Breaking An Omelet

According to the following article from Politico, Donald Trump and the Republicans are struggling to find ways to attack Kamala Harris and are throwing out wild claims to see if anything sticks.

Like accusing her of disliking Jews which probably won’t work because she’s married to one.

Trump also said Kamala “happened to turn Black” late in life when being Black was to her advantage and that charge probably won’t stick either because she attended historically-Black Howard University and while there joined a historically-Black sorority and her father was Jamaican and her mother was Indian so if Kamala was hiding being Black in her early years, she did a pretty lousy job of it.

But the Republicans aren’t the only ones resorting to infantile insults.

Apparently Kamala and the Democrats (which sounds like a lounge act that would feature soft jazz and play to a mostly-empty lounge in a Lake Tahoe casino) got together and decided how to strike back at Trump and the Republicans (which sounds like a Far-Right Group that would unsuccessfully try to overthrow the government and then whine about it constantly after it didn’t work) and came up with:

“Weird.”

Meaning they’d label Trump and Vance and everything they want to do as “weird” which I’d label as “pretty fucking vague,” but apparently Kamala and the Democrats are happy with the insult and some Democratic Strategist Dude whose name I forgot to write down thought it was awesome and people would remember it and if calling the Republicans “weird” doesn’t do the trick, Kamala could then try starting every speech with:

“I’m rubber, your glue.”

In fifth grade I lost whatever little mind I had developed at that point and ran for Student Council and as I recall that campaign was quite a bit more dignified than the one we’re currently watching.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/01/donald-trump-kamala-harris-attack-plan-00172178

When people ask how long it takes to draw a cartoon, they generally mean the drawing part and not the reading and thinking part, but you do a lot of reading while hoping an idea will occur to you.

And – depending on your political point of view – lucky for me when I read that Kamala Harris had enough delegates to lead the Democratic ticket, my next thought was what would Donald Trump need to lead the Republicans and you just saw the answer.

And my next thought (they just keep coming, don’t they?) was wondering if the people who distribute my work would send this cartoon to client papers because it’s pretty hard on Republicans.

(BTW: My attitude about politics and personal relationships is pretty much the same as a professional ballplayer’s: during the game I’m going to try to break up double plays and run you over at home plate and if I’m on the mound I’ll “buzz the tower,” but after the game’s over, wouldn’t mind going out for a beer with you as long as you didn’t do something unforgiveable like trying to overthrow the government or play for the Houston Astros.)

Anyway…

Here’s the Political Cartoonist’s Conundrum:

Do something controversial and you risk pissing people off and losing readers and client papers, but avoid controversy and produce a bunch of bland cartoons and then you’re boring and risk losing readers and client newspapers.

Plus, these days – if you’re politically incorrect in the wrong way and piss off the wrong people – you can lose your career, because when the shit hits the fan all those people who were right beside you when you decided to storm the castle will fade into the background and you’ll suddenly find yourself way out in front of The Charge of the Light-Hearted Brigade.

(OK, I may have mixed my metaphors in the middle of the stream, but face it; you can’t break an omelet without making some eggs.)

When I worked for the San Diego Union three editors had to approve my cartoons and when the publisher decided she’d had enough of me and my work, I got fired and the three editors who approved those cartoons continued their careers as if they’d never told me it was OK to make fun of John Wayne.

That apparently-offensive cartoon was based on someone giving a speech and saying “John Wayne is America” which the Union ran on their front page as a headline and that inspired one of those inappropriate thoughts I’m prone to, so I drew a cartoon of John Wayne killing a Mexican (The Alamo), a Vietnamese (The Green Berets) and an American Indian (Take Your Pick of Movies) with the cut line “John Wayne is America.”

Hard to believe that didn’t go over big in a military town.

In my only face-to-face meeting with the newspaper’s publisher, she told me I was making it hard for her to socialize (meaning she’d take crap about my cartoons at cocktail parties in La Jolla) which I hadn’t realized was part of my job description.

My cartooning philosophy, assuming I have one, is go ahead and draw the harsh stuff, but don’t be afraid to occasionally take a swan dive into the goofy.

So a presidential candidate has to pick a running mate and they try to pick one that will help the ticket and not have too much baggage of their own, so when they announce they’ve selected Bob Bland from the Great State of South Monotony a lot of us respond by saying:

“Who?”

(And if you knew who Tim Walz was before Kamala made him her VP pick you probably need to get a hobby.)

But after a VP gets picked, the media will dig up past social media fox paws and former high school classmates who want their moment in the spotlight are now willing to talk about the time they got together with Bob, sniffed glue and robbed a gas station while disguised as Carmelite nuns, so the bland VP pick often winds up resembling the Great Fish from The Old Man and the Sea after the sharks got done holding an All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffet.

(Just looked it up out of curiosity and a group of sharks can be called a “school” of sharks, although a “shiver” of sharks is preferred, but most people don’t know that so let’s just go old-school and call a group of sharks by the term we all know: a “law firm.”)

Anyway…

After Trump named JD Vance as his running mate, people started digging into his past and found a number of questionable statements like JD blaming America’s decline on “childless cat ladies.”

NEWS ALERT:

Childless cat ladies tend to get out and vote because they’ll do anything to get out of the house and breath air that doesn’t smell like cat urine and despite the fact that JD was probably trying to be funny – which is a dangerous move for people with the same sense of humor as members of the Gestapo – the Democrats acted like JD announced he was advocating Firing Squads for the Elderly.

It got so bad Trump was asked if he was planning on dropping JD from the ticket.

Apparently JD was trying to develop a theme because he also said childless Americans – especially those in the “leadership class” – were “more sociopathic” and made the country “less mentally stable” and the “most deranged” and “most psychotic” commentators on Twitter were typically childless.

And now a sidebar on people who have children

As Regular Readers know I’m a Big Baseball Guy although I don’t give a rat’s ass about stuff like baseball trivia and who won the batting title in 1776 or what three Cincinnati Reds served together on a chain gang or who has the highest OPS during Day Games played on alternate Thursdays.

What fascinates me is how the game is played and why it’s played that way and I eventually learned a fair amount about that stuff and because I’m a huge show-off I let people know I knew that stuff and coached my kids’ teams because I didn’t want someone who didn’t know that stuff, but still had firm opinions about baseball, screwing them up.

So I spent a lot of time coaching kids, but as soon as my kids were done playing I quit coaching:

BECAUSE OF THE PARENTS.

Nobody is less mentally stable and more deranged and more psychotic than a kid’s parents who believe nothing even slightly negative should ever, ever, ever happen to their Bubble-Wrapped Child and you just ruined his chances to play for the New York Yankees when you wouldn’t let him pitch in a church league game for 6th and 7th graders because he hadn’t practiced and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball if the pitching mound was located inside the barn.

I’ve seen parents heap scorn and anger and verbal abuse on a 15-year-old umpire who had no previous umpiring experience, but volunteered to serve as one so their kids could play baseball.

As a former professional ballplayer once pointed out, the vast majority of kids who play sports at the grade school level will not go on to play in high school and most high school athletes will not go on to play in college and most college athletes will not go on to play professionally and most ballplayers who sign pro contracts will not go on to play in the Big Leagues.

So what we teach our kids about playing a sport isn’t nearly as important as what we teach our kids about being a good human.

With the possible exception of presidential assassins and people who think they can dabble in the stock market and make big money, nobody is more bat shit crazy than parents and this is another example of JD Vance having no clue about reality, so don’t vote for him to be a heartbeat away from the presidency or let him serve as an umpire in a Little League game.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/05/politics/usha-vance-jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/index.html

I’d seen pictures of Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr., but my main impression of them was based on the Saturday Night Live sketches in which Eric was portrayed as being developmentally disabled and dependent on Don Jr. to get through Life and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here you go:

But for the above cartoon I had to draw them, so I looked at a few pictures and decided they reminded me of some minor characters in a Shakespeare play who were plotting to kill their father the king and would then have a falling out because they both wanted to have an incestuous relationship with their sister.

I’m not saying any of that is true, I’m just saying that’s what they look like and take a gander at this picture from a Vanity Fair article and tell me I’m wrong:

JD Vance claimed people without children are sociopathic, psychotic, deranged and less mentally stable, but Donald Trump’s got kids and he’s no day at the beach either.

According to the Associated Press and everybody else, Supreme Court Justice and World Traveler Clarence Thomas took yet another undisclosed trip on the private jet of GOP megadonor and Nazi memorabilia collector Harlan Crow.

The “private jet” part of the story struck me because, while I’ve never flown on one, I’m guessing people who own private jets fly “whenever I’m goddamn good and ready” so they’re probably on time a lot.

Since it’s the airline I use the most I looked up Southwest Airlines on-time arrival rate and in 2023 it was 76.26%, a statistic that indicates I flew on the other 23.74% of their flights and yet 76.26% was fifth-best in the industry in 2023 among North American airlines. And that figure indicates airlines will be happy to take your money and leave you stranded if you show up two seconds late, but feel no obligation to be on time themselves.

Today’s Lesson

When someone makes a claim ask to see the evidence behind it, if you need to pick a VP running mate pick one with the personality of warm tapioca and hasn’t expressed opinions about feline owners, there’s a 24% chance your plan won’t fly on time unless you own one, parents are as batshit crazy as anybody and never ever never offer to umpire a kid’s baseball game.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/