CSotD: Stinky Fish and other delights
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Bad Reporter sets the mood for the day, not so much for the specifics, but because Don Asmussen faces a challenge of finding three gags in the news and, well, I guess he can kick back and pour himself a beer these days, because the challenge isn't finding a topic but sorting through them.
Which isn't to downgrade the fact that he makes three cartoons while others make only one, but, while he really moves fast, all political cartoonists are facing the challenge of drawing something that won't fall to pieces about five minutes after it's posted.
Lalo Alcaraz is not the only one to draw a good cartoon about McCain coming back to DC to end healthcare despite having it himself, which worked when his first "Yay" vote was to open debate and he then cast another in favor of the straight repeal.
But then last night he cast the critical "Nay" to kill the GOP skinny repeal.
That's why cartoonists make the big bucks.
But Scaramucci's fish quote is kind of a key to the utterly bizarre situation in the White House, and a hat tip to Tom Falco for pointing out this morning's Post and News covers.
Scaramucci noted in his own defense that he's a New Yorker and thus expected to be brash and vulgar.
He means "New York City." I'm from Northern New York and spent about 20 years elsewhere, much of it trying to explain that not all New Yorkers can see the Statue of Liberty from their porch and we don't all salt our conversations with the Oedipal epithet.
Okay, I do, but that's not the point. I still grew up a good 350 miles from that statue, which, by the way, is in New Jersey.
Anyway, "A fish stinks from the head" first emerged from the campaign of Mike Dukakis, back when it was a Greek rather than Italian expression and I hope a lot of Greeks read Mooch's comment, because I once wrote a series called "Tales of Ancient Rome" and had to help fend off pickets and boycott threats by furious Greeks at two newspapers that were running it, one of which was the Daily News.
One can only hope they'll feel the same way about Trump's hitman appropriating their culture this time around.
In any case, Dukakis used it to mean what it sounds like it means: The guy at the top needs to take responsibility.
Mooch, by contrast, went on to say "I can tell you two fish that don't stink. That's me and the President. "
In other words, he may not know where the expression comes from, but he also doesn't know what it means.
Nor, judging from this Tweet, does the Communications Manager know how dealing with the press works.
Jumpin' Jesus on a Pogo Stick, how can you head up a communications department without understanding what "on the record" and "off the record" mean? It's like taking a job as an auto mechanic without knowing how the gasoline gets in the car.
I once quoted a guy who called me the next morning to sheepishly complain that he thought the interview was over, but admitted he knew damn well you're never off the record unless you both explicitly agree to be.
And he was just a hotel/restaurant owner in a small city a good 350 miles north of the Center of the Universe.
So now we've come to a point where a comic strip about dogs is able to make political points that get right to the heart of things. Well, we've got enough metaphorical sons of bitches in power that I suppose the literal ones understand it as well as anyone.
Stay tuned, Will. Trump will probably add her to his cabinet.
She wouldn't be the least qualified person at the table.
Meanwhile, back in the playroom
Drew Sheneman makes a golf joke and, once more, it's hard to come up with anything more ridiculous than reality.
There was a time when the President took a substantial time off during the summer, and, in fact, Washington generally emptied out in an era before air conditioning and global supremacy.
McKinley used to decamp to the Hotel Champlain, some 350 miles north of the Center of the Universe, and, while he brought staff and continued to do presidential things from there, it was time off.
Later, when Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him after an unfortunate incident some 400 northwest of the CotU, TR famously took a few weeks off to head out to Yellowstone with naturalist John Burroughs and invent the conservation movement.
(We're working to fix that last bit, in the name of national unity.)
However, we now have both air conditioning and a position in the world where being President is pretty much 24/7, and we prefer a head of state who understands the priorities of his position.
as well as the importance of enacting policies that will keep government spending to a minimum:
Now for the Juxtaposition of Something Completely Different
(Bizarro)
(Bliss)
This pair actually formed a sort of Trifecta this morning, since someone posted this caution on Facebook about all the ways you can kill birds with your good intentions.
I'm not sure how Harry Bliss differentiates those trees that appreciate hugging from those that don't, but, if I were an aspiring cartoonist, I wouldn't question anything he's putting forth at the moment, since his offer to let you set up a studio in JD Salinger's old workspace is currently open. As a bonus, not only would you be out in the woods with plenty of trees and few distractions (and, though in New Hampshire rather than New York, still only 250 miles east-northeast from you-know-what), but you'd be 20 minutes from the Center for Cartoon Studies and an excellent sushi/Korean place.
As for kissing frogs, they don't all turn into princes, as this reversal of a familiar tale warns:
(Best you go no more a roving in the night)
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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