Wonkette
By the Comics Curmudgeon
So did you hear that Rod Blagojevich, America’s noblest, most sexually potent governor, was removed from office yesterday, because of racism, or maybe jealousy over said sexual potency? Everyone loved Blago — minorities, poor people, what have you — but nobody loved the lovable lug more than America’s political cartoonists. Why was that? Was it his noble struggle against impossible odds, which reminded them of themselves? Was it his transparent scumbaggery, which allowed for a disdainful bipartisan free-for-all? Was it the hair? It was probably the hair.
Click the cartoons to make them larger, like Blagojevich’s coif!
Here is a fine metaphor for Blagojevich’s removal from office by the dastardly Illinois Senate! He is being pulled offstage by a giant hook, as if he were an act in one of the vaudeville acts of yore. Yet there is a problem with this image; vaudeville, for all its manic intensity, was informed by a certain ethos of human decency wholly lacking in this entire sorry saga. No, a better analogy would be the sordid world of the traveling freak show, in which sorry specimens of broken humanity would be paraded in front of jeering, taunting audiences, for money.
Here is another excellent metaphor! Blagojevich is depicted as some sort of giant statue-thing with an obscenely distended mouth, out of which is flowing a veritable river of human feces. Then there are three tiny people labeled “talk show hosts” who are frolicking and laughing in the shit-river, and even dipping their hands in it and splashing each other. The intended meaning is that Blagojevich is full of shit and the talk-show hosts who had him on their shows were willing to roll around in the filth! This is what passes for subtlety in political cartooning.
Hey, you know what would be awesome? If instead of just one Blagojevich, there were three of him, and after the Senate removed him from office, this Pat Quinn character, who’s just been chillin’, stone cold lieutenant governing, and claiming very loudly not to be Rod Blagojevich, took the oath of office and then ripped off his latex mask and really was Blagojevich after all, and he shouted “Psych! Now who wants to buy some motherfucking state offices? Oh, also, there’s a third one of me out there, somewhere, so don’t bother impeaching me again. We’re going to go on a ’50s-style panel show together!”
No, seriously, I have no idea what the hell this cartoon is supposed to be about.
This one I totally understand though. It’s a scene from the popular ’80s children’s show, Corrupt Governor Babies, in which Li’l Rod Blagojevich is about to beaten senseless with a huge slab of wood! It’s OK to abuse children in cartoons, because they can’t really feel it.
Have you ever known one of those people who are always ranting about how things they don’t like are being “shoved down my throat”, and by “shoved down my throat” he (it’s usually a he) means “are allowed to exist,” and for some reason these things involve homosexuality more than half the time, and you think to yourself, “Gee, when you put it like that, it sounds kind of gay?” Well, uh, this cartoon, in which Rod Blagojevich forces a terrified, gagging Harry Reid to fellate a Roland Burris-shaped butt plug, will not disabuse you of that notion.
After Blagojevich was stripped of office, the Illinois constitution dictated that he also be stripped of his clothes and have his hair — the source of his magic powers — shaved away in act of ritualized humiliation. He must spend the next year of his life begging on the streets of Chicago as a mendicant. This punishment was intended to be fatal, because it is very cold in Chicago; but the framers of the Illinois constitution did not count on the warm, glowing power source that is Rod Blagojevich’s self-love. He’ll be fine, motherfuckers. He’ll be just fine.
The cartoon depicting a giant mouth spewing shit everywhere… how many dicks can fit in there? His future cell-mates need to know.
That Ghandi cartoon is just incredibly strange. Oliphant got this really bad idea and instead of just passing it by, as political cartoonists must do with thousands of ideas each day, he actually went ahead with it, and now we’re looking at it. WTF?
I normally loathe Glenn McCoy’s political cartoons, but this one is actually. . . well, not funny, but decent. It actually makes sense, and there’s no baby trying to kill an abortionist.
1. Kind of lame.
2. Just plain disgusting.
3. I agree with you. Completely incomprehensible.
4. Female teacher, young male student. Oh, sure, she acts all strict disciplinarian in front of the other kids. Once she gets him behind her desk, she’ll drop the stick and go straight for the dick.
5. We’ll see. Burris could turn out to be the best U.S. Senator ever, and all it would take is a fanatic dedication to subpoenaing Bush administration people, but somehow I expect he will just ride it out until the next election cycle, after which he will retire to his mausoleum and wait to die.
6. Blago without the hair is not Blago. Oh, maybe that was the point.
Too bad Blaggo wasn’t saddlebacking Reid with the Burris-plug
I want a Ralph Steadman. Really, why not?
It’s hard to hate Glenn McCoy, even though he’s conservative and the jokes in his cartoons are therefore almost never funny; because the drawings themselves are almost always hilarious.
I don’t know, for cartoonists, Blagga-dicks is just low hanging fruit…
In a world without glib hair jokes, the living will envy the dead.
Lascauxcaveman: BTW, today is Confusing Misuse of Italics Day. Didn’t you people get the memo?
I like the idea of Blagojevich as three evil, hair-coated horcruxes.
#3 - The show should be To Tell the Truth, Not What’s My Line. It would have made sense if the show’s name were right.
Insomniacs with the game show channel know these things. Unfortunately.
in which sorry specimens of broken humanity would be paraded in front of jeering, taunting audiences, for money.
Hey now, furries and Republicans need to eat, too.
“Was it the hair? It was probably the hair.”
Yes. Yes it was. I am hoping, since it is Friday, that this story will run out of steam by Monday so that we never have to see this pathetic, wretched asshole, again. Or his hair. For sure the hair.
The raw sewage one seems fairly accurate to me.
The best part about Blago getting axed, as any Illinoisan can tell you, is that the Open Road Tolling signs are coming down!
masterdebater: Hair. Sampson, pre-buzz, slew bezillions of Phillistines with the jawbone of an ass and he hardly knew Blagorod.
I’m going to miss that bastard. Don’t get me wrong, he should not have any power what so ever, but he made me laugh. And isn’t that what man first dreamed of when he looked up to the stars?
Well? I’m asking you a question.
scariest damn fuzzy pumper barber shop ever.
“Frolicking and Laughing in the Shit-River”, the new self help book for television hosts desperate for ratings and relevancy in a post Obama world. Foreword by Joanne Rivers.
Hey, is the cartoonist who does Dick Tracy the same guy who did the weird To Tell the Truth Blago triplets one? I actually like his style in Dick Tracy, which makes the whole strip freaky and stark and noirish, but it doesn’t really work well with whatever it is he’s doing there.
Cedar: Yeah, it’s the same guy. You might recall last year’s insane “Dick and the Governor and the Mayor spend the night in a haunted house” plot — the governor and mayor were caricatures of Blago and Daley, respectively. The Blagojevich stand-in ended up being held at gunpoint by a crazed maniac. Sadly, this was before anyone outside of Illinois knew who he was, and now the archives are pay only, I think.
Reid’s strategically-placed shoe makes it look like Blagodick’s fly is down. I thought there’d been a sex scandal I hadn’t heard about on top of everything else.
Personally, I always had a hard time looking at the guy when he wasn’t in profile. His eyes are so close together that he’s practically a cyclops.
That said, I’m gonna miss him for the same reasons I miss Marion Barry. Yeah, they’re both crazier than shithouse rats, completely out of touch with reality, and egregiously unqualified to serve the public trust, but dammit, you just have to love their indomitable spirits.
And their chutzpah. Also.
Josh Fruhlinger: Unfortunately, I don’t remember that, which is too bad, as my mother’s family is not only from Chicago, but is also Serbian, so I’ve known about this douchebag for years.
Josh Fruhlinger: Oh, Josh. If what you’re saying is true, that one would be worth linking to.
Lascauxcaveman:
Starts here
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/10/16&name=Dick_Tracy&week=1
less buttplugs, more buttsecks.
Cedar: Hmm, on second thought he doesn’t look very Blago-y, does he? I have been misinformed!
The raw sewage cartoon was by far the best of the lot. What kind of a self-respecting talk show host would let that man on their show? All of them, because something like that is fucking golden. If by “golden” you mean “really icky and I need to go wash the filth off my self-respect”. I noticed that Geraldo parachuted himself in there.
More pictures of Harry Reid being tortured, please.
As a resident of the ‘Land o’ Lincoln,’ I would have to say that one Hopey is worth three Blagos any day.
Lascauxcaveman: “Misuse of Italics Day”
Today only, we’re calling them Serbics, in honor of a Reign of Terror lasting over 2,000 days.
Made my way here via Watergate Summer blog. What a kick! Blago/Gandhi strikes a nerve. Like MKL, Blago had a dream, & it was effing golden. He will have time to write his memoirs, from the slammer. Blago~ the buzzcut years.
Cartoon #4 has a major problem labelling Blag a “schoolyard bully”. Dick, horse’s ass, reality-challenged yes, but bully?