And other ironies, including:
Andrew Snowden wasn't the Time
person of the year. The Republicans have a way to make their
candidates look like they don't hold women in utter contempt. And a
presidential selfie infuriated the most narcissistic politicials and
pundits in America.
Today's toons were selected, with
exquisite care, from the week's offerings at McClatchy
DC, Cartoon Movement,
Go Comics, Daryl
Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com,
and other fine sources.
p3 Picks of the week: Mike
Luckovich, Jack
Ohman, Clay
Bennett. Steve
Sack, Joel
Pett, Gary
Varvel, Ted
Rall, Lisa
Benson, Signe
Wilkinson, Lee
Judge, Steve
Breen, Bill
Day, Pat
Bagley, Mario
Piperni, Matt
Wuerker, Jen
Sorenson, and Monte
Wolverton.
p3 Best of Show: Stuart
Carlson.
p3 Legion of Merit: Ben
Sargent.
p3 Award for Best Adaptation from
Another Medium (tie): Tony
Auth and Jeff
Danziger.
Ann Telnaes pays tribute to an
angry little man who can only stay relevant by making foolish
historical analogies.
Mark Fiore celebrates
the intermix of small government and the free market. Not.
Taiwan's Next Media Animation
chronicles a man who gives a
different spin to "cat burglar."
Here's a long-forgotten Edward Gorey
work entitled The
Pious Infant. Righteous adults are undoubtedly sprinting to
their local school and public libraries to challenge it, even as we
speak. We here at p3 couldn't be prouder.
One of the great injustices of
20th century cartooning was that Charles M. Shulz never owned
the rights to his own characters: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy,
and the rest. The 91st anniversary of his birth was on November 26th,
celebrated around the US by Met Life commercials – insurance
companies being so popular and all, how could CMS have objected? –
and now we have this
(emphasis added):
Hold onto your footballs, people. Conservatives just bought Charlie Brown.
Of course, we already knew that despite his iconic status as the world's most famous loser, Charlie Brown -- aka "Chuck" aka That Round-Headed Kid -- has been selling everything from lunch boxes to life insurance for decades. But now the conservative publishing house Regnery, publishing home of profound thinkers like Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter, has licensed him, along with the rest of the Peanuts troupe, for a planned "Little Patriot" series of books for children. Soon, Charlie Brown and his friends will be selling the right-wing agenda.
"Who better than Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang to help teach children about what makes America strong?" reads a press release from Regnery's president, apparently too blinded by the cuteness of the cast to remember that Schulz's strip is mostly about unshakable anxiety and perpetual defeat. "We are delighted to be working with such a trusted and beloved brand."
Wow. "Trusted" and "beloved" are odd words to be used by the publishing house that brought you such "trusted" books as McCarthy and His Enemies and Unfit for Command, the mudslinging "exposé" of John Kerry from a Swift Boat veteran. And The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, sometimes referred to more simply as The Incorrect Guide to Science. Oh, and a book about the Clinton years that was described in The American Prospect as "paint[ing] images of Hillary Clinton hanging crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree."
No wonder the round-headed kid in the
zig-zag sweater is so depressed.
And just to piss off conservatives,
who loathed Nelson Mandela in the 1980s but want to cash in on
his post-mortem popularity now by rediscovering their heretofore
unmentioned admiration for him, here's a collection of memorial
toons, via Comic Riffs.
Tom Tomorrow explores the
true Republican meaning of . . . oh, you know.
Keith Knight salutes a
man who was fundamentally an optimist.
Tom the Dancing Bug presents: Oh
no, I said the phrase. Interesting factoid: On my Portland to
Detroit flight last week, I sat next to someone with two things to
say: (1) She and her husband would love to move to Portland to be
with their children, but property values in Detroit were in the tank
so even if they sold their house they would have to live in a camper
van here, and (2) even though her employer made workers say "Happy
Holidays" [Made you say it? Seriously? I asked. Yes,
she insisted.], she said "Merry Christmas" to her
customers/clients anyway, apparently just to stick it to The Man.
Red Meat's Karen and Milkman Dan
have the
smackdown you've been waiting for.
The Comic Curmudgeon studies the
economic basis of feudalism.
Comic Strip of the Day takes the
Stuart Carlson toon above and runs
with it.
Oh, Santa – this is embarraskin'!
With today's animated feature, I reassert the p3 theory that
the relationship between Olive and Popeye would be so much
simpler if Olive didn't keep her windows open (in December!) so Bluto
couldn't hear what they were up to and hatch his evil plots. Still,
"Mister and Mistletoe" (directed in 1955 for Famous Studios
by longtime Popeye director Izzy Sparber, with musical direction by
Winston Sharples, who understudied with the great Sammy Timberg
during the golden age of Fleischer Studios, and uncredited voice work
by Mae Questel as The Slender One, Jason Beck as the rhyming Bluto,
and Jack Mercer as Popeye – who also gets story credit) has its
moments, including the vaguely homoerotic moments between the
Spinach-Eating Sailor and the Jolly Old Elf. Also notice that there
are three nephews this time – not two, not four – who never ask
what Bluto's doing in his long underwear sitting by the tree. Makes
you wonder what they're used to seeing around the house.
The Big, But Could Be Bigger, Oregon
Toon Block:
Matt Bors regrets: They came for
the corporations, but he
wasn't a corporation, so. . . .
Jesse Springer is
proud to memorialize the suspension Pharoh Brown from Oregon's
Alamo Bowl appearance for his participation in an incident where
students involved an unwilling (retired) UO professor in a snowball
fight.
Test your toon captioning kung fu at
The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon
contest. (Rules here.)
No comments:
Post a Comment