media

Unfocused Groups

This entry was posted in comics and tagged DOGE Donald Trump Frank Luntz media New York Times on by
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Ever since the 2016 election, the New York Times has been doing Trump Voter Safaris for their ostensibly liberal audience to either gawk at or empathize with. They are a sideshow from the people with real power. And now they’re being moderated by Frank Luntz, which is especially gross for any of us old enough to remember his role in shaping Republican messaging in the early aughts.

Scrutinizing Trump’s supporters individually is a waste of time while authoritarianism runs amok and time runs out to stop it. But those daffy bastards sure are fun to goof on online.

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White House Approved Programming

This entry was posted in comics and tagged Donald Trump Kristi Noem media Nancy Mace RFK Jr. Stephen Miller transphobia TV on by
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Paramount needs federal approval for a merger, so they’re bending over backwards to appease the administration (it won’t work, they’ll just demand more obedience) by neutering CBS’s autonomy in its news coverage. Other corporate media giants have done the same to pre-emptively appease an administration that barely squeaked out a win and is already underwater in every conceivable poll.

That might work for some industries, but the media requires appealing to audiences bigger than one demented individual in the White House.

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2025 Corporate Media Style Guide

This entry was posted in comics and tagged bigotry Donald Trump free speech Israel LGBTQ media Palestine racism on by
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After less than a week of insane (and illegal, if laws were still real) executive orders, the mainstream media has rolled over and showed its belly to the second Trump administration. The publishers and owners signaled this move was coming throughout the election, but to see them all become state media apparatuses overnight was jarring.

When these policies were first introduced to the public with coverage of Project 2025, the public recoiled, because it’s unpopular Nazi shit. The media gave Trump a boost by letting him claim he disavowed it, but now that he’s practically signing copies with each executive order, they’re desperately trying to spin their audiences into favoring it or pretending it’s not happening.

Unfortunately, mainstream media’s not the only one doing it. Democratic leadership seems to be using this same playbook instead of acting anything like an opposition party.

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Winter Reading Pile

This entry was posted in comics and tagged billionaires books mass shooting means-testing media Project 2025 on by
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I hope your holidays were relaxing enough to get you rested for the long slog through the rest of winter and the years to come. I’m still avoiding drawing you-know-who to pace myself for what’s coming, but even with my limited news consumption over the holidays, I’m already suffering from Elon/Trump burnout.

I’m not going to tune out of the news like many people have wisely done since the election, and I’m sure I’ll be drawing those shitheads a lot, but I can’t do another four years of “GET A LOAD OF THIS BOZO!” every week. It obviously had no effect the last time I did it, so why subject myself to that again?

That’s the long way of saying I want to try different approaches this time around. I’m not yet sure what that’ll look like, but let’s find out!

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Schmaltzmark Channel Holiday Specials

This entry was posted in comics and tagged christmas holidays immigration media NIMBY Santa Stephen Miller TV xmas on by
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The late Thanksgiving has made this holiday season shorter than usual (if you’re not a freak who puts the tree up the day after Halloween), so here are some holiday goofs before I have to really start thinking about next year.

I’ve never watched one of the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas schlockfests, but Netflix put out something called Hot Frosty where a sexy snow sculpture comes to life (?) and I figure I should practice writing that kind of stuff for when editorial cartoonists make it to the next FBI director’s most wanted list.

Now to enjoy one sip of the eggnog I bought then immediately remember why it’s not a regular staple in our fridge.

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Election Anxiety Remedies

This entry was posted in comics and tagged 2024 election Elon Musk Jeff Bezos Mark Zuckerberg media on by
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With less than a week to go until votes are finally counted, people’s election madness has reached a fever pitch. A lot of people have channeled that energy into productive uses, but the one’s who haven’t can’t stop clogging our timelines with increasingly panicked posts.

While there’s still a few days to get out the vote with phone banks and canvassing, ballot curing is a process I didn’t know much about until recently. 33 states allow voters whose ballots were rejected to correct issues over various timeframes. Getting in touch with those voters and helping them through that process requires lots of volunteers.

There are several organizations that do this, but one I’ve found that lets us slobs in non-swing states easily volunteer can be found here.

Hopefully there will be a decisive winner by next week’s cartoon, but I’m sure there will be plenty of coup attempts and other shenanigans going on for months to come.

Stay sane, everyone!

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Newspaper Nit Picker Fact-Checks This Comic

This entry was posted in comics and tagged 2024 election Donald Trump Glenn Kessler media on by
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This week the columnists whose whole schtick is “fact-checking” contorted themselves into knots trying to find as many untruths and straight-up lies in this week’s DNC as last month’s RNC. They went so far to claim things he actually did in his first term don’t count because he’s said he’ll be different in a second one.

It would be gullible if they weren’t so obviously trying to smooth over his many disqualifications in order to keep this a horse race.

I focused on Glenn Kessler as the avatar of this whole genre of goofy “fact checkers” who use silly icons and graphics to add some razzle-dazzle to what’ve become essentially opinion columns. There are countless real fact checkers who do the thankless job of verifying the details in actual reporting. But all these bozos do is tediously parse language and figures of speech to grease the wheels of false equivalence.

Trump and his courts are still a very real threat, but you can tell the public is bored of his antics and was itching to move on. Unfortunately, the media is not.

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Leaked Emails from the Trump Campaign!

This entry was posted in comics and tagged 2024 election AG Sulzberger Donald Trump JD Vance Kevin Sorbo media New York Times Roger Stone on by
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Someone or some government agency successfully phished the Trump campaign and obtained its emails. They then contacted several media outlets about leaking them, but all refused citing “ethics in political journalism” or some other horseshit.

They famously didn’t do this in 2016, when it was Hillary Clinton’s emails. Back then, everything was published on Wikileaks first, so they had the veneer of covering important documents that were “already out there” despite the illegal provenance. This doesn’t explain why the NYTimes spent months breathlessly covering even the most benign of those emails in the hopes of generating a scandal, or at least a quantity of coverage that implied there was one.

As the polls look worse for Trump, the media will work harder to prop him up. Not necessarily for ideological means, but because a close race is good for readership and advertiser numbers.

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This is a wordy comic, and I’ve had trouble getting alt-text to work with it. Here’s the full transcript:

(panel 1 – Title in the style of the Trump/Vance logo.)
Leaked Emails from the Trump Campaign
(panel 2 – An email from Roger Stone.)
Subject: HACKED!
From: Roger Stone roger@weirdheads.biz
Hey man,
I clicked a link for Nixon nudes (for research purposes only), but it turned out to be a phishing attack.
Just a heads up.
Whoops,
Rog
(panel 3 – An email from Kevin Sorbo.)
Subject: RNC SPEAKING SLOT?
From: Kevin Sorbo K.Sorbs@dlist-divas.geocities.org
Mr. President,
Why didn’t I get a spot at the convention? I was more famous than Hulk Hogan for a few minutes in the ’90s.
No worries though! If you want, I can post a really racist tweet about your new opponent. Let me know.
Kevin
(panel 4 – An email from Steven Cheung.)
Subject: EPSTEIN’S PLANE
From: Steven Cheung Cheung@donaldjtrump.com
Boss,
We’ve leased Epstein’s plane while yours is in for repairs. I don’t anticipate any bad press from this.
Steven
P.S. Because you’ve stiffed so many contractors, none will agree to get the Dershowitz stains out.
(panel 5 – An email from J.D. Vance.)
Subject: WRONG RALLY LOCATION?
From: JD Vance pigboy@donaldjtrump.com
Dear Sir,
No one’s here and there wasn’t any advance work done. Please send me the correct location and I’ll hop on a bus A.S.A.P.
JD
(panel 6 – An email from A.G. Sulzberger.)
Subject: ALL GOOD
From: A.G. Sulzberger nepobaby@nytimes.com
President Trump,
Don’t worry. We’re not going to make a whole thing about your emails because we want you to win.
Maggie says hi.
Dash