Sunday morning toons: Overdone Thansgiving fare

If you couldn't come up with a way to point out the shame of the US's current spate of anti-refugee animus that didn't involve the torch of the Statue of Liberty, the Emma Lazarus poem on her base, or the myth of the First Thanksgiving, you might have made the cut this morning, but the odds weren't in your favor. But I was willing at least to consider quotes from Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" because underneath this hardened and cynical exterior I'm a softie at heart. And besides, like Peter Venkman, I have this indecent attraction to hottie 19th-Century French embodiments of liberty and democracy. I don't apologize.

And there were several toons that employed the refugee toddler in the red shirt and blue shorts washed up on the shore several weeks ago, but that whole angle was just too specific and too ghastly for me. Sue me.

And if you only like France again because they want to bomb the crap out of people in the Middle East you don't like again, you faced slim odds on that too. In fact, I liked Daryl Cagle's piece, below, precisely because I couldn't tell which side it was taking.

But if you're more worried about the 3000 innocent Americans killed by terrorists since 2001 (or about your re-election chances) than the far higher number of American children who've killed someone or been killed under our ridiculous gun regime, then God, Jed, I don't even want to know you.

And I only found one cartoon on the touchy subject of Charlie Sheen's HIV status, and it wasn't dismissive enough of the self-replicating train wreck he's become or the fact that he got time on The Today Show to parade it as his virtue in standing up to blackmail, so I'm afraid I let it pass. He has had his moments, but few of them are recent and there are times when I think he should have retreated into obscurity after Ferris Buehler.

Today's toons were selected from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, and other fine sources of toony goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Steve Breen, Walt Handlesman, Steve Kelley, Chan Lowe, Jim Morin, Rob Rogers, Jeff Stahler, Tom Toles, Signe Wilkinson, Darrin Bell, Matt Wuerker, Brian McFadden, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Tim Eagan.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium (tie): Clay Jones, Mike Keefe, and Jack Ohman.

p3 Legion of Merit (with Citation for Waterboarding the Cat): Jeff Danziger.

p3 Croix de Guerre: Ted Rall.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Gary Varvel and Glenn McCoy.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Giaccomo Cardelli (Italy), and Konstantino Tsanakis (Greece),

Ann Telnaes notes how close we are to the prediction by Sinclair Lewis. Or by Huey Long. Or somebody.

Mark Fiore points out (again) what should have been obvious (long ago): Terrorism depends, reliably, on the West – and especially the US, I'm sorry to say – to react like a drunk in a bar at 11:30pm on a Friday whose drink got sloshed when he was bumped by a stranger. But the correct response – or at least part of it – will never happen: Putting pressure on our partners in peace.

Tom Tomorrow gets to the satiric nubbin in panel five, but then it takes an ugly turn back toward reality in panel six.

Keith Knight is obviously tired of letting transitory fluff obscure the real issues.

Reuben Bolling presents, among other things, the continuing adventures of Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler from 1909 – except this time there are more idiotic time travelers in play.

Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl resists a temptation, but not as awful a temptation as you might have expected.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon notes the continuity problems of legacy strip madness. For the record, Blondie Boopadoop was a flapper of the Betty Boop era who improbably married Dagwood Bumstead, the son of a wealthy tycoon who thereupon cut his fly-haired son off without a penny, 

Comic Strip of the Day takes the day off from political cartooning. The results take a sharp turn toward pets and dessert pastries.

A thunder of jets in the open sky: This week marked the 56th anniversary of the Rocky and Bullwinkle franchise in 1959. Known for its great writing, surprising political satire, shameless puns, infinite bumpers, and dreadful animation, R&B was that generation's gold standard for Marketed to Children/Written for Adults television humor. Here's the story of Bullwinkle inadvertantly inventing rocket fuel from a family fudge cake recipe, the secret origins of Peabody and Sherman, and the story of Rapunzel like you've never heard it before.

The Modest Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman polls the donor base.

Allegedly Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen provides a handy guide to distinguish Us from Them.

Matt Bors watches as France once more endears itself to good Americans, and Americans endear themselves to . . . well, go ahead and guess.

Jesse Springer pulls back the curtain on Oregon's public records request laws:

Test your toon captioning super-powers at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) And you can browse The New Yorker's cartoon gallery here.

The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along: Pearls Before Swine, Doonesbury, Rhymes with Orange, Zits, Adam @ Home, Mutts, Over the Hedge, Get Fuzzy, Prince Valiant, Blondie, Bizarro, Mother Goose & Grimm, Rose is Rose, Luann, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Rubes, Grand Avenue, Freshly Squeezed, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, and Jumble.