Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Hiya, Smiff! And, thanks for picking this one up! Y'know, I've noticed lately just how many of my best ideas have come to me while in that sort of half-dazed, half-dreaming REM state that I'm in while the DW is morning-news channel-flipping. I've complained adamantly to the DW about this, suggesting that if she's going to insist on waking me up with the early-morning news, she should at least leave it on the BBC -- we get the BBC America channel on our dish -- so that I can hear some real, actual news about real, actual events of real, actual importance from around the world, instead of a load of crap about shopping-mall shootings, Stacy Petersen, Natalee Holloway, and Brad Pitt's personal plan to help the homeless of New Orleans. No goddamn' wonder that all weekend, while working on this cartoon, I couldn't quit hearing that melancholy chorus in my head:

...you are only coming through in waves;
your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying...

But, aa-aaaanyway...sorry I haven't done more cartoons in the past few months, but I've been shooting a lot of newsreels for the DC IMC -- the ANSWER mobe back in September, the World Bank meetings in October, a couple of Jena 6 rallies and, last but not least, the big ol' Ron Paul blowout in Philly last month... and man, oh, man, what a goddamn' freak show that was, for sure, co-starring every nativist, theocratic, gold-standard hobby-horse riding yahoo imaginable on the stage and, in the crowd, a contingent of Keystone State Skinheads.

And, speaking of freak shows, are there any other fellow Washingtonoids here who caught the front page of this morning's Washington Post? Oprah Friggin' Winfrey is splattered all over it; I almost mistook it for People Magazine at first. She's striding out across a runway to a stage backdropped by giant lit-up electric letters spelling out IOWA FOR OBAMA with the headline quoting her, "I'm Tired Of Politics As Usual" -- meaning of course, that it's time for a self-serving, self-aggrandizing, emotionally manipulative, sensationalistic, obscenely rich-assed talk-TV huckster to throw her (metaphorical) weight behind a candidate who's the political equivalent of an American Idol winner, the inaugural entry in Oprah's Politician-Of-The-Month Club. I didn't know whether to laugh insanely or throw up all over my front doorstep.

Just one question, though: if -- like the books A Million Little Pieces and The Secret, and her South African School For Girls -- Barack Obombirana turns out to be a colossal fraud, will she handle her damage control the way she did for those other colossal frauds? Inquiring minds, etc...

PS: If your curiosity is somehow piqued about that Ron Paul event, you can check out my DC IMC coverage at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aympZ8ILGSI . It's a foreign-language film -- Bullshit with English subtitles.

Great freaking fucking cartoon. Leaving the Huck-Konopacki tandem (sometimes guilty of vulgar Upper Midwest bloody laborist anti-globalism) in the dust, I reckon. Maybe one more small rung to climb to reach Kirk Andersen's Bushevism brilliance, tho...

The Glue from Toho-kue