CSotD: Hump Day Potpourri

Man Overboard manages what few cartoonists have, which is to make genuinely funny cartoons on Biblical topics without either being sacrilegious or being wrong about the scriptural references. Or, of course, both.

AFAIK, the moneychangers and dove-sellers did not actually look like Laurel and Hardy, but if you assume, as many do, that Jesus was objecting to profiteering rather than to providing people with doves to sacrifice, the dialogue sure translates well to modern days.

WWJD indeed.

The Texas state senators in John Branch‘s cartoon are not tearing up God: DEI is not Latin but stands for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” which they plan to ban in public universities. As Branch notes, the Texas legislature itself could use a dose on diversity, equity and inclusion, which explains more of their recent legislation than just this piece.

They’re not really all white men: Eight of the state’s senators are women, split evenly by party. Meanwhile five of the six members with clearly Hispanic last names, plus the one visibly African-American member, are Democrats. Which means a quarter of the 19 Republican majority consists of women and minorities, compared to three quarters of the 12 Democrats.

Returning to Biblical references for a moment, I’d be reluctant to cast the first stone until I’d taken a look in my own state house.

However, as Nick Anderson notes, there seems to be a pattern of grooming and indoctrination going on down there, which fits in with some other places where the GOP has a strong majority. A Republican majority might not be so bad if they truly upheld their rhetoric elevating personal freedom and condemning cancel-culture, but their motto seems to be “Scio te esse, sed quid sum?“

I’d laugh at their new law requiring the 10 Commandments in each classroom, and would wonder if they also planned to start quartering troops in private homes, except that another tactic of the New Fascisti is to purposely pass clearly unconstitutional laws that can then be argued in front of the McConnell Court.

They came for Roe v Wade, but I was not pregnant, so I said nothing.

Nick Anderson Ted Rall

The spate of random shootings may simply be one more of those times we thought people would finally rise up and demand change, but if slaughtered children in Sandy Hook or Parkland or Uvalde didn’t do it, there is probably nothing that will.

Still, both cartoonists do a good, though quite different, job of bringing home the “It could happen to anyone” factor, Anderson by melding being murdered into the routine events of an average life, and Rall by tagging the experience to a child we all know, and who most of us know that, though fictional, is based on a real person.

The chants in the street of “say her name” or “say his name” after an unnecessary death are a tool for changing a statistic back into a real person, as are the slide shows of murdered school children in better days. And we are seeing charges and convictions in some cases, if not in all cases.

The problem isn’t really about swaying public opinion on this issue. A strong majority of people want laws to put some brakes on the slaughter.

The problem is getting them to the polls and making sure they haven’t forgotten the undeserving dead so that they stop electing the undeserving facilitators.

Even heavy spending and purposeful gerrymandering cannot stand up forever to a time that has come.

Or, as Jeremy Banx might tell us, the biggest ego must at some point climb down from his throne, though I like the idea of Musk offering what he thinks is a reward to someone he’s likely to eliminate. Hard to say which is the worse bargain.

Being able to overthink anything, I’ll add that, at this point, the people who would want the blue tick are the ones he most needs to keep around.

But when did the world’s most geniusey genius get that sort of thing right?

Speaking of not quite getting things right, Friend of the Blog Mark Jackson sent a screenshot of Tuesday’s Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester. That’s Tuesday morning, and Tucker Carlson’s firing was announced at about 10 am Monday morning, and get a load of that front page story under the dateline.

For those who can’t read the opening text above the fold:

The basic explanation is that some editor saw the analytical piece when it crossed the wires on Friday or Saturday, liked it, and put it aside for use whenever there was space.

And then somehow managed to escape any news or chatter from 10 am Monday until Page One was put to bed around 9 pm. Did nobody in the newsroom happen to mention this?

It has been over 25 years since I’ve known of a newsroom at a daily paper that didn’t have at least one television constantly tuned to a news channel. Now I guess I do.

BTW, I’m done with Tucker’s firing unless someone comes up with something astonishingly terrific. But I will provide a plug and a link to Charlie Syke’s excellent piece at the Bulwark, in which he gets, as we used to say, right down to the real nitty gritty:

Someone pointed out in the comments recently that Sykes was once a loyal Republican. Well, yes, and George Washington once served in the British Army.

Sykes is now a disloyal Republican and we could use a few more of those.

Today, as seen in the Flying McCoys (AMS), is Administrative Professionals Day, which used to be National Secretaries Day and for a brief time was National Paraprofessionals Day, which sounded like they jumped out of airplanes with typewriters. I guess Administrative Professionals Day is good, though you can swap titles around forever and it won’t matter if you’re not respected.

At one job in Newspapers in Education I had an assistant who bore the title of “Assistant.” To be sure, I had a couple of them, and it never occurred to me not to respect them or not to load them up with interesting things to do.

The problem was that they kept getting inspired and leaving.

One of them, having learned my job, went to a similar position where she made twice what I did, and another, realizing that a job could be more than a chance to earn money, so got on staff at a rape crisis center, completed her MS and Phd and is a psych professor with a private practice treating PTSD.

I guess I should have bought them flowers once a year instead.