House of Eratosthenes

Let me start by saying Rex Babin has horrible taste. I don’t say that because I generally disagree with the tenor of the Sacramento Bee cartoonist’s work, although I do. I say that because I quite honestly fail to see what there is to recommend him. He draws far better than I do, but that says very little since I’m not a cartoonist. The illustrations are sub-par at best. Cartoonists can disagree with me, and still be counted on to produce illustrations that are pleasing to the eye. Babin’s drawings make me dizzy. As for content, his cartoons rarely adhere to reality, and where they depart from said reality, the disengagement seems to be a premeditated and deliberate attempt to deceive the people who will be consuming his product. Throughout the years, I’ve been forced to reject the possibility that Babin is simply ignorant of what he draws. I’ve come to the conclusion he’s a Democrat-party shill, knowing full well what he’s doing when he leads people astray. I decided that after looking at things like this and this and this and this.

He is to cartoonists what Howard Stern is to radio. Dancing on the edge, just asking to be fined or fired or both…except in Babin’s case it never quite seems to happen. This would be a compliment to him for his amazing finesse, his pinpoint precision in figuring out where the line is, but if Babin has style and grace here he manages to show it nowhere else. Everything about his work reminds one of the metaphorical bull in a china shop. When he goes over the line, he goes way over it. One gets the impression that his continued employment is not an indication of his discretion or his skill or his market value, but instead of some enormous favor someone owes him.

Having said all that, even a stopped clock is right every twelve hours. And in the cartoon at left he has managed to capture the situation perfectly. It’s still ugly to look at, but the reader is left to ponder on what exactly is wrong with this situation, and in so doing will unerringly echo my own thoughts if the reader has an ounce or more of working brain in his head. The comportation with the truth is perfect, or near-perfect.

I suspect Babin’s preference for what is to be done about this, is different from my own. But that’s okay. He’s built a picture around my thousand words: It is bull squat that two different standards of privacy should exist for two different classes of people, with some cock-and-bull excuse of “separation of powers” being used to legitimize such a stratification.

The Founding Fathers were pretty worried about the existence of an aristocracy before they got caught up in how our government was to be designed. Jefferson, alone, spent a lifetime crusading against aristocracy and in particular, primogeniture. We don’t have primogeniture in the Congress, but the folks under the dome seem to be working under a wholly different set of rules from us “real” folks, and the difference between those two sets of rules appears to have escaped everybody’s ability to measure.

President Bush, seeking to somewhat extinguish this escalating firestorm, has ordered a 45-day freeze on the documents in question. Any sixth-grader ought to be able to tell you that if you buy into the arguments about “independence of the legislative branch” — and that’s a huge “if” — a 45-day-freeze does nothing to address the issue raised. How stupid do they think we are? Like I said in the post linked above, to solve the problem Pelosi and Hastert are saying demands the attention, in fact to even begin to address it, you have to exempt members of Congress from the law. All laws. Any law. Anything that can be enforced, because they don’t like the enforcement. Nothing else will do.

Congrats, Babin. You got it right this day. I’ll mark the calendar; credit where credit is due, and all that. I’m sure you’ll tick me off pretty good tomorrow.

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That’s About RightThursday, May 25th, 2006

That’s About Right
Thursday, May 25th, 2006