Our Daughters Like Corner Pillars Cut for the Structure of a Palace

Rick McKee, 6/13/13:

It is right and proper for men to control the sexuality of their women.

Maybe -- just maybe -- if they do as they're told, we'll let them vote the way we tell them to.

Hegemonic Religion Round-Up: Infant Jesus Edition

The following cartoonists would like it to be known that their most central religious beliefs and concerns are precisely as shallow and bland as the average in their particular paper's circulation areas:

Randy Bish, 12/25/12:

Gary Varvel, 12/25/12 -- though he apparently worships an orb, and carefully avoids drawing any contemporary political parallels with "Prince of Peace":

Tim Hartman, 12/24/12 -- channeling a very clingy mother, or assuming we can all fondle the Baby Jesus through some hitherto unknown version of transubstantiation:

Rick McKee, 12/21/12:

Bill Day, 12/21/12, who also displays a shaky understanding of where babies actually come from:

And, finally, this odd little number from Berlin's Rainer Hatchfield, which, yes, does feature both Joseph copping a feel and farm animals devouring the newborn JC, 12/24/12:

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

Rick McKee, 5/3/12:

Obama is pushing Baby America into the pit of National Debt, because Baby America has never had a national debt before, and the policies and programs created in the past have nothing to do with that debt.

Ring That Dinner Bell

Rick McKee, 4/20/12:

Obama was trained from a young age to eat the rich -- he's a socialist sleeper agent! -- which is why tax rates in the US are at historic lows right now.

That's a pretty lousy sleeper agent, isn't it?

The Obligatory "Everyone Who Disagrees With My Religion Will Be Tormented Eternally" Round-Up

Let's see who felt the urge to avoid actual work and instead signpost their mainstream, unsurprising religious views this weekend, shall we?

First up is Gary Varvel's 4/8/12 cartoon:

Which implicitly threatens the rest of the world with death. Classy!

And then there's Randy Bish's cartoon for the same day:

This one takes the same imagery, shows it twice for added boredom, and then throws in a pop-culture reference so stale that only an editorial cartoonist would attempt it!


Ed Gamble, also on 4/8/12:

He takes the bold step of simply stating his religious doctrine baldly, without any commentary and barely a stab at passable art. But Ed's a Christian in a majority-Christian society, so he gets to count the time he spent on this -- both minutes -- as work!

Tim Hartman's Easter Sunday cartoon

uses the same (tired, bland, sectarian) text and at least tries to re-link it to spring, rebirth, and (implicitly) all of those old spring festivals that the early Church stole from to begin with.

A day earlier -- note that, since it makes the whole point of the cartoon moot -- Joe Heller gave us this:

A poignant rewrite of the old Pennsylvania Dutch proverb "Kissing don't last; Cooking does;" Heller contrasts the candy his readers hadn't gotten yet when they saw this cartoon with the eternal damnation he knows is in store for them if they don't knuckle under to whichever particular denomination of American Christianity he's sure is the Only True Religion.

Rick McKee took his Friday cartoon (4/6)

to wish his co-religionists a happy holiday. He, too, got to count a greeting card as his work for the day. Nice work if you can get it.


Bill Day, even earlier than that (4/5) had this

horrifying vision of the Great Bird of the Galaxy hatching out of the shell of the earth. Either Day doesn't actually know how shells work, or he hopes that his little peace symbol will make everything OK. Either way, it's pretty creepy.

And, finally, Steve Breen actually understands the concept of an editorial cartoon, using the seasonal theme to actually make a comment on something else:

Everyone else, take a close look at this one -- we'll be checking to see if you learned it when Christmas rolls around.


(And, no, I didn't see a single Passover cartoon. Of course, only the hegemonic religion can be allowed this degree of flabbiness.)

Update:

Hey! Here's another actual editorial cartoon on an Easter theme, from Gary McCoy on 4/7:

It's paint-by-numbers and pretty dull, but it shines in this horrible company!

Update 2:
Glenn McCoy took the weekend off, but came back on Monday (4/9)

to point out that he, too, is a white Christian male (like Jesus!) and that he'd like the opportunity to avoid real work for another day.  

A Bowl of Band-Aids Is the Same as Hospitalization Care, Right?

Rick McKee, 3/6/12:

1) McKee is, of course, conflating condoms and contraceptive pills here, which ignores the fact that contraceptive pills have other uses...and that was one of the major points of this entire exercise.

2) So are we in favor of Planned Parenthood now? Because it was a different story a couple of months ago....

Untangle That Metaphor!

Rick McKee, 12/7/11:

Obama's very power of rhetoric is the thing that will destroy the middle class.

Because why, that's why!

(Oh, yeah, and he's a commie Kenyan sleeper agent, too!)

You Know the Drill By Now

Rick McKee, 10/19/11:

Dirty hippies! Dirty hippies! DIRTY HIPPIES! DIRTY HIPPIES!

How many times do McKee and his buddies have to say it before you finally ignore those Occupy Wall Street folks?


If they had legitimate complaints, they would be old white men with funny hats and guns, right?

Free Market Firemen

Rick McKee, 10/10/11:

There really is a company called 1-800-Board Up, and they're a leader in the field of slapping plywood on a structure after it's had a fire.

(I know! And they say American ingenuity is dead!)

Anyway, in Augusta, Georga, there's currently a bit of a kerfuffle because the brother of the fire chief works for 1-800-Board Up, and thus the competing boarding companies (again: who knew?) are getting frozen out.

Once again, the lesson is: there's no job so odd and marginal but that there's already two guys pitted ion a death struggle over it.

Ursines at the Gate

Rick McKee, 10/5/11:

Oh, those poor, poor financiers! There's a sad bear on their doorstep, so they're only making tens of millions this year!

Pity the poor, poor financiers!

(Also -- the bear market "will work for food"? What on earth could that metaphor possibly mean?)

Bo Ate It

Rick McKee, 8/18/11:

You can just make the economy better -- by working hard enough at stuff that this margin is too small to contain -- and so not doing so is proof of laziness.

Elephants Never Remember

Rick McKee, 7/29/11:

Actually, it's "cut, cap, and balance" -- the Tea Party wants the government to stop doing some unspecified things that it's doing now, like maybe paving roads, keeping the air clean, or Medicaid, and then never again be able to raise any more money than it's getting now, no matter what happens.

And, you know, the government did spend substantially less than it took in...until 2001, when a certain President pushed through a bunch of big tax cuts, a major new entitlement (Medicare Part D), and funding for two wars. So should we just go back to the Clinton-era tax code?

National Treasure -- or Treasury?

Rick McKee, 7/15/11:

Selling off our national monuments to balance the budget is exactly the kind of forward-thinking, free-market solutions that our Congressional leaders would embrace -- and, if there's a low-bid sweetheart deal for some major campaign contributors, all the better!

Normally, I wouldn't expect Obama -- that first guy is meant to be Obama, right? -- to along with that kind of plan, but he's moving closer to the Republican position every day, so another week or so should do it.

Never Pass Up the Opportunity to Draw a Giant Firecracker

Rick McKee, 7/5/11:

Remember: there's one party in the debt ceiling negotiations that has been putting out new proposals regularly since February, and steadily moving farther and farther from its original position as the other side remains intransigent and unwilling to compromise.

And, if you listen to McKee, you'd think that was the congressional GOP.

Big Louie and the Violin Kid

Rick McKee, 5/15/11:

Investors don't care at all about debt ceilings -- the US is the only major country that even has one. What they don't like is the thought of a possible default, which is what would happen if the ceiling isn't raised.

Oh, and that thuggish character? That's you, and me, and the Chinese government, and some sovereign wealth funds, and several million other random people and institutions -- T-bills are the most widely held financial instrument on the planet.

Also, on the other side of this cartoon's metaphor, loan sharks love people that don't pay off their debts, keep running them higher, and keep making payments. Those are the very best customers.

It's in the Vault

Rick McKee, 4/29/11:

It's so true -- Obama's White House has been vastly more secretive than those of his predecessors -- especially when compared to Republicans like GW Bush and Nixon -- and every other President has proudly displayed his long-form birth certificate in the Oval Office.

Brother, Can You Spare a Scythe?

Rick McKee, 4/24/11:

With the resurrection of Jesus, the law of death was utterly broken, and so no one has died in the over two thousand years since then.

And, since we all know that to be true, it proves that McKee's particular brand of Christianity is the One True Religion forevermore.

A Long Drive

Rick McKee, 4/20/11:

If we ever have a President that doesn't golf, the fallout among editorial cartoonists will be immeasurable.

Return of the Barter Economy

Rick McKee, 4/4/11:

McKee works out of Augusta, Georgia, where they're playing a little golf this week.

Gas in Georgia is running a little under $3.50 a gallon, which some in more heavily taxed states may find shocking -- that it's seen as so high, I mean.

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?

Rick McKee, 3/14/11:

Bandwidth was limited, so the intervening panels -- in which J. Random Muslim was detained, beaten, thrown in Gitmo, expelled from the country, thrown off an airplane, and tried to go about his daily life like anyone else -- had to be left out.