CSotD: Points of Personal Privilege
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Dave Brown gambles on timing with this cartoon about China's response to Trump's trade war.
It's a great cartoon, but Tiangong-1 went harmlessly into the Pacific before the cartoon could get much traction. Such is life, though normally the problem with timing isn't over flaming space debris but over flaming contradictory tweets.
I'll admit to selfish motivations here. Normally, I take market fluctuations with a ton of salt, because I don't touch my IRA very often. However, this is the one time of year I make a bit of a withdrawal on behalf of my Uncle Sam, and it's a bad time for Dear Leader to be tanking the Dow Jones.
Particularly when he brags when it goes up and goes mute when it falls.
And particularly when the apparent reason for the fall is his decision that the best way to build our economy is to piss off all our trading partners and get into a trade war with some of the largest.
And when he furthers the damage with an utterly unhinged, uninformed, petty, partisan, batshit attack on Amazon.
I honestly don't know if he's straight-out lying or is simply that wrong; nobody has yet established where his ignorance and his dishonesty intersect.
For instance, he obviously lies about a lot of things like his academic record, but when he announces that people are crossing the border to sign up for DACA — which requires applicants to have been in the US since 2007 — you have to wonder: Is he really that stupid, or simply that uninformed? Or just a liar?
Part of the answer is that an intelligent person would STFU about things he didn't understand.
And I like Brown's metaphorical satellite, but it would take a much bigger blow to get Dear Leader off his Twitter account and into the real world.
Hey, I admitted that I was working from selfish motivations. Sue me.
And while I'm gazing into the mirror, Pajama Diaries was well-timed, because I've been thinking about 1968 a lot, mostly in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the King assassination, but personally, too.
Rob and Jill are looking back at the early years of their marriage, so that's a little different. I was 18 in 1968, which spanned my freshman and sophomore college years. Those ought to be pretty standard and unremarkable years, but we didn't live in standard, unremarkable times.
I'm putting together some editorial cartoons for tomorrow to mark the anniversary, but finding I have to include some on different topics, because, if time is what keeps everything from happening all at once, it was doing a piss-poor job of it half a century ago.
A couple of my closest high school buddies were just wrapping up a visit to beautiful Khe Sanh this week, while LBJ surprised some people with a bombing halt in Viet Nam and then, at the end of his speech, surprised everybody by announcing his decision not to seek another term.
The day King was assassinated began for me at an Indiana Primary speech by Bobby Kennedy, who then flew to Muncie to speak at Ball State and then to Indianapolis, where he was informed of the murder and famously made a speech that kept that city from burning.
Meanwhile, I went to a presentation by Peter DeVries in the afternoon and one by Joseph Heller that night, at which we learned of the killing and he had a hard time starting up his prepared remarks but Catch-22 was certainly relevant.
Oh, and I guess I went to a couple of classes, but they fade from memory. Packed as the day was, it was all public events and I don't have any purely private memories of the day. Anybody who was there could have the memories I've packed into the day.
And nobody who wasn't could, though I'm already getting plenty of helpful revisionism about what happened and how it felt from people who have read about it.
This much is personal: I just found out that the girl I was dating then died in 2004, which was a bringdown except that she was married for 32 years to a guy I met with her once a few years after we broke up. He seemed like a really good guy and I was happy for them and I still am, though I'm sorry she didn't make it past 52.
Still, as Dr. Jones said, it's not the years, it's the mileage. A successful nursing career, two kids and a marriage that lasted over three decades is damn good mileage.
Plus she got out before everyone began explaining our experiences.
After all, any given moment has its value; it can be questioned in the light of after-events, but the moment remains. The young prince in velvet gathered in lovely domesticity around the queen amid the hush of rich draperies may presently grow up to be Pedro the Cruel or Charles the Mad, but the moment of beauty remains. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
And while I'm into personal takes …
The National Cartoonists Society has announced its nominees for the actual Reuben, the Cartoonist of the Year award, which will be handed out in May 26 at their convention in Philadelphia.
I've had a couple of good friends win the thing and I was happy when they did, and the people nominated this year all do really good work, so I won't mind which one of them takes the trophy home.
I wish it meant riches and continued employment, but maybe in these dire times it's just as good or even better to know you have the approval of your peers.
I am only realistic, not cynical, in saying that, because cartooning is still small enough that the people who make a living at it know each other, or at least, each other's work, and Michael Cavna got some nice quotes in his coverage that indicate so.
So good luck all, and, if their annual convention includes a public event, I'll let you know and will see you there.
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.
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