Sunday early afternoon toons: Lauer-ing the bar, monetizing the memory

The sad part is that, just as Trump will apparently never be able to blurt out something so toxic that he can't recover from it (assuming it doesn't increase his approval rating from the get-go), my guess is that Matt Lauer's terrible job as the overmatched host of the Commander in Chief forum last week will soon disappear down the memory hole. Using one third of his time with Clinton rehashing the asked-and-answered "questions" the emails? Ignoring the Dye-Blond Buffoon's lies, evasions, and inaccuracies? Pffft. Put Matt back on the Today show for a week and let him land that day's "get" – perhaps a collie who rescued a boy from a mine by running to town for the sheriff – and all will not only be forgiven, it'll be forgotten.

And, for the record, I'm with Brother Pierce: I object to calling it the "Commander In Chief Forum," because the country is slowly but surely coming to think that the Presidency has no other function, and that being CinC makes the president the boss of me. (Spoiler: Nope.) And, although Pierce doesn't mention this himself, I object to the symbolism of holding it on an aircraft carrier. Have we really forgotten the last time a big press draw like this was held on an aircraft carrier? A Facebook commenter said yeah, but what about veterans' issues, to which I should have replied (but didn't, alas) that Veterans' Affairs is a cabinet post (hence, part of the Executive branch), not a wartime responsibility of the CinC, and so we don't need the invocation of the latter role to expect presidential candidates to answer policy questions on the topic. If I really wanted gratuitous military symbolism, I'd be watching an NFL game right now. Unfortunately, I imagine the CinC Forum is here to stay as a part of the presidential election ritual.

Also, what's the big deal about athletes kneeling during the national anthem, rather than standing at attention with hand over heart? First amendment issues aside, we're once again confusing football and soccer uniforms with military uniforms, and the standards of behavior appropriate to each. Besides, kneeling is also a way to show respect, and even subservience – ask Zod.

And finally, our highest honors to to ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman for recognizing that we will never forget the meaning of today's anniversary until the last advertising account manager no longer remembers. As a parallel piece, Comic Strip of the Day looks back at what was not political cartooning's finest hour.

Today's toons were selected by an underqualified morning talk show host from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, The Nib, and other fine sources of cartoon goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Jeff Danziger, John Deering, Lisa Benson, Tim Eagan, SigneWilkinson, Jeff Stahler, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Matt Davies.

p3 Legion of Merit: Stuart Carlson.

p3 Medal of Mandatory Freedom (tie): Jim Morin and Brian McFadden.

Ann Telnaes is relieved: Trump does have a plan after all.

Mark Fiore presents Suzie Newsykins, whose only summer mistake was listening to grown-ups.

Tom Tomorrow has too nearly captured the essence of my Twitter feed.

Keith Knight asks an interesting question, but it's hard to tell which answers (if any) are made up.

Reuben Bolling wins the Saul Steinberg Prize.

Carol Lay returns to a theme she owns: the search for the perfect Other. Once again: happy ending or not?

Red Meat celebrates a generational rite of passage: summer camp.

The Comic Curmudgeon salutes Six Chicks for committing.

Sometimes it seems like Comic Strip of the Day and Sophie Yanow are about the only ones out there in the Tooniverse paying attention to Standing Rock. Although I suppose that may change if Amy Goodman is indeed arrested. To be clear, I'm a fan of both Goodman and the First Amendment, but I suppose I feel the same way about Standing Rock and the prospect of its white First Amendment martyr as I used to feel about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association: If a spectacle like this is what it takes to get some action on the problem, then so be it.

Read the label! As a shout-out to a friend, here's "Hopalong Casualty," directed in 1960 by Chuck Jones from his own story. I usually don't feature Warner Bros cartoons from beyond the mid-1950s because the production values got poorer and poorer (and you can see it happening here), but this is a gem, mainly because Jones is a master of timing and understood the logic of the Coyote and Road Runner (his own creations, after all) so well. Almost half of this toon is taken up with the "Acme Earthquake Pills" gag, which is one of the funniest bits in all of cartoondom. If you Google "acme earthquake pills" you'll find there are two or three clips of just that three-minute bit, but they're all ruined by the same well-meaning but thoroughly misguided overdubbing of music director Milt Franklyn's minimalist soft-tympani-roll driven build-up and use of bizarre sound effects – and silences, which always signaled something worse was to come – with someone's heavy-handed use of "creeepy music" that only occasionally syncs with the mood of the exact moment. (No links.) Enjoy Hopalong Casualty at Vimeo.

The Magnificent Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman observes that everyone in Casablanca has problems. Maybe theirs will work out.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen watches as the world reacts to the EpiPen scandal in the US.

Matt Bors hits it on the nose: This election though, am I right?

Jesse Springer looks on with concern at the latest symptom of Oregon's seemingly perpetual budget woes.

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

Monday afternoon toons: “The end of labor is to gain leisure.”

Aristotle. Can't go wrong with Aristotle. Know what I'm saying?

Just a reminder: Oregon was the first state in the union to make Labor Day a state holiday, in 1887. (Take that, former Oregonian publisher N. Christian Anderson III! I haven't looked at the print Oregonian in a long while, but I imagine the strongest sign in the Big O that it's Labor Day will be the matress and car ads rather than the reporting on unions and Oregon's workers.)

And "taco truck on every corner" is a threat? Pal, you lost that argument over twenty years ago.

Gene Wilder's gone. Not much to be done about it, apparently, but crank out some Wonka-at-the-Pearly-Gates panels, which didn't make the cut today – not even the ones where he was in the steampunk glass elevator car.

If Colin Kaepernick had asked me for advice beforehand, I'd probably have said, "Lose the pig socks; it distracts from the central issue." But otherwise, I frankly can't find much to fault about his use of his First Amendment freedom to call attention to the increasing militarization of the police. He's been far more patient and on-message than I'd be – and he's doing it in the most jingoistic of the major professional sports leagues. Good on him.

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, The Nib, and other fine sources of cartoon goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Joel Pett, SigneWilkinson, Steve Benson, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Clay Jones.

p3 Legion of Merit: Gary Varvel.

Ann Telnaes worries that the only part we'll enjoy is whacking him with a big stick.

Mark Fiore wonders about a presidential campaign whose slogan amounts to saying, "How can things possibly get worse for you?"

Tom Tomorrow covers The Twilight Zone election.

Keith Knight Kaptures (see what I did there?) the reactions to the Great Sit-Down of the 2016 NFL season.

Reuben Bolling points you toward what you fear most: when instinct takes over a hominid from the Pliocene Eoch – in a Western-theme barbecue restaurant. Not pretty.

Carol Lay presents The Story Minute, in which Mr. Know-It-All finds Ms. Right. It's actually pretty charming.

You probably know where this week's Red Meat, featuring Bug-Eyed Earl, is headed, but I bet you won't be able to look away in time.

Comic Strip of the Day reviews the concept of "an old man's argument" and reminds us of the extraordinarily talented, but now silenced, singer – a favorite here at p3 - who liked smart guys who cared about things that matter. (Bonus challenge: In addition to name-checking Cat Stevens and Linda Ronstadt, CSotD also works in a nod to James Taylor, if you can find it.)

"The Champ's a bum!" "Rabbit Punch," directed by Chuck Jones in 1948 from a story co-written by heavyweights Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese, pits Bugs in the boxing ring against Battling McGook, when the original challenger, Dyspeptic McBlaster, fails to go the distance. Uncredited: Billy Blechter (McGook). McGook would return as the The Crusher in a 1951 wrestling remake of "Rabbit Hugged," also directed by Jones. (We'll  probably feature that next week.) For those who need to know, the "1043" on the steam engine in Round 110 (you'll see) is the production number for that cartoon. The WB animators knew how to keep themselves amused. Watch "Rabbit Punch" at VideoMotion.

The Completely Dignified Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman wonders about takin' care of business all these years later..

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen mocks the U of Chicago president's eminently mock-worthy message to the incoming class of 2020.

Matt Bors discovers the mother lode of all further election coverage this cycle.

Jesse Springer still doesn't like any tax plans coming out of the legislature these days (this time it's a gross receipts tax, which obviously the Oregonian doesn't like either).

Test your toon-captioning 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.

Sunday morning toons: And I read about it in Willamette Week!

(Thanks for the nod, Batocchio! Some day I'll chew through the hunters' nets and set you free.)

Three days' worth of Non Sequitur cartoons, by Wiley Miller, were pulled from the Oregonian's comics page last week. (You can see the strips beginning here.) The editor's justification was that the strips, which gently ridiculed (though not by name) the Bundy brothers' takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, "seemed jarring and in poor taste given that someone now was dead." He added:

That decision has yielded a grand total of two reader complaints.

– although that may be more a gauge of shrinking Oregonian readership numbers than of any reaction to the decision to withhold the strips in question.

Alert p3 readers may recall that the O had a similar bout of the fantods (albeit suffered by a different editor) in 2012, also resulting in a week's worth of strips getting pulled. In that case the cause of the disturbance was a Doonesbury series ridiculing Virginia and Texas Republican legislators attempting to mandate transvaginal ultrasounds for all women seeking an abortion. (The p3 coverage of that dust-up began here, and continued here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

It's probably a coincidence that in both cases the O's editorial judgment came down on the side of gentle handling for right-wing extremism. Just an abundance of caution.

Today's toons were selected – with appropriate concern for the delicate sensibilities of our readers – 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, Jim Morin, Rob Rogers, Tom Toles, Signe Wilkinson, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Stahler.

Ann Telnaes sketched this week's Democratic Town Hall.

Mark Fiore ponders: Does the pointless focus on Iowa's caucuses prove the existence of God? Or something else entirely? Or . . . ?

Tom Tomorrow follows the election coverage so you don't have to.

Keith Knight thinks about the poor Iowans who will never get better.

As we approach the Super Bowl, Reuben Bolling reminds us that a neuronic cluster is only as strong its weakest ganglion. And there's no "I" in CTE!

Marriage: Tricky business. Marriage to Red Meat's Ted Johnson: Doubly so.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon itemizes a million ways to die in a Dick Tracy strip, the newest of which appears to be narcotizing plot lines. (And yes, I know he only lists seven ways, but the one about the rats sounds pretty bad, and without the reference to a million I lose the hook for this entry.)

Comic Strip of the Day celebrates the only indigenous American art form other than jazz.

Mrrrff? Simon's Cat's latest adventure, "Tough Love," directed by Simon Tofield, is a convincing excuse for giving the whole Valentine's Day thing a miss. Come for the meditation on the fickleness of romance, stay for the hilarious moment of embarrassment for Simon's Cat (you'll know it; trust me).

The Comfort-Fit Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman got this shot in on The Man Whose Face You'd Love to Punch even before he'd smirked his way through the Fifth Amendment before Congress.

Maybe/Maybe Not Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen considers the virtues of knowing where he stands. (Thirty-six years ago, I had a dream of buying an old station wagon and driving the country roads of Iowa. Every time we saw a farm house, we'd pull up the drive, knock on the door, and ask the person who answered if they'd voted for Reagan. If they said yes, we'd laugh uproariously and drive on to the next farm. If they said no, we'd say Hop in – we're going to have some fun. 'Twas ever thus, I suppose.)

Matt Bors brings up a pretty widely-held sentiment. Lucky think he's not carried by the Oregonian, eh?

Jesse Springer thinks that popular Oregon passtime isn't as simple as its enthusiasts make it sound.

Test your toon captioning superpowers 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.

Sunday morning toons: Yooge and Obviously Very Classy

If your cartoon used "political correctness" as a term of opprobrium, you have been played by the right and you didn't make the cut today (even if you're a cartoonist whose work we've been happy to feature before – you know who you are).

If you really think that throwaway coffee cups are an important part of the national conversation on anything except throwaway coffee cups, you missed the cut by a country mile. (If, on the other hand, you get the irony of complaining about that in the first place, you may very well have gotten one of the coveted p3 golden tickets today.)

If you regard the ISIS terror attacks in Paris on Friday as a great opportunity for the US (at least those parts of it that don't contain your friends and family) to get its war on, you didn't make the cut. At least in the old days, there was the assumption you'd at least be willing to buy war bonds (link goes to an image with a casual WWII-era racial slur; consider yourself warned). In fact, if your take on the Paris attacks is summarized in any of these, you didn't make the cut.

And no, that's not <air quotes>political correctness</air quotes>, nor is it censorship. Shush. (Nope. Not censorship either.)

Today's toons were selected, based on how they were polling in Iowa last week, from the 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, Clay Jones, Glenn McCoy, Jim Morin, Jeff Stahler, Signe Wilkinson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Chan Lowe.

p3 Legion of Merit: Darrin Bell, John Deering, Jerry Holbert, and especially Rick McKee.

p3 Award for Best Repurposing Of A Disturbing April 1976 National Lampoon Cover: Henry Payne.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium: Daryl Cagle

p3 "If You Think There Are Invisible Rats and Bugs on the Wall, You're Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend," But If You Believe an Invisible Hand Guides All Markets Toward Optimal Outcomes, You're a University of Chicago Economist" Medal: Matt Weurker.

Today's p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence will be presented by Comic Strip of the Day.

King Features Syndicate is celebrating its 100th birthday with a special comics insert for local newspapers. From Krazy Kat to Rhymes with Orange, Prince Valiant to Flash Gordon, from Popeye and Betty Boop to Hi and Lois, it's a fun historical tour. But you won't find it in today's Sunday Oregonian.

Ann Telnaes live-sketches last week's GOP presidential debate, and discovers the Jack Lemmon lurking inside of Jeb! Bush.

Mark Fiore wonders what planet climate-change deniers are living on.

Tom Tomorrow says it's all about the post debate ritual. And, of course, the "But Later."

Keith Knight reflects on a missed opportunity.

Reuben Bolling says, Have a nice day, Citizen! You have been warned!

Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl been hangin' out in the park all mornin'.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon's Google search history will never be the same – and he has Snuffy Smith to thank.

Comic Strip of the Day reviews the immediate post-Paris options: sorrow and bluster.

Speaking of King Features, Popeye, and Betty Boop: He was already a hit in the comic pages when Popeye's first theatrical appearance (and Olive's, and Bluto's) got a kickstart from the already-established Betty Boop in the 1933 "Popeye the Sailor," directed by Dave Fleischer, with animation by Seymour Kneitel and Willard Bowsky. (Kneitel kept his animation and, later, directing duties all the way through the low-budget made-for-TV Popeye cartoons of the early 1960s.) Uncredited voice work by Billy Costello (Popeye), Bonnie Poe (la Boop and The Slender One), and William Pennell (Bluto).

The music department had a good time on this one: In addition to "Strike Up the Band (for Popeye the Sailor)," a shameless borrowing of the 19th century song "Strike Up the Band (Here Comes a Sailor)", this cartoon introduced the song that would eventually be Popeye's theme (loosely borrowed by songwriter Sammy Lerner from Gilbert and Sullivan and, if Wikipedia is to be believed, written in two hours), plus brief quotes from "The Sailor's Hornpipe," "The Volga Boatman" and "Bollocky Bill the Sailor," the latter of which was repurposed from an old and off-color 19th century drinking song into the theme for Bluto's role as Barnacle Bill the Sailor in the 1935 short "Beware of Barnacle Bill."

There are occasional internet references to this short as having been "banned," which is a bit of a stretcher. The casual racism (consider yourself warned) of one scene and the hanging-by-a-thread quality of Betty's lei and grass-skirt hula wear did cause some TV stations to keep it off the air for a while after they were syndicated in the early 1950s (the sexy Boop performance was probably more of a problem at the time than the "darkie" sight gag, unfortunately; and of course the ritual violence against Olive wasn't a problem until much, much later).

The Yooge and Obviously Very Classy Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman made me laugh.

Possibly Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen has a dream, in which green M&Ms figure prominently.

Matt Bors explains that whole Syria thing. It'll definitely put your mind to rest. 

Jesse Springer captures the moment: While surveiling #BlackLivesMatter for potential threats to police – and that should have been enough to make somebody stop and rethink things, right there – Oregon's Department of Justice wound up targeting their own Director of Civil Rights. Well played, OR DOJ. Well played.

Test your toon captioning kung fu 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.

Ouch. That's going to leave a mark. (Part 2)

The Statesman-Journal joins GoLocalPDX by turning up their noses at the award-trolling efforts of Oregon's former newspaper of record:

What's Pulitzer pox, you ask? It's a swelling of the cranium following the awarding of journalism's top prize. When you are overcome by it, Pulitzer pox creates an insatiable craving for more awards.

To the trained eye, Pulitzer pox symptoms are easy to spot. The early stages produce ecstasy, euphoria and a thirst for champagne.

But in the weeks that follow, all the accolades make the swelling worse, compromising judgment and, in unfortunate cases, delusions of grandeur, high fever and delirium.

The Oregonian won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2014. Apparently, they developed no immunity and it went right to their heads.

How else to explain the power-mad editorial suggestion on Feb. 4 that the duly elected governor of Oregon accede to their demand and resign?

At the time, Kitzhaber, a popular and trusted public servant who has moved this state forward in innumerable ways, had not been charged with any crime or found by anyone in authority to have crossed any ethical breach.

Nothing about that has changed, yet, after a complete cave-in by the governor's supporters and a media frenzy of O.J. proportions, John Kitzhaber is out of the job he was elected to fulfill.

Long-time readers of The Oregonian can always spot That One Editorial Topic or That One Journalistic Series that sticks out like a sore thumb (remember the headline last summer, ripped from the 1982 film Poltergeist: "THEY'RE HERE" -- aimed to make readers tremble at the thought of otherworldly intruders?) and say to themselves, "Ah, yes, this their time-out for another run at a Pulitzer."

It was a big front page piece on the print Oregonian last summer, but if you can't find "They're Here," on their website, or the rest of the week-long 2014 series hyping the rumors of drug cartels exploiting lax immigration laws by moving into Oregon, the beating heart of their four-day-a-week tabloid makeover, it's not your fault. Unsearchability is something of a tradition at OregonLive, and diverting hapless readers there is part of their business model.

And if you can't find much follow-up about the story after their splashy coverage for a week in late June – well, there's a reason for that, too. The Oregonian really has only a small handful of stories it likes to run with. Workers' rights: Bad. Port of Portland workers' rights: Very bad. Public employees' pensions: Especially bad. Local taxes for any conceivable reason: Also bad. Alternative transportation spending: Ditto.  And, of course, the political indistinguishability of Jeff Merkley and Amanda Wehby as candidates for the US Senate.

Once Pulitzer Week was over, The O went straight back to their comfort zone. And if you were wondering about that 2014 Pulitzer-winning editorial, the one you may not have spotted and likely can't find now, it was part of a series complaining about the cost of workers' pensions. 

Because, you know, it's like the problem with former Oregonian staffers Oregon Media Group employees: Pension promises just make it that much harder to put them out.

Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.

Online local upstart GoLocalPDX let the editorial board of The Oregonian have it in the chops on Friday, after the absentee journalism landlords of the former statewide daily called for the resignation of Gov. Kitzhaber for his conflict-of-interest and ethics problems.

The problem with the resignation call, as GoLocalPDX points out, has less to do with Kitzhaber's sins of omission and possibly of commission, which are not to be ignored, than with the O's editorial board imagining they have standing to offer so much as the cough of a sheep on a distant hillside.

After itemizing the political scandals that The O has watched other outlets run with over the last two decades -- a pretty substantial bill of indictment, especially considering they didn't even like Sam Adams -- GoLocalPDX concludes with this:

The Oregonian’s call for Kitzhaber’s resignation is premature and self-serving. While the Governor’s judgment seems impaired and his answers either failed or appeared misleading, he deserves his proverbial day in court.

The Oregonian, owned by out-of-state powers, should focus on serving their readers, curtail their sanctimony and focus on good journalism. Democracies work better that way.

Sunday Afternoon Toons: A snowbound potpourri

We've got the Sochi Olympics, and the curious fact that everyone who satirizes Putin seems to draw him with his shirt off. We've got the sad death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. We've got the continuing slow political death spiral of Chris Christie. Somehow, CVS/Pharmacy has contrived to be news. And don't forget the newest right-wing anti-ACA talking point: If you can quit your second job because you don't need it just for the health insurance now, it proves that Obama is anti-job.

Today's toons were dug out of a snowdrift near Pioneer Square and discovered to be 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, Jack Ohman, Stuart Carlson, Steve Benson, Jeff Danziger, Jim Morin, Ben Sargent, Drew Sheneman, Nate Beeler, Pat Bagley, Dave Granlund, Gary Varvel, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jack Ohman.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (While Getting the Facts Wrong): Glenn McCoy.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (While Getting the Facts Right): Rob Roberts.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Manny Francisco (Philippines) [also a p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence, for Chappatte and Francisco].

Ann Telnaes celebrates Putin's grip on free speech.

Mark Fiore foretells the conversation that will be created by the newest invention, the iBus.

Taiwan's Next Media Animation wishes Jimmy Fallon good luck in replacing that other guy – you know, the one who peaked artistically in "American Hot Wax." That one. Interesting that NMA's rendering of Leno – oh, you knew it was Leno all along; don't act surprised – makes him look a lot like Newt Gingrich, another holdover from the early 1990s who just won't go away.

Hullaballo's movie maven Dennis Hartley reviews the animated short that are up for the 2014 Oscars.

Regular p3 readers know we're not huge fans of Scott Adams and his Dilbert strip around here – we'll never be hanging over the railing of the balcony in the Ed Sullivan Theater screaming his name, to take but one measure of our feelings – but we're supporting him on this one: As a way of letting Adams ridicule the anti-gay laws passed in India, Asok the intern has announced that he's gay. Yup. Gay, gay, gay. As a result, the Idaho Falls Post-Register and the Seattle Times are both running old strips rather than Adam's attack on India's government – which he allows one of his characters to describe as having "a nuclear arsenal and the scientific knowledge of inebriated astrologists." Or the objection could be to Asok's gayness. Or both. (Commenters in the above link report other media censoring Dilbert too, although the details are a little blurry. The Portland metro area is largely shut down this weekend due to snow and now freezing rain, so I don't know if the Oregonian has made a similar move, but their record on this sort of thing is not pristine.) Displaying the problem that many conservatives have when it comes time to talk about freedom as a matter of human rights rather than a matter of libertarian economics, Adams' defense of this move comes out a little garbled. Nevertheless, we with Adams good luck on this, and remind readers so inclined that his Dilbert website always has the genuine article.

Tom Tomorrow raises the moral dilemma: First, they came for the cute, cuddly cartoon characters, but I wasn't a cute, cuddly character, so. . . .

Keith Knight brings up an awkward question.

Tom the Dancing Bug sets the standard by using "literally" perfectly correctly.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson and his son share a moment at the movies.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon shares fun history facts.

Comic Strip of the Day takes a daringly un-hip position on The Lockhorns.

The shortest animation ever shown on the p3 Sunday Morning Toon Review: This isn't the entirety of "Piker's Peak," a largely-forgettable Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam outing directed in 1957 by Fritz Freling. It's just the funniest part, and it goes out to all my Portland metro readers (!) who are snowbound for the third day. When this toon was shown on ABC on Saturday mornings, this gag was removed, because, you know, there was nothing like a Bugs Bunny cartoon to make little children want to take up competitive mountain climbing so they can get buried under an avalanche just so they can watch a dog drink a martini!

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, and Freshly Squeezed.

The Big, But Could Be Bigger, And We're Not Giving Up, Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors watches as a good thing gets out of hand. I get the point, even about Pepe LePew, but I'm not giving up "Baby It's Cold Outside."

Jesse Springer notices some bad signs for Oregon education. (Note that it's not second-lowest graduation rate in the nation, it's second-lowest on-time graduation rate – not that's a whole lot better.)

Test your toon captioning mojo at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Sunday morning toons: Fitzgerald was right

"Let me tell you about the very rich" he wrote. "They are different from you and me." (The shorter version that everyone remembers is what Hemingway said Fitzgerald said.)

How different are they, you ask? They're Tom Perkins-different. They imagine that their current unpopularity among the rabble is the moral and political equivalent of . . . well, if you don't already know, you'll see it featured several times below.

Other people feeling that life is treating them harshly include Congressional Republicans, who – after proudly making sure the legislative branch of our federal government will block every single thing that the White House wants until a Republican is back in the Oval Office – complain that Obama issuing fewer executive orders than pretty much any president since WWII is (also) the moral and political equivalent of Nazism. And there's that, uhm, made Congressman from New York who felt that being asked about his finances by a reporter was a valid Stand Your Ground case – no duty to retreat there. The reporter is lucky he wasn't wearing a hoodie.

But at least today's not the worst day to be a groundhog. Although I wouldn't want to be in the amateur weather prediction business this winter.

And while I really don't have a dog in this afternoon's fight, most of my local friends want Seattle, and I have to live with them. No hard feelings to the Bronco fans out there.

Today's toons were selected by seeing which of our favorite artists saw their shadow this morning, 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, Jack Ohman, Stuart Carlson, Rick McKee, Nick Anderson, Jeff Danziger, Jeff Stahler, Drew Sheneman, Signe Wilkinson, Rob Rogers, Ben Sargent, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Pat Oliphant.

p3 Legion of Merit: Steve Breen.

p3 Certificate of Humanitarian Achievement: Joe Heller.

p3 World Toon Review: Tom Scott (New Zealand), Ingrid Rice (Canada), and Petar Pismestrovic (Austria).

Ann Telnaes witnesses the long – and pointless – march.

Mark Fiore welcomes the Gilded Age Internet.

Taiwan's Next Media Animation pays indirect tribute to Firesign Theatre: There's barbecue all over the road in southern California

Tom Tomorrow sez: Lucky it wasn't terrorists!

Keith Knight pays tribute to Wee Pals creator Morrie Turner.

Tom the Dancing Bug presents Lucky Ducky and Hollingsworth Hound in a not-terrifying and un-ghastly story of complete absence of danger to the 1% of the 1%. Brace yourselves for nothing really bad happening! (Readers who may have lost track of the secret origins of Lucky Ducky are invited here.)

Red Meat's Mister Wally has . . . afterthoughts.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon asks: Just how much a part of your family is your cat?

Comic Strip of the Day explores "shades of difference."

I've been looking for "Lights Fantastic," directed in 1942 by Fritz Freleng, online for ages, and I finally found it on a Romanian site. (Unfortunately, the YouTube/Google/TimeWarner combine has made it pretty much impossible to embed it here, so you're going to have to follow a link this morning. Sorry.) It's a delightful piece of fluff containing so many pop culture and advertising references of the moment that it may be nearly untranslatable today (imagine Planter's Peanuts commanding the key spot at Times Square!). Uncredited voice work by Portland's own Mel Blanc, and musical direction by Carl Stalling, who lifts from "Lullabye of Broadway," "My Wild Irish Rose," and "Laugh, Clown, Laugh," among others. Sight gags and puns include references to the Cotton Club, Four Roses bourbon, the American Tobacco Company, Chase and Sanborn Coffee, Carnation Condensed Milk, and Dutch Maid Cleaner. Casual use of racial and ethnic stereotypes; consider yourself warned. Click here to watch (be ready -- it autoplays).

The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along: A Sunday-morning ritual here at p3 international headquarters has long been reading the Sunday Oregonian's comic section over breakfast in our lavish corporate dining hall. Alas, the ever-diminishing four-issues-delivered-each-week newspaper is set to go full-Monte tabloid by spring. Since the strategy involves routing former hard-copy readers to their iffy website (or, in those cases when Doonesbury gets too true for comfort, to the original online source of the "content provider"), we thought it might be helpful to get ahead of the curve by sharing the links to our favorite Sunday comics – and here's the important part: they're listed here in the exact order we always, always follow in reading them. So fix yourself the breakfast or brunch of your choice and join in: 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, and Freshly Squeezed.

Yes, Prince Valiant. Bite me.

The Big, But Could Be Bigger, And We're Still Working On It, Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors is too polite to come right out and say that Tom Perkins is an unbelievably foolish person.

Jesse Springer wonders: Can the Oregon Legislature hit the broad side of a barn?

Test your toon captioning mojo at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Banned Book Week in Oregon continues: In which Harper Lee has a suggestion for the Hanover County School Board

It began badly for the HCSB:

The Hanover County School Board got more than it bargained for after deciding to censor Harper Lee's classic novel of Southern race relations, To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel, decried as "immoral" and "improper," was removed from the shelves of county school libraries by unanimous vote in 1966. In response, the Richmond News Leader offered to send free copies of the book to the first 50 school children who requested a copy. These books were paid for out of the Beadle Bumble Fund, a newspaper fund taking its name from the memorable character in Dickens' Oliver Twist and formed for the purpose of "redressing the stupidities of public officials." All 50 copies were given away.

And let me note parenthetically that if The Oregonian, Oregon's four-day-a-week newspaper of record, had a Beadle Bumble Fund (which also paid the fines of those the News Leader's editor considered victims of “despots on the bench”), I might consider resubscribing. Moving on:

Sadly for the decency-lovin' guardians of Virginian morality, the unexpected publicity of this case brought to light the awkward fact that over the years the state board of education had arbitrarily, and without public notice, prevented thousands of books from being placed on the approved reading list for public schools – the word “censorship,” in its most blameworthy sense, is entirely appropriate.

And back in Hanover County, Virginia, things weren't getting any better for the school board. The following letter soon appeared in The News Leader:

Monroeville, Alabama
January, 1966

Editor, The News Leader:

Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that "To Kill a Mockingbird" spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.

Harper Lee

Thereby reaffirming this blog's long-held belief that the best weapon against attacks on free expression is more free expression.

The Hanover County School Board eventually rescinded its ban on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Sunday morning toons: Unacceptable

This is becoming unacceptable: Last week I noted that Time.com had joined Slate.com in discontinuing its political cartoon feature. This week, I notice that About.com doesn't seem to have added any new political cartoons in over a week. Perhaps the site's curator is simply taking the holiday week off (as no doubt are many of the artists themselves), although one would think the curating job could be tasked out to a couple of unpaid interns. How difficult and expensive can it really be, people? I do it every week for free. (On a related note, The Oregonian has threatened to drop either “Ziggy” or “The Family Circus,” depending on readers' votes, but that's hardly “Sophie's Choice.” Both hoary one-panel-ers were still in place as of yesterday.)

If political cartoons are no longer being carried at high-profile sites like these, how will people know that the middle class is out there protesting its endangered status in countries all over the world – except the US?

Or that Egypt, after coming that close to imploding, seems to be taking a some kind of breather?

Or that “Dwarf Planet”[sic] Pluto has been disrespected yet again?

(Fetching Good Out of Evil Department: We've added Comic Strip of the Day to our list of fine sources.)

Today's toons were selected using a process only slightly more successful than the US governments attempts to locate Edward Snowden, from the week's pages at Cartoon Movement, GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Daryl Cagle, Comic Strip of the Day, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Jim Morin, Jeffrey Koterba, Daryl Cagle, Pat Bagley, Adam Zyglis, Joe Heller, Gary McCoy, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 “Late to the Party” Hall Pass: Lee Judge.

p3 World Toon Review: Pedro X. Molina (Nicaragua), and SvitalskyBros (Czech Republic).


Ann Telnaes reminds us of the old adage: Every barbecue has its winners and losers.


Mark Fiore presents the cartoon he looks forward to not doing anymore.


How did you spend your Fourth? Taiwan's Next Media Animation tells us how some people did. (Bonus points if you get the Free Candy joke.)


Tom Tomorrow hears the approaching sound of dominoes tumbling.


Keith Knight examines the dangers of skimming. (How sadly clueless am I? I figured that the cartoonist with the new-born would be showing his multitasking mojo, signing autographs and changing diapers at the same time.)


Tom the Dancing Bug presents the latest adventures of the masked man who brings justice and order to the West. Wait until Johnny Depp gets his hands on this property!


Red Meat presents Ted Johnson: savvy consumer.


The Comics Curmudgeon considers paths not taken.


Ooooh! I'm dyin' again! The inexplicably-titled “8 Ball Bunny” (it has nothing discernible to do with an 8-ball, except that 8-balls and pen-goo-ins have the same color scheme) was directed in 1949 by Chuck Jones, and released in 1950. Story by Michael Maltese, animation by Phil Monroe, Ben Washam, Lloyd Vaughan, Ken Harris, and Emery Hawkins, musical direction by Carl Stalling, and voice work by Portland's own Mel Blanc (with Dave Barry voicing Fred C. Dobbs). With a mish-mash of bad New World geography and references to the previous year's Warner Bros classic “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” it isn't among the most memorable of Bugs Bunny's films, even though the team behind it produced some of the Oscar-winning rabbit's best work. “8 Ball Bunny” represents the second appearance of Playboy Penguin. According to Wikipedia, ABC cut the “bwana” gag for Saturday morning syndication.

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors shows that the Taliban know how to play dirty.

Jesse Springer notes that, unfortunately, summer isn't the only season that's arrived in Oregon:

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)