Let's do the Time Warp again!Like George Herbert Walker Bush confronting a supermarket price scanner in the 1992 political legend, cartoonists live in a bubble of retarded time, only they're acutely aware of it. There's not much they can do about it. The panels they draw today, the dialog they letter today—none of it will appear until having been properly aged. The lag-time is built into the process of cartoon publication.
As the Los Angeles Times reports this morning, Garry Trudeau has cast caution to the winds and declared Barack Obama the winner in his Doonesbury strip for Wednesday, November 5, the day after the election. While comic-page editors at newspapers across the country scratch their heads as they decide whether to run the presumptuous strip, Trudeau is not wringing his hands over his reputation if he turns out to be wrong. As he told the press, “I'd be a lot more worried about the country than the strip.”
Naturally, the news media contacted the McCain campaign for a reaction. The Times published a snarky comment from McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, who said, “We hope the strip proves to be as predictive as it is consistently lame.”
Are you laughing yet? Please recall that this is the campaign spokesperson for John McCain, the candidate who three weeks ago said in Virginia Beach, “We're six points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes.... My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them!” Apparently Bounds is merely reflecting the kind of logic that is pervasive in the McCain campaign. (But who, of course, could blame them? Much of the national media spun every incident as “good for McCain” during the first months of the election year.)Let's gently parse the statement of Mr. Bounds. He said that the campaign would like the Doonesbury strip predicting Obama's victory to be as predictive as the strip has been “lame.” We can take it as read—can't we?—that Tucker and his buddies really regard Doonesbury as a lame comic strip. Therefore, by Tucker's own statement, lame = predictive. It predicts Obama. Oops!
Nice thinking there, Tucker!
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6 comments:
Actually, if you quoted correctly (“We hope the strip proves to be as predictive as it is consistently lame.”) then they are really confused. If they think it's "consistently lame," then they're saying they hope it'll be predictive--that is, they hope it's RIGHT about Obama winning. If they think it's NOT predictive, then they think the strip is NOT lame.
Read the sentence carefully: "AS predictive AS IT IS consistently lame." What they meant (I assume) is that they hope it is as predictive as it is good, and since they think it's "lame" (thus, not good) they think it's not predictive.
Ah, the joys of the English language. Careful reading reveals how ignorant McCain's people really are; they can't even insult Doonesbury correctly.
I never thought I would agree with Tucker Bounds, but in light of his predictable use of the English language... I too hope the strip proves to be as predictive as he feels it is consistently lame.
Consistency is elitist. Words mean exactly what the speaker intends them to mean, nothing more nothing less. Why, a great egghead once said so!
(sorry -- I could not resist!)
But with the McCain campaign running out of media funds, maybe the little words came around of a Saturday night for to get their wages, and found they weren't getting any! That would throw a Spaniard in the works.
A Spaniard? Are you sure you don't mean a "spanner" -- a wrench?
Well, it certainly seems to me that tossing a Spaniard into the works would cause even more trouble than throwing in a spanner. The Spaniard might object, though.
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