Sunday morning toons: Special "Must it always be about you?" edition

Questions, questions, and more questions:

• Senator Olympia Snowe: Most important person in the world? Or self-promoting obstructionist?


• The "public option:" Dead as a doornail? Or clinging to life?


• Nobel Peace Laureate Obama: Escalating in Afghanistan? Or giving that whole "peace" thing a chance?


• Swine flu: Threat? Or menace?


• Dow 10,000: Corporate triumph? Or labor disaster?


• Limbaugh's failed bid for the Rams: Rejection of racist track record? Or merely a branding issue?


• Halloween: Trick? Or Treat?

For the answer to these questions--and others--from the week's news, let's start with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckavich, Nate Beeler, Mike Keefe, Monte Wolverton, Jimmy Margulies, Michael Ramirez, Steve Sack, Joe Heller, Steve Breen, and Ed Stein.

p3 Best of Show: John Cole.

p3 "Never Look at Bush's Nose the Same Way Again" Award: Daryl Cagle.

p3 "Best Adaptation from Another Medium" Award: Adam Zyglis.

p3 "No Class Struggle Here" Prize: Mike Luckovich,

p3 World Toon Review: Michael Kountouris (Greece), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Cameron Cardow, (Canada) and Petar Pismestrovic (Austria).


What's black, white, and red all over? Ann Telnaes says it's not what you think.

Telnaes two-fer: Is it back from the dead, and just in time for Halloween??


Toon envy: Ted Turner, who sold his media empire to Time-Warner simply to make sure that Rupert Murdoch couldn't get his hands on it, misses sitting in the big chair:

When Liu asks him if there are any media mergers he'd like to see happen, Turner responds: "I'd like to see me running Time Warner." He says later, "I'd like CNN to report to me, and the Cartoon Network."

. . . hang on a minute--he wants to run the Cartoon Network?

As for Cartoon Network, Turner tells anchor Betty Liu, "If I had control of it, I'd put 'Captain Planet' on at a top time period so that kids would see the environmental superhero instead of just Superman."

Perhaps Turner, who's dedicated much of his post-TNT energies to environmental causes, has forgotten the story of Poochie? Earnestness only gets you so far on Cartoon Network (especially after 11pm).


You keep using that word "bill"--but Portland homeboy Jack Ohman does not think it means what you think it means.


The Minnesota bloggers at the "dump Michelle Bachmann" blog--which they've given the no-nonsense name Dump Michelle Bachmann--have released the second Michelle Bachmann comic. (Read about the first comic here.) Talking Points Memo gives it a tepid review, especially compared to issue #1, in large part because the creators rely heavily (too heavily, says TPM) on Bachmann's actual words for her comic dialog. You may recall that SNL faced the same problem last year with their otherwise-spot-on Tina Fey skits lampooning Sarah Palin. When they experimented with simply giving Fey actual Palin quotes verbatim, the humor didn't die out completely--for those who thought Palin was a joke and were sufficiently well-read, it was easy to get a laugh by simply quoting her directly--but the wonkish irony of that never matched what good satire writers could have had coming out of her mouth.


Building up to Halloween: Last week we featured the first of three horror-themed Porky and Sylvester team-ups, directed by Chuck Jones for Warner Bros. Here's the second, "Claws for Alarm," from 1954.

p3 Bonus Toon: Furlough days for state employees--not much of a loss to anyone who thinks government can't do anything useful anyway. But Jesse Springer reminds us that some Oregonians still count on the government:




And finally, remember to check out Slate's political cartoon for today.