Letters to the Editor
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Quoting Gary Hart
It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.
By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.
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I tune in to Mr. Breathed's weekly cartoon . . .
. . . not just to see Opus, but because I can't wait to read what stupid things the readership has to say. Oh boy! I can't wait for this week's slew of shit. Fire away!
This week's prize goes to the person with the most crippled, stunted sense of humor.
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Quote of the Day
"For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so..."
-Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset
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Berkeley Breathed?
It's Easter Bunny Season. Get with it, Santa.
Why Do You remind the readers of Christmas?
You need to inform modern day Easter Bunny Egg Rollers...
The Tourist at the White House Easter Egg Roll Contest need to know...
How does a Rural Tourist flush a White House Easter Egg Outhouse?
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Voting for four more years of war in 2004!!!
Oh wait, its 2008...
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Next up: Lawyers Are Evil! What's Up With Kids and Their Crazy Slang?
Wow, this one was so moldy you could make pennicillin from it! Ba dum bump!
But seriously. Is Opus being written by a humorless Boscht Belt reject? The notion of a fat politician giving money to the average voter is...well, it was always a anti-tax fantasy, but with bridges collapsing and the infrastructure underfunded it's like still believing some long disproven urban myth. The entire complaint about pork is it doesn't pander to the public but serves some obscure private interest or connection.
Politicians pander by playing to voters fear. Nearly all of them do this, left and right. And whether the fears are true or false, the appeal in politics is they involve no real financial promises. Just keep hitting the fear button and leave the expensive promises to special interest.
The only financial way politicians suck up to voters is by endlessly promising no taxes - easy to do, because voters resent taxes primarily because they appear to be misspent. Except the tax cuts go to the wealthy and waste and fraud remains, so it only reduces what's left to satisfy voter needs. Such is life under Grover Norquist's plan to deliberately bankrupt the government.
To end this cranky digression - it's just irritating to see considerable artistic talent spent on jokes which are not only hackneyed and lame, but also an uninformed opinion pretending to be satire.
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Hunh?
I really like Opus. Sometimes I get it -- as a junkie myself, 20 boxes of 200 turnip twaddlers will never cease to be funny, and I also get that both Yogi and Bullwinkle ran for president -- but sometimes I don't.
So, Opus has traded herring for champagne and brunette Parrish lovelies for the kind of blonde 50's glamour puss that would enthrall the heart of the coldest, oldest Congressman alive? I'm missing something, I just know it.
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humorless
Darn it, it's shaped like a joke -- it has little asides, and funny faces, and it mugs and winks at the audience, and that last panel looks like a punch line in some way. Why am I not laughing, or smiling?
I never knew I was humor impaired until I read this.