Doonesbury and Bloom County

Doonesbury has been brilliant since it started. Quality has dipped occasionally (the eighties were hard for Mr. Garry Tradeau, one senses) but he keeps coming back. Bloom County was very similar--but not exactly. Berkeley Breathed a more surreal cast (including Opus the Penguin), and never quite gelled the way one hoped. But it still had it's brilliant moments.

Bill Watterson

The next historically would be Doonesbury, but I'm going to skip thematically. We are moving into comics which have existed while I was alive, so why not. Bill Watterson's Calvin is a long way away from Charles Shultz's Charlie Brown, but they are still both children (sort of).

I often wonder what Mr. Watterson is like--I mean he kind of burst on the scene with Calvin and Hobbes, rode it to the top, then bowed out. He puts in a fair amount of commentary in his strips on living small and environmentally; but then Calvin is such a terror.

Charles M. Shultz

Charles M. Shultz is a bit like Disney; a victim of his own success. I mean he's never been that cutting edge or out there, except, perhaps, in his introduction of religious themes into his work. He was just brilliant.

Walt Kelly, Genius

Walt Kelly's Pogo is my favorite comic strip from before I was born. It's got humor to spare and it works as well today as it did then. Plus it had a lot of heart, which is something you don't see as much from some political cartoon strippers.

Second Comic Strip

I always loved looking at Windsor McCays "Little Nemo in Slumberland." What makes Slumberland work is the very tight, almost matter of fact drawing style that McCay brings to his surreal stories. It makes it almost believable.

Comic Strip Day

OK, here's the deal. Other than Your Weekly Rush, which I might push till tomorrow, I am going to spend the day reviewing the history of the comic strip from my perspective.

Starting with old Krazy Kat. Krazy Kat is hard to understand (for me anyway), but Herriman played with layout in a way that is still pretty exciting. And the pathology of Krazy and Ignatz (Short version, Krazy loves Ignantz, who then throws a brick at her, and she loves him more) is still fascinating.



We always hurt the ones we love. For some reason that never made too much sense to me.

New Link

I don't know how long this guy will be doing this--looks like he just started. But he is apparently in Baghdad blogging on what he says, and he has a good writings style--so check it out.

Media Bias is Real!

Well, Brent Bozell turns in a bravura performance supporting the right-wing claim that the media is liberally biased. He references Joe Conason's brilliant new book, "Big Lies, but drops it immediately, apparently aware that he's overmatched.

Instead he turns to Al Franken's latest. Franken was apparently on the Today Show twice this last week, when Ann Coulter hasn't been on it at all (at least to promote her latest book, Treason (or why we should take all the Liberals and feed them to coyotes). Yep that proves liberal bias, and in no way reflects the soft news of the Today Show (which is so soft it's almost like gauze), which favors celebrity (and comedy) over political screeds. And of course it's reaching out to a very wide audience and it's just barely possible that Coulter might offend someone by telling half the country they hate America and should be punished as traitors.

He comments, "How does Franken rate two appearances in one week? Sure he's witty and all that, but he was there to promote a book, a book that wasn't anywhere on any New York Times bestseller list. (With this kind of double promotion, you can be assured that now it will be.)" Actually, Mr. Bozell, you might want to check out a recent controversy with Fox News for why Mr. Franken's book is shooting up the charts.

At any rate, Joe Conason's chapter on Media bias is one of the best of the book. It points out that not only do conservatives have no trouble getting on air time to express their views (Ms. Coulter's failure to appear on the Today Show aside, she has been on plenty of other programs), they also have a very large section of the media dedicated to putting forward the conservative view (including the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, Fox News, and 99% of Talk Radio.) There's no lack of representation of Conservative ideas in the media, but I can understand why it's fun for conservatives to pretend that there is.

Great Picture

I like cool pictures as we all know. Found a cool one at the New York Times, but can't put it up just now, for reasons referenced below.



The article is about Wild Boars in Berlin. Apparently it's easier to just live around them--but there is a downside. Apparently the giant pigs have a tendancy to tear up the place (not too surprising I suppose).

Arnold

Well, I've been following the Arnold story relitively closely (or as closely as I can) and I've noted many references to his movies. They've referenced the Terminator. They've referenced Kindergarten Cop. They've referenced other movies staring Schwarzenegger.

But have they referenced his ground breaking role as Mr. Freeze? I think not.

I had a really cool picture of Arnold as Mr. Freeze--but it's giving me hassles putting it up. So i'm linking to it, hoping that will work.

How many California Gubenatorial candidates have experience as a cartoon supervillian?

If you think of an article that references Mr. Freeze, E-mail it to me.

War is Over

Good news everybody! I know a lot of you were feeling, like me, a little duped by this administration. I supported the war on the theory that Saddam had Chemical and possibly Biological weapons that could be used against the United States or other nations. So I've felt a little down as these weapons of mass distruction have failed to materialize. Well, Ann Coulter has the answer in her latest column.

"Now that we've taken the country and are uncovering mass graves, canisters of poison gases, victims of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and colonies of terrorists, liberals are claiming the war created it all."

So you see. We've found canisters of poison gas. That proves that they had weapons of mass distruction. Oh wait, that turned out to be a false report, months ago. They were canisters, but of something else, wrongly assumed to be Poison Gas. I guess Ms. Coulter must have missed that story.

She also reiterates a bumper sticker point I've made before. Democrats have, according to Republicans, sided with Terrorists. Yep, our misgivings about the war in Iraq, our suspicion that running up the highest deficits ever, our desire to see the United Nations take a larger role in the rebuilding so as to get as many of our troops out of their as possible: all those are symptoms of terrorist-lovers. Either you are with Hardline Conservativism or you are with the Terrorists.

Something to keep in mind.

Schwarzenegger Madness

Yep, it's been a few days since Schwarzenegger popped up onto our radar screen, so lets see what Bill Murchinson has for us today.

Murchinson takes on the tricky question of whether Arnold's liberalism on social issues matters. "If you define "conservatism" as "skepticism of government's ability to solve any but basic problems," you may, but also may not, want government prescribing particular moral practices. Morality, you may assert, is a private matter, one from which government should stay away. This would mean, in practice, that the government should allow abortion and prohibit school prayer and that, additionally, it should affirm sexuality in all its forms.

If, on the other hand, you define "conservatism" in terms of its relationship to hierarchical and time-tested norms, many of those norms being religious in origin, you may posit a governmental duty to roll back particular wrongheaded government policies."

In other words one faction wants small government, the other is comfortable with big government, so long as that big government is busy enforcing "time-tested norms." Murchinson does try to link the two together suggesting, rather ludicrously, that recent economic scandals are somehow connected to the lack of school prayer. Perhaps Mr. Murchinson would benefit from a study of the Guilded Age, a more religious time, but certainly not lacking in economic (or political) corruption.

New Site

Added a new site called The Coulter Project. If you don't feel like you get enough criticism of Ann Coulter, this is another place you might go. Lord knows Ms. Coulter puts out enough to criticize.

House of Cards

Apparently I'm not the only one frusterated with the prevelance of crappy decks of cards with "enemies of the state" on them. Bryant Jordan, writing at the Boston Globe (reprinted at Commondreams) writes about one deck in particular. Called America's Most Unwanted it seems a takeoff of the Axis of Weasels deck that was such a hit. It mocks Hollywood Liberals and members of the United States Congress

The problem, it is being put out by two active-duty Marines. And the Marine Corps Judge Advocate General has stated that they are allowed to do this.

"Basically, this means that the two officers have the Corps' blessing to hold up to public ridicule and scorn members of Congress who are opposed to the war in Iraq. Now, members of Congress hold themselves up to ridicule and scorn almost every day. Regardless, when the Marine Corps turns a blind eye to members of its officer corps publicly disrespecting congressmen over their views on the war, it has entered politics.

If the Marine Corps doesn't see it this way, it should wait until some of its officers market a deck that holds the administration up to the same kind of ridicule."

Something to consider. Personally I consider those decks (except of course the original one) to be mean-spirited bargain basement attempts at cashing in on war.

Iraq and the UN

Here's a phrase I'm tired of. Don't Go Wobbly. Apparently it's something Margaret Thatcher said to Ronald Reagan, and it's also the title of the latest article from Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

In it he talks about increasing pressure on President Bush to do the sane thing and begin shifting more of the responsibility for rebuilding Iraq to the United Nations. But to bolster his argument he has little more than a mocking attitude towards United Nations Blue Helmets. He also believes that the recent attack on the U.N. indicates that they feel more or less the same towards the U.N. that they do the United States. That's probably true, if you are referring to the specific people who planned that terrible attack. But is it true for the country as a whole? I'm not sure that follows. Certainly many Iraqis resent the United States for our invasion.

A Simple Summation

Came across a bumpersticker today.



It's a little blurry because I tried to enlarge it. It does convienently sum up one strand of Republican thought. To certain segments of the conservative movement Democrats or Liberals are the enemy, perhaps an even greater enemy than the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

I remember the days when we pretended those that we disagreed with were good, honerable Americans we happened to disagree with. Seems like those days aren't coming back.

If this floats your boat, there are a lot of other products available at this website.

The Big Three Issues

Maggie Gallagher, as a helpful service to all us lazy commentators, deliniated the three big issues of campaign '04. They will be;

1). Fighting Terrorism
2). Energy
3). Gay Marriage

All other issues will apparently be mere sideshows. So Democrat questions about President Bush's lack of candor in building his case for the Iraq Invasion will not affect the election. Neither will President Bush's miserable performance on the economy. Nope, such stories might interest you, but they won't influence the election. So keep that in mind.

Judge Moore

Well Judge Moore has been suspended and apparently will no longer try to fight the mandated removal of the Ten Commandments.

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with David Limbaugh. I am not as comfortable with the monument as he is (for the reason that no such monument by any other religion would be allowed). But at the end of the day it's not that big a deal to me, and if Alabama feels they need that, than why not?

But my opinion doesn't factor into this the way the federal court's reasoning does. And they have made their position clear. "My allegiance to the rule of law leads me to believe that we cannot permit a state court judge -- no matter how righteous his cause -- to violate federal appellate court rulings. He should vigorously oppose the wrongheaded feds at every phase and exhaust all possible remedies, but once they are exhausted, he must obey. Our entire system of ordered liberty depends on the integrity of our legal system, which in turn depends on government officials, especially judges, obeying the law. Indeed, state judges also take an oath to uphold the federal constitution."

That's pretty clear.

Now Limbaugh does take the federal court to task for their ruling and for infringing on States Rights, but he acknowldeges that that is the way law works currently.