Cartoon of the Week

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Can cartoons win Pulitzers?
http://www.caglecartoons.com/images/preview/%7BAFF3E6D0-3EEF-4A7D-92F2-B8727418BC8C%7D.gif

[Lindsey]

Can cartoons win Pulitzers?
Oh, absolutely! Jeff MacNelly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_MacNelly) won several Pulitzers for his political cartooning. (There's a separate Pulitzer category for that, apparently.)

Good cartoon!

--Lindsey

[RayB (France)]

Can cartoons win Pulitzers?
http://www.caglecartoons.com/images/preview/%7BAFF3E6D0-3EEF-4A7D-92F2-B8727418BC8C%7D.gif

A wag might comment that it was damned nice of Abe to give her a turn on the WC and is even going to pull the chain when she is through.

I totally agree with the true sentiment expressed in the cartoon. She was a brave lady in troubled times. I think the 'laying in state' is a bit much though.

It brings back memories of when I was barely 18 yrs. old in 1950. After Boot Camp, I was stationed in Memphis at a Navy Airborne Electronics School. Now I was born and raised in Detroit. When I was very young my father employed about 10 'Colored People' and they 'adopted' me. They were like my uncles. About a third of my high school was 'colored' and I can't recall ever seeing or hearing about a race-related hassle.

So here I am in Memphis on liberty and as I approach some colored people coming toward me on the sidewalk, they stepped off into the grass to let me go by. To say I was flabbergasted doesn't do justice to my Naval vocabulary. It was still 'back-of-the-bus' days and I used to purposely sit in the back till a couple asked me not to because it might cause them trouble. I will never forget those days. We HAVE come a long way, baby, but even though it ain't over yet, we will never see those days again thanks to people like Rosa Parks.

[Dan in Saint Louis]

I think the 'laying in state' is a bit much though.
I imagine that the "laying in state" is hoped to have the side effect of bringing closer together an increasingly fractious crowd in DC.

[Judy G. Russell]

We HAVE come a long way, baby, but even though it ain't over yet, we will never see those days again thanks to people like Rosa Parks.Which is, in my view, all the more reason for the laying in state. Making it clear to those who would gladly return to the days of making others step aside that the rest of us will not let that happen is something we can't do too often -- or too strongly.

[RayB (France)]

Which is, in my view, all the more reason for the laying in state. Making it clear to those who would gladly return to the days of making others step aside that the rest of us will not let that happen is something we can't do too often -- or too strongly.

Fine.

[Lindsey]

Which is, in my view, all the more reason for the laying in state. Making it clear to those who would gladly return to the days of making others step aside that the rest of us will not let that happen is something we can't do too often -- or too strongly.
Ummm--I hate to be picky, but all this talk of "laying in state" is making me think of Rosa Parks as part of Frank Perdue's operation. It should be "lying in state," no?

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Ummm--I hate to be picky, but all this talk of "laying in state" is making me think of Rosa Parks as part of Frank Perdue's operation. It should be "lying in state," no?Depends on whether the word is being used transitively (they were laying her in state) or intransitively (she was laying in state) and even then it's a distinction that most commentators are ready to give up. Prior to the 18th century, the uses were not distinguished anyway.

[Lindsey]

and even then it's a distinction that most commentators are ready to give up.
Most commentators need a good course in standard English usage.

In any case, the term they were using this morning on the radio was "lying in honor." I had never heard that term before, and I don't know if there's a difference between "lying in honor" and "lying in state" or not, but in any event, it's a rare tribute for someone who is not a government official or a military figure: the last (and only other) non-governmental figure who was similarly honored was Pierre L'Enfant, the architect who designed the city of Washington, D.C., in 1909. (L'Enfant actually died in 1825, but he was re-interred in Arlington National Cemetery in 1909.)

--Lindsey

[RayB (France)]

**Most commentators need a good course in standard English usage.**

Ya oughtta hear British 'Newsreaders' with BritSpeak. (British English) Drove me up the wall for 17 years.sd

[Judy G. Russell]

in any event, it's a rare tribute for someone who is not a government official or a military figureThat it is, and one well deserved in this case.

[Lindsey]

That it is, and one well deserved in this case.
Not to sell Rosa Parks short, because what she did was courageous (though not unprecendented), and she certainly deserves her place in the history books, but stepping back to look at the larger picture, I think she's serving as a stand-in for Martin Luther King, who died too soon for the country to honor him that way.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

Martin Luther King... died too soon for the country to honor him that way.Unfortunately, there was enough else in his background (at least rumored, which can often be worse than proven) that the country probably would never have honored him that way. But having an annual holiday named after you ain't bad...

[Lindsey]

Unfortunately, there was enough else in his background (at least rumored, which can often be worse than proven) that the country probably would never have honored him that way. But having an annual holiday named after you ain't bad...
Well--Rosa Parks wasn't just a little seamstress with tired feet, either. She broke ranks with MLK; she says in her autobiography that she never believed in non-violence, and she was a great admirer of Malcom X. Somehow, I think those who look on King with disfavor wouldn't be any more thrilled with the real-life Rosa Parks. ;)

She may have been small, but she was feisty! Interesting quotation from her autobiography in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102402053.html):

"Let me have those front seats," the driver said, indicating the front seats of the middle section. No one moved. He repeated himself: "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats."

The black rider by the window rose, and Parks moved to let him pass by. The two women across the aisle also stood up. Parks slid over to the window. "I could not see how standing up was going to 'make it light' for me," she wrote in her autobiography, "My Story" (1992). "The more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us.

"I thought back to the time when I used to sit up all night and didn't sleep, and my grandfather would have his gun right by the fireplace, or if he had his one-horse wagon going anywhere, he always had his gun in the back of the wagon," she wrote. "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
You go, girl! But forty-two? My goodness, if you look at the pictures taken at the time, she looks more like eighteen.

--Lindsey

[Judy G. Russell]

It's hard to imagine, isn't it? Forty-two years old before -- for the first time in her life -- she refused to be treated as less than anyone else. We have come a loooooooong way, thanks to people like her.

[Lindsey]

It's hard to imagine, isn't it? Forty-two years old before -- for the first time in her life -- she refused to be treated as less than anyone else. We have come a loooooooong way, thanks to people like her.
Well--from what I've read about her, this wasn't the first time she had tangled with a bus driver over the arbitrariness of the rules, and she was already active in the NAACP at the time this came up, but yes, this was the first time, I think, the she had really dug in her heels and refused to budge.

One of the "rules" was that even though they had to get on at the front of the bus to pay the fare, blacks then had to get off and walk around to the back of the bus to board. And it was not unusual for the bus to take off before all of the black passengers who had paid the fare had time to walk around and get back on.

One rainy evening when she boarded the bus, Mrs. Parks objected to having to get off in the rain and walk around to the back, but the driver insisted. She took her time getting off, and, possibly deliberately, dropped her purse on the floor just as she got to the steps. She then sat down in one of the "white" seats at the front, ostensibly to pick up her purse. The driver was livid. When she finally stepped off, he immediately pulled away without giving her a chance to re-board from the back. She was so incensed about the incident that she walked 5 miles home in the rain.

--Lindsey

[MollyM/CA]

One of the "rules" was that even though they had to get on at the front of the bus to pay the fare, blacks then had to get off and walk around to the back of the bus to board.
--Lindsey
Good God. I had no idea, and haven't been so shocked since I found out that libraries were segregated. I think ours in Harlingen (TX) was open on alternate days --probably about once a week for blacks. Latinos were grouped with blacks for some purposes. We went to school with Mexicans legal and illegal but didn't swim with them --the pool was open two days a week for blacks and Latinos.

So, Lindsey, where did you pick up that bit of information?

[Judy G. Russell]

One of the "rules" was that even though they had to get on at the front of the bus to pay the fare, blacks then had to get off and walk around to the back of the bus to board. And it was not unusual for the bus to take off before all of the black passengers who had paid the fare had time to walk around and get back on.Appalling. Absolutely appalling. I can't imagine what anger it must engender to be treated that way for no good reason.

[Mike]

We went to school with Mexicans legal and illegal but didn't swim with them --the pool was open two days a week for blacks and Latinos.
I'm guessing this was solely so the white folks wouldn't be offended by seeing other colors of skin, and not because the pool's water was changed daily to prevent the color from shifting?

[Lindsey]

So, Lindsey, where did you pick up that bit of information?
Google is my friend. <g> I think that came from a recent article about Rosa Parks in the Washington Post, but let me see if I can dig it up again... No, it wasn't the Post, it was Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

But no, I had not known until I read it last night that the situation with the buses involved anything more than segregated seating, either.

--Lindsey