CSotD: Chosen Roles
Skip to comments
Edison Lee is early in the stages of a fantasy arc about the first moon landing, and I'm leading with it because I just finished editing a piece about Saturday's "Girls and Science" program at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Which puts all sorts of ironies all over that last panel. Orville is less clueless if we assume that it actually is 1969 and there are no women in astronaut positions, or we can assume that, in this fantasy version, there are women astronauts, but that, as one of them, Katie automatically gets the thankless role of piloting the command module while the guys get to step on the moon.
I'll be watching the arc with interest, because they'd have avoided the topic by putting Joules the lab rat in the Michael Collins role.
We shall see how things play out.
But you don't want to see how the Agnes painting-the-toilet arc played out. Okay, you do. Don't blame me.
And speaking of things we've touched on recently, Harry Bliss has an odd followup to yesterday's panel, in which an unnamed fellow who looks a lot like Dan didn't trust a playful puppy.
I think Dan has some issues.
Which leads us to our …
Juxtaposition of the Day
(
(There are so many places to take this pair that I barely know where to begin.
Regular readers know how I feel about "man caves," that they are for guys who can be convinced that having input about 12.5% of the atmosphere in your house is some kind of victory. Which means that, for Randy to speak of the man cave with such approval makes him far more of a codependent wimp than Drew, who simply understands when it might be a good thing to quietly withdraw.
Meanwhile, Randy's idea that, if you screw it up, you won't have to do it again is … well, about where you'd expect someone with a man cave to be. Locked right in there at 12 years old.
And let's look into his accusation of "codependency:" He's counting on finding a woman who wants to be his Mommy and not his partner, because Mommy is happy to take care of her little boy, and that works whether you lose the purse or throw the red flannel shirt in with the white clothes or however you screw things up so you can go to your manly cave and play with your toys while Mommy does your chores for you.
Drew's response is more nuanced and certainly more mature. He's not going to go full-bore into marveling over her fabulous writing career, but he's also not going to be too much of a wet blanket.
And note that he's agreeing with her plan, albeit in perhaps a somewhat passive way. I suspect he knows how long this latest thing will last and is simply preserving his neutrality.
Now let's use the concept of the Perpetual Pre-adolescent to move into …
The Political Side
You could almost hear the all cartoonists' pens begin scratching at once when Dear Leader unleashed his bafflingly ridiculous piece of egocentric fantasy: “You don’t know until you test it, but I think, I really believe I would have run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
I mean, where are the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth when we really need them?
(I know: Down in their man caves, humping their AR-15s)
Anyway, I had many cartoons to choose from, but Nick Anderson not only popped up first in my feed but achieved a level of silliness that the idiotic concept merited: Everybody picked up on the bone spurs, but "Man of Squeal" is truly inspired.
And here's an analysis of the remark to go with it. Columnists have also been in a race to cap the straight line.
What's most outrageous about it is that he had just moments ago called out the Broward County Sheriff's deputies as cowards, and this is yet another case of our seriously demented manchild changing the subject: "But enough about them; let's focus on me!"
There have been many times that this know-it-all Know Nothing has reminded me of a particular barroom genius from my hometown, but now more than ever.
The fellow — I'll call him "Stan" — at least wasn't a draft dodger.
In fact, he went into the service, for all of about three or four weeks, and then was miraculously home again and I never heard an explanation, but I'm sure he had one, and I'll bet it was a doozy.
What I do remember is that, unlike another local fellow who washed out of boot camp and never said a word about it, Stan went on about his military career as if he'd raised the flag on Iwo Jima.
A particularly Trumpian exchange came at the bar one night when, while bragging about his army training, he said to Freddy King: "You know what, Fred? I could kill you in ten seconds!"
To which Fred replied, "You know what, Stan? Your time's up."
We all tolerated Stan because we'd grown up with him and we liked the guy and we liked his family and, besides, he was pretty entertaining though perhaps not the way he intended.
But one night he spouted off to a hunter — which is to say, someone from out of town — who invited him outside and proceeded to knock him down a few times until one of the locals stepped in. Stan deserved to have his ass kicked a bit, but enough was enough.
Though not enough to shut him up, because he was still Stan.
Which is the sort of thing you can say about an amusingly delusional guy like that, as long as he doesn't have the nuclear launch codes.
Because here's the big difference: We never elected Stan to anything.
After all, he was the silly damn fool, not us.
He's an expert on coal mining as well!
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments 1