So, now that my imminent demise by lack of affordable health care is guaranteed, I decided to celebrate by Googling the words “Doom Looms”. The following collage of doom and oddities in image form is the result.
This is Dr. Doom, not Trump. Trump would never admit a flaw.
Stephen Hawking recently declared that we will not survive as a species if we don’t move off the planet Earth within the next 100 years.
North Korea is at least keeping Trump entertained.
Filed under angry rant, collage, feeling sorry for myself, health, politics
My title today may prompt you to think, “Apparently, when Mickey does art it is stupid art.” If my title didn’t make you think that, then my first sentence certainly did. I am literally putting stupid ideas into your head. And this is a problem because the people currently at the top of the people pile that is our modern society are shoveling great smelly heaps of stupidity directly into our brains.
I know stupid. I was a public school teacher for thirty-one years. No one survives the mine-field of stupid bombs in the classroom without being able to recognize the incoming booby-head missiles. Years worth of lame homework excuses have made stupidity easily recognizable. Being stupid is easy. Countering it is hard.
So how does one be stupid? I nearly found out yesterday as I was driving on an access road for I-35. I was going the 40-mile-per-hour speed limit and got a phone call on my cell phone. All I did was look at my phone to see who was calling in case another school child was calling because pollen season was killing them again and they wanted to come home from school… again. My son shouted a warning of imminent death and I looked back at the road in time to see the car dealer had left a car-carrier trailer in the road with the ramp down. Wow! That was almost an epic Evel Knievel stunt.
But being epically stupid is simply a matter of not paying attention well enough. It is easy to achieve. Note how often President Cheeto-head achieves it.
I have also found it to be a remarkably easy thing to be stupid on Facebook and Twitter. All you have to do is post and repost stuff, or tweet and retweet stuff, that speaks to your own prejudices and ignores what is factual and what is not. I have seen very elaborate anti-climate change graphs that seem to show a correlation between sun activity and periods of warming and cooling climate. The biggest problem with this frequently debunked “take-that-and-stuff-it!” evidence is that it was created by a pair of propagandists with oil-company ties who were only masquerading as climate scientists.
When you vet that source and introduce evidence to your conservative Facebook friend you will get back a horrified speculation about the depths of your own stupidity for believing that Snopes.com is not also propaganda and you can’t believe everything NASA says because their funding is at stake. And I end up having to admit I do say similar things about their cherished sources like Infowars, Breitbart, and Fox News. Truth is apparently more the product of faith than it is the province of science.
Besides not knowing what facts are, it is fairly easy to be monumentally stupid by having no empathy at all. Iowegians who would bend over backwards and feed their own liver to a hungry Iowan, will routinely cry about the dangers of Sharia law and talk about wall building at the sight of Syrian widows and orphans. And don’t even get me started about shoot-first Texans. Not after they just shot and killed another unarmed black teenager in Balch Springs.
So how do you make an Art out of Stupid?
Well, the CBS Morning News has started running down the key events in the news with snippets quoted from late-night TV hosts and comedians like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, and James Corden. You defeat stupidity by aping it, imitating it, and making people laugh at it. It is really defeated when you make someone laugh about their own stupidity, like the story about me and the I-35 launch ramp. Comedians seem to be the only ones effectively reporting on the current Presidential situation, and even CNN and MSNBC news anchors have begun making jokes in their reporting. I have become a lover of political cartoons like never before.
You may not be able to rescue other people’s minds from being stupid. But what you can do and be artful about is… make them laugh.
Filed under angry rant, education, humor, memes, politics, red States, satire
Yes, I did wash my mouth out with soap after saying that title out loud. But I can’t help thinking such strange thoughts. It is probably because Trump’s healthcare plans already have me off my meds.
I hear you screaming at your WordPress Reader saying, “How can you possibly be thinking such un-Democratic and really dumb thoughts?”
Well, if you think about it… I mean, hit your head three times near the reasoning center of the brain with a really hard rock… some of the greatest things that have happened to mankind have come from the very worst things that ever happened.
Because of World War Two and Hitler, we ended up inventing computers, and we ended up with a space program because beating Hitler gave us Werner Von Braun and some of the best rocket science minds in Germany. Because LBJ felt guilty about helping the CIA murder Kennedy he enacted the Great Society and Civil Rights reforms that make up the best of Kennedy’s legacy. (What? You say that’s crazy conspiracy theory? Well, I have been hitting my own head with a rock.) In fact, the combination of Hitler and Kennedy’s assassination put men on the moon.
Yes, humanity needs really bad times to happen to force them to make changes for the better. And Trump is really bad times. He takes food away from school children and old home-bound people so he can play more golf at Mar-a-Lago on the taxpayers’ dime. (Well, actually, it costs significantly more than a dime.) He puts coal plant waste into rivers and the drinking water of millions. He cuts regulations so corporate polluters are free to pour more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and keep us all so toasty warm with global warming that our faces will eventually melt. (And can you imagine what beauty pageants will be like when the contestants no longer have faces? Mr. Trump will no longer even be anxious to make those un-announced tours of the dressing rooms.)
The only choice we will have for survival if we are not Walmart heirs or Koch brothers is to fight back and correct the situation. It is possible that enough people will wake up to the whole Trump trauma to take back the House of Representatives in 2018. Then the investigations can really begin. Trump is waking up a sleeping giant. The public is ready to start fighting back. Bill Nye the Science Guy is ready to throw some punches for science.
Things that are necessary are never easy. It is by making too many easy choices that we got ourselves into this mess. There is a lot of stupidity and incompetence and badness out there to overcome now. And we must face it or it will kill us.
And it may be a good thing that Trump won the election. Hillary would’ve been a competent president and nothing would really have changed about the status quo. We would’ve continued to complacently allow Republicans to run the House and Senate and oppose even the most mild and wishy-washy things that President Hillary would’ve tried to get done. Now, the Trump backlash may propel us onward towards actual solutions to very real problems like climate change, excessive money in politics, ignorance among the voting public, and income inequality that is tipping us toward a new dark ages and a feudal-technological society.
So the big splash that Trump is sure to make might be a very good thing for liberals who hope to change things for the betterment of a majority of the people.
Filed under angry rant, clowns, commentary, conspiracy theory, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, politics
Yesterday’s post got me thinking about how words and the power behind words can actually hurt people. They can you know. Words like “brainiac”, “bookworm”, “nerd”, “spaz”, “geek”, and “absent-minded professor” were used as weapons against me to make me cry and warp my self-image when I was a mere unformed boy. I do not deny that I was smarter than the average kid. I also recognize that my lot in life was probably better than that of people assaulted with words like “fatty”, “moron”, “loser”, and “queer”. Being skinny as a child, there was actually only one of those deadly words that was never flung my direction. Words like that have the power, not only to hurt, but even to cripple and kill.
We all stand naked at times before a jury of our peers, and often they decide to throw stones.
I try to commit acts of humor in this blog. Or, at least, acts of verbal nit-witted goofiness that make at least me laugh. I have been told by readers and students and those forced to listen that I only think I am funny, and I am a hopelessly silly and pointless old man (a special thank you to Miss Angela for that last example, used to tell me off in front of a science class I was substitute teaching years ago.) But those words do not hurt me. I am immune to their power because I know what the words mean and I am wizard enough to shape, direct, and control their power.
I have stated before that I don’t approve of insult humor (usually right before calling Trump a pumpkin-head, or otherwise insulting other members of the ruling Empire of Evil Idiots). And I don’t mean to shame others or make them feel belittled by my writing. But sometimes it happens and can’t be helped.
This blog isn’t about entertainment. I am not a stand-up comedian working on joke material. I use this blog as a laboratory for creating words and ideas. It is mostly raw material that I mean to shape into gemstones that can be used to decorate or structurally support my crown jewel novels. I use it to piece ideas together… stitch metaphors and bake gooseberry pies of unusual thinking. I use it to reflect on what I have written and what I have been working on. And sometimes, like today, I use it to reflect on how readers take what I have written and respond or use it for ideas of their own. That’s why I never reject or delete comments. They are useful, even when they are barbed and stinging. I made an entire post out of them yesterday.
I try hard myself to be tough in the face of hurtful words. You have to learn that essential Superman skill to be a middle school and high school teacher. It is there in those foundries for word-bullets that the most hurtful words are regularly wielded. The skill is useful for when you need the word bullets to bounce off you, especially if you are standing between the shooter and someone else. But I can never feel completely safe. Some words are kryptonite and will harm me no matter what I do. Some words you simply must avoid.
Anyway, there is my essay on hurtful words. If you want to consider all of that being my two cents on the matter… well, I probably owe you a dollar fifty-five.
Yesterday I posted a weird picture that I haven’t used before and made myself cry gushers of tears again for the boy the picture is a portrait of. I suppose it is a catharsis I didn’t really need. I woke up today with a blistering headache to keep my perpetual backache company. Could that have been caused by the crying and the blues that ensued? Probably.
So, I have no idea for today. My brain hurts and my heart is burned out.
I checked Facebook where I had posted this quote from Malala ;
I wasn’t really prepared for controversy. I should’ve been. It is obvious from the guns versus books graphics that it would stir emotions in my liberal author and teacher friends, as well as my conservative cracker anti-Muslim friends.
My aunt, a former career teacher, responded first. She wrote, “Like the thought.” She was a great third grade teacher in Iowa for many years. She loved all kids then and still does today. I want to be like that in retirement too.
But the next response was from a former high school friend who voted for Trump and hates all the people the Republican Party orders him to hate.
“Sounds great like most sound bites. Much harder to explain and implement.” My friend, Ali Hassenbutter (not his real name, but this will make him angry as well as protect his actual identity), likes to take jabs at me for being a liberal, and the subtext here is that, even though I was a teacher for many years, I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to education. So, I answered him with some heartfelt teacher-ism.
“I had Egyptian and Lebanese and Arab students in my classes at Garland ISD. They are people just like us. You help them learn English. They make American friends. Americans learn that most Muslims are not terrorists. What’s so complicated about that? Unless you start slamming doors in their faces and treating them as less valuable than you are.” I admit to maybe being a bit snarky in that last line, but sometimes he gets my goat. (I know I should just let him have it. I have never liked my goat that much anyway. It smells bad.)
A fellow ESL teacher from Garland chimed in even though she doesn’t know Ali. “And these students added spice in our classroom… Just like they do in the USA.” She knows all the students I was referencing.
Then one of my other Belmond classmates who knows and probably detests us both as heathens added his words of wisdom, “The real concept here is that we are in fact ALL HUMAN.” See there? The Bible banger gets it. And I really appreciate when he steps in and tries to make peace. He’s somewhat nutty at times, but his new-found religion allows him to believe like I do that we should choose love over hate as our default response, even to terrorism.
But Ali comes back with; “It takes both approaches to this problem. But then there is Berkley as a shining example of education gone off the rail.” He’s at least trying to sound like he is listening to our comments, but then he pulls this old red hot chestnut out of the fireplace. He offers it like the opinion of the crazy, racist uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner.
“Yes, because it was the teachers’ fault at Berkley. That poor young racist agitator from Breitbart was supposed to have a peaceful forum for spewing his hateful mouth garbage at young liberal college students, and the college administrators who granted him that right didn’t bend over backwards far enough to prevent a violent reaction.” I know, sarcasm is the resort of the defeated. I should be championing love over hate and freedom of speech over my personal revulsion to Milo.
My teacher friend had this to add; “I understand the “right” instigated that incident.”
“Yes, but they wore masks to hide their identity. That makes them automatically liberals, doesn’t it? If I am able to follow Fox News Logic, anyway.” Sez I.
And so, there we stand, at the very beginning of a month-long Facebook love/hate debate. And I will lose. You can argue with brick walls and score more debate points than you can arguing anything political with Ali. And the frustrating thing is, he’s an ordinary decent human being and stand-up guy too. Not just a dismiss-able deplorable because he voted for Trump.
I have no ideas today. I have a headache. If I can’t defend Malala’s heroic logic, then I can’t even argue my way out of a bowl of chicken soup. Doomed to drown in chicken broth. At least I will die healthy at the bottom of that mixed metaphor. That should be worth a laugh.
I am tired of making fun of President CheetoHead. There is no challenge in it. John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, and Samantha Bee have made all the best jokes already. If you are not sure who those people are, they are late night talk show hosts and comedians who do political news humor… you know, the only fact-based no-BS news you can get nowadays. Really? You haven’t heard of those people before? Let me ask you this, then… Do you think we should bomb Agrabah to defeat ISIS?
But there has to be some sort of response to the Syrian gas attack on small children beyond the thirty minutes of hopeless weeping I did after watching the news yesterday. The Great Orange Face showed off his testosterone levels yesterday by shooting Tomahawk missiles at an air base in Syria over that attack. “This was all Obama’s fault,” he said. Of course, Trump didn’t consult the Congress or any other world powers first, not even Putin. Each Tomahawk missile costs $1.59 million dollars, so firing 59 of them at that air base cost us a total of $93.8 million dollars. Think of how many Mar a Lago golf weekends that could have financed! And what did it accomplish? We were very careful to warn the Russians ahead of time so they wouldn’t be in the targeted area, and the Russians are Syrian allies in the war against the rebels who were gassed. So the two Syrian air-base janitors we killed with those missiles must’ve been really hard to kill. They had to be exploded 59 times.
And how do you stop war crimes against children by bombing janitors and empty runways anyhow?
But who am I to criticize? My conservative Republican friends tell me I am an unpatriotic liberal idiot for not supporting Trump’s actions as Commander in Chief. I admit it. I am not a fountain of military knowledge and wisdom. But I would still rather see hissy fits against war criminals acted out against the war criminals instead of empty buildings and innocent civilians. And when they are through with Bush and Cheney, they should go after President Assad too.
But, as long as all we are going to do about it is go “Doopy Doo!” in a really off-key singing voice, I might as well show you what I found in the garage. This is my Alcoa Century Diesel (with 100 cylinders in the real engine) which I found in the garage while cleaning. It is my biggest engine in HO scale, painted red, yellow, and silver in an official Santa Fe railroad pattern. I had to show that to you before Trump gets to the verse, “Here we go Doofy Lie!” And so, the song goes on.
Filed under angry rant, goofy thoughts, humor, politics
Yes, this is another pitiful attempt by Mickey to be a political cartoonist fighting the good fight by slaying the bad guys with really weak and awful satire. But I can’t help it. Just as Popeye had a powerful urge to sock goons in the puss with his spinach-fueled twister-sock, I have to throw some derfy toonage at the vile and heartless members of the GOP (Greedy Old Perpetrators).
After all, they are easy to make fun of. Republican job applications all start with the question, “Which cartoon Dick Tracy villain or comic book Batman villain are you most like?”
They do things like organizing an Oversight Committee for the sole purpose of spending millions of dollars to point fingers at Hillary and shout the name of a North-African town where diplomats died basically because of budget cuts to security ( a Republican budget) and shout it loudly until people begin to think Hillary must have had something to do with it because men with heads shaped like sports equipment are shouting it so much.
And Republicans are able to do this stuff because they know how to win elections and control the government.
Basically what I am saying is that Republicans cheat. They get to rule even though they generate fewer votes in the country.
And what do they do with that power once they have it in their tiny, tiny hands? They use it to make more money. The rise of the billionaire class in the last thirty years is evidence that they are insanely good at it. Do they use that money and power to help their neighbors and better the lives of everyone? Of course not! Why would you think that?
Republican priorities are obvious when you look at the first things on their agenda. They want to roll back environmental protections and pour more pollutants into rivers and into the air. They want to do away with Obamacare to eliminate the extra taxes that wealthy people have to pay. They want to prevent people from immigrating from lands where people don’t have white skin, because the only part of a Republican that can be black with the full approval of their party, is the heart. Yes, that part can be jet black and rancid.
Take that, evil Republicans! Wait, why are you laughing? Didn’t my satire slay you?
Oh, well, another day, another cartoon.
Oopsie! Wasn’t that heart supposed to be black?
Filed under angry rant, cartoons, commentary, humor, pessimism, politics, satire
Somebody who has an orange spray-tan on his face, a wig made out the remnants of the Scarecrow from Oz after the Wicked Witch was done with her revenge, and tiny, tiny hands once promised that if elected, he would make us sick of winning. Heck, I was sick before the battle started. And winning so far this week has meant merely that the Trumpcare/no-care/death-care plan failed spectacularly in the GOP controlled House. And why did it fail, providing me with a backhanded win? Because the Freedom Caucus couldn’t agree to a plan that wasn’t cruel enough to the old, the sick already, and the poor. Seriously, they wanted a healthcare plan that didn’t cover mental health, prescription drugs, hospitalization, or basically everything that I might need an insurance policy to cover. They want, ideally, to give us health insurance where we must continually pay premiums month by month and then, when we get sick, choose to die at home and get no benefits. So winning for me means that I can continue to get the crappy insurance coverage I already have under Obamacare to keep me perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. And it IS a win compared to what the Evil Republican Empire wants to do to me.
But one thing that makes me even sicker about this kind of winning is that it is simply a temporary stay of execution. They are going to do it again. How many times, after all, have they voted to repeal healthcare already? I have lost count. Republicans really, really, really don’t want us to keep any of our own money when we can give it to some soulless corporation instead. And the budget that lurks around the corner is just as big, bad, and brutal as the whole healthcare kerfluffle. They mean to roast and eat Big Bird like a Thanksgiving Turkey, steal food from school children, fire everybody who works for the government and even thinks about preventing corporations from pouring poisons into our water and air, and cut funds to the State Department so that diplomacy and prevention of wars is seriously impaired.
So what, as a concerned citizen, am I gonna do about it? Well, I’m a sick old former school teacher who likes to write humor pieces while I’m busy slowly dying. So I’m going to make fun of the bad guys. Seriously, the best I can do is try to ridicule them to death.
So let’s start with the Trumpinator’s penchant for hiring evil leprechauns to torment us.
And I want to take a moment to talk about the perils of allowing turtles to do politics.
It is true that “slow and steady wins the race” but, come on! It also apparently allows you to steal Supreme Court nominations and have no clue what “hypocrisy” means. He is offended when Democrats refuse to accept and love his party’s proposals, but demonstrated absolutely no ability to say the word… you know the word… the one that means the opposite of “no”… when Democrats were in charge.
And then there’s the lovely zombie-eyed granny hater that we have allowed to eat the social security system. His plans for Medicare, Healthcare, and Social Security are all featured now on posters in the Grim Reaper’s public relations office.
So there you have it. That’s the best celebration of the recent win that Mickey can come up with in his stupid little head. It’s no wonder we are tired of winning already.
Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, politics
Meet Xandu, the Beholder… I can’t say he’s a bad guy, but only because he’s a giant floating head full of eyes, and doesn’t have the proper parts to be considered a guy.
Those of us who were nutty about playing Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980’s hear the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder” and we’re automatically thinking weird thoughts about Xandu, and maybe even questioning, “Which eye do you mean?”
Beholders have one big eye, and a lot of little ones equipped with death lasers, gazes of perpetual sleep, nausea looks, and fear-eyes that make you run away in terror. With that kind of surreal right-brain crapola going on in my stupid old dungeon master’s head, it’s no wonder I might go into this discussion of the Beholder with monsters on the brain when I really intended to talk all along about this particular beholder;
Tomi Lahren is the darling of the right wing media, broadcasting her loud, angry racist-Barbie rants for Glen Beck’s lovely fear and hate smorgasbord known as The Blaze. You can tell just by looking that she is a genetically German/Norwegian Midwesterner who could be an Iowegian if only she had had the good sense to be born in Iowa instead of the big bowl of blah that is Rapid City, South Dakota. I know that may sound like some kind of reverse racism to say I can tell those things “just by looking”, but it isn’t, because I meant you can just look those things up on Wikipedia like I did. To hear her shout her opinions on immigration in her closing segment called “Final Thoughts” you could swear she was channeling Donald Trump and lulling you into a stupor with her gaze of perpetual sleep power. She is also known for giving San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick the nausea look for silently protesting racism and social injustice by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. And she reserves both the fear eye and the laser death eye for Black Lives Matter activists, calling them the equivalent of the KKK because… Well, I can’t read minds, especially hard little white power minds that say “all lives matter” because they really want to say “black lives DON’T matter”.
But, honestly, I don’t dislike this blond beholder who is more than just a floating head full of evil eyes. She was cute on The Daily Show talking to Trevor Noah. And she used her indoor voice even when saying slightly racist things. The two of them seemed almost friendly, though ideologically they are worlds apart.
And this is what we really need to see more of, the two sides of an issue actually being able to talk about issues acknowledging that each side has a right and a reason for the views they personally hold, and you can’t get the bugs out of the batter before you bake the cake if you don’t work together. Lahren was even willing to be brave and appear on the liberal comedy talk show Real Time with Bill Maher where conservatives are often chewed up and spit out in front of a distinctly liberal audience.
But she is still a beholder. She views the world through one big eye, one point of view, with little room for opposing viewpoints. You will definitely have to decide for yourself as you enter the next dungeon room and come face to face with the beholder, which one is worth the roll of the dice to defeat, and which one you should run away from screaming like a little liberal snowflake girl.
Filed under angry rant, commentary, Dungeons and Dragons, goofy thoughts, Liberal ideas, politics
Catch a Falling Star 
Fact or Opinion (It’s a Teacher Thing)
“Climate change is a hoax by the Chinese.”
That, unfortunately, is not an opinion. It is a fact. It is a FALSE FACT.
Facts are statements that can be proven or disproven. There are studies by government agencies and university science departments all over the world that provide evidence to back up the theory that the climate is drastically changing in ways that threaten our existence. The studies are repeatable, peer reviewed, and thoroughly “vetted”, to use the new word that Republicans embrace so deeply and lovingly for immigration issues. On the other side of the question, you have scoffing congressmen who bring snowballs into the capitol and say, “See? The science is not proven.” That is not a fact. Where is the evidence which is not anecdotal and based on a misunderstanding of the difference between “climate change” and “weather change”? That is by definition an opinion. And it is not even an informed opinion. Opinions are not equal to facts. Comparing the two is like comparing apples to onions. No, that is not even correct. You can eat both of those things. It is more like comparing apples to planetary moons.
After a long and heated Facebook debate about immigration between me, a Texas teacher, and an Iowa Republican Trump supporter I went to high school with who doesn’t even know if he ever met an illegal immigrant, I have pretty well proven to myself that a big share of the divide between liberals and conservatives stems from the unwillingness of one side to avoid equating facts and opinions. Apples and moons.
So give me a moment to do what teachers do.
Here is a non-political lesson in Fact versus Opinion.
Who do you prefer? Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny? The answer doesn’t matter to me.
I can give you a quick and dirty lesson on fact and opinion using these two cartoon characters. And it doesn’t even matter who you like more.
Here are some obvious facts about the two of them.
They are both cartoon characters. They are both anthropomorphic animals. They both wear gloves most of the time. They both have a thumb and three fingers on each hand.
These things are observably true. You can prove them by looking at the illustrations I have already provided.
Other things may not be as readily apparent, but no less provable.
Both of them are heterosexual and both of them have one main love interest. Neither of them have ever been married, but neither of them really are playboys and even though there are no legitimate bits of evidence that either one has ever had sex with their respective girlfriends, Bugs has kissed Lola on more than one occasion and Mickey has kept company with Minnie for longer than most old married couples.
These things are provable by watching the cartoons and observing a preponderance of evidence. There is no contradictory evidence. But the possibility of contradictory evidence doesn’t change these things into opinions. A disproven fact is still a fact. It is merely a false fact. Over time the relationship between Bugs and Daffy Duck may become clearer and the fact that Bugs is gay may pop out of the cartoon closet. It does however, require proof, so it is a fact, not an opinion.
Here’s another fact you know the evidence supports. Bugs Bunny is a nudist. He almost always appears in cartoons naked. Mickey, however, believes in wearing clothes. Even when he gets out of the bath tub, he clutches the nearest towel, and you never get a look at whether he has cartoon genitals or not. Mickey does hang out a lot with a duck who wears no pants, but that’s an irrelevant fact.
The notion that Mickey and Bugs are very different personalities because they had very different creators, is an opinion. It is a opinion offered by people who have studied the characters and their creators, and therefore can give you an informed opinion. But it still can’t be proven.
Walt Disney made Mickey into more or less of an every-man sort of character whom audiences can identify with. Things happen to Mickey Mouse, and the comedy comes from him trying to deal with those external forces, be they wind storms during music concerts, Donald Duck’s raging temper, or the evil plots of Black Pete. Walt never said this was so to prove it, but it is not unreasonable to think it.
Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, was created by several great animators like Robert McKimson, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Bob Clampett. And Bugs tends to make things happen to other characters. Think of how he plays Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and even his pal Daffy for laughs. He is more of a Groucho Marx type character than an every-man. We don’t identify with him. We only laugh at his victims (because they always deserve what he gives them). That too is an opinion. And even if one of his creators were to say that this was the intent, it still is not proven until all of them agree. And they all had very different ways of doing things.
But these are only informed opinions. You cannot be proven wrong whether you agree or disagree with them. You are entitled to your own interpretations and opinions because they are not provable facts. There is no one way to view any opinion.
Opinions, even un-informed opinions and religious beliefs are never either wrong or right. You don’t make a mistake when you have an opinion. It only becomes a mistake when you try to use it as a fact, or mistakenly believe it is a fact.
So, there is my lesson for those Facebook arguers who never seem to know the difference. It’s all color-coded and everything. So try using this new knowledge when arguing with me, rather than calling me stupid, or making your point IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!
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Filed under angry rant, artists I admire, cartoons, commentary, education, Mickey, strange and wonderful ideas about life, teaching
Tagged as Bugs Bunny, fact or opinion?, lesson on fact and opinion, Mickey Mouse, teaching with humor