We Are Simply Humorless and Dour

Brian Fairrington draws pictures for the Arizona Republic, the rabidly right-wing rather conservative Phoenix newspaper. His cartoon below was printed in the Daily Star today. For this morning's Humorless Boner-killing Feminazi Quiz, identify the basic concept that eludes Mr. Fairrington. Bonus points for style commentary.



If you rolled your eyes and said, duh, "consent," you win. Bonus style points if you pointed out the juxtaposition of the FLDS people, carefully depicted as neatly dressed ladies gently shepherding their lovely, teddy bear-clutching charges, with the ambiguously gendered S&M couple in the foreground; the stippling on the asscheeks and legs of the figure facing away from the viewer suggests just a little that they're not only into masks and cattle prods but are gay too for good measure.

I'm sure if Mr. Fairrington had just a little more space on his canvas, he would have shown the inbred 50-year-old men marching the little girls into the temple bed for their ceremonial first banging while the rest of the gomers stand around watching, portraying the contradiction between appearance and substance within that FLDS culture and the disconnect between the same within our mainstream culture--and the irreconcilable friction between the two, and the immense difficulty faced by children raised within one sphere who will now have to navigate the other--with nuance and sensitivity, rather than going for the easy knee-jerk kink-bashing and gay-bashing fallback.

Or maybe not.

Cartoon Cartoon

Whole lotta catching up to do after the weekend, but first things first. I am majorly crushing on Paige Braddock, who does the Jane's World comic and a few other arty things besides. Just look at those eyes. Swoon. Awright, those eyes and those hands and that body of work. What can I say? I must dig female cartoonists.

Speaking of things drawn, I give the Simpsons Movie ten Boltgirl Seals of Approval out of ten. I do not normally laugh out loud at movies, or at least haven't since the first training scene in Dodgeball (if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball), but quite gleefully did at this one. Could it have been better? No, I do not think it could. It was that good.

Ahhh...

I think I'm in love. Go read Kris Dresen's comics now (yes, it took me a minute or two to figure out, but click on the title panel to enter the comic and then click again on the panel to get the subsequent panel...). She captures quite a bit in graphite.

Which leads us to Top Skills Boltgirl Would Like to Have:

1. The ability to capture quite a bit in graphite or pen and ink, to be able to actually draw those pictures that express a thousand (or more) words.

2. The ability to make enough pie crust to not have to scrimp on the latticework on top.

3. The ability to, oh, I don't know, maybe work at work.

Cartoon Cartoon

The Daily Star ran this interesting cartoon, reprinted from the Rome (GA) News-Tribune on the Op-Ed page this morning.

The message appears to be that Democrats are insisting on spending precious government resources wiretapping gays to purge DC of the Lavender Menace, while Republicans, weary but resolute, insist on maintaining their razor-sharp focus on the terrorists. The donkey, who's probably ditching work if he has a job at all, wears typical liberal protest attire, a t-shirt with a slogan, and holds a giant sign with another slogan. The elephant, in contrast, is in office attire, his loosened tie, five-o-clock shadow, and cup of coffee signifying yet another late night spent at the office in pursuit of the terrorists (hopefully this elephant is among the one percent of FBI agents who have the ability--maybe--to order a cup of coffee in Arabic).

Oh, and the elephant makes a funny. A ribald funny that manages simultaneously to reference both blowjobs and the heterosexual male fear of Teh Gay coming on to him. How clever!

This is fascinating stuff coming from the party that focused obsessively on a consensual blowjob between two adults not that long ago, to the exclusion of nearly everything else, spending over a year and millions of dollars to prove that Bill Clinton is a Very Bad Man. A blowjob that was inappropriate, immoral, and ill-advised, to be sure, but one that was not illegal, a blowjob that was used to indict not just a president but his entire party. Now we have a Republican embroiled in a much more disturbing scandal, one involving predation on underage pages, and the rest of the Republicans and their media mouthpieces--when they're not scrambling to make excuses for the guy--are falling over themselves to tut-tut that the Democrats are making this an issue right before midterms, insisting that it's really not that big a deal, that if it's a big deal at all, it's because it distracts from the party message of all terror, all the time.

Meanwhile, the implication that the Democrats are blaming the page scandal on "the gays" and demanding special surveillance (special rights, anyone? okay, how about special blame, then?) is bullshit. It goes beyond that, actually; it's intellectually lazy and intentionally dishonest bullshit. The Democrats are not demanding that anyone "wiretap the gays." In fact, the Dems have specifically not engaged in the sort of gay scapegoating and demonizing that the right wing apologists delved into within 24 hours of the scandal breaking. The sole demand is that the House Republican leadership own their responsibility for covering up Foley's actions for the past six years, during which time they consistently chose political expediency over the well-being of the teenage kids entrusted to their care in the page program.

But that wouldn't have been nearly so amusing a cartoon.

Fitz Schmitz

The Arizona Daily Star's editorial cartoonist annoys the crap out of me sometimes. Unless today's effort is intended to be satire, he apparently doesn't recognize the difference between the Gettysburg Address (honoring the dead from America's Civil War) and Bush's September 11 speech (drumming up support for the Iraq war). The Gettysburg Address was anything but political.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Contrast Lincoln's words with W's.

We face an enemy determined to bring death and suffering into our homes. America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over. So do I. But the war is not over - and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious.

First sentence: death and suffering, check. Second sentence: little outright lie; America (more accurately, the American administration) very much asked for this war, and in fact wanted it so badly that it perpetrated and perpetuated a series of lies designed to make the average sound-bite citizen believe that Iraq was intimately involved in the September 11 attacks. Note to self: try to find camera footage of Dick "there absolutely was a connection" Cheney's temples threatening to explode when W stated Saddam was not involved. Third sentence: war will never be over, check. Interestingly, his closing paragraph echoed Lincoln's:

Our Nation has endured trials - and we face a difficult road ahead. Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us. We will defeat our enemies ... we will protect our people ... and we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty.

Sounds lovely, although it's difficult for me not to take the cynical view that "putting aside our differences" is code for "sit down and shaddup."

Emotional Hangover Remedy

Yesterday and the day before's marriage amendment kerfuffle sucked such raw emotional ass--and Boltgirl doesn't really go for that too much, although she's happy for the people who do--that I refuse to think deep thoughts today.

I did find this most excellent comic. Read them all. This one too. I think I'm in love.