Worth a Thousand Words

I recently realized one of the drawbacks of electronic newsmedia, at least for me (a stone-age, elderly, hard-copy newspaper reader) is the relative difficulty of seeing editorial cartoons on the op-ed pages. Of course I realize that one can search out a far wider variety of editorial cartoons on the inter-web than one would ever see if one were restricted to those printed in the local broadsheet... but it's just not the same.

Here's the paper-reading routine: Scan the headlines, flip to the letters (in my opinion the most entertaining-yet--sometimes-enraging part of the whole newspaper experience), check out the cartoon in the hope of a chuckle, then go back and read the stories in more depth. (By the way, the Sports section goes almost immediately into la poubelle after I scan the front page photos for hot, athletic menz; and I actually do occasionally read the pro tennis coverage.)

The cartoon carried in this morning's LA Times (above) is by Bruce Plante of The Chattanooga Times, and his take on an unfortunately all-too-common cohort of our fellow "Amurricans" (to borrow a term from the AYM) really summed up for me how sad and sorry the state of the nation is. Then again, I'm a condescending member of the "liberal elite." Long live the tradition of the editorial cartoonist.