The Funny Papers

#IStandWithAnn Pedro X Molina

#IStandWithAnn JD Crowe

#IStandWithAnn Jack Ohman

#IStandWithAnn Barry Blitt

#IStandWithAnn Daniel Murphy

Kevin Necessary, Mike Luckovich, Dave Whamond, Phil Hands, Darrin Bell, Andy Marlette, Gary Huck, Walt Handelsman, Lalo Alcaraz, Dennis Goris, Nick Anderson, Michael de Adder, Clay Bennett, Pedro X Molina,

The Funny Papers:Ann Telnaes Resigns

Last week Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes announced she had resigned from The Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish that cartoon upo there depicting billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos on bended knee in front of President-elect Felon:

“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

The cartoon depicts Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI chief Sam Altman on their knees, handing over bags of cash to a statue of The Felon next to a lipstick-holding Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and bowing Mickey Mouse. Telnaes said the cartoon “criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect,” satirizing “these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago.”

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists [AAEC] condemned The Post’s decision, accusing the newspaper of “craven censorship” and “political cowardice":

“Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper.”

 The AAEC then called on other cartoonists to finish Telnaes’ sketch and post it online in a show of solidarity.

After resigning, though, Ann Telnaes created another cartoon and here it is:

The Daily Hypocrite: Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz is an asshat; no doubt. He’s also a ginormous liar, and we have a myriad of instances where he’s done just that. And he’s still bragging about how he shut down the government and cost the American taxpayers $24 billion dollars, and is even using that to run for office, though I wonder how he’d cry and bitch and moan if, as President … I know, it’ll never happen … a Democrat shut down the government.

But this isn’t about lying, being an asshat, or destroying the government Ted Cruz; this is about Hypocrite Ted Cruz.

See, he recently released an ad for his political campaign, featuring Ted and the missus, sitting with their two children, reading them Christmas tales, like "How Obamacare Stole Christmas" and "Rudolph The Underemployed Reindeer."

Too funny. Not. But then he read from a book called “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails” and had one of his children, his seven-year-old daughter, read the line:

“‘I know just what I’ll do,’ she said with a snicker. ‘I’ll use my own server and no one will be the wiser.’”

Isn’t that hilarious how he makes his children part of his campaign when surely his seven-year-old daughter knows next to nothing about what she’s saying, but is, in fact, just parroting what Daddy told her to say?

And so, Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Ann Telnaes created a cartoon for The Washington Post — which has since been taken down — depicting Ted Cruz as Organ Grinder Santa Claus and his two daughters as the dancing monkeys.

And Cruz went off.

"Not much ticks me off, but making fun of my girls, that will do it. Don't mess with my kids. Don't mess with Marco's kids. Don't mess with Hillary's kids. Don't mess with anybody's kids. Leave kids alone."

Huh. But didn’t you start this by making your own children part of your campaign? I mean, you chose to put them in a campaign ad, and even had one of them take a shot at Hillary Clinton, and that’s somehow all right?

Siddown Ted, your hypocrisy is showing. But he isn’t done. Now he’s using that Washington Post cartoon as a money grab for his campaign, which fired off a fundraising email entitled, "They attacked my children!"

"You see, there is something that rises up inside a man when his children are attacked—something fierce and unstoppable. It is this same unstoppable force that makes me more determined than ever to fight for you, your family, and American families everywhere. Can I count on you to stand with me?"

So he uses his children in an attack ad on Hillary Clinton — going so far as to have a seven-year-old ‘read’ from the book — and when a cartoonists calls him on it, he cries foul and uses the situation to ask for money because, wait for it, his children.

I agree that children should be off limits in these campaigns, but if you’re gonna use your kids to attack the President — who, by the way is not running for office remember — or an adversary, you have no right to get your knickers twisted when someone else makes a parody of your family. You started it; you used your child as a trained monkey for a political ad.

And finally, my main issue with the cartoon is that Ted Cruz should have been depicted as a monkey because that’s what he is: a trained chimp, pandering to the rightwingnuts.

Ted Cruz: The Daily Hypocrite.

Feud: Mama Grizzly Bore™ vs. The Washington Post

It used to be good being the Mama Grizzly Bore™. Sure, she blew John McCain’s’ lest, best, shot at ever living in the White House and yes, she quit her job as Governor of Alaska because all those questions about her lack of ethics were making things hard for her. But, she had a base of support, mostly wingnuts, illiterates and Teabaggers, or any combination thereof,  and so she could host a reality show and “write” a book and get paid a couple of bucks to speak here and there. But, this summer just might be the summer of the MGB’s™ discontent.

See, even her base of loons and nut-monkeys turned on her when she began her rabid Impeach Obama talk — and if the loons and nut-monkeys turn on you, well, you better sit down — and then a poll came out in which the majority of Americans, and not just the liberal elite Hollywood types with their cement ponds and fancy cars, picked her as  the person they most want to see shut up and go away; I won’t mention that I’ve been saying that since late summer 2008, m’kay?

And she just recently came up with her own media channel, dubbed by some as the Blamestream Media, which is more expensive and far less interesting ort newsworthy than NetFlix.

So, I feel for her ... I kid.

See, now MGB™ has gone on the attack against the Washington Post on her Facebook page, calling WaPo reporters “a bunch of wusses” too scared to investigate Obama:

“The public knows of our current president’s incompetence, denials, and cover-ups, but would be well served if we could count on your resources to dig deep for truth in all matters pertaining to Team Obama.

…

The list of Obama abuses and impeachable offenses is long. I challenge you to lift a finger and help protect democracy, allow justice for all, and ensure domestic tranquility by doing your job reporting current corrupt events fairly. If not, you prove yourselves incompetent and in bed with Obama, not caring one iota about media integrity.

Those running the Washington Post’s show now, compared to those during the Nixon era, are too afraid of being uninvited to the permanent political class’ cocktail parties and petty gossip fests, making you all a bunch of wusses. I challenge you to get to work.

…

To reclaim your credibility (and the mainstream media’s, at large), I challenge you to engage in the same aggressive investigative journalism you courageously employed 42 years ago covering President Nixon.”

Sadly, MGB™ who infamously could not name one single newspaper she read when being interviewed by Katie Couric in 2008 — I guess she doesn’t think The National Enquirer counted — picked on the wrong paper with which to tangle.

Responding to MGB’s™ ludicrous, and, at times, childish, rebuke, the Washington Post expressed surprise that Palin actually reads a newspaper, even if they are “circa the early 1970s.” And then they said this:

“Way to blast that Washington Post!

One problem though: The post in which you blast the Washington Post sits about ten posts above this July 20 Facebook post of yours, which starts with these words:

Obama Knew of Border “Crisis” Prior to Reelection; Lied About That, Too!

The Washington Post has a bombshell article out about how “top officials at the White House and the State Department had repeatedly been warned of the potential for a further explosion in the number of migrant children since the crisis began escalating two years ago.

Bold text added to note a contradiction in your timeline. In one Facebook post, you’re calling The Post wussies, and in an earlier one, you’re crediting its reporting for exposing a policy failure of the Obama administration. It’s not really a big deal, though. One remedy would be to delete the post that congratulates The Post for its July 19 story on the early warnings about the border crisis. Another remedy would be to amend your Post-slamming post to say something along the lines of: “You’ve fallen like a lead balloon, except for that sweet story last week about how the Obama administration had ample warning of the border crisis, as well as any other Obama administration-critical stories that I missed on account of my documented failure to read newspapers.”

A third approach would be to leave things as they are, on the safe assumption that no one looks to you for consistency anyhow.”

Oh MGB™. Schooled and read by the Washington Post.

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Richard Cohen Says The GOP Isn't Racist And Then Proves It Is

The other day I stopped in at Viktor’s place — Maybe it’s JustMe — as I usually do, and he’d posted this quote from The Mama Grizzly Bore™ about the US debt to China:

"This free stuff, so seductive. Why do you think marketers use free stuff to bring people in? Free stuff is such a strong marketing ploy. But didn't you all learn too in Econ 101 there ain't no such thing as a free lunch? Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that note comes due -- and this isn't racist.. but it's going to be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to be beholden to a foreign master. Because there is no plan coming out of Washington, D.C. to stop the incurrence of debt."

Now, I’m not here to talk about debt, or even MGB™, because the part of the quote that got me is the part where she says “this isn't racist.. but it's going to be like slavery when that note is due.” I made a comment that when someone says they are about to say something that isn’t racist, then it’s usually racist. The qualifier does nothing but draw attention to your racism.

But that’s the GOP, in a lot of ways, though, to be fair, not all of the GOP. But, as we’ve seen these last five years, with the way the GOP has gone against anything and everything that our first Black President has put forward — without coming up with their own ideas, mind you, as proof that they are better in politics — the GOP is racist.

Even Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist,  is racist and thinks the GOP is racist, and we know this because he s trying to tell us that the GOP isn’t racist, by, um, well, writing about it. And, again to be clear, this is the same not racist Richard Cohen who, earlier this year, claimed victory in the George Zimmerman trial after Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin; Cohan had compared the image of Trayvon Martin in a hoodie had the same affect on a white man as a man Ku Klux Klan robes does to a black man.

Yes, he did. And now he’s gone off again, proving he’s not racist by being a racist, in talking about newly elected New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio and his family:

“Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering mayor-elect of New York—a white man married to a black woman with two biracial children. {Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?} This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their America at all.”

Oh, where to begin … ?

I guess I was first appalled about his verbiage ‘mainstreaming of what used to be avant-garde.’ I take it, he means The Gays and by mainstreaming he means equality, which apparently he doesn’t consider worthy of all for all people.

But it’s his blatant racism, his implication that a white man married to a black woman, and with children no less, is somehow appalling to conservatives because it doesn’t look like ‘their America.’

I’ve got news for you Mr. Cohen, you are a racist, and this isn’t just your America. Last I checked it belonged to all of us equally, regardless of gender, orientation or race. The great thing about America, to me, and I guess this is just another in a long list of reasons why I’ll never be called a conservative, is that we are all Americans, no matter our skin color, accent, ethnicity, religion, lack of religion, gender, age, sexual orientation. And we can all — or at least some of us — marry whomever we choose to marry, be they different races or religions or, in at least 15 states and the District of Columbia, the same gender.

That’s America, Mr., Cohen, not your lily white one-way view, and that’s why the GOP is floundering, because while the rest of  America and the world, change and adapt and grow and learn, learn, and understand, the GOP is stuck in the mud up to their necks.

Racist, indeed.

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A Kiss Is Just A Kiss....Even If It Takes A Battle To Get One

My goodness, the Washington Post just stepped right into it.

What with Marriage Equality now officially the law of the land, or at least the District of Columbia, the Washington Post published a front page photo of two men kissing, and set off such a firestorm of controversy from wingnuts, dingbats, and asshats.

Oh my.

Let's take a look then, shall we, at some of the reader comments to the newspaper in the days following the man-on-man liplock:

Ann Witty wrote to say she was cancelling the subscription she'd held since the 1960s: “I am 65 years old and I realize that the world is changing rapidly – much more rapidly than I would like it to. While I realize that the Post must report on these changes – even the ones with which I do not agree – I feel that the picture on Thursday morning was an affront to the majority of your readership. It is not something that I want coming into my home. I believe that even your editors know that it would have been better placed in the Metro section and that it would have mitigated its impact to do so.”

So, she doesn't want to see happily married people on the front page of the paper? War is fine? Shootings? A-okay. Anger and rage, bring it on. Love? Not so much. Well, Ann, the times have changed, and you need to change with them, or simply dig back through your old Post archives and reread the news that you want to hear. The rest of us will be moving on.

Lee Miller of Columbia said:

“I would appreciate it if your cover pictures would not be so disturbing where my kids can see it easily on the kitchen table... please don’t shove this “Gay” business in our face. This is something that should have shown up on an inside page or two (without the picture).”

So, again, pictures of people in love might disturb your kids? i think it disturbs you, Lee, because you, sir, are a homophobe. And, for the record, "Gay" is not a business; it's not a lifestyle; it's an orientation just like straight.

And here are some more comments about The Front Page Kiss:

“the picture of two guys kissing makes me cringe.”

“Put it on page 10 or page four, put it in the paper, but I do not like it right there where I can’t avoid looking at it.”

The Washington Post is “promoting a faggot lifestyle.”

“That kind of stuff makes normal people want to throw up. People have kids who are being exposed to this crap. I will be glad when your rag goes out of business. Real men marry women.”

Actually, what makes me throw up is this kind of blatant homophobia that wants to take an innocuous picture of two people in love and turn it into pornography. And, for the record, with all the hoopla and hate and homophobia, the Post did not back down to these bigots, and, well, just twenty-seven cancellations came in.

So, for those of you in DC who don't want to see two men or two women, having just been married, kissing on the front page of the paper, let me remind you that in the 1960s when the Washington Post ran photos of interracial couples kissing after their suddenly legal weddings, many of you complained then.

And now it's no big deal.

We're here.

We're queer.

We're getting married in DC and kissing on the fron page of the paper.

Get used to it.

Richard Cohen, Asshat Of The Week

"The real purpose of hate-crime laws is to reassure politically significant groups -- blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc. -- that someone cares about them and takes their fears seriously. That's nice. It does not change the fact, though, that what's being punished is thought or speech. ... I doubt that any group of drunken toughs is going to hesitate in their pummeling of a gay individual or an African American or a Jew on account of it being a hate crime. If they are not already deterred by the conventional penalties -- prison, etc. -- then why would additional penalties deter them? And if, in fact, they kept their mouths shut, refrained from the N-word or the F-word or the K-word, and simply made the beating or the killing seem one triggered by dissing or some other reason, then they would not be accused of hate -- merely of murder or some such trifle. If, though, they gave vent to their thoughts, they would be in for real trouble. For the most part, hate-crime legislation is just a sop for politically influential interest groups -- yet another area in which liberals, traditionally sensitive to civil liberties issues, have chosen to mollify an entire population at the expense of the individual and endorse discredited reasoning about deterrence."

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen on Hate Crimes laws.

First off, the Hate Crimes laws does not affect thought or speech, but action.

It works a little something like this: I read asshat statements like this, from Richard Cohen, and I think he is the most ill-informed illiterate hack on the planet. And i can do that. I can also open my mouth, or my computer keyboard, and speak or write that Richard Cohen is the most ill-informed illiterate hack on the plant. That's okay, too. What I cannot do, is use my opinion of Mr. Cohen to physically attack him in any way.

That would be a hate crime.

Got it now..............................Dick?