Q Toon: Jack and Alec

In case you don't keep up with MSNBC on Friday nights, brand new program host Alec Baldwin has been suspended for two weeks after being filmed calling a pesky photographer a "c***sucking f**." (Baldwin tried explaining that he actually called the guy a "c***sucking fathead," which is only half as homophobic.)

I don't usually have MSNBC on during Baldwin's particular time slot, but I presume that the channel has temporarily gone back to programming about what it's like to live in prison, where such language is completely unheard of.

As I mentioned the other day, drawing Baldwin from opposite angles proved to be quite the challenge, in part because he must have decided that his right side is not his good side. (Insert rightwing-vs.-leftwing snarky remark here.) After writing that, I tried image-Googling "Alec Baldwin cartoon" and found very little evidence that other cartoonists have been able to capture essence of Alec in their work. So I guess that while I don't feel that I've quite captured the Baldwin Moue, I don't feel so bad about my efforts this week after all.

Q Toon: N-word vs. Q-word

I come rather late to the Paula Deen party -- her use of "the N word" was not, initially, an LGBT issue, after all. Then certain right-wingers decided to make it one by whining that if Deen had to lose her career just for being racist, then New York liberal actor Alec Baldwin ought to be hounded out of his career for having tweeted that a gossip columnist who had criticized Baldwin's wife is "a toxic little queen."

Allow me to stipulate first of all that Baldwin's having resorted to gay-baiting name-calling is certainly reprehensible -- although, given his history, hardly surprising. (I'll also predict that since in his post-romantic-lead career, he has gotten type cast as an over-privileged, self-absorbed jerk, the current flap will not put a dent in his wallet.) I will further stipulate that Baldwin's tweets do not herald a return of the Algonquin Round Table.

But is the Q word as indefensible as the N word? The very fact that nobody has to refer to it as "the Q word" in the press suggests that it isn't. It's probably not as bad as "the F word," if you care to compare it to something more synonymous.

I don't know Daily Mail gossip-monger George Stark, but I'm guessing that I haven't inadvertently drawn him among the staff at Capital One Headquarters.