Q Toon: Stocks Make a Comeback

This week's cartoon would have had more oomph if Rick Santorum hadn't managed to fritter away his lead in the Michigan polls with a lousy debate performance and those truly goofy remarks about President Kennedy and the snobbishness of a college education. And then there was his open appeal for Democratic crossover votes; with all the talk in the media about how Romney needed a convincing win in Michigan or it would show how weak his candidacy is, I wonder why I never heard anything about how anything less than an overwhelming Santorum win there would mean that he had only won due to crossover mischief.

You do have to wonder why Santorum thought that criticizing JFK was a good idea. That kind of talk just might sell in the Bible Belt -- maybe -- but a lot of Catholic voters up north still revere the assassinated president. Even if they're rock-ribbed pro-life Republicans today. And saying that college education is for snobs? Even voters who haven't been to college themselves are likely to aspire to sending their children there.

Well, anyway, here's a cartoon about returning America to the 1650's, when everybody lived according to Christian morals whether they liked it or not, and folks didn't send their kids to snobby colleges, and JFK couldn't have been elected president. But I think the guy in the stocks on the right might have a difference of opinion about the 1950's not having been so bad.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Suffice it to say that Hester will not be showing off her right leg at the Oscars any time soon.

Q Toon: Who's Your Sweet Babeu?

This has been a story made for cable news, but of less interest to print media -- outside of Phoenix New Times, which broke the story in the first place. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu was thrust out of the closet after a relationship went sour. His ex, a Mexican immigrant named Jose Orozco, suspected that Babeu was trolling the internet for sex, and stung him by arranging a rendez-vous under a fake identity on line.

(Originally, I wasn't going to include the boyfriend's name in this cartoon, but decided that the name Jose helped clarify that I wasn't trying to gloss over his being, say, Swedish. In the last couple days, however, Orozco's full name and photo have been made public on line and on television, so I will not keep referring to him as "the boyfriend" here. I should also explain that I use the word "illegal" in the cartoon instead of "undocumented" on the assumption that Babeu would favor such terminology.)

Babeu has denied the accusation that he threatened to expose that Orozco was in the U.S. illegally if he ever went public with their relationship. Babeu has, however, come out of the closet as a gay man as a result of the story, which he says is a relief to him.

We'll have to see how this affects his candidacy to represent Arizona's fourth district in Congress. He may be hurt less for the revelation that he's gay (this was once Jim Kolbe's district, after all) than by the incongruity of his relationship with Jose with his record as a hardliner against illegal immigration. Babeu first came to national attention four years ago as the sheriff walking beside John McCain in the "Build the Dang Fence" ad:

It isn't just the sexual relationship that conflicts with Babeu's record on immigration: he also employed Orozco to create and maintain his internet presence (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). If you need a moment to let that sink in, here it is again: the guy who went on national TV to decry undocumented immigrants in this country was simultaneously employing a guy he knew to be an undocumented immigrant to work for him.

Giving Orozco that job may have been what ultimately came back to bite Babeu in the ass: Orozco became suspicious of Babeu once he found the sheriff's accounts on gay dating sites Adam4Adam and Chino Valley E-news.

Buried deep in the New Times story is a development that may embarrass openly gay Democratic congressional candidate Matt Heinz. After Heinz broke with his party in the Arizona legislature to vote to allocate $5 million to combat border violence in Pinal County -- which is 70 miles away from the Mexican border -- one of Babeu's text messages that Orozco released reports that Babeu planned to spend the night with Heinz and his partner. (Note: The allocation was reduced to $1.7 million in the final bill.) Perhaps after a night of clubbing with the Heinzes, Babeu was simply being prudent by not driving home; but the implication of something further could doom both of their campaigns to succeed Gabby Giffords in Congress.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This may come as a disappointment to editors in Washington, Maryland, or New Jersey who were expecting a locally relevant cartoon this week. But I was in the mood to get off the subject of marriage equality for at least one week.

Happy George Washington's Birthday, federales everywhere!

What a Bunch of Dicks! (The Sequel)

We've all seen the photo of the wall of men testifying before Darrell Issa's committee yesterday on why the Fedrul Gummint shouldn't interfere with the Catholic Church's control over women's reproductive health.

From columnist Connie Schultz, here's a screen capture of the discussion of that event on MSNBC's Morning Joe today:

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.