Gary Varvel (Counterpoint) starts us out today with a trusty conservative talking point for Thanksgiving, but, as they say, “That ol’ dog won’t hunt.” Not at this point. We can debate over whose policies did more to add to national debt, with the understanding that conservatives have a lot invested in the accusation of “tax […]
Hard on the heels of our discussion of the topic, xkcd weighs in on the matter of college commas. To be finicky, there probably is a University of Chicago comma, but it may manifest itself in its absence. They have plenty of rules about commas, but since I don’t care enough to become a member […]
Yesterday’s cartoons by Ella Baron and Guy Venables were met with surprise by several readers, the issue of record quantities of sewage being dumped into English waters having only been mentioned here in passing before. One example of that being this Ben Jennings cartoon from August, 2022, when a drought brought the dumping of sewage […]
It’s only fair to point out that this Mike Lester (AMS) cartoon ran a few days before Biden suddenly racked up some significant gains in the all-important swing states that could decide the 2024 Presidential Election. If polls determined elections, Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016. Tracking polls is part of horserace coverage, and […]
This could have been a short day for me, because Jen Sorensen has said everything I have on my mind. Instead, I’ll elaborate. One challenge in critiquing editorial cartoons gone wrong is trying to determine if the cartoonist is genuinely mistaken or deliberately lying, but I like to think that deliberate lies come from farther […]
Harry Allard’s 1974 book “The Stupids Step Out” has been banned in many places because it’s not funny to refer to people as “stupid,” though you might try the transactional explanation, “It’s not that you’re stupid. It’s that you do stupid things.” Which seems worse, but I’m not going to defend the term, having merely […]
Today’s Non Sequitur (AMS) offers my favorite: A combination of humor and potential for serious thought. It’s only funny if you recognize the blend of fact and folklore that runs not only throughout most religions but most ancient histories as well. Fundamentalists on either side simply don’t get it. One group feels you should […]
If you’ve never seen the 1944 classic “Gaslight,” it’s worth the $3.99 at Amazon Prime, if only for the cast. But watching it will also help you understand why people keep throwing the term around in political terms today. In the movie, Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) marries Paula Alquest (Ingrid Bergman) and then attempts to […]
Dark Side of the Horse (AMS) on the dumb side of praise. There are a couple ways of looking at this simple cartoon, the first being that paying to be told you’re smart is contradictory, and you can bet that vending machine never shows anything but 160, which is genius level, 100 being average. According […]
It used to be a tradition this time of year to break the fourth wall and wish readers a Merry Christmas, these being some examples by classic strips back in 1925. I didn’t see many examples today, though it may be that, come next Friday, more cartoonists will do that. It’s a clumsy situation […]
Matt Wuerker sums things up. I don’t suppose there are very many people who want either of these to be America, because both images suggest that there is a problem, and wouldn’t it be nice if there were not? But there always is, and the question is whether you repress discontent or hash it out […]
RJ Matson offers a great take on “Blind Justice.” Blind Justice is an ideal that we’ve never achieved. The idea of a system in which everyone who comes before it gets equal treatment, in which Justice does not see who is on either side, is something to strive for even if we know in our […]
It doesn’t matter where we begin today, since it’s really a grab bag, but Chip Bok’s cartoon made me think, so we’ll start there. I brushed off the Bloomberg part. I’m glad he admitted that “Stop and Frisk” was a bad policy, but I don’t take his candidacy seriously and it doesn’t seem anyone […]
Christmas-themed cartoons should be pretty much over on this day of Three Freedom Hens, but Steve Breen notes a post-Christmas part of the story that should be relevant year ’round. And isn’t. Now, even if you take the Bible as folklore, there are all sorts of contradictions or, at least, odd choices of what to […]