talking heads

good question ... especially after tossing in sex, blasphemy, damnation, cannibalism, vampires, ghouls and zombies — all of which were enough to drive canadian artist chester brown's kafkaesque "ed the happy clown" afoul of international customs, making it risky for the book to be shipped across the border.

this complication did not prevent brown from earning a 1990 harvey award for best cartoonist.

bizarre, pathetic, hilarious, cruel and mesmerizing, the unpredictable and unrestrained adventures of brown's completely harmless and perpetually helpless hero were some of the best comics i'd discovered in '94, second only to scott mccloud's groundbreaking "understanding comics". i got my copy at that year's san diego comicon, where vortex, brown's publisher, had a few boxes personally driven to the show.

a pint-sized reagan, his sultry wife nancy and a hoary brian mulroney

while the book is not politcal, ronald and nancy reagan play commanding roles, even if they and former canadian prime minister brian mulroney look nothing like their familiar selves. nonetheless, their obvious dissimilarities go unremarked and these odd doppelgängers are taken as granted and treated as the real mccoys. as with many a dream i've had, such distortions only come to light with the dawn.

• • •

(story and art by chester brown)

the only constant in their universe

mark levin:	there is a road to tyranny, and i believe we're headed on that road ...
glenn beck:	fascism is coming!
unidentified:	intimidation is yet another part of the slow erosion of our liberties.
mark levin:	they want the population to surrender their liberties to the government ...
yaron brook:	you're in very dangerous water to the freedoms that exist in this country.
glenn beck:	and controlling your life ... !
michelle bachman:	i believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service ... and the real concern is that there are provisions for what i would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward ...
sean hannity:	keep it up, congresswoman, you're doing a great job, and, uh, i have no doubt that they will keep attacking you 'cause you're so effective. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it.
michelle bachman:	thank you, we're gonna fight for our freedom!
sean hannity:	absolutely — against tyranny!

since the great summer of our malcontents a great many pixels have been spent on the unimpeded descent of the republican party into self-perpetuated paranoia and terror.

most of us readily recognize their screeching obstructionism as a coldly calculated form of aversion therapy designed to induce a reflexive nausea in the voting public at the very mention of each and every word and deed of their new liberal overlords. but that's just their election strategy for 2010. as i pointed out in "not just obama", republican hostility can be traced to their long-standing and wholehearted denial of legitimacy and fitness to any leaders not proudly swearing fealty to so-called "conservative principles" even patron saint ronaldus magnus could not uphold.

upon further reflection, i think the paranoia in particular erupts from a place fundamentally ingrained within the conservative psyche. an all-encompassing paranoia is the inevitable response to the acceptance of conservatism as an outlook on life or philosophy.

what is the essence of conservatism at its core, when stripped of the emperor's clothes? it is a dedication to the preservation of the status quo against the forces of change. and what is the only constant in the universe, as the saying goes? that's right, it's change, which i guess makes paranoia the only constant in the republican universe. who wouldn't be crippled by dread with the very laws of the universe arrayed against them?

thus conservatives struggle, in a futile battle they can never ever win. on their side, a homogeneous, aging, shrinking, increasingly unpleasant and disconnected and ultimately dying base that is less interested in recruiting fresh troops than in purging its few remaining heretics. across the battlefield, a younger, diverse, tolerant and growing army untainted by bitter memories of the cold war of the 50's or the culture wars of the 60's, 70's and 80's, for whom the terms liberal, far left, socialist, marxist and communist don't trigger a pavlovian release of the contents of their bladders. for conservatives, time will never be on their side.

a record-breaking transition

and too long in coming ...

bush's final approval rating: 22 percent president bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new cbs news/new york times poll showing mr. bush's final approval rating at 22 percent. seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way mr. bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years. mr. bush's final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago. the rating is far below the final ratings of recent two-term presidents bill clinton and ronald reagan, who both ended their terms with a 68 percent approval rating, according to cbs news polling. recent one term presidents also had higher ratings than mr. bush. his father george h.w. bush had an end-of-term rating of 54 percent, while jimmy carter's rating was 44 percent. harry truman had previously had the lowest end-of-term approval at 32 percent, as measured by gallup.

nation's hopes high for obama, poll shows obama will take office tuesday as the most popular incoming president in a generation. he also will enter the white house with a broad mandate to act that was missing when george w. bush was elected by the narrowest of margins in 2000. more than half of all americans have high hopes for his presidency, almost three-quarters of the public say obama's proposals will improve the struggling economy, and about eight in 10 have a favorable view of him — more than twice the percentage now holding positive views of bush. about seven in 10 say obama understands their problems, and a similar proportion say his victory gives him "a mandate to work for major new social and economic programs."

poll finds faith in obama, mixed with patience president-elect barack obama is riding a powerful wave of optimism into the white house, with americans confident he can turn the economy around but prepared to give him years to deal with the crush of problems he faces starting tuesday, according to the latest new york times/cbs news poll. ... as the nation prepares for a transfer of power and the inauguration of its 44th president, mr. obama’s stature with the american public stands in sharp contrast to that of president bush. mr. bush is leaving office with just 22 percent of americans offering a favorable view of how he handled the eight years of his presidency, a record low, and firmly identified with the economic crisis mr. obama is inheriting. more than 80 percent of respondents said the nation was in worse shape today than it was five years ago. by contrast, 79 percent were optimistic about the next four years under mr. obama, a level of good will for a new chief executive that exceeds that measured for any of the past five incoming presidents. and it cuts across party lines: 58 percent of the respondents who said they voted for mr. obama’s opponent in the general election, senator john mccain of arizona, said they were optimistic about the country in an obama administration. ... his favorable rating, at 60 percent, is the highest it has been since the times/cbs news poll began asking about him. overwhelming majorities say they think that mr. obama will be a good president, that he will bring real change to washington, and that he will make the right decisions on the economy, iraq, dealing with the war in the middle east and protecting the country from terrorist attacks. over 70 percent said they approved of his cabinet selections.

horseshit

adele fergusen's column is a huge pile of manure — and those are the author's own words, not mine.

not that i disagree.

in her march 13 political column, "why do blacks continue to support democrats?", that appeared in the kitsap peninsula business journal — which has already scrubbed the article from its site — adele enjoined her "black brothers and sisters" to abandon their "perpetual victimhood" and recognize that their past enslavement was in fact "the work of god", and that being bought and shipped as cargo was their big ticket to the so-called land of the free.

along the way, in building her case against the democratic party, she takes aim at those who criticized president bush at the february 7th funeral for coretta scott king and fires several shots at unions. curiously, she cites not a single positive reason for blacks to support the republican party.

one of these days before i die, i hope to see a shift in the attitudes of so many of my black brothers and sisters in this great country we share, from perpetual victimhood, to pride in their achievements on the road from slave to american citizen. remember ronald reagan’s story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? he went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, “with all that manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.” the pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to america for black people. i have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of god, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. a harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. their descendants rose above it. you don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves. besides freedom, a job and a roof over their heads, they all sought respect. but even after all these years, too many have yet to realize that to get respect, you have to give it. the treatment given president bush at coretta king’s funeral was shameful. and these weren’t poor, uneducated black people who “dissed” him. they were among the country’s top-drawer blacks, there to bury black royalty. while bush got the cold shoulder, former president clinton was welcomed as if he still held the office. it mystifies me why the black population remains in thrall to the democratic party. black parents want a good education for their children yet they are consistently denied two opportunities that have proven enormously helpful in the few places where they are allowed because the d’s oppose them. school vouchers and charter schools. the teacher unions, among top contributors to the democratic party, oppose them for fear of losing control of the public schools which continue to turn out kids who have to be slipped through graduation by finding alternatives to standard requirements for learning, and where black kids fall behind whites. and what the teacher unions are against, the democrats are against. many a school board member is a democratic activist there to be on the ground floor against vouchers and charter schools. in the few places where vouchers to attend private schools and innovative charter schools are allowed, the unions file lawsuits claiming damage to the public schools by diverting the voucher money to poor families and limiting as much as possible the number of students who can attend the charters. they won one in florida last month. sure, the ultimate solution is to jack up the performance of the public schools, but so long as the unions are running the show, that isn’t going to happen. the unions don’t care if you’re a good teacher, just that you’re a member and pay your dues. it is nearly impossible to get rid of an incompetent teacher. their interest is themselves, not the kids, and their answer to the poor performance of the schools is more money. black students regularly trail white students because they get the more inexperienced and less qualified teachers and are plagued by low expectations. results of the use of vouchers and charter schools have been outstanding, yet the democrats say no, so why do black parents support them? why do they act the victim? blacks have no cesar chavez. jesse jackson isn’t going to buck the democratic party. neither is the naacp. black parents should confront democratic leaders at all levels and demand these tools of learning be made available or expanded or don’t count on our vote for your candidates. you’ve let the unions keep your kids down too long already. (adele ferguson can be reached at p.o. box 69, hansville, wa., 98340.)

as in my previous post "shaft's final solution" i'm not going to bother enumerating the absurdities in this column. i'm fascinated instead by two specific points.

first, obviously, racism manifests itself not just in the form of hatred, genocidal or otherwise. hatred is just the most visible and destructive manifestation of racism. affection, in a very counter-intuitive manner, can be another manifestation, whose pernicious effects are much more subtle:

patronize: 1. treat with an apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority.

adele addresses african americans as her "brothers and sisters" but clearly she adopts the patronizing tone of the sweetly-scolding grandmother, who of course knows what is best for her troubled and "mystifying" charges.

second, it is amusingly ironic that adele utterly fails to grasp the point of reagan's joke about the pony, the point being of course that the pony doesn't exist.

by insisting that somewhere in the steaming pile of manure of slavery there actually existed a "hidden pony", adele only shows herself to be as hopelessly deluded as the child joyfully shovelling away.