election.
Kitchen-table issues swung the vote. His supporters voted for less expensive groceries, and if you want them to regret their choice, you have to hit them with a reminder not of what they should have paid attention to but what they did pay attention to.
Eggs are more expensive and inflation has increased. Trump is blaming Biden, but that ol’ hound ain’t gonna hunt forever and at some point it’s going to become clear that he’s in charge of the economy.
And that eggs are still too expensive.
The other reason to discuss eggs is based on the slogan “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” I admire Matt Wuerker’s cartoons, and I don’t disagree with his citing of the Overton Window, because the GOP is framing its assaults on things people care about, regardless of their actual level of importance.
At least, I think that’s what the cartoon means, but I had to look up Overton Window, which makes me wonder how much the Overton Window itself fits into the definition of things people are talking about.
Comedians refer to being “too smart for the room” as a source of failure: You can be clever without being effective if the audience doesn’t catch your drift. True for stand-ups, true for cartoonists.
Anne Derenne goes for simplicity: An ankle bracelet as “Conviction for the Wealthy” and a jail cell as “Conviction for the Poor.” Other than needing to translate from the French, there’s no requirement for deep analysis. Her point is obvious.
The best part of employing simplicity is that although she’s cartooning in Europe, over here in the US, we’ve just seen Steve Bannon plead guilty to stealing $15 million from people who thought he was going to help build a wall on our southern border.
His punishment is that he has to be a good boy for three years and he’s not allowed to do it again.
Imagine if he’d gone into a liquor store and stolen $1500. And his name was DuWayne instead of Steve, and he didn’t know anybody powerful and important.
If you want to explore the unfairness a little more deeply, Mehdi Hassan has a brilliant column — with receipts — on the topic of how DEI has become the new N-word for racists who know better than to use the N-word itself.
Speaking of how the other 10% lives, I was surprised to find that Steve Kelley doesn’t realize that talent agencies and speakers bureaus routinely sign up political figures.
Maybe you have to have spent a little time actually in the newsroom to know this, but of course ex-presidents and ex-senators and other prominent people sign up with somebody to arrange their appearances and handle the contracts, etc.
One of the advantages of being a staff cartoonist is that you have to show your rough sketch to an editor, and sometimes the response you get is, “No, that’s not how it works” or, in this case, “Yeah, but everybody does that.”
Though if your audience doesn’t know that everybody does that, I guess you can say whatever you want.
It’s not like saying “Gulf of Mexico” or something.
I’ll cut Lester a little bit of slack on this one, because part of trying to cover the firehose of dishonesty, foolishness and weird, unworkable policies issuing out of the White House is that the flood makes it hard to stay current.
But only a little bit of slack, because, for example, the Austin American-Statesman had a very thorough refutation of those false and misleading claims about USAID. It’s just not that hard to break out of the Fox/Newsmax silo to find out what else is being said.
I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him. – Abraham Lincoln
Here’s a different explanation of the USAID shutdown.
Speaking of sources, someone said that the law will not allow Musk/Trump to pay those who resign more than $25,000, so a promise to pay them until September is empty. But I don’t have a second source, so I’m not going to say whether that’s true or false.
But I’ve got another story about why this is a sucker bet. I was at a newspaper that offered buyouts, and there was one such buyout available in the marketing department where I worked. I knew that I had seniority over everyone else and, given my length of service, I’d have scored six months pay if I took it.
So I went to the publisher and volunteered to quit, and she told me the buyout was no longer available in my department, at which point I realized that, while I was senior to the other employees, my boss had a year or two seniority on me, so I went to talk to him and he explained that he’d insisted on a buyout and they insisted he keep it secret.
The result was that management now knew I was willing to quit, and so they began a system of harassment that eventually led to my departure, without six months pay or even qualifying for unemployment.
Violets are blue
Roses are red
If you trust your boss
You’d be better off dead.
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