Ann Telnaes has just been turned into Obi Wan Kenobi. The Post may have killed her cartoon, but they’ve made her much more powerful. And I think she’ll only use her powers for good!
I don't really give a shit about athlete's salaries (or athletes, come to think of it). They're being paid for their talent, same as famous actors, musicians, and others in the performing arts. And why? Because they make money for their corporate overlords. Let's be honest with ourselves: income is rarely relative to the amount of work put into an occupation. I would bet, for example, that the guys (and it's all guys) that pick up the trash from my building complex work a lot harder than I do, but also probably earn less than half my salary (and I just sit at a desk and pretend to know some somewhat complex IT stuff).
I opened my Subscription to the Washington Post, on the first day I moved to Washington from Philadelphia. August 2, 1969. I closed my subscription to Philadelphia Inquirer to pay for it. Today, I cancelled my subscription to to the Washington Post, and renewed my multi-year subscription to
"Funny Times". At least, the "Funny Times" has Dave Barry . . . and lots of editorial cartoons.
1) Nobody ever held a gun to an owner's head and said he had to pay some athlete an all-time record high salary. They wouldn't pay it if they didn't have it to spend, and if there's that much money available, better it go to the guys actually playing the sport.
2) Most salaries aren't anywhere near those of the elite contracts that make the news. I'm fact, in some years the median salary is lower than the "league minimum" salary, because of pro-ration and service time.
3) Athlete's careers can be very short -- a few years or less, followed often by injury.
4) Despite popular belief, player salaries don't affect ticket and concession prices. Those prices are based entirely on supply and demand. They charge what the market will bear regardless of payroll.
I object to high athlete salaries only because I wish the nation would put more of that money towards me and people like me, scientists. But we don't, and it is not the fault of the athletes, and I'm not willing to be that plainly self-serving. So let them have it. They deserve whatever they can extract from the team owners, especially with union contracts that compel providing for the less-famous players at the same time. They do that, don't they? An athlete who makes $20M for a five-year career makes something equivalent to $444K per year for the 45-year career of a regular person. Good money, to be sure, but not insane. In exchange, many of them get a lifetime of physical and mental injuries. In football, many of them get a lifetime that is not even all that long. At half a million per year, how many years would you be willing to give up in exchange for that money? I'm not interested in professional sports, myself, but I don't begrudge athletes getting their piece out of the money that fans make available.
What chaps my britches more is the big money made from bad science fiction movies and TV shows. Hire us as consultants, and make your work suck less!
I’ve bought several cartoons over the years. For example, I always bought the Bob Staake cartoons associated with any week of the Style Invitationsl during which one of my entries was “ above the fold.” I have a copy of the famous “ UNIX programmer” Dilbert signed by Scott Adams. In the course of events, my wife , who is more woke than a triple espresso, relocated that one to a humble spot above the toilet in our son’s old upstairs bathroom. That toilet gets patronage maybe three times a year.
Dang, it never occurred to me to ask Bob Staake if I could buy one of his cartoons ( the one I captioned in an invite contest). Hope it’s not too late.
Fact is, as the Wise Man of the Bronx points out, there is indeed a difference between a responsible journalistic enterprise and a company in the commercial sector. Elaborating a bit, I suggest that integral to a journalistic enterprise is the holy grail of news judgment, just as say, profit is for a public company. Both do involve the exercise of judgment but in dramatically different ways --- although there is assuredly a relationship over time between questionable news judgment and the bottom line. When either is compromised, the value of the enterprise decreases. Had Bezos been the only supplicant in Telnaes' cartoon or was singled out somehow, there could, I suppose, be some room for the owner (or his managers on his behalf) to take offense, especially if this was also the case in a series of written pieces. On the other hand, as an owner very much in the public eye you should (normally or traditionally) have the hide of an elephant. But he wasn't singled out, and the fact that he was joined in supplication by a number of obscenely wealthy and prominent ass-kissers in the communication business, is very much news and certainly opinion, worthy. We don't know what else Telnaes may possibly have been putting up with --- the spiking of this cartoon being the proverbial straw. My guess is there is more behind the departure than we know and which Ms. Telnaes is discreetly keeping to herself.
This almost just in... Demento is now trying to stop the release of Jack Smith's pending, reportedly two-volume report on the classified documents and J/6 election interference cases. There's word a motion may also be filed with Aileen Cannon to stop at least the release of the classified documents volume because of the pending trial of two of Demento's henchmen in the case. Why the concern Demento, you did nothing wrong, right? You've been telling us that for years.
I've bought only one editorial cartoon. Alas, it doesn't look like it's possible to post it here (or at least I don't know how). So:
Frame 1: [King's adviser] "Solomon, my king, our choices are:
Frame 2-3: 1. Build a state on the oppression of a captive minority; 2. Let the Jordanians oppress them for us. 3. Allow the situation to deteriorate into a real civil war; or; 4. Negotiate with the Palestinians.
Frame 4: (Solomon) Hmm.
Frame 5. (Solomon) Could you repeat choices 1 through 3?
Frame 6: (Silence)
I think at least some readers here will recognize the work of Yaakov Kirschen in the Jerusalem Post's Dry Bones. The cartoon appeared in 1988 or so.
Santa was tasteless but I appreciated it. The new college football portal is a morass being managed for Bill Belichick by Mike Lombardi, football GM journalist and author at large. It came about to pay college athletes their due (=good) but it has created motion on the part of all players trying to move up, ostensibly every year if they aren’t satisfied. Interesting to see how BB does, in recruiting and coaching.
Me too. On one hand, if the colleges and universities are raking it in (and coaches are getting big bucks) the players deserve something. On the other hand, it eliminates the amateur level. And if I had a third hand it would be that at many of the big name school those players are likely getting something, somehow, under the table so maybe it levels the playing field.
Guess a mill to Demento wasn't enough for Fuckerberg. Now we hear he is doing away with independent fact-checking on Facebook, Threads and Instagram. Should quickly turn them into the toilet that Brand X has become.
The drag performer Varla Jean Merman did a musical parody called "The Mailman Always Comes Twice." The name is clever and it makes me laugh, as did the joke about the nuns.
As for the Carter take-down, it is a pet peeve of mine that a great many people, progressives included, require Democratic politicians to be pluperfect in all things. Despite their having done many great and good things, any deviation from perfection makes them disposable. (President Biden would know all about it.) But for Republicans, there are scarcely any standards at all. As the abominations pile up, the media shrug. The nation shrugs. That needs to change.
About Carter's self-serving memorial speech: having sat through many memorial speeches and read through many memorial tributes, I have always been struck by the extreme rarity of anything but this. Most people interpret paying tribute to X as an invitation to ruminate on how highly X thought of them. Yes, one might have expected better from Carter, but as Gene points out, what it means is that he was human.
In other news: nun joke is great; Santa joke is impressively terrible.
Ann Telnaes has just been turned into Obi Wan Kenobi. The Post may have killed her cartoon, but they’ve made her much more powerful. And I think she’ll only use her powers for good!
I don't really give a shit about athlete's salaries (or athletes, come to think of it). They're being paid for their talent, same as famous actors, musicians, and others in the performing arts. And why? Because they make money for their corporate overlords. Let's be honest with ourselves: income is rarely relative to the amount of work put into an occupation. I would bet, for example, that the guys (and it's all guys) that pick up the trash from my building complex work a lot harder than I do, but also probably earn less than half my salary (and I just sit at a desk and pretend to know some somewhat complex IT stuff).
I opened my Subscription to the Washington Post, on the first day I moved to Washington from Philadelphia. August 2, 1969. I closed my subscription to Philadelphia Inquirer to pay for it. Today, I cancelled my subscription to to the Washington Post, and renewed my multi-year subscription to
"Funny Times". At least, the "Funny Times" has Dave Barry . . . and lots of editorial cartoons.
Sam Laudenslager
Thanks for the links to my scribbles. And yes, athletes, actors, CEO's are over paid, but that shan't change ...
T
Four points about athlete's salaries:
1) Nobody ever held a gun to an owner's head and said he had to pay some athlete an all-time record high salary. They wouldn't pay it if they didn't have it to spend, and if there's that much money available, better it go to the guys actually playing the sport.
2) Most salaries aren't anywhere near those of the elite contracts that make the news. I'm fact, in some years the median salary is lower than the "league minimum" salary, because of pro-ration and service time.
3) Athlete's careers can be very short -- a few years or less, followed often by injury.
4) Despite popular belief, player salaries don't affect ticket and concession prices. Those prices are based entirely on supply and demand. They charge what the market will bear regardless of payroll.
I object to high athlete salaries only because I wish the nation would put more of that money towards me and people like me, scientists. But we don't, and it is not the fault of the athletes, and I'm not willing to be that plainly self-serving. So let them have it. They deserve whatever they can extract from the team owners, especially with union contracts that compel providing for the less-famous players at the same time. They do that, don't they? An athlete who makes $20M for a five-year career makes something equivalent to $444K per year for the 45-year career of a regular person. Good money, to be sure, but not insane. In exchange, many of them get a lifetime of physical and mental injuries. In football, many of them get a lifetime that is not even all that long. At half a million per year, how many years would you be willing to give up in exchange for that money? I'm not interested in professional sports, myself, but I don't begrudge athletes getting their piece out of the money that fans make available.
What chaps my britches more is the big money made from bad science fiction movies and TV shows. Hire us as consultants, and make your work suck less!
So Carter had strong opinions including a high opinion of himself. At least they were informed.
I’ve bought several cartoons over the years. For example, I always bought the Bob Staake cartoons associated with any week of the Style Invitationsl during which one of my entries was “ above the fold.” I have a copy of the famous “ UNIX programmer” Dilbert signed by Scott Adams. In the course of events, my wife , who is more woke than a triple espresso, relocated that one to a humble spot above the toilet in our son’s old upstairs bathroom. That toilet gets patronage maybe three times a year.
For something by Scott Adams, a spot above the toilet is way too high.
Dang, it never occurred to me to ask Bob Staake if I could buy one of his cartoons ( the one I captioned in an invite contest). Hope it’s not too late.
He only sells the b/w drawing…not the color ones… but they’re not expensive
Fact is, as the Wise Man of the Bronx points out, there is indeed a difference between a responsible journalistic enterprise and a company in the commercial sector. Elaborating a bit, I suggest that integral to a journalistic enterprise is the holy grail of news judgment, just as say, profit is for a public company. Both do involve the exercise of judgment but in dramatically different ways --- although there is assuredly a relationship over time between questionable news judgment and the bottom line. When either is compromised, the value of the enterprise decreases. Had Bezos been the only supplicant in Telnaes' cartoon or was singled out somehow, there could, I suppose, be some room for the owner (or his managers on his behalf) to take offense, especially if this was also the case in a series of written pieces. On the other hand, as an owner very much in the public eye you should (normally or traditionally) have the hide of an elephant. But he wasn't singled out, and the fact that he was joined in supplication by a number of obscenely wealthy and prominent ass-kissers in the communication business, is very much news and certainly opinion, worthy. We don't know what else Telnaes may possibly have been putting up with --- the spiking of this cartoon being the proverbial straw. My guess is there is more behind the departure than we know and which Ms. Telnaes is discreetly keeping to herself.
This almost just in... Demento is now trying to stop the release of Jack Smith's pending, reportedly two-volume report on the classified documents and J/6 election interference cases. There's word a motion may also be filed with Aileen Cannon to stop at least the release of the classified documents volume because of the pending trial of two of Demento's henchmen in the case. Why the concern Demento, you did nothing wrong, right? You've been telling us that for years.
I've bought only one editorial cartoon. Alas, it doesn't look like it's possible to post it here (or at least I don't know how). So:
Frame 1: [King's adviser] "Solomon, my king, our choices are:
Frame 2-3: 1. Build a state on the oppression of a captive minority; 2. Let the Jordanians oppress them for us. 3. Allow the situation to deteriorate into a real civil war; or; 4. Negotiate with the Palestinians.
Frame 4: (Solomon) Hmm.
Frame 5. (Solomon) Could you repeat choices 1 through 3?
Frame 6: (Silence)
I think at least some readers here will recognize the work of Yaakov Kirschen in the Jerusalem Post's Dry Bones. The cartoon appeared in 1988 or so.
I don't really care about pro athlete salaries. But our new system of promising millions of dollars to college athletes does disturb me.
Santa was tasteless but I appreciated it. The new college football portal is a morass being managed for Bill Belichick by Mike Lombardi, football GM journalist and author at large. It came about to pay college athletes their due (=good) but it has created motion on the part of all players trying to move up, ostensibly every year if they aren’t satisfied. Interesting to see how BB does, in recruiting and coaching.
Me too. On one hand, if the colleges and universities are raking it in (and coaches are getting big bucks) the players deserve something. On the other hand, it eliminates the amateur level. And if I had a third hand it would be that at many of the big name school those players are likely getting something, somehow, under the table so maybe it levels the playing field.
I’d never see the VW video before, I found it hilarious.
Not me. I found it gross.
Guess a mill to Demento wasn't enough for Fuckerberg. Now we hear he is doing away with independent fact-checking on Facebook, Threads and Instagram. Should quickly turn them into the toilet that Brand X has become.
The drag performer Varla Jean Merman did a musical parody called "The Mailman Always Comes Twice." The name is clever and it makes me laugh, as did the joke about the nuns.
As for the Carter take-down, it is a pet peeve of mine that a great many people, progressives included, require Democratic politicians to be pluperfect in all things. Despite their having done many great and good things, any deviation from perfection makes them disposable. (President Biden would know all about it.) But for Republicans, there are scarcely any standards at all. As the abominations pile up, the media shrug. The nation shrugs. That needs to change.
About Carter's self-serving memorial speech: having sat through many memorial speeches and read through many memorial tributes, I have always been struck by the extreme rarity of anything but this. Most people interpret paying tribute to X as an invitation to ruminate on how highly X thought of them. Yes, one might have expected better from Carter, but as Gene points out, what it means is that he was human.
In other news: nun joke is great; Santa joke is impressively terrible.