Today’s Brewster Rockit (Tribune) got a chuckle but it brings up a topic I’ve been meaning to raise. It’s no secret that newspapers are in deep trouble, in part because of changes in how people consume media but mostly because vulture capitalists decided to slaughter the goose so they wouldn’t have to wait for the […]
As everyone struggles to explain the young man who tried to shoot Trump, I thought of this Tom the Dancing Bug from 1999, when we were trying to figure out Columbine and everybody had a theory. We didn’t actually come to a conclusion, or, at least, not to one that solved the problem, though, as […]
Jeff Danziger (Counterpoint) sounds echoes of the bandwagon/Bellman effect discussed here yesterday. Yossarian was asked, “What if everyone felt that way?” and responded “Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?” Understandable answer, but then again, Edmund Burke wrote, “Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the […]
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” — Stephen Dedalus As Doonesbury concluded back in 1971, putting Kent State into the memory hole allowed us to “concentrate on fresher, more recent, tragedies.” But as Senators Hawley and Cotton call for the National Guard to be sent to quell campus protests, it’s […]
David Rowe picks up on both themes for today: King Charlie has been diagnosed with cancer, and so has Uncle Sam, at least in the John Dean sense of there being a cancer on the presidency. We’ll get back to that second part. As for the King’s cancer, Matt is refreshingly sarcastic about the vague […]
About the time I file today’s posting, Donald Trump will be appearing in federal court attempting to claim immunity for soliciting fraudulent election results in Georgia. He has another appeal pending in Georgia, seeking immunity on state charges in the case. Jimmy Margulies (KFS) comments here on a separate attempt by the former president to […]
“Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth—to see it like it is, and tell it like it is—to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth. ” — Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1968 Gary Varvel (Creators) offers a pair of cartoons that illustrate today’s theme. The first is […]
This Doonesbury ran on May 30, 1973, not July 4, but it’s an important intro to the political cartoons that ran a half century ago today, because, like most historical moments, Watergate is shrouded in half-remembered stories and outright myths. Trudeau may have been a little pessimistic about how much people were paying attention at […]
I wish I thought this Arlo & Janis (AMS) were the sign of a coming revolution, but I’m not that naive. I’m also not sure whose fault it is, and perhaps the answer to that is that it’s been a group effort. Looking back, it seems that every major invention in communications — radio, TV, […]
I laughed at this New Yorker cartoon, though they don’t bother crediting their cartoonists and if you Google “New Yorker cartoonist CAB” you find out how many times they’ve made fun of taxis. It might as well be signed “pigeon” or “Chardonnay.” Whoever drew it, it got a chuckle, but it also got a flinch […]
Scott Stantis sits out on a lonely limb, preserving his professional identity as a conservative while also maintaining personal decency, which results in a cartoon like this. It shouldn’t be necessary to identify a conservative as thoughtful and decent, but here we are, and Stantis’s take on the FBI search is one of the few […]
Tom Tomorrow asks how we’ve managed to undo so much so quickly. It’s an excellent question. But as the seeds of all those reforms were being planted, the seeds of their destruction were also being sown. The 1968 Presidential Campaign in which Nixon edged out Humphrey saw George Wallace mount a redneck-based effort that […]
Starting the day with things we ought not to believe, Ann Telnaes encapsulates the conflicting stories about how the Secret Service accidentally deleted text messages from, golly, of all dates, January 5 and 6, 2021. She includes a nameplate for Nixon secretary Rosemary Woods, for the benefit of those too young to remember Woods’ […]
It is unfortunate that the 50th anniversary of the Watergate scandal coincides with the current political crisis, but we’ve added “-gate” to every bump in the road for the past half century, and both scandals involve the White House, so the popular linkage was likely inevitable. But Matt Wuerker (Politico) demonstrates how different the world […]
The tradition is to mark history in round numbers, and 54 years ago is hardly that, but March 31, 1968 was a pretty interesting moment in time and, besides, I have a doctor’s appointment this morning, so had to put something together in advance. So here was a historic moment for the date, and let […]