HAIL DUBYUS!

An Illustrated Guide to Mendacity and Folly in the Imperium Americanum

BRITNEY FLASHES! (Hey, It’ll Get More Attention Than Civil War In Iraq)

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I know, I know, Stephen Colbert did a throwaway line about no one’s wearing blue or gray on Wednesday night, but my wife will swear that I decided on this cartoon early (like 2 am) Wednesday morning. I unfortunately have had to swear off reading other editorial cartoons until way after events have taken place because I feel if I get an idea and someone else has done something similar, I can’t work on my own. Similarly, if I’m stuck on something and I read the other cartoons, I might be sorely tempted to take someone else’s idea and apply my own twist to it…which is kinda cheating. However, I’m not going to dump my own ideas because of a throwaway line. Nonetheless, he did say it publicly first (phooey!). Of course, my version of a civil war is not very Ken Burns…more Michael Curtiz or William Cameron Menzies.

In other news, the big BUZZ search is, of course, Britney’s pantyless flash while slutting around with Paris and Lindsay. I’m too censored right now to even consider capturing THAT 🙂

But Can You Believe A Puppet?

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(AP) Snow denies Saddam trial ‘scheming’

(AFP) Bush spurts toward campaign finish after Saddam verdict (Ah, I love that headline)

Granted Saddam is an evil tyrant who deserved the death penalty, but do we do the world any service by trying him in a kangaroo court? This should have been an international tribunal, not an Iraqi one, since there’s no way he could have gotten a fair trial in Iraq. One of the standard motions in America is the change of venue for someone who cannot obtain a fair trial in a given location. I put it that the Bush administration made another huge mistake in not forcing this trial to take place in an international court. Of course, that’s partly because the Bushies deny consistently the status of international proceedings, but it’s also because in an international court, Saddam could have mounted a true defence–and in doing so, exposed US involvement in his crimes going back to Reagan and Bush the first and involving Cheney and Rumsfeld. All in all, a sad day for the principles of justice.

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah! Not Exactly An Auspicious Opener

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(WashPost/AP)Tony Snow Has 1st On-Camera Press Session

“Asked repeatedly about reports that the government has collected records on millions of Americans’ phone calls, Snow said, ‘I don’t want to hug the tarbaby of trying to comment on the program, the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.’
The expression, which refers to a character in the most famous of the fictional Uncle Remus stories, is sometimes used to portray an inextricable situation. But, as the word also has been used as a derogatory term for blacks, it raised eyebrows when spoken from the White House podium.
Later in the briefing, Snow was asked what he meant. ‘Well, I believe ‘hug the tarbaby,’ we could trace that back to American lore,’ he said.

Hey, Tony, there’s a LOT of expressions we can trace back to American lore that we don’t use anymore, like the famous phrase W.C. Fields euphemized as “Ethiopian in the fuel supply.” The problem is, you’re used to working in an environment that didn’t look askance when anyone said “Tarbaby,” and now you aren’t. But thanks, I knew you’d come through with a cartoon idea 🙂

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