So yesterday I read that Kamala Harris was in Guatemala and she said that country’s leaders need to restore hope to its citizens and my first thought was: “Lots of that going around right now” which was awesome because it led to a very simple cartoon idea which I needed because I had an early afternoon appointment to get my hair cut by a professional for the first time since March of 2020.
Above you see my hair; below you see the cartoon.
I was so excited to get out of the house I considered renting a tuxedo and bringing my stylist a wrist corsage, but I didn’t want anything to impinge her ability to give me a good haircut and having a dead plant strapped to her arm probably wouldn’t improve the situation.
Anyway…
When I think of a really simple cartoon idea I sometimes feel guilty (a rare emotion on my part), but then I remember the complicated cartoons that took forever and here’s an example from the Capitol riot:
Crowd scenes like the ones depicted in these two cartoons take a lot of time to draw and unfortunately a lot of our news in the past 12 months has involved crowds, so in the future if you plan to screw up in some newsworthy way I’d really appreciate it if you did it all by yourself.
If you average out the time it takes to draw something simple and something complicated, I figure everybody’s getting their money’s worth and reminds me of the time I came into the Kansas City Star early so I could also leave early and as I was walking out the door someone said, “Nice of you to come in today” and I couldn’t resist answering:
“I got here at 6AM and didn’t see your car in the parking lot.”
Which is a great response as long as the person you say it to isn’t the publisher and unfortunately for me it was, which may or may not help explain my current employment status. What can I tell you, I can’t resist a good line even when I deliver it to a less-than appreciative audience.
Which reminds me of a story about the Monty Python comedy troupe.
They get invited to Germany and fly to Munich and for some reason their hosts think they want to see a concentration camp and take them to Dachau, but they get there late and Dachau’s closing and they’re told they can’t come in.
And Graham Chapman says: “Tell them we’re Jewish.”
CEO pay and the minimum wage
When I read a newspaper I take notes for possible cartoon ideas, but sometimes a good cartoon subject gets away because politicians have the extremely irritating habit of being boring three days in a row and then screwing up six times in a single day.
Note to politicians:
The cartoonists, standup comedians and talk show hosts of America would be very appreciative if you could pace yourselves and give us a scandal once every 24 hours instead of acting like you’re in a medically-induced coma on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then on Thursday behaving like Hell’s Angels on a meth-binge.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Now here’s one of those stories that got away:
According to the Associated Press, the pandemic sent the economy to its worst quarter on record and slashed corporate profits, but despite that financial shit storm many boards of directors decided this was an event beyond their CEO’s control, so it wasn’t really their CEO’s fault and their CEOs should not be punished financially.
Which is interesting because it didn’t stop a number of corporations from firing people at the bottom of their organizational flowcharts, even though those people didn’t control the pandemic either.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander unless the gander is a CEO.
So while corporate America pleads poverty when it comes to raising the minimum wage, pay packages for the biggest companies’ CEOs rose again last year. Turns out the median pay package (half make more and half make less) for a CEO at an S&P 500 company hit $12.7 million in 2020.
Assuming they work 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year which seems highly unlikely, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt anyway, that’s 2,080 hours per year which works out to $6,105.77 per hour.
Meanwhile, the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and hasn’t been raised since 2009, probably because corporations really can’t afford any more than that if they’re going to continuing giving their CEOs their weight in gold bars, rubies and concubines.
Experienced crooks know they need to get their stories straight and corporate America would do well to follow their example.
Conservative Snowflakes
On a recent trip to my local library I discovered two things about wearing a mask:
1. You can chew gum while wearing a mask, but…
2. You probably don’t want to forget you’re wearing a mask and attempt to blow a bubble.
So, yes, wearing a mask in public can be a minor pain in the ass, (emphasis on the word “minor”) and my bubble-blowing incident made me think of the people who whine about this minor inconvenience and then turn around and call Liberals “snowflakes” and just in case you haven’t run into that term yet, here’s the definition:
"Snowflake" is a 2010s derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions.
Which is rich coming from people who whine about pretty much everything that inconveniences them including wearing a mask, not using racial slurs in public, social media platforms that won’t let them encourage insurrections and having to pay their taxes which, despite their professed love for America, a lot of them try to get out of doing.
And the biggest whiner of all is their hero, Donald Trump.
So enough of this “snowflake” crap; absolutely nobody is more easily offended and unable to deal with opposing opinions than Trump supporters and if that offends you I think I’ve made my point.
In conclusion
OK, I showed you my hair, got a couple complaints off my chest, insulted Donald Trump and made up a plausible excuse for drawing a very simple cartoon whenever I get the opportunity, so I think my work is done here and I now need to start looking for today’s cartoon idea.
And let’s all hope it doesn’t involve yet another crowd because I’m thinking of getting a mani-pedi.
I cannot tell you the bubbles I have blown into my masks in the past year plus. Totally ruins the experience. You’d think I’d learn but apparently it’s like biting your tongue and hangovers. They just keep happening.