The Death of Bob Dole

Generally speaking, political cartoons are based on political events and to understand a political cartoon the reader has to be aware of the political event it’s based on, so political cartoonists spend at least some of their time wondering what readers know.

A question that used to be a lot easier to answer when more people read newspapers and I figured I was drawing for Kansas City Star readers and if a story was on the front page of the Star and a reader didn’t go to the trouble to read it, that was on them.

So front page story = cartoon material.

And there used to be a lot more stories on the front page of a newspaper, but more stories on the front page meant more stories had to be continued inside (which is called the “jump”) and newspapers got worried that their readers wouldn’t make the “jump” possibly because we’re a nation of fat asses that think burgers need at least two patties, a half-pound of bacon, three kinds of cheese, “secret” sauce (which seems to be Thousand Island Dressing, so it’s not that big a secret and I’m guessing it wasn’t created in a NASA laboratory) and if at all possible, a rack of ribs.

Which brings us to the McRib sandwich.

The first time I saw one of these advertised on TV, I wondered how you could eat a sandwich with bones in it because if you’re a BBQ eater you know a rack of ribs includes actual ribs, but the internet describes McDonald’s sandwich as featuring “restructured pork” shaped like it’s got bones in it so apparently they could have made the pork patty look like Mt. Rushmore or a Rose Bowl Parade float or Kim Kardashian’s butt and according to the article the process for “restructuring” pork was developed by the United States Army and if there’s anything the United States Army is known for, it’s fine dining.  

And according to another article on the internet, to make the McRib edible there are 70 ingredients, one of which is a flour-beaching ingredient also used in yoga mats, so if you’ve ever chowed down a McRib and felt a sudden urge to do a Downward Facing Dog pose, now you know why.

Here’s an article on that:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/11-amazing-facts-about-the-mcdonald-s-mcrib-170212930.html

Although…the above article claims a professor from the University of Nebraska was the one who actually came up with “restructured meat product” and quotes yet another article that says “restructured meat” contains some pretty disgusting parts of what I’m going to assume is a pig which means I need to show you a picture of Downward Facing Dog to take our minds off the shit both of us have swallowed.

Turns out McDonald’s developed the McRib because their Chicken McNuggets (and I’m sure those are filled with nothing but high-quality chicken) were so popular they had a chicken shortage and then they figured out that if the McRib was sometimes unavailable it would be more popular (which is the same marketing technique pioneered by Tom Sawyer when it came to whitewashing fences) and now there’s a McRib cult that has “McRib tracking” websites so people who have a sudden hankering for “restructured” pig parts know where to find some.

Considering what we’re willing to eat, refusing to take a vaccine that would prevent a deadly disease isn’t even close to the stupidest thing Americans have done lately, but I’ve clearly gotten off track assuming I was ever on one and we should get back to what political cartoon readers know and how that affects what cartoons get drawn.

The “local” cartoon

I once had a KC Star executive explain that they had come up with a new formula for our front page stories and from then on there could only be two national stories on the Star’s front page which prompted me to ask:

“So if Jesus came back and they discovered Hitler was still alive and World War Three started on the same day, one of those stories would go inside?”

Which is just the kind of insightful comment that people who sit around and come up with one-size-fits-all publishing rules appreciate so much and eventually gets you a lifetime sabbatical from permanent employment.

These days I’m drawing for King Features and I send them a cartoon and they send it out to client newspapers and I have no idea where my cartoons run or who’s reading them or what they know and when Bob Dole died it was a big deal here in Kansas City, but I wasn’t sure it was a big deal anyplace else until I saw they were covering his funeral live on national TV and when the Star said Bob Dole would “lie in state” and on the same day I read yet another story about Donald Trump continuing to claim the election was stolen, I had the cartoon you see at the top of this post pretty much written for me.  

Dole’s obituary included praise for his willingness to find common ground with his political opponents, but these days if a Democrat goes out on a limb and suggests the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, Mitch McConnell would refuse to go along and hold his breath until he turns red because turning blue is no longer a political option when your basic platform is being a bunch of dicks – which oddly enough includes  a surprising number of women – and refusing to go along with anything suggested by a Democrat.

Two house-keeping issues raised by one cartoon

I recently posted the above cartoon about Joe Biden’s crappy approval ratings and a severely misinformed reader commented that crappy approval ratings are what you get when you steal an election, a Trump claim that has been discredited pretty much everywhere and by pretty much everyone and that includes the courts and his own Justice Department and here’s an article on that:  

https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraud-b1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d

So anyone who’s still making that stolen election claim has either missed every story debunking Trump’s bunked versions of events or is willing to mindlessly believe anything Trump says or knows the claim’s untrue, but is trying to mislead others and I don’t feel the need to provide a platform to help them do that.

Which reminds me of the time some morons in Kansas (which, considering what some of their politicians are currently up to, really doesn’t do much to narrow things down) were arguing that evolution wasn’t real and the Star did the “balanced journalism” thing and quoted both sides and gave them equal time and the problem with that approach is one side had some education and knowledge of the issue and the other side was a bunch of Bible-thumping dimwits that believed dinosaurs never existed (which is odd considering the makeup of the U.S. Senate) and the World was created last Thursday and by giving them equal time the Star was allowing its platform to be used to misinform gullible people and if you create a powerful platform maybe it shouldn’t always be “Open Mike” night and allow the kind of people who think Hitler was on to something borrow your megaphone.

Which doesn’t mean those people can’t make their arguments, I just didn’t think the Star had any obligation to help them do it.

In other words:

You have a right to a yard sign, but you don’t have a right to put it in my yard.

Another reader pointed out Trump’s approval ratings were even worse than Biden’s and here’s a USA Today fact-checking story on that:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/23/fact-check-bidens-approval-rating-higher-than-trumps-term-low/8347107002/

So that reader was right and it’s worth pointing out, but it’s also worth pointing out that political cartoons are good at making one point at a time and in the past I’ve ridiculed Trump’s lack of popularity with people who have 3-digit IQs, so you’d have to look at my entire body of work to know what I really think and I can’t imagine anybody has an interest in doing that because looking at my entire body of work would bore me, much less anybody else.

And now it’s time for me to stop writing, because if what I just read is correct the McRib is back and I’m in the mood for some “restructured meat product” which will eventually increase my desire to take up yoga and let’s face it, with my diet I could really use the exercise.

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