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A lot of right-wing chuds assume their right to free speech means they have a right to say whatever they want to a captive audience everywhere they go. And if someone uses their own free speech to tell them to fuck off, they whine about cancel culture until they get a glowing profile in the New York Times.

Deplatforming works. Anyone claiming they can defeat racism, fascism, or any form of extremism through honest debate is either stupid or a collaborator. People spewing those views need to be ostracized from society. Humoring them just gives them oxygen and drags that poor Overton Window so far to the right it causes the entire house to collapse.

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America’s Assignment Editor

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The NYTimes was never the bastion of the liberal media people claim it is, but it’s definitely taken a hard right turn since nepo baby AG Sulzberger took over the family business. He oversaw James Bennett becoming opinion editor, who let Bari Weiss and Tom Cotton run insane 4chan shit for a couple years before the normal employees put up enough of a stink to run him out. (With a few notable exceptions, the opinion section still sucks shit though.)

The rightward tilt of the “straight” news side were always there, with the Iraq War propaganda being the most blatant in my lifetime. But Trump has sent them over the deep end; either to appear neutral with both-sides bullshit, or actively targeting a minority to signal their willingness to work with fascists.

None of this will save them if they succeed in getting the second Trump term they want so bad. He hates their fancy high society guts and will send them to the camps with the rest of us.

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2024 Valentines

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Fake valentines are an (almost) annual tradition since I first started drawing weekly cartoons over 22 years ago. The little cut-out dots and scissors are vestigial artifacts from when my comics regularly appeared on paper products called “alt-weeklies.”

While there’s apparently a lot of decent economic news these days, things are pretty grim for tech and especially media jobs. Execs are either hollowing out their staffs to boost dividends, or simply getting bored with their media toys and moving on to the next big grift.

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Prurient Pundits

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The post-midterm, off-year elections happened this week, and every professional opinion-haver is trying to turn the results of extremely local races into their 2024 election predictions. What else are they gonna do? Report on a well-researched subject with new information? Let an expert talk instead? Of course not.

I’m going to try to avoid any 2024 election content for as long as possible. Barring any actuarial realities catching up to the frontrunners, the primaries are a sideshow with a foregone conclusion.

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Zaslav TV

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David Zaslav has been rapidly turning what was once HBO into a low-rent content farm that makes Tubi’s offerings look like Masterpiece Theatre. Other studios and streaming platforms are pulling the same stunts to avoid paying residuals and axing entire shows for the tax write-offs. But Zaslav’s work at Warner Bros. Discovery really stands out for his unctuousness while doing it.

The Writers Guild is still on strike, and their modest demands to be paid slightly more would barely make a dent in the executive salaries of assholes like Zaslav.

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Box Office Bombs

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I still haven’t returned to going to the movies. Mostly due to never being a fan of crowded theaters even before COVID. But maybe if the numbers are low and the edibles are just right, I’ll get tickets to see Dune Part II.

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Scab Scripts

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The Writers’ Guild of America declared a strike early Tuesday after the executive side of the entertainment business refused to negotiate their modest demands. A lot has changed since the last writers’ strike in 2007, especially how media is consumed and compensated.

Netflix’s red envelopes were the big new thing back then, and now they’re a relic young people think coexisted with BETAMAX. Yet pay, residuals, and benefits are still stuck in that ancient time before we had to manage a dozen or so streaming logins.

All of these studios are making profits, just not enough to satisfy Wall Street’s maw. So they’re screwing writers and nickel-and-diming their subscribers by canceling shows and memory-holing their back catalogs to save a few cents on residuals, all to squeeze out more dividends and stock buybacks.

Joe “Union Guy” Biden broke a rail strike so the economy wouldn’t take a hit. If this writers’ strike goes on long enough to harm the studios’ bottom lines, I’m sure he’ll find a way to intervene.

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Media Perverts

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I’ve been closely following the news and news commentary for a quarter century now and drawing cartoons about it almost as long. Sick freaks from the top down to the lowly cartoonist at bottom.

Quitting Twitter has spared me from catching a lot of the worst takes people rage share, and it’s been a marked improvement on my quality of life. Yet somehow I still see the worst offenders when they cross over to the more earnest folks over on Mastodon.

I drew myself in better shape than my last self-insert and you’ll just have to trust me that it’s accurate.

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