Sometimes it’s easy to call out a cartoonist. In this case, given that, in his profile statement at Counterpoint, Mike Beckom boasts of deliberately insulting people and being insensitive to their feelings, and styles himself as “not politically correct” at his Twitter page, it’s not out of bounds to assume his mockery of Hawaiian culture […]
That’s my Grandpa, at the head of the one-room classroom in Ironwood, Michigan, sometime in the first decade of the last century. I spent more than a quarter of a century working with schools myself, reporting on them, lecturing, doing teacher workshops and writing curricula, but I take my hat off to the people who […]
F-Minus (AMS) offers a cartoon that took me back to the days of the Soviet Union, when people stood in long lines for groceries and other basics. This same gag was told there as part of the grim humor Russians enjoy, as well as part of a reality in which people really did get into […]
Clay Jones takes a poke at cartoonists who have drawn Joe Manchin as the Grinch, and I’m happy to pass it on because I didn’t really want to do an entire posting of Grinch/Manchin cartoons. Several Grinch cartoons had appeared before the current flood of Manchin cartoons, and it’s not surprising, given how the Grinch […]
Martyn Turner provides a good starting point by celebrating the fact that we’ve long since lost track of the starting point and it’s all ups and downs now. Turner is Irish, hence the snakes. The game we Yanks call “Chutes and Ladders” is “Snakes and Ladders” elsewhere because of its Indian origins, but it’s played […]
I’m using this Halloween-themed Clay Jones cartoon to make a point that Clay Jones doesn’t represent. Jones is self-syndicated and pumps out cartoons at a prodigious rate, often giving his clients more than one choice on a given day. Today is November 2 and he’s already put up four cartoons since this October 31 one […]
Barney & Clyde (WPWG) has it right, but it’s more complex. I don’t think people are any more stupid than in the past, nor do I believe there are any more stupid people than ever. However, stupid people are far less isolated than they used to be, and that gives them a great deal more […]
We’ll start this discussion of misunderstandings and outright lies with an easy one: Steve Kelley (Creators) resurrects an old canard that, rather than holding off rallies because of the pandemic, Candidate Biden was “hiding in his basement,” and uses it to make a point about his falling approval ratings. You can find any sort […]
In Between Friends (KFS), Susan sometimes struggles with “older,” but she’s becoming more comfortable with “wiser,” which makes sense, since the phrase “older but wiser” suggests that the latter is compensation for the former. I prefer “older AND wiser,” and how sad if they don’t coincide. (There is, indeed, no fool like an old fool.) […]
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 […]
Joel Pett reflects a mood set by others. Today’s headline puns on a mystic 14th century text in which the writer contends that we can’t know God through intellectual striving and so must approach faith through a more contemplative route. It wasn’t new then and, of course, it isn’t new now, though it is kind […]
The joke being that, while some of us ran as fast as we could, some of us didn’t run at all, and so here we are in the same place as we started. I’d laugh, if I didn’t have a niece in Florida who tested positive despite being vaccinated. She’s okay; For nearly all […]
Another hero bites the dust, and I’m assuming this Barry Blitt piece is based on Eric Clapton declaring that he won’t play in venues that require proof of vaccination. He was already on the record as an anti-vaxxer, along with — sigh — Van Morrison. I don’t get the “white” thing, but I’ve seen a […]
Matt Wuerker (Politico) outlines a glitch in a free society, or at least in this one, which is that Power can still gain an advantage by keeping its populace frightened and insecure. The easier to eat you with, my dear. And, in a capitalist system that does not rein in monopolies or keep private enterprise […]
No politics today. It’s my dog’s birthday and I promised her I wouldn’t get all het up. So we’ll start with this Frazz (AMS) which Constant Readers will realize I like because he actually gets the meter right. But I also like it because it takes something absolutely silly and turns it smart, which is […]