I got wired a time or two when I lived in southern Arizona, but it was nothing like this. Photo by Jonathan Clark | Nogales International via The Associated Press and stolen shamelessly by Your Humble Narrator
Whatever the sonofabitch gets, it’s never enough. Wives, bankruptcies, you name it.
Now not even a Big, Beautiful Wall® will tickle Il Douche’s little pickle. Now it has to be a Big, Beautiful Wall with Six Rows of Razor Wire®.
And remember, folks: FreeDumb® isn’t free. DoD estimates that the military has spent $132 million so far “supporting” U.S. Customs and Border Protection — never mind that the number of arrests by the Border Patrol is the lowest since the early 1970s, while the number of agents has more than doubled — and other estimates indicate that border deployments could eat up a cool billion by the end of fiscal 2019.
Can we maybe put one of these BBWWSRORW® around the Orange House? With a lid on it?
Here’s a golden oldie, from my short stint at The Arizona Daily Star. I didn’t stick around to get the sack; I shot out of that place like a rat out of an aqueduct.
As long as we have a cartoon president, how ’bout drawing him up a cartoon Wall®?
We have the technology. Also, the manpower. Newspapers are shitcanning Pulitzer-winners right, left, and center, among them Steve Benson, who was the editorial cartoonist at the Arizona Republic back in 1980, when I scribbled the occasional ’toon for The Arizona Daily Star.
This is nothing new, of course. A J-school prof warned me in the Seventies that there were maybe a thousand editorial cartoonists, tops, and that I might consider expanding my portfolio a tad. This was excellent advice. Because their numbers kept shrinking like a spider on a hotplate, to hundreds and finally dozens.
It was nearly impossible to even make a start Back in the Day® because what few cartoonists there were could be had for chump change via syndication. So the editor of the Frog Dick (S.C.) Daily Lily Pad & Croaker could have Pat Oliphant every day for the price of a tepid cup of Maxwell House at Lulu’s Lunch Bucket.
I still got to draw cartoons, as you know. But I did it as a reporter, as a copy editor, as an assistant feature editor, and like that there. On the side. Onliest time I ever got hired as an honest-to-God cartoonist was when that Boulder-based journal of competitive cycling decided I was too dim to be their managing editor but funny enough to scribble gags about fat masters, dope fiends, and Suits.
In a few short years there won’t be any of us. Robots will be drawing all the cartoons. And you won’t get any of the jokes, because they will be by robots, for robots.