June 21, 2004 by s.z.

Family Circle Facts of Life Today's Cartoon (You can see it here) A smartly dressed Mommy is standing on a city sidewalk with Jeffy.  Jeffy points at a car that is being towed and asks, "Why is that car up on its hind legs?" Discussion: Jeffy, when a car and a truck love each other very much ... This strip is obviously a call to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment (because if gay marriage is made legal, then trucks will marry cars, and even have sex with their "spouses" on public streets, right in front of your impressionable toddlers). Prediction: Mommy (looking very stylish and sexy in her Jackie Kennedy-esque designer suit) represents America's female voters.  Jeffy is, as usual, a stand-in for Dubya.  Notice how Mommy seems to be distancing herself from Jeffy, and isn't paying any attention to his childish prattle?  Keane is predicting that the 2004 Presidential Election will have the largest "gender gap" of any election since 1980, and the lack of support from female votesrs will be a key factor in Bush's defeat.  Oh, and just like Mommy is planning to leave Jeffy on the street and race home before he notices she's gone, Laura will leave George shortly after his electoral defeat. But I imagine there are other ways to interpret this comic strip -- maybe even, in a world of non-situational ethics, a RIGHT way.  Let's see what you've got. P.S.  Pete M. has alerted us to the prophetic cartoons of Hal Lindsey; Pete suggests we use them for our Sunday prognostications, which sounds like an excellent idea.  So, to make up for yesterday, check out this one depicting The Rapture Investigation Committee. Also, if you value your soul, you should carefully ponder the meaning of Pete's new batch of Christian T-shirt designs over at The Dark Window.  I think my favorite is the one with Satan reading the Bible -- it makes every day Halloween! 6:03:43 AM

Short Takes 1.  One of Michelle Malkin's adorable vingettes about life chez Malkin:  Scenes from the Malkin household..."Mommy, if you were a Care Bear, which Care Bear would you be?" "Hmmm. Let me think about that." answer Michelle's "answer" is Grumpy Bear ("Grumpy Bear frowns a lot—that's his way to show us how silly we look when we frown too much").  Not totally inappropriate -- but only because Hateful Bimboette Bear isn't one of the choices. 2.  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has met the enemy, and the enemy is slutty. But in the post-Madonna universe, even highly original performers like Janet Jackson now feel the pressure to expose their bodies on television in order to sell albums. This, in turn, has spawned the lascivious careers of copycats Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who, together with Madonna, comprise modern-day music's axis of evil. And since the sanctions just aren't working, Britney must be invaded. 3.  Amber Pawlik, explaining how this war is really very simple. What is going on in the Middle East is not difficult or complex. These Muslim terrorists are evil; we are good; and we should not hesitate to wipe them off the face of the earth, like we did the NAZIs. We are over-thinking this war, and it’s time to stop it. The reason why we are over-thinking it is because the left is forcing us too. Damn liberals, always making us think and stuff! 4.  Here's the first paragraph of a 700 Club story entitled "I Do'… And You Die!" Art and Lysa TerKeurst married out of wedlock, hoping to redeem their past sins and fulfill their needs for love. But wedded bliss eluded them and Lysa fervently prayed that her husband would die. See, this is what happens when you get married out of wedlock!  And sadly, Lysa didn't even have enough faith for her prayers to be answered -- it's good she sought help from the 700 Club. 5.  Oh, and speaking of the 700 Club, here's Pat Robertson, responding to a question about whether Saddam will get a harsher punishment than those who "lived decent lives outside of Christ." The thing you don't realize is that sin is sin. It is probably no worse to kill somebody than it is to slander him or her. So, the good person who wasn't a Christian will be punished by God just as harshly as the arch-fiend Saddam, that guy with the rape rooms who put people through the shredder.  I wonder if those torture plans signed off on by the Bush administration were based on this same principle -- you know, since all the Iraqis are Moslems we know upfront that they are sinners, and so we can go ahead and abuse them because they obviously deserve it, even if they aren't technically terrorists.   Anyway, instead of slandering Pat, we might as well just kill him, since it's all the same to God. 6.  Gary Aldrich is still living with his paranoid fantasies about the Clintons: The word on Capitol Hill is that Senator Hillary and all her staff, which mainly consists of unhappy-looking young women with perpetually frowning facial masks, have made a pact that all shall wear black pantsuits on a daily basis. This is because today’s enlightened women (read Feminists) can’t be bothered thinking about what to wear as they rise in the morning. They have more important things to think about. For example, like how to take over the world in 2008. Yes, Hillary and her army of frowny-masked women attired in black pantsuits are plotting to take over the world.  Where is Derek Flint when you need him?  And it's clearly unnatural (and an offense against God) for women to wear the same thing everyday, like MEN --  it's undoubtedly a sign that they are satanists or something. Republicans have always been known for their beautiful women. So I imagine Bill suffered greatly from his visit to the White House on Sunday. On some level, he surely knows that Republican women are never found throwing themselves at rock stars or serial philanderers, but then again hope springs eternal. What Gary means is that Republican women are never throwing themselves at HIM, and he imagines it's because they are too chaste and spiritual to ever endulge in that kind of thing.  All children born to Republican women are conceived by the Holy Ghost. 7.  And here's Jerry Falwell quoting Gary Bauer as he urges us to politely threaten our senators ("The politicians in Washington must be made to fear for their political lives!") so they will vote for the Federal Marriage Amendment.  Because if it doesn't pass, then life as we know it will cease to exist. "The failure to pass an amendment," said Mr. Bauer, "will give a green light to liberal judges all across the country and the consequences will be devastating. The words 'husband' and 'wife' will be meaningless. Homosexual adoption will be instantly legalized, and generations of children will be raised in wholly unnatural environments – deprived of ever having the benefit of a mother and a father. The public schools will teach your children that two men 'marrying' each other are morally equivalent to one man and one woman. It's legal, so it must be OK! Our kids will be taught how to perform 'safe sodomy' in their sex education classes. Churches will be pressured to either abandon the Scriptures or lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to 'marry' homosexuals. That would be discrimination, after all!" That's not the future I want for my children and grandchildren. It's not the future I want for evangelical churches across this nation. It's therefore time to get down and dirty! Well, getting down and dirty would be easier if Jerry had already had that Safe Sodomy class, but he'll still do his best. Anyway, some things to think about -- but not too much, because like Amber said, that would be falling into the liberal trap, and it might make your head hurt. 4:28:48 AM

'It is a standing peculiarity of family life ...'  A couple of people have asked what happened to America's Worst Mother™ (a trademark of TBoggAmerica) and the Gurdonettes (Evangeline, Aphasia, Michelob, and Achilles-Bob) this week.  Well, Mr. TBogg has the definitive answer:  Meghan is desperately hanging onto her spot at NRO by showing off her Poli-Sci chops disguised as a musings on the family. Thus children are countries that must be invaded, converted, or killed. Alliances are formed and broken. Trade agreements are abrogated. Treaties are trashed. The "littles" are invaded by the "bigs" and have democracy shoved down their little throats while we torture them, sexually humiliate them, and steal their oil...  In short, Meghan is trying to use her kids to predict world events, like Bil Keane does with his.  But there are a couple of things from this column that aren't just about Meghan's attempt to demonstrate to the Competent Mothers that she went to college. 1.  Achilles-Bob's new best friend is his little sister Aphasia. It is now abundantly clear that Paris and Violet are saving all their best jokes for each other. He rushes home from school to play with this once-scorned hanger-on. Over breakfast the other day their eyes were sparkling with mutual regard and the air was full of, "Hey, Violet — " and "Paris, listen to this — " as if the rest of us had vaporized. Achilles-Bob is ten or so.  Aphasia is four.  Like astute Fever Swamp psychoanalyst Mary asked a couple of weeks ago when Achilles-Bob was hanging out with the toddlers in the park: Doesn't this kid have any friends his own age?  2.  Meghan's family really is falling apart: We are sitting outside in the humid dusk, finishing supper. No hum of cicadas, no shriek of aggrieved toddler. With everyone else in the household either out at a movie or fast asleep, Paris and Violet are bantering affectionately in a way that I suddenly realize is completely new. Okay, Meghan, Achilles-Bob, and Aphasia are eating supper outside, because the house still has that "Condemned by the Board of Health" tape on the doors.  Maybe Meghan put some Valium in three-year-old Michelob's juice cup, which is why she is fast asleep and there is no "shriek of aggrieved toddler" to disrupt the dining experience of everyone else.  And maybe eldest daughter Evangeline has ditched her dorky family to see go see Mean Girls again with her cool preteen friends.  But where is the husband?  Did Meghan drug him too, or is he at the mall with the preteen girls?  In either case, it sounds like something is very wrong, and we will probably be reading about the Gurdon family in the Wash Post's "Police Blotter"page in the near future. And I sense in AWM some sadness and anger about the new development in family dynamics that her "Hey, NRO editors, I'm not just a housewife; I too know about history, Rich Lowry!" affectation can't disguise.   Achilles-Bob and Aphasia are now best friends who have their own Algonquin Round Table -- of which Meghan is conspicuously not a member.  Evangeline has her felonious girl gang.  Toddler Michelob, social pariah, has been banished to the nursery.  The husband is MIA. (Asleep? At the movies? Having an affair?  YOU make the call!)  And that means that Meghan is all alone.  I really think she should look up James Lileks -- his wife is always going out with her "friends" and leaving him alone in the evenings, and he was really broken up about Gnat going off to day camp.  I think Meghan and James could share their empty nest angst, and maybe have a "quiet lives of desperation" affair.  Hey, it would at least give them something new to write about. 12:11:41 AM