There’s a kind of joke comedians call “clappers,” jokes that aren’t really funny but it makes the crowd clap. At the end of his career, Bob Hope did a lot of those. He’d say, “Boy, politicians sure are stupid,” and everyone would clap because they, too, believed that politicians were stupid.
And to me, that’s the worst part of having Trump as president. The only thing comedians and comic strips are giving us are “clappers.”
And I’m bored with them.
Miley Cyrus’ first inkling that there is misogyny in hip-hop may have come while she was bent over on stage being dry-humped by Robin Thicke as he sang a song about date rape.
Ours is a culture that will pay young girls a lot of money to demean and exploit themselves.
I’m proud of her for walking away.
When Ronald Reagan was president he was asked by an investigating committee if he had secretly sold arms to Iran (which was illegal) and used the proceeds to fund a covert war in Nicaragua (also illegal). His reply was, “I don’t recall.”
Seriously!
And there were people who leapt to his defense, saying a president couldn’t possibly be expected to remember every little detail of every little thing that went on in his administration.
So just imagine how much damage Donald Trump could do if his image was that of a kindly, doddering old fool.
This is something that has bothered me about social media for some time: it’s easy to surround ourselves with a cocoon of people who look, act, and believe exactly like ourselves, and we forget that there’s a whole wide world out there.
That doesn’t just make life boring– it makes democracy impossible.
Frazz is on the web HERE.
As a matter of policy, the Catholic church never takes a side in a war. They issue some vague guidelines, then trust that if the politicians (!) decide to kill people and animals and take other people’s things, they are probably doing it for Just and Moral reasons.
On the issue of abortion, they are definitive: “We have decided, and the answer is ‘No.'” On the issue of gay rights, they are definitive: “We have decided, and the answer is ‘No.'” On the issue of contraception, they are definitive: “We have decided, and the answer is ‘No.'” Even on the issue of capital punishment, they are definitive: “We have decided, and the answer is ‘No.'”
Then on the issue of war and peace, suddenly it becomes, “Well, you know, it’s not really our place to say…”
The United States is amping up for war, again, on a couple of different fronts. A compliant press is already busy paving the way.
Look for the Pope to wring his hands helplessly, issue vague “war is bad” kinds of statements, and pray for The Troops.
“The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer.” ~Terence McKenna
“There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander.” ~Abbie Hoffman
People sometimes ask rhetorically, “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?” but there’s a big problem with that premise: it assumes that only one man was responsible for World War II, and the millions of other people who participated were merely dragged behind in the great man’s wake, powerless to do anything other than bob along in the waves he created.
It denies the power of any individual– save the one– to influence world events.
I reject that.
