Art Collection: "Mutt and Jeff" Comic Strip Drawing, Bud Fisher Studio, 1922

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Above is the original artwork (pen/brush and ink with graphite on illustration board) for a Mutt and Jeff comic strip which was originally published by the Wheeler/Bell Syndicate on December 22, 1922. A noteworthy thing about this drawing is that it's HUGE, 11.25" x 30". Typically, drawings for daily strips are about 8" x 20", and I have no idea why M&J strips from this period were drawn so large; it's not like the drawings are particularly complicated, refined, or detailed.

Bud Fisher created A. Mutt (the feature's original title) in 1907, and it is generally regarded as being the first successful daily comic strip. Fisher became very, very rich thanks to Mutt and Jeff, but quickly lost interest in actually drawing it. By the time the above drawing was published, all the work was done by Billy Liverpool and Ed Mack (who probably drew this one), but that didn't stop Fisher, a notorious credit grabber, braggart and all-around asshole, from signing it! A good example of Fisher's hubris is that he liked to claim in interviews that he drew every frame of the 300-or-so M&J animated cartoons produced by the Barré Studio, an absolutely ludicrous and insulting claim which surely endeared him to the talented production artists who slaved away to make him even wealthier.

This drawing has been through some rough times (I'm sure its awkward size didn't help): it got bent up and mangled on the left and re-flattened, probably with an iron; it has moisture damage, and at some point in 1923 it was reformatted for publication elsewhere, hence the second pasted-on signature and copyright notice.

I love this strip, though. So many question marks! It features one of my favorite things, a vaudeville-style prohibition gag (a subject I always favor; I've got four or five other prohibition-themed strips from the 20s in my collection). The title of this episode, written in pencil at the top, is "You Can't Tell What You're Drinking These Days", and that's the key to the gag*: the judge asks what they were drinking, and hell if they know what sort of bathtub concoction it was. In the end, it's clear that Mutt and Jeff really need to work on their negotiating skills.

*Comic strips in the early days usually carried titles, a tradition which petered out and then was finally done away with when comics shrank in the 40s. Later, Bill Griffith revived the practice in Zippy the Pinhead.

Pamela Geller Is Totally Losing It

Do you know what is really bad publicity? When a mass murderer writes approvingly of you as an inspiration just before going out on a mass killing spree, and that's the situation in which horrible Pamela Geller finds herself and all of her friends. Poor Pamela! Normally I would never recommend visiting her toxic blog, Atlas Shrugs, but she is just so totally unhinged right now (more than normal, I mean) that it is, for once, pretty entertaining. If you're lucky enough to not be familiar with Ms. Geller, she has made it her life's work to convince us that Muslims –all Muslims, not just radical ones– are utter demons bent on our destruction, and they must be stopped! But surely, surely saying so didn't help inspire Anders Breivik to launch his deadly rampage. Heavens no! So anyway, almost every post on her front page right now is about how she's really the victim in all this. Delicious.

Photo via Islamophobia Today.

No True Scotsman

Ever since the inconvenient truth of Oslo madman Anders Breivik's right-wing/Christian philosophy became clear, I've been waiting for American conservatives to roll out the "No True Scotsman" argument to defend themselves. Are you familiar with this strategy? It goes like this:

A: No Scotsman would eat a live puppy.
B: But I just saw Sean Connery eat one right over there! Look! He's eating one now!
A: No true Scotsman would eat a live puppy.

Keep your eyes open, because you'll be seeing this logical fallacy a lot. Want a good example? Here's Bill O'Reilly going on and on and on about how Breivik isn't really a Christian; he can't be, because No True Christian would do such a thing!

Besides, it's all a liberal media plot to make Christians look bad. Don't forget who the real victims are here!

UPDATE: it looks like Andrew Sullivan's readers also pegged O'Reilly's rant as a "No True Scotsman" construct.

Baffling Mystery Explained

Something which has always puzzled me is the way extreme right-wingers like to claim, with a straight face, that American liberals are somehow colluding with Islamist fundamentalists to... to what? Destroy America, I guess. And this is obviously the most perplexing theory, since the former is so completely incompatible with the latter. How does one reconcile the classic tropes of American liberalism (Racial equality! Equal rights for women! Tolerance for hairdressers and interior decorators!) with the kind of scoldy puritanism of hardcore Islam? Well, obviously you can't. Erick Erickson, however, the proprietor of Red State, and an obviously odious individual somehow taken seriously by mainstream news organizations, gives it the old college (or at least dorm room) try:

Secular leftists and Islamists are both of this world. Christians may be traveling through, but we are most definitely not of the world. In fact, Christ commands us to throw off our ties to this world. But the things of this world love this world and hate the things of God. That’s why secular leftism can embrace both activist homosexuals and activist muslims when the latter would, when true to their faith, be happy to kill the former.

All of them can pile on and condemn the Christian because the Christian is just passing through, a stranger in a strange land.

See? It all makes sense now!

Evil Pops Its Collar

This is an undated image obtained from the Twitter page of Anders Behring Breivik, 32, who was arrested Friday July 22, 2011 in connection to the twin attacks on a youth camp and a government building in Oslo, Norway. (AP Photo/Twitter, Anders Behring Breivik)

I resisted posting this, because I thought, OMG, what an unacceptably shallow observation to make! But then I realized that this blog's entire raison d'être is to make shallow observations, so with no small amount of embarrassment, I'll go ahead and make it.

And, well, in for a penny, in for a pound:

Ah, How Refreshing! Here's A Cool 'N' Breezy Picture Of Ursula Plassnik

Die Abgeordnete und ehemalige Aussenministerin Ursula Plassnik (OeVP) kommt am Mittwoch (22.06.11) in Wien zu einer EU - Hauptausschusssitzung des Nationalrates. In der Ausschusssitzung wird die Hilfe fuer Griechenland debattiert. Foto: Hans Punz/dapd

Ursula! Looking fab! So what's the affable Austrian giantess been up to lately? Oh, jeez... you don't really expect me to understand this stuff, do you? It's sooooo totally boring other than having Ursula in it. I think she's still fighting with Turkey? All I know is that she looks happy, triumphant even, and since it's Summer she's eschewed her usual majestic scarves for an equally mighty necklace. I don't know German so I have no idea what that caption above says, but I just know it has got to be something about that necklace. Here, look at it bigger:

That is perfectly scaled to Ursula, as is her Wonder Womanesque cuff. Oh, Ursula, whatever it is you're trying to do, I want you to succeed* so that the once generous spigot of stylish Ursulapics can be turned on once again.

*Oh, oops.

Michele Bachmann Looks Out Of Airplane Window, Points, Tsks

This photo provided by the Michele Bachmann campaign shows Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., flying in a light plane over flooding from the Missouri River, near Hamburg, Iowa, Monday, July 18, 2011. Bachmann said the magnitude of flooding along the Missouri River this summer warrants a presidential visit. Bachmann and a fellow Republican House member, Steve King, R-Iowa, took an aerial tour of the flooding on Monday morning.(AP Photo/Michele Bachmann Campaign)

OK, I know it isn't much, but OMG I had to get that horrible Rupert Murdoch picture off the top of the blog.

Rupert Murdoch Hand Turkeys!!!!!

Rupert Murdoch attempts to speak to the media after he held a meeting with the parents and sister of murdered school girl Milly Dowler in London, Friday, July 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Running Interference

(AP Photo/Sang Tan)

I mentioned a few days ago that I've been obsessed with the British tabloid scandal, and it's just getting wilder and wilder. Already today it's clear that this brouhaha has yet to reach its crescendo.

Rupert Murdoch has been trying hard to be the picture of contrition (see photo above), surely unfamiliar territory for the notorious tyrant. If you want to see News Corp.'s official attitude, however, look no further than this morning's editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which vacillates between "everybody does it" and "this all happened years ago" and "it's all a plot by our liberal rivals anyway." Check out the opening disclosure statement, which was surely crafted by about three thousand lawyers:

When News Corp. and CEO Rupert Murdoch secured enough shares to buy Dow Jones & Co. four years ago, these columns welcomed our new owner and promised to stand by the same standards and principles we always had. That promise is worth repeating now that politicians and our competitors are using the phone-hacking years ago at a British corner of News Corp. to assail the Journal, and perhaps injure press freedom in general.

That doesn't sound too contrite to me! Read the whole thing and you'll see Murdoch's real attitude: this isn't fair, waaah. And anybody following the scandal can clearly see that this is hardly just a matter of a teensy tiny  "British corner of News Corp." as the fiasco engulfs Downing Street, Scotland Yard, etc.

Expect the "author" of this editorial to appear on every single Fox News program over the next couple of days, endlessly shouting, "It's a British scandal! Do you hear me? BRITISH. It's just about being nosy about the Queen and Hugh Grant, OK?"

UPDATE: I posted the above at about 5:30 in the morning. Since then lots of people have piled on this embarrassing editorial. My favorite is from Media Matters (I know, I know), who refer to it as "petulant, tin-eared... wildly misguided and clownish...."

Antisocial

OK, so I got an invite for that new Google product (thanks, Mr. Dork!). Now, some of you may have noticed that I'm not on the Facething (none of these people are me, nor, for that matter, is this). To be honest, I have absolutely no idea how Facebook "works." Really, I have no clue whatsoever, and have never been even vaguely tempted to find out. It's not that I'm a Luddite, or unwilling to participate in the internets; it's just that it never seemed necessary to me. I mean, if somebody I went to high school with wants to find me, that's easy enough to do. I've never gone to any great lengths to protect my identity on the web.

So anyway, I decided to give it a shot and signed up for Google surveillance and just... didn't get it at all. I suspect that if I had been on Facething, I'd understand it and think it was similar but different and better? I guess? I stared and stared at it and thought, "What is this? What am I supposed to do now?" And then I saw people who wanted to circle me or whatever and thought, "Who is this person? Do I know this person? I don't recognize this name, or this one either." Is this what being "prodded" feels like?

It came close to being an existential crisis*. And then I searched and searched and found the place where I could express my desire to not participate, and did so. And now I feel all better! The end.

*Not really.

Art Collection: "Nancy" Comic Strip By Ernie Bushmiller, 1971

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This is the original drawing (pen/brush and ink on Bristol board, 7" x 20.5") by Ernie Bushmiller for the "Nancy" strip which was published in newspapers on March 12, 1971.

I'm not sure what to say about this one other than to suggest that you gaze upon its utter perfection. This is a typically minimalist late Bushmiller strip; it doesn't even have any word balloons! I love, too, the very subtle up-and-down placement of Sluggo within the frame, which gives this strip a nice rhythm, and the gag is, of course, executed flawlessly.

I have several other Bushmiller originals (see one from 26 years earlier here), but I'm withholding most of them until Pony Pal™ Mark's sure-to-be authoritative How to Read Nancy is published later this year.

How Does Everybody Feel About Hillary Clinton Wearing A Scrunchie In Public?

Hillary Clinton listens to Portugal's former president and UN High Representative Jorge Sampaio as they take part in the Community Of Democracies ministerial conference in Vilnius on July 1, 2011. Petras Malukas / AFP - Getty Images

Just what I needed to pull me out of my blogging inactivity: hairdo controversy! This comes via the Today Show's "The Look" blog, which documents Hils disembarking a plane accompanied by the regrettable hair accessory, and then later still wearing it at some meeting.

Hillary! C'mon, no. I suppose one could argue that wearing a scrunchie on an airplane is acceptable, but I've always regarded airports and planes as primo fashion show-off zones, so I'm not buying it. Also, the Today Show blogger, Rina Raphael, while barely disguising her horror at the wayward accessory, tries to mitigate it by pointing out that Sienna Miller and Catherine Zeta Jones have been spotted in public in scrunchies and that American Apparel is selling them now. To me, though, these seem like further reasons to avoid these terrible elastic hairdo tumors.

But then... to leave the scrunchie on for a meeting? Oh, Hillary, say it ain't so! Please tell me you just forgot it was there. And to make matters worse, Hils' hair looks so totally cute otherwise!

Hillary has never been a fashion icon, obviously, and I've always admired her for that, but really! A scrunchie! The mind boggles.

Swish of the combable tail to Pony Pal z7q2 for the tip!

Oh, Oops! Did I Really Just Go A Whole Week Without Posting?

Sorry about that! I'll try to get interested in something other than the News of the World scandal this week.

Michele Bachmann's Fans Are Getting Scarier, But At Some Point They Are Going To Have To Deal With How Her Name Is Spelled

Kathryn Ramsey, 11, of Charleston, S.C., holds up a sign supporting Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., at a rally in Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, June 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Alice Keeney)

Also, is each and every female Republican from now on to be portrayed as Rosie the Riveter? Yes.

Real Food: Milk

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Condi Talks, Gets Paid, Goes Home

(Photo by Michael J. Elderman)

Condi may be low-profile, but in a way she has the best post-Bush career of any of her old cronies. Basically, she just goes to obscure, wonky conferences, gives her boilerplate speech, answers three or four questions, and then returns to her office at Stanford five or six figures richer to await her next easy gig.

And so it was last night when Condi appeared at some confab put on by the influential and prestigious (I'm kidding) Western Riverside Council of Governments. How boilerplate was her speech? You may recall that in April, writing about a similarly pointless event, I said that "She gave her 'It's so nice to read the paper in the morning and not have to do anything about it' anecdote which she's using in every interview, every appearance lately," and last night she trotted it out again:

Giving a shout out to newspapers she said, “When I get up in the morning the first thing I do is to read the newspaper and I look at the problems in the world and say isn’t that interesting. I don’t have to deal with it,” she said.

She then went on to say that people have to find their passion and "spoke of her upbringing in the segregated South." How novel!

It really makes me wonder if they let her keep the Animagic Condibot, because the Disneytronic, labor-saving device is custom-made for appearances like this, and her speaker fees would easily be enough to finance its upkeep.

Who knows? It's good work if you can get it, though.