No Holds Barred
Today’s first cartoon was originally conceived years ago and I wanted to use it to comment on Newt Gingrich, but people with more sense (a description which doesn’t narrow down the list of possible suspects) decided I couldn’t say the Speaker of the House had fewer moral limits than a prostitute.
So I never got a chance to use it, which means someone’s standards have either dropped or improved and either way I thought there was now at least some chance my syndicate would send it out to client papers.
As far as I’m concerned (which isn’t all that far), Donald Trump has made publishing the cartoon more likely because he’s done so many outrageous things the cartoon seems even more appropriate than it did when I was going to draw it about Newt Gingrich.
As far as I know Newt Gingrich hasn’t buried any of his former wives on a golf course.
If Donald Trump is the New York Yankees of Outrageous Behavior, Newt Gingrich is at best the Tampa Tarpons which is a tremendous analogy if you know the New York Yankee minor league system.
And speaking of having to explain your jokes…
Back in April, a lone gunman (one of our most popular demographics) tried to gatecrash the White House Correspondents Dinner, so they shut that down, rescheduled, tried again and this time Donald Trump got to give his rambling hour-long speech that was filled with insults and fat jokes that nobody found funny including him because before Trump was through, he criticized his speech writers.
I’ve never experienced being surrounded by yes-men and ass-kissers (which would be a great name for a Steely Dan album) but I would think one of the problems with that scenario is everybody laughing at your bad jokes and you starting to think you must be funny and deciding to take your act on the road and try it out on a group of people who aren’t sucking up to you.
Read the room, Donald.
Full disclosure: this cartoon about the sun’s proximity was at least partially inspired by 100 degree temperatures in Kansas City along with humidity so high it feels like you’re walking around wearing a slightly damp electric blanket.
The solution for this is simple: QUIT WALKING AROUND.
Nevertheless, I try to take a walk every day, but when it’s this humid no matter how early I walk I wind up feeling like I finished fourth in a three-person wet T-shirt contest.
And while I’m talking about great ideas…
According to the internet, Willis Carrier invented air conditioning in 1902 and I’ve always wondered how Willis didn’t win a Nobel Prize, although if what I just read is accurate, he invented it to keep paper from warping in a Brooklyn printing plant so apparently Willis wasn’t all that concerned with the workers.
While Willis was hot stuff when it came to inventions (wait…maybe I should have used “cool customer” instead) he totally sucked at marketing because when he patented his idea in 1906, he called it his “Apparatus for Treating Air.”
Apparently, the name “air conditioning” was thought up by another guy named Stuart Cramer and Willis liked the name enough to steal it and Frederick McKinley Jones invented the first portable air-cooling refrigeration system. Fred was Black which may have led some people to think a Black man invented air conditioning and a White man stole the idea, and while it sounds like that’s not true, let me assure you if a Black man had invented air conditioning, one of us White men would have been pleased as punch to steal the idea.
And if that sounds bad, just remember I’m celebrating my culture.
BTW: Just read an article about Frederick McKinley Jones and the guy’s history is and was fascinating:
And on the subject of stealing ideas…
Now back from the days when Saturday Night Live was still funny, here’s Eddie Murphy playing Clarence, the Black member of the Beatles who claims he inspired all their songs and the Fab Four just changed the titles because they were originally called She Loves You, Man and Eight Days a Week, Man and I Want to Hold Your Hand, Man:
Moving on.
As I’ve expressed on more than one occasion: political cartoons generally don’t inform; they comment on what you already know.
Which sounds simple, but is getting harder to predict because the media has shattered into a thousand pieces and we’re not all watching the same TV news or reading the same newspapers or listening to the same over-caffeinated cranks on social media, so I often Google a story to see how many news sources carried it.
This cartoon is improved immensely if readers know the Pentagon and Trump Administration have started playing games with the Iran War casualty numbers to reduce the number of U.S. casualties.
Turns out…
They’ve created a whole new category called “Overseas Operations” and moved four names into the new category which lowered the Iran War death count from 18 to 14 because those four servicemembers were killed during Donald Trump’s mythical ceasefire. Hate to bring logic into it at this late date: but if troops are still being killed it’s not much of a ceasefire, is it?
And just in case you missed it, here’s what I drew about that at the time:
The Pentagon is now claiming Operation Epic Fury is over so if anyone else gets hurt or killed they should be counted as part of a different conflict and right now I’m thinking of all those politicians who give speeches about military members who give their lives in defense of our country and promise that:
“We will never forget.”
Which probably ought to be changed to:
“We will never inform.”
Today’s Lesson
Dropping the Iran War death toll from 18 to 14 isn’t much of an improvement, which let’s us know politicians and bureaucrats will disrespect the ultimate sacrifice of soldiers if it makes them look even a teensy tiny bit better.
And now a few words about that:
Having pretty much been raised by wolves if the wolves drank beer, drove muscle cars and fought over the last piece of pizza; when I had kids I read some books on parenting and one of the best things I read said my kids were not going to do what I told them to do, they were going to do what they saw me do, which goes a long way in explaining how I raised three smart-asses.
(Which, while it has its drawbacks, is still better than raising three dumbasses because we seem to have enough of those already.)
In any case…
Today’s Lesson is that what people do is more important than what people say and what the Trump Administration and the Pentagon just did was an attempt to sweep some U.S. casualties under the rug to make themselves look better. So they can say anything they want about honoring U.S. military casualties, but what they did was disrespectful.
Also…
God Bless the Apparatus for Treating Air and all those who sail in her; wherever you are, try to stay cool and I’ll do the same.
Thank you SO much for including the story of Frederick McKinley Jones, whose inquisitiveness and drive provided so much basic good for all of us humans.
It is stories like his that give me hope that our world might yet survive the likes of fat, foul-mouthed, blowhard politicians who wing everything and endanger the lives of every person on the planet while doing so.