Wonkette
By the Comics Curmudgeon
I will not lie to you: Sometimes political cartoons can be confusing! Especially for you, the unwashed masses, who never got any proper art education in school because your elected officials decided that Americans needed to know more about “science” and “math” and a bunch of poindextery stuff like that. Fortunately, your Wonkette provides to you, free of charge, explanations of some of the more obscure cartoons, straight from the typing fingers of the world’s only professional cartoon explainer. Join us after the jump, and prepare to be AMAZED AND ENLIGHTENED!
While technically a “political” cartoon, this comic is really more about reproductive biology than anything else. You see, when an anthropomorphic elephant and an emaciated Frankenstein love each other very much, they might decide to have a baby together. How is this hybrid elephant-Frankenstein baby created? Not through your filthy human sexual intercourse, thank you very much; not only is such a prospect distasteful in the extreme, but it may well also result in a terrible injury to the Frankenstein, due to the disparities in mass between the two partners.
Fortunately, a unique lifecycle has developed: the future parents lock in amplexus, at which point the elephant emits spores from its face, which land in the Frankenstein’s huge, beady eyes. Over the next six to eight months, tiny buds begin to blossom around the eye sockets, eventually falling off and skittering around the floor; this is the larval form of the elephant-Frankenstein hybrid, and usually one or two from every brood will make it to adulthood. THE MIRACLE OF LIFE!
This cartoon is about the Kids Today, and how they are all terrible. Remember when you were a kid, and summer vacation involved lazy days skipping rocks down at the reservoir, or riding your bike around the neighborhood, or playing pick-up baseball games down at the sandlot, or engaging in some halting sexual exploration in that old abandoned house at the end of the block? You’ll notice that all of these good, healthy activities are totally free, and therefore can be enjoyed in flush and lean times alike. Yet Junior here has theatrically propped up a newspaper with a screaming RECESSION headline as he writes his whiny “What I Didn’t Do On My Summer Vacation” essay. Oh, sorry, were mommy and daddy unable to afford to send you to polo camp, or buy you a Nintendo XBox, or get tickets to Coachella, or whatever the hell kind of money-grubbing thing you feel you have some kind of constitutional right to? Do you think you’re too good to go collect tadpoles down at the creek just because you had four different HBOs up until a few months ago? Your kind makes me sick, punk.
This cartoon dares to tell the difficult truth: that the world of business, important as it is to providing the fast food and alcohol that Americans need to endure the pain, is a nasty, nasty world, the most apt metaphor for which is a portly lady taking a dump. Congressmen need to go from “stall” to “stall” to take a close look at this so-called “private business” to make sure it’s all on the up and up, which is why most members of Congress are hardcore scat fetishists.
I’m reasonably sure that that’s supposed to be Henry Waxman at the head of this Congressional stall-peeping delegation. It’s definitely a Democrat, since the person in the stall is female.
To understand this cartoon by Glen McCoy, you need to understand its context. That context is the cartoon McCoy published the day after Kennedy died, which probably caused some whiny liberal editor to request a somewhat classier Ted Kennedy death cartoon, so here you go, you fucking pinko, Ted is meeting his liberal brothers, in Papist heaven, I hope you’re happy. However! While this might seem more Ted-friendly, doesn’t the scenario depicted sort of screw him? After all, Ted has arrived in heaven a pudgy old man, while John and Bobby are still skinny and young and handsome and probably getting all kinds of seraph tail. Surely they will resoundingly defeat the elderly Ted-angel in the rousing game of touch football they’re about to play on God’s front lawn.
This cartoon defies all of your bourgeois demands that it be “about” something. An everyman figure walks by a newspaper bearing the headline “CASH FOR CLUNKERS PROGRAM ENDS,” and thought balloons “…sort of.” What exactly does he mean by this? Is he looking at the prominently signed “BANK,” and considering all the cash the government is throwing at the clunkers of the financial world? Or is the key figure here the huddled hobo, society’s clunker, whose shakily held cup requests some cash from the rest of us? Or are both bank and bum just a bit of local color, and the “…sort of” merely referring to the rather anticlimactic way in which the actual Cash for Clunkers program ended? The best thing is that you can choose any answer, or none, or all of them, and by “best” I mean “extremely irritating.”
This cartoon is much more straightforward. It is about how every man wants to make love to a football, with his butthole.
I think that may be Larry Craig in the bathroom stall, he’s wearing heels! The three other guys must have known the correct “Toe Tapping” sequence. Dut-Dut-Da-Dah-Dunt…….Dunt-Dunt.
…make love to a football, with his butthole.
How would that work, exactly?
Tommmcatt: Squoze it!
It appears the lady in the stall has neglected to lift her skirt while pooping so it is a good thing that the suits from the government are there to help her.
Nice smackdown on the whiny kid. If throwing rocks at each other was good enough for my family, it’s good enough for this pampered brat.
ted, bobby, and jack made it heaven and joe didn’t? that hurts my heart, joe was a hero, too. also.
Oh, man! They wrote the word “Congress” on a satchel so we know those guys in suits are supposed to represent congress! I can’t stop laughing! Whew…
Tommmcatt: Not well, if full penetration was ever achieved. ER docs love this game, too.
slappypaddy: And apparently getting lots of “seraph tail”…
Native of SL UT: I think it is hoiked up behind, but she is a “lady”, so discreetly keeps her knees covered anyway.
When did Rod Blagojevich die and why is he hanging out in heaven waiting for Ted Kennedy to arrive?
Thank you, Mr. Professional Cartoon Explainer.
I have always wondered where frankelphants came from.
Also, Josh, the lesson on repoduction via spores is going to have me twitching for the rest of the damn day. Thanks.
the problem child: Thank you for introducing me to the word “hoik”. I pledge to use it three times today.
AnnieGetYourFun: NO! You beat me to it. I’ll say it anyway…
Rod Blagojevich and his twin brother welcome Teddy to heaven?
…or engaging in some halting sexual exploration in that old abandoned house at the end of the block…
Now THAT takes me back….thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Josh.
#1 - Lame
#2 - Lame
#3 - Fuck you
#4 - Awwwww… sniff
#5 - WTF?
#6 - Buttsecks!
Next please.
Jack and Bobby look suspiciously like Blago. A sly Illinois electoral fraud reference?
Native of SL UT: OMG great catch. I laffed and laffed.
Ben Franklin went to Coachella you dicks!
It is called the NFL Football Season (capitalized!) just so none of librul frenchie gayz think this about soccer.
Has anyone scientifically proven how many vigins a Dead Kennedy gets in heaven? I’m inclided to believe it is more than 72
freakishlystrong: I think he is out back selling the seraphs some illegal moonshine. Prohibition never ended Up There.
Bruno: How about the number of virgins Jello Biafra has been with right here on Earth??
I think there’s something more sinister at work in the “cash for clunkers” ‘toon. See, the real scary thing is that there is a TRANSPARENT HOBO, who is really just the ghost of the 1976 Denver Nuggets miner mascot.
That cartoon of the football reminds me of the special attachment I had with a mellon when I was in grade school.
AggieDemocrat: “I see dead hobos”
aaronincus: Please tell me you’re not a female.
I kind of like that restroom stall cartoon. I guess the message is, “this is what private business has been doing to you, so congress is here to stop it”! No? OK, then I don’t get it. Oh, wait, it’s a wingnutty comment about how government needs to be more Reagany and leave businesses alone to screw us at will. OK, that makes more sense.
At least they acknowledge that private business has taken a giant shit.
That last one is even more disturbing if you picture Dick Cheney with the nuclear football.
The Station Manager: And that it needs to cut back on the ho-hoes.
Just judging from her cankles, that private business woman (itself an oxymoron) could EAT that Congressional panel. With a Diet Coke.
I kind of love Glenn McCoy now.
Tommmcatt: Slowly… unless one has adequate lube.
Well, I don’t know about “every” man and that football but that’s certainly how they do it when they hold their fantasy league draft at the embassy in Kabul.
Dear Josh: To defend sacred NCLB returning to school essays, please correct this sentence:
“What I Didn’t Do On My Summer Vacation” essay. Oh, sorry, were mommy and daddy unable to afford to send you to polo camp, or buy you a Nintendo XBox, or get tickets to Coachella, or whatever the hell kind of money-grubbing thing you feel you have some kind of constitutional right to?”
to
“What I Didn’t Do On My Summer Vacation” essay. Oh, sorry, were mommy and daddy unable to afford to send you to polo camp, or buy you a Nintendo XBox, or get tickets to Coachella, or whatever the hell kind of money-grubbing thing TO WHICH you feel you have some kind of constitutional right?”
BadKitty: The ’sort of’ comment is definitely aimed at the beggar. Jeebus, will they never stop waiving their jangling cups at us and disturbing our reveries about the young Brittany?
Q: how many miles per gallon of hooch do the beggars get?
A: zero. they sit right there.
Q: How fast do they accelaerate?
A: They go from 0 yrs to 60 yrs by the age of 40, meriting only contempt from EverNeverMan
The Station Manager: Ever see the Kliban cartoon, “Business on Parade”?
Naked Bunny with a Whip: “That last one is even more disturbing if you picture Dick Cheney with the nuclear football.”
Best comment among many outstanding imho, which unfortunately counts for naught where I work and live. But that’s their problem.