Q Toon: The Price of Admission

Well, it's about time I drew a cartoon about Hillary Rodham Clinton again.

One of the commentaries I read this week compared Hillary Clinton's self-inflicted problems to Joe Biden's reputation as the Great Gaffesby. But while Biden's loose talk comes across as candor, Clinton's somehow does not. One gets the impression that, for example, the remark about not knowing where Bernie Sanders was during her 1993-94 fight for health care reform came out of her campaign War Room and was carefully tested with a focus group before she said it on stage.

On the other hand, her "We didn't lose a single person in Libya" remark this week, a gift-wrapped present to the Republican witch hunters, would have been nixed by any semi-sentient human being in the Clinton campaign organization. And Siri, Alexa, or even Magic 8-Ball could have told her to avoid praising the Reagan's "effective, low-key advocacy" on HIV/AIDS.

On that topic, there was another cartoon I could have included in last Saturday's post remembering Nancy Reagan, drawn right after the one of Nancy answering the phone while Ronnie played with his Star Wars. Nancy Reagan wasn't in this February, 1987 cartoon, but her anti-drugs slogan was central:

But getting back to Hillary Clinton and the Joe Biden comparison: what if Hillary Clinton's gaffes this month are part of a carefully scripted plan to counter the perception of her that she's always carefully scripted?

(Clinton cameo appearance on Broad City last night)

Never Mind.

The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that "according to people familiar with the show," taping of the Colbert Report was suspended Wednesday and Thursday due to an emergency in his family.

I suppose that if the emergency hiatus had been due to the contraceptive segment, as I had speculated yesterday, the likes of Bill Donahue and the other professionally offended media watchdogs would be crowing about their success in cowing Comedy Central, CBS, Viacom, and the Greater Secularist Conspiracy. Likewise, it would seem out of character for the Daily Show not to mention a contretemps between the Colbert Show and the network brass, and they haven't dropped a hint of it.

So let's hope there is nothing tragic going on chez Colbert, and wish the family our best in coming through this emergency.

P.S.: It's been a while since Editorial Explanations has been baffled by my cartoons, but this week's oeuvre breaks the easily-understood streak. I had rather thought it might do so, since I was so stingy with labels, but at least one reader has ventured an accurate guess.

Whither Steven Colbert?

Like many Comedy Central viewers and the folks who lined up to see last night's Colbert Report, I was surprised to find Wednesday night's episode cancelled. Comedy Central and Viacom are not saying why Stephen Colbert has been indefinitely suspended, but the fact that Tuesday night's episode is not available on the Comedy Central web site indicates to me that it's an issue of something he said or did on that show, rather than some personal or health issue.

The prime suspect would have to be the segment titled "Contraceptive Crusade," satirizing the dispute between the Obama administration on one side and the Catholic Church and Republicans opposed to "Obamacare" on the other.

Colbert described the Catholic church's stand on sex as being strictly for procreation, involving the sperm from a male husband, the egg from a female wife, and a soul from God in a  "divine and ineffably beautiful three-way." In a joke that somehow got past CBS censors, Colbert further explained Catholic teaching that contraception of any kind is anathema, because, "when you use contraception, you are not only sinning, you're cock-blocking the Almighty!"

Continuing, if you didn't get the joke that Rick Santorum's opinion that the administration's contraceptive insurance mandate puts our rights on a slippery "or lubricated" slope, well you haven't googled the ex-Senator in a long time. But you couldn't have possibly missed the phallic imagery of Colbert sliding a condom over a banana, then standing behind it as, at crotch height, he cut it in half with a miniature guillotine.