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 […]
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 […]
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’ […]
Here’s a bit of bad news from Jimmy Margulies (KFS), which doesn’t fit my politics, because I’m far from ready to fly the white flag over this country, but it does fit my current mood, which is decidedly Eeyorean. It seems Joe Biden took a few minutes to intervene with Russia on behalf of Brittney […]
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 […]
My intention this morning was to hold off on last night’s hearing until cartoonists had a chance to comment, and I’m not sure how many of today’s featured pieces were done beforehand — clearly several were — and how many were done in the wake of the broadcast. Whatever the count, there’s plenty to consider. […]
Marc Murphy warns that it is late, though perhaps not too late. But it is certainly too late to sit and watch and wonder and hope. Like the man in the joke, God has sent us a canoe, a rowboat and even a helicopter, yet here we are, sitting on the roof watching the waters […]
A bit of political catching up, and Ann Telnaes expresses what I hope is a wider frustration with the lack of accountability for the architects of the insurrection. There was a fair amount of frustration over the fellow who only got eight months in prison for his part in the uprising, and it’s understandable in […]
Today’s Pardon My Planet (KFS) provides a coincidental coda to the impeachment, because, come on now, what did you expect? I’m actually more optimistic now than I was at 24, when I was sure, along with a whole lot of other people, that Nixon would escape the revelations of Watergate. In fact, I wrote a […]
I find it perversely comforting that, having praised Popeye the Sailor Mensch on Saturday for giving away a million dollars, I find in Monday’s Thimble Theater (KFS) that he’s having trouble doing it. “Perversely comforting” in that, while I wish it were otherwise, it’s clear that even back in 1937, we had plenty of cynics […]
Topics for cartoons are beginning to come out of Washington like the firehose of which Dan Perkins warned, and Chip Bok is only one of several conservatives who dismissed reports that Dear Leader had referred to veterans as “losers and suckers” because the sources had requested anonymity. If they were telling the truth, they’d have […]
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards. — Samuel Johnson Jeff Stahler gives the most succinct […]
(Joe Heller) (Darrin Bell) Back in the 1970s, when instant replay first emerged and there was discussion of using it to confirm penalties, legendary NFL referee Art Bell said it was fine with him, but he wanted the right to check the whole tape and call any holding he noticed. It was a wiseass comment, […]
I wasn’t sure where to start today, but David Horsey may come the closest to my position. I’m not quite with Bob Englehart, in proclaiming the unknown writer as a hero, because, as others have suggested, there’s an element of complicity in staying on the team, even if you’re helping to thwart the President’s most […]
“This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” — Winston Churchill, Nov. 10, 1942 Ann Telnaes reflects my own mood at the moment: He’s completely hemmed in, but it hasn’t stopped him from tweeting. I’ll confess that, when Nixon was […]