I predict more inaccurate predictions

So here’s my problem (OK, one of my problems – the complete list is fairly lengthy) : a while back the people who distribute my cartoons changed their deadline and now want the cartoons by 11 AM East Coast time and since reading the news and thinking of an idea and drawing that idea and then doing the necessary work in Photoshop to make the cartoon printable can sometimes take up most of an eight-hour day, becoming a vampire/cartoonist (AKA “vamptoonist”) and getting up at 3 AM didn’t seem feasible, so the cartoons are drawn the day before I send them to the syndicate.

What I draw on a Monday goes out on a Tuesday and may or may not appear in some newspaper on Wednesday.

And this past Tuesday morning (Election Day) the political experts were assuring me and everyone else that the Democrats were going to get slaughtered because generally speaking whatever party won the presidency in the last election loses seats in the midterm election, plus –according to the same experts – the Democrats clearly had the wrong message and didn’t talk enough about the economy and spent way too much time talking about abortion rights and I read that on the CNN website so you know it must be true. (More on that in a moment.)

So on Tuesday I drew the following cartoon to be sent to the syndicate on Wednesday morning:

But by Wednesday morning, the political experts’ predictions had proved to be inaccurate. The results were mixed and because they were still counting mail-in votes, some of the winners and losers hadn’t been announced, but what was clear is that the election wasn’t a disaster for the Democrats so the cartoon I drew on Tuesday was useless.

Fortunately I got up early and because it also wasn’t the “red wave” the experts had predicted, had an idea that could be turned out quickly which is the one you see here:

So I went back to the CNN website and the article about Democrats getting slaughtered was gone, but now they had an article about how the “news media” had misread the situation and while they didn’t mention themselves or their own mistakes, they did manage to squeeze in the fact that the experts at Fox News got it wrong.

Maybe the Fox people made the mistake of believing what they read on CNN, but that’s speculation and we’ll eventually talk about the dangers of that, but first...

A narrative about the dangers of narratives

Generally speaking the media love “narratives” (simple stories that explain complicated situations and I’m part of the problem because I’m about to offer you another one) because saying “things are really complicated” isn’t entertaining or fun and doesn’t make us sound like the experts we consider ourselves to be.

For instance:

If you read about the stock market it’s not uncommon for a reporter to latch on to a single news event and use that to explain why the market went up or down, as in:

“Energized by the news that …”

Or:

“Depressed by the news that…”

Which is bullshit because millions of people participate in the stock market and in reality we can’t talk to all of them and know why they did what they did, so we attribute one motive to everybody.

The same thing can happen with elections.

And since the old pre-election narrative was clearly incorrect, a new post-election narrative was needed and now the same people who misread the signs and told you the Democrats were going to get slaughtered were happy to read the tea leaves and say Republicans made the mistake of listening to Donald Trump when he endorsed any half-wit who would say he got cheated out of the presidency and the Republicans ran those half-wits and once they were exposed to semi-sane voters in the general election, they lost.

In fact, my alma mater (and to my surprise I spelled that right on my first attempt) the Kansas City Star ran a post-election editorial headlined: “Divided election shows voters want compromise” which doesn’t explain why those reasonable voters elected Republican Pain-In-The-Ass-And-Election-Denier-Unless-He-Wins Kris Kobach attorney general of Kansas or Herschel Walker got enough votes to force a run-off in Georgia or the Republicans the reasonable voters are so tired of actually picked up 16 seats in the House.

Things seem to be a little more complicated than a simple narrative would suggest and the following cartoon may eventually prove to be inaccurate.

This cartoon was inspired by the news that people close to Donald Trump suggested he delay his announcement that he’s going to run for president because things didn’t go all that well on Election Day.

Apparently Trump also believed there was going to be a “red wave” and he’d surf in on that and make his announcement and he’d get the nomination and we’d elect him Homecoming King, but since the “red wave” didn’t materialize it’s been reported that he was pissed off because it screwed up his personal agenda and never forget he thinks everything is about him and I think he mainly wants to be president because everybody has to listen to him whenever he talks and he gets to hang out with cool people like Vladimir Putin and collect really neat souvenirs like football helmets and team jerseys and Top Secret documents he can show off at Mar-a-Lago cocktail parties.

Unlike the previous cartoon which may or may not turn out to be true, this cartoon seems to be 100 percent accurate.

And now back to those inaccurate predictions

OK, we seem to have drifted off-topic (and by “we” I mean “me”) and this has turned into yet another Anti-Trump Rant, but now we’ll make a mid-course correction (and be “we’ll” I mean “I’ll”) and talk about the media’s need to make predictions and create narratives even when past experience shows we pretty much suck at both.

Refusing to wear a party hat

I once appeared on a sports talk radio show and was asked if Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost was having Salvador Perez catch too many games and I said how in the hell could I possibly know that without talking to Ned and Sal and the team trainers to see how he was holding up and for the rest of the show refused to answer questions unless I actually knew the answer and when the show was over I asked my host, “Was that good sports talk radio?” knowing it wasn’t.

I was informed that in sports-talk radio “we do a lot of speculating” to which I answered “I know.”

At times I was also asked to provide predictions about how the Royals would do the next season and I’d answer by asking which players were going to get hurt because if you didn’t know that, any prediction would be useless. My refusal to speculate caused hard feelings because when I said there was no way I could predict the future, it was interpreted (and quite accurately I might add) as saying:

“And there’s no way you could either.”

My standard position is that I had a hard enough time understanding what had happened and was in no position to predict what would happen.

But refusing to speculate or predict was like showing up at a party where an overly-enthusiastic host has provided everybody with party hats and refusing to put your hat on means you’re no fun and a “party pooper” because your refusal reminds everybody else that they look like assholes.

The three hardest words to say

I believe I’ve written this before and probably will again, but books and movies are filled with scenes where people have a hard time saying those three little words:

“I love you.”

Which in my experience is bullshit; way too many people are saying “I love you” even when they shouldn’t and in reality the three hardest words to say are:

“I don’t know.”

Ask an Uber driver about brain surgery and don’t be surprised if he offers up an opinion.

When we don’t know, we rarely admit it and fill in the blanks spots with conjecture and speculation and half-baked ideas we heard from an acquaintance who got their information off Facebook which some of you are doing right now.

But here’s some rock-solid advice even though you’re getting it through social media:

When someone makes a prediction or offers a narrative, ask yourself how they could possibly know what they’re predicting or explaining and in this case I’m predicting more inaccurate predictions because being wrong doesn’t slow us down one bit and we’ll just keep offering predictions and narratives and if you’re currently asking how I could possible know that, here’s my answer:

History.

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