We're all feeling a bit spent after the mass Michael catharsis, and our president is overseas, although nobody seems to care.

The only item of interest to come out of the G-8 meeting (snore) is that the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a proud, in-your-face skirt-chaser, and he's not holding any teary-eyed press conferences, thank God, to justify his behavior. They're much more civilized about these things in Italy.

It's the dog days. Al Franken joined the other comedians in the U.S. Senate... at least he's honest enough to admit to his calling. Sarah Palin's flash in the pan has sizzled out. I'm drawing cartoons about the fact that theme parks nickel and dime you to death once you've paid the steep fee to get in the gates.

Anybody who goes to a family attraction should expect to get fleeced. What makes it special is the fantasy. The kids get to imagine themselves in the midst of a charmed wonderland. The parent footing the bill gets to imagine that he or she is a small shopkeeper in Bedford-Stuyvesant getting shaken down by the neighborhood gang in exchange for their not smashing his plate-glass windows.

That's why they call it the Magic Kingdom.

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I was just talking to a man whose son, a U.S. Marine, was involved in one of the largest helicopter assaults since Vietnam (four thousand troops), which took place on Wednesday, July 1.

He said that a lot of Marine parents get together on a web chat site to support each other when they know a major operation is going on.

In this case, they agreed between them to watch all the available TV stations and let everybody else know if anything about the assault was mentioned. Between coverage of Michael Jackson and Gov. Mark Sanford, over an hour passed before he was able to tell the others to tune in to a network.

It was the BBC.

Now, you can't blame the media for all of this. They do their homework, and they look at their instant ratings. If war were still a hot seller, we'd see a lot more of it on TV and the front pages, so we're collectively responsible as members of a nation that happens to have an incredibly short attention span.

Which brings me to this cartoon. With this memorial extravaganza, the age of innocence is over. We're about to be treated nonstop to the sordid, seamy underbelly of the Jackson saga. The parasites are coming out of the woodwork. They were always there, but this is their moment in the sun.

My advice: If you are the type who wants to keep Michael's spirit of love, harmony and peace alive, this would be a good time to go read a book.

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I've said this before about other pols, but I really mean it this time: This guy is the gift that keeps on giving.

The only conclusion I can come to at this point is that the Republican Party has a secret strategy, which is to let the man talk himself into such a black hole that the general public can only conclude he's a rogue nutball and not representative of the Party as a whole.

It's fun watching all the TV talking heads try to keep straight faces while they recite the direct quotes. This could be a bodice-ripper romance novel, except that the little I ever read of one that was lying around in a doctor's office was much better written.

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Americans are having trouble coming to grips with all the ways the recession affects daily life.

Sure, we trim the budget at home, but when local government makes painful cuts that we feel down at the grassroots level, we get resentful. Take Independence Day fireworks, which we feel is our right as Americans to enjoy. Somehow, they just happen.

It's this preconception that causes civic leaders to swallow hard before they take away something so highly visible. They're afraid we'll take it out on them later at the polls.

On the other hand, how would you like to be a city worker who's been doing his or her job for decades, and doing it well, when some councilman comes to you and says, "Sorry, but we had to lay you off so we could save our own butts by blowing up a few thousand dollars in the atmosphere this year?"

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An armed robber goes into a convenience store to steal money out of the cash register. He pulls out a pistol and points it at the store clerk.

He has no intention of using it. He just wants to show the man he means business. The store clerk, upon seeing the weapon, involuntarily recoils. He slips on a puddle of Mountain Dew and his head hits the tile floor. He dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The robber is apprehended, and charged with something called "felony murder," which is to say that even though he never intended to take a life, he embarked on a series of activities that directly resulted in the death of the clerk.

How is Bernard Madoff any different than this guy, when his theft resulted in several suicides by people whose entire life savings had been wiped out?

He's lucky all he got was 150 years, and not the magic mojito I.V. As it is, I heard that he's not going to a country club prison. Thanks to the enormity of his crimes, he's rumored to be headed for medium security, with rapists, armed robbers, and other unsavory types who are also serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.

In other words, the system has no way of disciplining them if they should happen to visualize their own grandmother in the place of some little old lady who is now forced to survive on cat food, and decide to take appropriate action.

That's what it feels like not to know if you're going to make it through the next day, Mr. Madoff.

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I like to think that when people die within a short time of each other, they share a bus to the next life which departs only once each week.

It's a pretty long trip, so the passengers get plenty of time to talk to each other on the way to the end of the line. If you think of it this way, it makes for some fascinating speculation about what conversations might be taking place during the journey.

Imagine Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Billy Mays having an impromptu bull session in the back. After Ed introduces everybody, Farrah and Michael discuss all the fashion trends they've set between the two of them, and Billy, with his inextinguishable enthusiasm, shows the King of Pop how to get rid of that stubborn stain on his glove.

The quartet have one thing in common, and it is the thing that reserves for each of them a special place in our hearts: they really, really loved their work. What a pleasure it was to watch them do (and so deftly, at that) exactly what they were born to do.

We should all be so lucky.

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Editorial cartoons are a clunky medium for doing tributes.

It's difficult to tread the line between sincere and sappy, because brevity is the soul of an effective cartoon, and you have to hit the sentiment just right or it blows up in your face.

While I respect Michael Jackson's work, I am not a fan; so at first I decided to pass on the subject. That was before, one by one, my colleagues came by asking what I was planning to draw in response to his death. It became apparent that this is one of those mega-topics you cannot avoid, because it is so much a part of common existence that it demands commentary.

Fearing that my lack of requisite grief would cause a tribute to ring hollow, I decided that the best way to honor Jackson, the man and the artist, was to comment on my own profession and the way it is exploiting his demise (being mindful of how the Princess Di extravaganza eventually played itself out).

Endless electronic wallowing on the air, in print and on the Internet seems to be the modern way of mass grieving. Many people must need it, or it wouldn't pump ratings, circulation and net hits the way it does.

I do not argue with that. It's just a shame that taste always has to be a victim in the race to be the most saccharine. It debases us all.

And another thing: Poor old Farrah Fawcett, a figure equally worthy of our respect, has been all but forgotten in this orgy.

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This is happening so regularly now that it almost isn't worth commenting on. After all, we'd just gotten over Senator John Ensign of Nevada last week when Mark Sanford obligingly added his name to the rapidly growing list of Politicians You've Probably Never Heard Of Until They Cheated On Their Spouses.

This latest sex scandal borders on the garden variety (everything seems rather ordinary after Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards), except that there's a certain deliciousness to the self-immolation of someone who was so quick to condemn Bill Clinton for the same behavior. Hypocrisy is the spice that livens up an otherwise mundane dish.

And besides, as I've pointed out in the cartoon, what's wrong with nice, red-blooded American girls? What are our womenfolk, chopped carne asada?

It's an insult to the locals, like joyriding around Detroit in a Hyundai.

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When a crime is committed, the people's interest in an ordered society is represented by the prosecution, which pursues its task (without passion or prejudice) within an accepted and respected framework of law.

Our reverence for the law and the assumption of its equal application (at least in theory) are part of the social contract that holds us together as a society. When that contract is violated, it's an affront to us all. That is, I think, what lies at the root of the anger at Donte Stallworth's punishment, or lack thereof.

We call the punishment of a crime the perpetrator's "debt to society" for a reason. It is not his or her "debt to the victim," because in theory, it is society and its code that have been wronged. This is what keeps our system from descending into "eye for an eye" justice. The legal system is there to protect us from ourselves, from each other, and from our natural revenge instinct. Without it, we'd all be killing each other off in vendettas.

The redress of personal grievances is settled lawfully in civil court. The fact that Donte Stallworth made a financial settlement with the family of his victim should have no bearing on his criminal sentence. We know this, if not because we are familiar with the law, then because we feel it in our guts as members of a collective group with a stake in preserving our code.

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Yes, it's a dark view of the American character.

My feeling is that the American psyche embodies both the best and the worst of human nature. There is a xenophobic strain that has permeated our culture since before we became a nation, perhaps stoked by our two-ocean isolation. Ironically, we are a nation of immigrants. One could imagine that this might inoculate us from the poison of racial and ethnic hatred. If anything, it has heightened the sense of isolation felt by some on the fringes.

The institution of slavery in a relatively modern society helped to solidify a mind-set wherein some human beings were considered, legally, less "human" than others. Glowing embers of that attitude continue to smolder beneath our national surface.

Economic hardship tends to bring such strains into stark relief and make them more acceptable, particularly when the have-nots or the aggrieved are seeking someone to blame for their current plight.

On the other hand, what makes America exceptional is that we have laws and systems in place designed to conquer those base and ugly forces of human nature that have consumed other peoples. It is our strength that we keep trying to better ourselves as a pluralistic nation, in spite of persistent setbacks. We are a nation of laws, thank God. Unfortunately, we are also a nation of human beings, with all our inherent flaws.

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It shouldn't have to be this way.

It should be a given that our veterans go to the head of the line when it comes to federal expenditures. After all, there'd be no Federal Government to expend anything if they didn't put their lives on the line, time after time.

Instead, we get the national shame of the Walter Reed scandal (uncovered by Washington Post investigative reporting --a field which is in great danger these days--but that's another story) and VA hospitals with staffs so poorly trained that they spread horrific diseases through shoddy hygiene to people who deserve much better.

My guess is that the reason the pols pay lip service to our men and women in uniform without following through with the goods is that the volunteer military is a relatively small constituency. Back when we had a draft, the inconvenience and sacrifice were spread to many more families throughout the congressional districts, and besides, many pols had served themselves, thanks to that same draft. They could relate.

Now, as the number of veterans in Congress dwindles, there is no immediacy.
It's easy to forget our national obligation, except at election time or Veteran's Day, when talk is cheap.

.

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It says something about the power of politics and influence to trump common sense when it has taken this long to get any meaningful legislation passed that regulates tobacco like the drug that it is.

There's an analogy here to the health care issue, in that we are the only industrialized country left with no guaranteed health care for its entire population, because powerful special interests stood in the way of the people's interest.

It does seem a bit weird that the Food and Drug Administration, an outfit designed to ensure the safety and purity of things we put into our bodies, is about to be placed in charge of a substance that kills and, at best, sickens people, with no redeeming medical value. I guess it's the only agency with the structure in place to do so.

We could have built a whole new department out of thin air--a la Department of Homeland Security--called the Slow Suicide Administration or something, but we know how Republicans feel about expanding bureaucracy. Best to keep it all under one roof.

This way, the Surgeon General can condemn the product on the one hand, while the FDA can safeguard us from, ahem, any harmful chemicals that might make it into our coffin nails on the other. As a taxpayer, I appreciate these rare examples of government efficiency.

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The fact that many coastal residents are not prepared for a hurricane is no surprise.

Nobody is going to prepare for anything as long as the threat remains an abstraction. It's human nature. They will begin to prepare, however, when the news that a storm is approaching percolates its way through the ordinary stress and distractions of their daily lives.

This usually happens about forty-eight hours before the storm hits. All of a sudden, there are lines at Home Depot for (now scarce) plywood, and at the supermarkets for water, batteries and other staples that should have been bought months in advance. Incredibly, home improvement stores report that much of the plywood is returned after a storm fails to materialize, as if by surviving a near-miss, we have been inoculated against future catastrophes.

That kind of attitude can only be ascribed to blind superstition. This is what a lot of people must be taking solace in when they fail to perform simple preparatory tasks despite incessant government and media reminders.

It's too late now, but realize that I left ground bat wing and eye of newt out of the cartoon. Shoulda been better prepared.

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Not again!

Remember the Great Swine Flu scare of 1976? Poor old President Ford could never catch a break. Somebody died of swine flu in Vermont or somewhere, and the whole U.S. health system mobilized.

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine were manufactured at taxpayer expense, thousands upon thousands of Americans were inoculated, and in the end more people died of reactions to the flu shots than from the original disease. The whole fiasco ended up as a political embarrassment.

I clearly remember drawing swine flu cartoons when I was just getting started at a small paper in Oklahoma that didn't even publish on Mondays (so that nobody would have to work on the Sabbath), and now, thirty-three years later, I find myself having to brush up on my hog anatomy all over again.

To quote Santayana, "Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." There are two lessons to be taken from this: Don't stay too long in the same dead-end job, and let somebody else be the guinea pig for that flu shot before you take the plunge.

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It's the Holy Grail for cash-strapped localities: cameras, supplied by a private company, that snag red-light runners. The company takes a cut, the city gets the money, and it's win-win for everybody.

Red-light runners are one resource that South Florida possesses in an abundant, inexhaustible supply. Tapping into them is like harnessing the power of the sun.

Besides, everybody hates them, so it's like taxing child abuse or something. There's no constituency of red-light runners that will organize to push back against being targeted.

Another advantage I see is that, this being Florida, the rear-end collision side-effect of drivers slamming on their brakes at the last moment will be more pronounced than in other states where these cameras are being tried. Take into account all the usual text-messaging, phone-yakking, ingesting of dangerous drugs, and doing make-up while driving that happens in every state, and add to it the slower reaction time of a tailgating senior who is trying to get through the light because, like everybody else in Florida, it's important to get wherever you're going ahead of all the other drivers, and you've provided a stimulus for one of our major industries: personal injury lawsuits.

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

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Today, we are going to discuss the decline of civilization.

No, it isn’t the result of rot from within, the death of shame, or the erosion of morals. You can lay it all on the e-doorstep of fixed-rate unlimited access calling plans.

Now, even people with little means can remain connected all day, through cellphones, texting, email, Twitter, and a host of other media I haven’t had a chance to get incensed about yet. Talk has always been cheap, but now it’s even cheaper. When the value of something is debased, it gets overwhelmed with dreck.

I don’t care if somebody laments that they’re over-connected. Obviously, they can’t figure out anything more redeeming to do with their lives than mindlessly chatter or write in e-snippets all day, so no harm done.

What bothers me is when they indulge their need while someone who is too old to find this stuff necessary is trying to hold a personal, real-time, in-place conversation with them. Someone like me, for example.

Then, there’s what texting has done to flatten the language. World War III could easily start because Dmitry Medvedev misread an Obama text message lacking the proper irony-denoting emoticon, “;-)”,
as in, “U dummy ;-).” This tells me that the medium has an inherent clarity problem.

Go ahead, call me a Luddite. To me, subtlety and inflection are the exotic spices of communication.

> Discuss this entry

It's time, once again, to get our minds off depressing issues like politics and the economy to discuss an unrelated local topic, to wit: the Boca Raton teacher who has been accused of allowing her cats to starve to death in her apartment while she was off working and spending time with her boyfriend and family.

We knew the subject would stir passions, which is why we made it the Daily Buzz on the Sun Sentinel's website. So far, it has been a smashing success.

I am owned by two cats, myself. I use this locution advisedly, because in a relationship with a cat, he or she is the master, and you are the dog. A cat displays allegiance to the last person who fed it, and that's about the extent of the bonding. I think it's precisely because cat loyalty is so transitory that we prize the critters so. Dogs love you even if you're a dirtbag. With them, love is cheap (I also have a dog).

This is why pet food manufacturers can extort cat lovers, pound for pound, for the most carefully prepared feline treats, while dog food can be bought in bulk at a price that more accurately reflects what it's worth. No kitty toy or gimmick designed to make their lives more comfortable is too expensive.

For the record, I think that what this woman is accused of doing is worthy of a felony charge. The least she could have done was leave the sliding door ajar so that they could get out and fend for themselves. She didn't.

On a personal note, this cartoon marks my 25th anniversary here on the Opinion Page of the Sun-Sentinel. Where did the time go? I think I'll celebrate the auspicious occasion with another Lowe-Down Cartoon Caption Contest, probably next week. Cool prizes and the thanks of a grateful nation lie in store for those with the guts to enter.

Stay tuned.

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There was a report on the radio that the crime of car stereo theft had all but disappeared.

Automakers realized that they could make more money by installing high-quality stereos as standard equipment in order to help their cars sell. With no need to upgrade one's stereo, the market for "used" ones evaporated.

This is the theory behind the "War on Drugs." No market, no crime.

One of the reasons the law enforcement approach has been such a dismal failure is that it may criminalize use and sales, but it never addresses the fundamental aspects of society that make drugs an attractive option to the population.

The Egyptians invented beer. Shortly thereafter, some Egyptian relaxed in his stone recliner in front of a wall of sports hieroglyphics with a six-flagon, and invented the weekend bender. People like to depart from reality. When given the chance, kids sniff glue, prisoners put together stills from anything they can find to make alcohol from fruit. Why? It's fun.

For America to be the kind of place where nobody sought to use and abuse mind-altering substances, we'd all have to be like...Utah. Which is a great place to live if you're into a pure lifestyle. A lot of Americans, I have a feeling, would not think of living in Utah as "fun." I understand, though, that even Utah is finally passing a law that allows you to get a drink in a bar. No fun, no tourists.

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Sometimes the role of the editorial cartoonist involves more than finding fault or poking fun. Sometimes his role is to channel what the community feels.

Political views aside, it would be hard not to have anything but respect for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who not only battled and beat breast cancer, but did so without missing a day of work. As befits her character, she is now using her experience to aid in passing legislation that will increase breast cancer awareness among young women.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz is an unabashed progressive. I remember decades ago, when she first made her mark in the legislature by pushing for dry cleaning parity for women's blouses, which for some reason incurred a higher charge because they buttoned left-to-right. It sounded silly at the time, and was ridiculed both by her colleagues and the media, but she stuck to it and gained a lot of credibility in the process as a crusader. She knew that small things mattered to her constituents.

Well, this is a big thing, and it looks like she has attacked it with the same determination that has become her hallmark, and that has helped catapult her to a leadership position in the U.S. House.

We all wish her good fortune in her life and endeavors.

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There's no question that this Pope has made some controversial moves during his pontificate. Most recently, there was the rehabilitation of the holocaust-denying bishop. Oops.

Now, he's made some irresponsible remarks about condoms and AIDS during his trip to Africa. I don't quibble with his view that the use of condoms is a sin because it's a form of contraception, if that's what he believes. After all, he's in the belief business, and who knows what constitutes a sin better than the Pope? But, declaring that the use of condoms helps to spread HIV is just plain wrong.

Sure, abstinence works well, if you use it all the time. Unfortunately, the same God who created us also bequeathed us this pesky drive to procreate, and sometimes that drive just overwhelms reason and faith. I don't think He meant to say, as seems to be the case with HIV/AIDS, “Lapse one time and you're dead, along with a raft of other innocent souls you may be lapsing with in the future.” That doesn't leave much room for repentance and forgiveness.

Before you go calling me a Catholic-basher, I should say that I'm very fond of Catholics. In fact, I'm married to one.

I just think His Holiness is way off base this time. He's a man, not a god, and he isn't infallible. The problem is that his words, even when misguided, carry a great deal of weight.

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I think some of the vitriol aimed at Madoff, even by those who weren't his victims, is based on the acknowledgement that he is not sorry for what he has done. Not in the slightest. A sociopath, devoid of conscience.

While he was confined to his apartment, (a show of leniency that added insult to those he injured), Madoff brazenly mailed expensive jewelry and cash to friends and relatives, right under the noses of his federal keepers. Now skeptics say he's pleading guilty in hopes the feds will leave his family out of the investigation. He holds no cards, yet he's still trying to game the system.

Personally, I find it refreshing. I'm tired of people in the public trust--like politicians, for example--dragging their wives up to the podium with them to blubber about how sorry they are for what they did (read here: for getting caught at what they did). Madoff is a genuinely detestable character, unrepentant, an equal-opportunity perp who is shuffling off to the slammer with his head held high.

There is no room for pity. None asked for, none given. Bernie is offering himself up as the national pinata, someone we can hate without reservation. We needed a clear embodiment of the inchoate violation we all feel, and he has done himself proud.

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There are armchair and professional shrinks who contend that Barbie, the iconic doll of the past half-century, has done more to harm self-esteem and promote the spread of eating disorders among young girls than any other object in history. Barbie, they say, creates an ideal so unreachable that teenagers have starved themselves to death trying to replicate her figure in their own flesh.

A colleague of mine isn't buying it. She has two young daughters who have a couple of dozen Barbies between them, and she says they are not suffering from self-esteem issues. They just like to dress the things. If anything, they're developing overly robust shopping habits.

Anyway, the overlooked story here is Ken, the unsung prince consort. Being that this is a tough economy, products need to collaborate (as I have suggested in this cartoon), to get the word out. Ken must be in his late sixties by now, having begun life as a teenager, and he most likely suffers from...um...male issues that the major pharmaceutical companies could have a field day with.

And let's not forget accessories. We could get Crane or Kohler to produce little side-by-side bathtubs for our lovers to lie in while they hold hands and contemplate their golden years.

You got a better stimulus plan?

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Evidently, many Congresspersons were Twittering madly under the table to their tuned-in constituents during Obama's address the other week. This is a sure sign that the latest communication fad many mainstream Americans are just learning about has already ceased to be hip and cutting-edge.

I am reminded of the 1970's, when our elected officials wore extra wide ties, big fat Carnaby Street collars, and cut their hair just long enough to look "with it" for the younger set, yet not so long as to offend their more strait-laced constituents back home. It was a delicate balancing act of personal grooming.

Personally, I do not understand things like texting and Twitter. Aside from not wanting to know about every belch and grunt emanating from distant acquaintances, I would rather run my car into a tree while talking to a friend on my cell phone than do so while wearing out my thumbs producing a text message. Saves effort.

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SLEEP TIGHT.

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Sometimes stories that don't seem to be relevant to anything in our lives just grab the public by the throat and don't let go. Or, more accurately, the public grabs them by the throat.

I know people who don't know the difference between the deficit and the national debt (and don't care) who have become world authorities on every intimate detail of Caylee Anthony's life and death.

The Octuplet Mom is another one of those stories. They're the glue that holds this great nation together, because, just like whether or not you want anchovies on your pizza, everybody's got an opinion, and everybody wants to share it, vocally.

The fix illustrated in this cartoon does not seem unreasonable, when you take into account society's current levels of crassness. Everybody comes out satisfied, because the taxpayers don't have to foot the bill, and the companies involved get some eyeball time.

It won't happen. Not because of a belated sense of propriety, though. In this economy, everybody's cutting back on his marketing budget.

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On a point of personal privilege, I just want to give a "shout out," as Sarah Palin might say, to the current students in the Williams College Art 102 survey course. I understand you were cajoled, importuned--nay--threatened, into visiting this blog by my great friend and mentor Eva Grudin.

I remember what a relief it was to pass from 101 to 102 because (and don't tell EJ Johnson I said this) if you've seen one Gothic cathedral, you've pretty much seen 'em all.

When I came back to teach Winter Study, I spent a good deal of my time trying to talk my students out of going into investment banking careers. That doesn't seem to be such a problem anymore, considering this economy, so take it from me--if you're after a classical liberal arts education, you could do a lot worse than major in Art History.

From the likes of the aforementioned EJ, and the legendary Lane Faison and Whit Stoddard, I learned much more than who painted or built what. I learned critical thinking, the organization. distillation and communication of ideas, and--especially from EJ--how to turn an elegant phrase.

'Nuff said. I hope you enjoy the blog. Please tell your friends and family about it.

Oh, and ask EJ to tell you about the time he fell through the stage. That happened during my year.

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Local governments issuing permits so that people can keep wild animals on their property is a little bit like imposing federal limits for carcinogens: in reality, there is no maximum allowable. The mere presence of the danger is either a threat, or it isn't.

Issuing an animal's owner a permit to keep a tiger, a boa constrictor, or a chimpanzee does not automatically render the animal safe. They cannot really be domesticated, or they wouldn't be considered "exotic pets."

Surely people who enjoy the thrill of keeping savage beasts penned up in settled communities could take up a hobby less injurious to their neighbors, like chainsaw juggling.

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Yes, everybody is justifiably indignant about the single woman who had all the babies, and whose self-indulgence is going to cost the State of California (which can ill afford it) millions for their delivery and upkeep.

You would think that the pro-life crowd was celebrating the miracle, and sending wads of money to help the poor woman take care of her brood, since she had the courage to go ahead, get implanted, and give birth without "getting rid of the problem." I must be missing something, because the cash doesn't appear to be rolling in.

It's strange the way some pro-lifers, at least the ones who use abortion as a political wedge issue, seem to lose interest in the welfare of children once they're born. Where do all the funds for pre- and post-natal care come from? The subsidies for the actual deliveries? Pre-K programs? College assistance? Day care? Hold on a second- those are programs Democrats tend to fight for.

And another thing, while I'm on the topic: Why does the "sanctity of life" not extend to our use of the death penalty? When I lived in Oklahoma, I met plenty of folks who saw no disconnect between fighting to save a fetus' life and clamoring for somebody to get fried.

I never could figure out exactly at what age a human being's life ceased to be sacred. Asking the experts just stirred up trouble.

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A survey I once read about said that men feel more stress over Valentine's Day than any other holiday. Evidently, the fear is that the wrong gift, or one not lavish enough, might wreck everything.

There was an attractive young Cuban-American reporter in our newsroom a few years back. I'm not sure being Cuban-American had anything to do with it...let's just say she was a traditionalist in matters romantic. She was known to have had several suitors on the string at the same time, and as Valentine's Day drew nigh, she began tapping her foot. Sure enough, Security began arriving carrying enormous batches of roses to the point where it looked like a funeral service was taking place over in her cubicle. Her haul became the yardstick by which all future Valentine's floral offerings were judged.

Our current economic situation is bound to create even more trauma as young swains seek to pinch pennies without looking penurious.

It will also stimulate cleverness and creativity in the art of gift-giving. For what it's worth, Ladies, I suggest you go with the creative guy.

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The latest hot pastime is for kids to send sexually-oriented text messages and nude pictures of themselves to each other on their cell phones as a way of "flirting." Whatever happened to offering to carry somebody's books home?

I was having a discussion about this at work with a friend, who happens to be the mother of two teenagers. "Kids these days have nothing on Sodom and Gomorrah," she said authoritatively. "Read your Bible. You shoulda seen the things they were doing back then. And while Moses was up on the mountain, they were down there making all kinds of stuff out of gold and silver!"

My friend may have conflated a couple of stories, but her point is well taken. Young people have done everything they could to challenge the mores of their societies since "time in memoriam," as one of my old Oklahoma associates would say. Idol worship, dancing the waltz, glue sniffing, psychedelic drugs, love-ins, listening to Elvis Presley records. Now it's body piercings, something called "embedding" that I won't even go into, and "sexting."

All parents can do is shrug and try to stay a step ahead in the arms race.

A word about Sodom and Gomorrah: I was under the impression that the Sodomites (Why is it that they get all the credit? Is it because it looks awkward to add a "y" to "Gomorrah" when you're writing a state morality statute?) were condemned not for their imaginative sexual proclivities, but for being inhospitable to strangers.

I don't purport to be a scriptural scholar, so I'll leave that to the sages to argue. Besides, it could be a subject for another cartoon.

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First off, I would like to thank Joseph, an observant reader, who pointed out that I mistakenly made Southwest Airlines the original subject of this cartoon. My apologies to Southwest, for it is, in fact, Spirit Airlines that I should have spotlighted. The correction has been duly made.

And, yes, Joseph, I do read my own newspaper, usually around 5:30 a.m., and at that hour I have been known to make more than a few mistakes.

Many of us in the newspaper business still think of what we do as a calling, not just a job. That having been said, nobody better understands the direct relationship between advertising and meaningful, rewarding employment better than we do.

We hear over and over that consumer spending is the backbone of the nation’s economy. The fact that consumers are now stashing their discretionary dollars under the mattress for a rainy day is one of the reasons why the recession is spiraling out of control.

But, when consumers are in a buying mood, advertising helps them make decisions about where to spend those dollars. It’s the circulatory system for that economic backbone, to extend the metaphor a little.

So when Spirit Airlines' flight attendants whine that it’s unprofessional to wear aprons with an ad for Bud Light on them, I say buck up. Instead of their grousing, they should join the rest of America in trusting their colds to Tylenol, in not squeezing the Charmin, in taking the thirty-six hour pill that’s ready when they are, and in choosing the adult diaper that has been proven in independent lab tests to be more absorbent.

Their jobs are probably the ones being saved by that ad.

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The way television was obsessing on the rich video of a plane floating in the river last night, and kept doing so deep into prime-time, I half-expected them to stage an episode of Dancing With The Stars on the wing.

Even when there was nothing new to say, they stayed on it. This was way better than a low-speed car chase down a freeway.

We did learn one important thing during the course of the evening: the reason Michael Bloomberg decided not to run for president. His public speaking delivery makes a dial tone sound like a Shakespearean soliloquy.

True, it's a miracle that nobody died. You can't take anything away from that.

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The staff here at The Lowe-Down want to wish you a Merry Christmas, and as a sign of our sincerity we are offering you a politics-free cartoon today.

Yes, this time of year is payback for having to endure nine months of summer, so why not share it with the less fortunate--specifically, our snowbound friends and relatives Up North?

Rub it in, real good. Heck, even if you don't celebrate Christmas, go ahead and make that call. Nobody can blame you for connecting with family.

Let's face it, they do the same thing to us during fall foliage.

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It would be easy for us working stiffs to indulge in a little schadenfreude over this Madoff investment Ponzi scheme uproar. The rich, trying to get even richer, ended up hoist on their own petard of greed.

Unfortunately, there were quite a few charities that placed their money and trust in the hands of this criminal as well, so a lot of innocent "little" people are being hurt.

Since Madoff's fifty-billion-dollar crime was white collar, he'll probably end up doing a few years at the Allenwood Federal Country Club, if he does any time at all. Meanwhile, a small-time crook who rolls a Seven-Eleven with a pistol will probably do twenty years or more, even though his crime affects far fewer people far less drastically. But that's the way the system works.

Meanwhile, where were the Feds while all this was happening? According to recent stories, they were probably sitting around with their thumbs up their derivatives, giving each other inside stock tips instead of doing due diligence.

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The old-timers allow as how, back in the day, folks would dress up in their Sunday-best duds to go up in aeroplanes.

Why, shucks...they used to gussy up to go on the train, or to the doctor's, even. Those were the days when people showed respect.

But flying really was something special. Pilots were like gods with Apollo's wings attached to their shiny brogans. They say the first stewardesses, (yep, that's what they called 'em back then--none of this mealy-mouthed "flight attendant" claptrap) were required to be registered nurses.

They served real food, too. Not just peanuts and crackers, but gourmet stuff, and they gave you little printed menus with names on 'em you couldn't even pronounce.

Course, in those days before deregulation and all, a plane ticket would set you back about six months' pay. But that didn't matter, 'cuz back then the dime-store science fiction magazines were telling us that by 2008, we'd all be traveling effortlessly by tele-transporter to points across the globe.

With no surcharges for blankets and pillows.

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No wonder the McCain campaign, in its final death throes, tried to slime Obama as "a Chicago politician" when all else failed to stick.

The term is a venerated one in American politics, but Blagojevich (we've all had to take lessons in Serbo-Croatian pronunciation over the last forty-eight hours--you should have heard my Cuban-born editor butcher it yesterday) does elevate corruption to a new, brazen level.

Imagine treating a U.S. Senate seat as a commodity. I suppose if you grew up within sight and smell of the Chicago stockyards, it's possible to view just about everything in this world as a commodity.

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When they asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he is said to have answered, "Because that's where the money is."

If you have a penchant for children, the best place to burrow in is among the legions of well-meaning educators and coaches whose business it is to be in close contact with children.

Society supposedly has safeguards; background checks, etc. But increasingly, the perps are managing to crawl under the radar screen. Distasteful as it is, it looks like the best way to defend against them is to educate our children so that they know when they are being victimized before the crime occurs.

How did we reach such a state that the innocence of childhood has become an unaffordable luxury?

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We sometimes forget that the Founding Fathers were humans, too. They didn't spend their whole lives just making historic pronouncements for posterity, or figuring out new ways to apply the philosophical principles of the Age of Reason to government.

They probably headed on down to the Continental Army Veterans hall and tossed back a few now and then, especially when they felt the need to get away from the Founding Mothers for a few hours.

But, to my point: it's all well and good to punish kids for bringing firearms into the schools, but we all know that they'd never be able to get hold of them in the first place if parents didn't make them accessible, either through negligence or oversight. After all, kids can't buy them. It's no infringement on the right to bear arms to punish parents when their children, due to their own lack of care, endanger others--or worse.

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A conventional wisdom seems to be developing that the same huge minority voter turnout that helped tip Florida into the Obama column also helped to put the "Gay Marriage Amendment" over the top, thereby enshrining discrimination in our state constitution.

If that is true, I find it puzzling that a segment of our society that so recently suffered under anti-miscegenation laws, and knows what it means to have the state step in and dictate whom one should and should not be allowed to marry, could be complicit in restricting the rights of another minority.

But, maybe it isn't true. Also, maybe I'm just dumb and am missing some key piece of logic here.

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Let us briefly digress from politics and the economic meltdown to address one of life's sad sideshows, the conviction of O. J. Simpson on multiple counts of armed robbery and kidnapping.

Remember thirteen years ago, when the country stood still as the verdict on O. J.'s innocence came down? Americans heard new terms, like "jury nullification," and we learned the degree to which one's race, background and experiences can actually influence the way we see and absorb facts. Maybe it was just white Americans who didn't know this already, but at any rate there was an orgy of national self-examination in the wake of the verdict.

Now comes O. J. into our consciousness once again, convicted of lesser crimes with hardly a burp this time. They say there were even empty seats in the courtroom.

One of my colleagues, who happens to be African-American, just shrugged and said, "Well, they finally got him." Not much else to say, really. O. J. is yesterday's news.

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It reminds one of the life cycle of the cicada. Every four years, the gay marriage issue rears up and threatens the very existence of our republic. A furious burst of political activity ensues, characterized by a flurry of would-be laws being placed on state ballots nationwide for consideration by a vote of the people.

Some succeed, others don't. The real purpose is to turn out "The Base," which will, while they are angrily wearing a hole with their pencil into the optical scan ballot at the place that would ratify the anti-gay question, vote for the Republican candidate before they go back to sleep, politically speaking.

We should take one moment to think about not just how cynical, but how patronizing of "The Base" this strategy is. It assumes that there is a large portion of the electorate that will not even bother to turn out to vote in a presidential election unless there is a sweetener involved.

For the rest of us, the question would seem almost quaint and irrelevant, under current circumstances, if it didn't have such a potentially disastrous effect on people.

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There was a story that immigration, both legal and illegal, is way down lately thanks to our anemic economy. If things get much worse, it is not a stretch to imagine the scenario envisioned in the above cartoon.

In his waning days, President Bush may at last be able to point to a positive legacy: the immigration problem was solved on his watch.

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Chances are the Founding Fathers, back in olden days, had no idea to what absurd lengths their Bill of Rights would be stretched. On the other hand, if you don’t go to those lengths, somebody might arbitrarily draw the line at a place that is unacceptable to the rest of us.

In other words, if you have to invoke the First Amendment to protect some youth’s right to wear his clothes in such a way that will make him feel like an idiot when somebody shows him a picture of himself twenty years later, so be it.

In the two-cents department, just because you have a right to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Take heavy-metal music, for example, of which I am not a fan. I do not try to stop it from being played, even when an aficionado of the genre is generous enough to share it with me at high volume while stopped at an intersection.

When treated to this largesse, I refrain from manually expressing my own Constitutionally-guaranteed First Amendment right, especially if I think said aficionado is likely to exercise his Second Amendment right to discharge his musket in my general direction.

Eventually, the light changes, and we all move on with our lives, our civil rights intact.

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When I began sketching this cartoon, I realized that I had never drawn Nancy Pelosi before, which seems surprising considering how much she has been in the news. Or, maybe I was just having a senior moment.

Cartoonists are always hypersensitive to facial quirks and details--after all, it's our job. I think anyone would admit, though, that our fair Speaker wasn't born with eyebrows that far up on her forehead (I'm not talking about the cartoon).

Getting to more serious stuff, my editor and I agree that the way out of our dependency on oil is not to drill for more, but to add a consumption tax on the petroleum products we use (while providing means to offset the tax's effect on the needy). It would force us to conserve and to find alternatives in our personal lives, while funding research into other forms of energy.

Makes a lot of sense, even though it'll never happen...especially with people around like Nancy Pelosi who can't think past the next election.

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My editor, Tony Fins, questioned why I would draw a cartoon addressing Dancing With The Stars' new season lineup right in the middle of the Democratic National Convention. I responded that maybe our readers needed a day of relief in the middle of all the superheated politics. I know I did.

The other reason is that I heard people talking about it around the office. It's one of those silly little things that provide the glue that binds us together as a community, like Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, or John Edwards' taste in floozies. It's part of the rhythm of the nation's day.

Besides, in an age when tuna cans are getting smaller and smaller, when a pound of coffee is now twelve ounces but sells for the same amount that a pound used to, what is the world coming to when our B-list celebrities are now D-listers? What happened to bang for the buck?

I fervently hope that an Obama or McCain Administration will make addressing this issue a priority.

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Nobody likes $4 gas, but you have to admit that, while we had it, it got us talking about a comprehensive energy policy like nothing ever has before. People actually drove more slowly, thought about those impulse trips in the car, and, yes, experienced a lot of hardship.

As the price continues to drop, so will the pressure on Congress to do something meaningful about the long-term question. Our elected leaders really didn't do much anyway, except rail about how we should either drill offshore, tap the petroleum reserve, or give people a rebate so they might buy more gas.

Our old habits are sure to return, until the next time we have a spike. My advice: Buy oil company shares, if you can afford them. They'll never let you down, at least not in our lifetimes.

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Don't feel too sorry for Exxon's corporate relations person; their salary is probably higher than the President's. It is rather ironic, though, that quarterly earnings reports always mean cringe time at oil company headquarters (Of course, we groundlings can't hear the champagne corks popping in the corporate suites).

I don't understand why Exxon even needs public relations. They produce something we desperately need. What are we going to do, stop buying their gas because we're even MORE angry at them? If maintaining a favorable corporate image is designed to keep Congress at bay, then some well-placed re-election campaign contributions are surely more effective at maintaining governmental regulatory inertia than the money they spend on all those feel-good ads. You won't find me complaining, though. Nosiree, there's nothing more all-American, in my book, than spending money on media advertising.

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I actually called the Dutch Embassy in Washington to find out how to say this.
It occurred to me that the bartender could have been speaking French, since French and Dutch are both official languages in Belgium, but somehow Dutch seemed to make the point better.

First, I tried the Belgian Embassy, but I didn't get anywhere with them (as the French would say, "Whoever does?"). So I called the Dutch, and at first the guy answering the phone thought I was yanking his meerschaum ( "You're a WHAT?"). We don't do translations, he said. After some begging, he finally spelled it out for me, military style... "Delta, echo, zulu," etc.

I owe them one, if they ever need somebody to stand with his finger in the dike.

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One of the tools in a cartoonist's box of tricks is exaggeration. Now and then, as has happened to a few of my cartoons over the years, reality overtakes imagination.

Judging by the add-on fees airlines have been charging for things like reserving your seats, sitting on the aisle and even for soda, an advance deposit for oxygen insurance and
a life jacket that inflates might not be far behind.

Maybe a year from now I'll do a "look back in anger" gallery and we'll find that this cartoon was clairvoyant rather than fanciful.

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My first job out of college was at a paper in a small town in central Oklahoma. Just about everyone there I talked to said they'd gotten their first sex education at Bible camp. Not in organized class, but empirically, in the bushes.

The point being, you can moralize all you want, but kids being kids, they're going to want to try out the equipment they've been given, so you might as well teach them how to drive responsibly.

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In the middle of all this, we're watching our Presidential candidates conduct an Alice in Wonderland debate about remedies for high gas prices that won't have any effect until today's kindergartners get driver's licenses. Which they won't need, because we'll all be riding bikes by then.

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To me, the most effective cartoons combine seemingly unrelated topics that happen to be in the public consciousness at the same time. Maybe they aren't so unrelated, certainly not to the poor flood victims.

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Remember the good old days, when your mother told you, "Be careful on your way to school?"
Now that you're a parent yourself, it turns out that strangers may be the least of your worries.

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The British have a delightful custom, which American political junkies can witness late at night on C-SPAN, called Questions in the House. This is where the Prime Minister is required to stand in the well of the House of Commons each week and take any and all questions from the opposition as well as his own party. He must be superbly prepared. He cannot duck, he cannot weave or bob. He will be called out if his answers are inadequate, and eventually the nation will lose confidence in him.

To me, Tim Russert performed this function for us, and this political season in particular, our nation will be the lesser for his passing.

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When I think charitably of President Bush, which is not often, I visualize him as an amiable dupe in the thrall of the incarnation of evil, Dick Cheney. There is talk that someday Cheney (along with Donald Rumsfeld) may be confined to our borders thanks to international warrants for his arrest on war crimes charges, a la Augusto Pinochet. I say fine--that will give the American people a chance to track him down first.

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In all fairness, left-wing fund raising organizations do the same thing, which is to demonize people (like Justice Antonin Scalia) to shake down their rabid base. So before you start saying I'm being disrespectful of Sen. Kennedy, let me stress that I would have drawn the same cartoon using liberals, were Justice Scalia the one who was stricken (although right-wing conservatives all know that liberals are godless. I'd have had to come up with a variation).

It's about political cynicism, nothing more or less.

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One could argue that not since Joan of Arc put on an armor suit has a line of women's clothing had such an effect on the raising of society's consciousness. Certainly the irresistible social forces that Hillary Clinton embodies made the moment appropriate in the 1960s for the introduction of the pantsuit. In return, the pantsuit may have imbued Sen. Clinton with a subliminal credibility as a potential commander-in-chief that she might not have enjoyed were she to have appeared on the campaign trail in a skirt. We'll never know for sure, but great historical events have turned upon such subtleties.

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I'm back in the saddle. Thanks to all of you who read my flashbacks on the blog while I was away.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of this job is combining seemingly unrelated topics in the news. I have developed these generic Martian characters over the years, and employed them in a variety of contexts. Originally, they had two eye stalks and a hand coming out of the chest, along with a mouth somewhere in the abdominal region and a single prognathous tooth. Now they boast only one optical appendage and a right foot.

I cannot take credit, however, for the character in the pantsuit.

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This is a subject which, as I have mentioned before, is dear to my heart. I read a story recently where the resale value of these behemoths is dropping like a stone. It reminds me of people who bought up condos to flip during the housing bubble and got left holding the bag.

Back in the good old profligate days, I remember seeing people leave their giant SUV engines running in the parking lot while they went shopping, so that the AC would keep the car cool until they got back.

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Thanks to budget cuts and higher food costs, the schools are having to choose between cutting back on the quality of the lunches they serve and raising prices, which will make them harder for low-income folks to afford. Is it just an economic issue, or is it a failure to assign the correct priorities? Somehow the legislature managed to keep funds in the budget for consolation payments to companies that lost out in bidding for state contracts.

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In all the excitement with the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, gas prices, and the economy going to hell in a handbasket, it's easy to forget there are other things going on in the world that make our issues pale by comparison. It's also easy to forget that there is somebody still occupying the White House, trying to be relevant.

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This cartoon was inspired by a business story about a well-known coffee retailing behemoth whose quarterly profits were, shall we say, disappointing. There are certain not altogether fatuous economic indicators that many experts follow carefully, for example the Macaroni and Cheese Index. When average people really start hurting, sales of this particular foodstuff show a marked rise.

We hereby inaugurate the Latte Index, which drops in indirect proportion to the rise in economic woes.

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You know we're in trouble when fuel and food prices reach the point of threatening that sacred all-American summer activity, the family driving vacation. Fortunately, modern technology will enable us to enjoy this pastime without ever having to leave the comfort of our homes...the ultimate green getaway. Let's hear it for the virtual open road!

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When you're standing there, gnashing your teeth at the gas pump, have you ever given thought to the fact that our insatiable appetite for gadding about in huge cars has caused so much land to be planted for corn to make ethanol that we're helping to drive up grain prices around the world? I hadn't either, until a short time ago.

So now people are starving--and rioting--so that we can have the freedom to take that impulse trip to the mall. It IS written into the Constitution, after all. Maybe these high fuel prices will force us, in our overriding self-interest, to re-think our responsibility to the rest of the world...

Nah.

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Every once in a while something gets handed to you on a silver platter. I got busy right away. Below, the controversial photo:

Here is my take:

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The Chinese, in their ancient wisdom, have provided us with the bond that unites mankind.

Drawing the Earth gives me a rare opportunity to use my compass, which normally lies around in a drawer waiting to stick me in the finger when I'm scrounging around for an eraser or something.

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Yes, I know...my own paper is guilty of it, too. She's splayed all over our homepage. That doesn't prevent me from commenting on my industry, though.

We have arrived at that nexus between what people want and what they need, a sore topic with those of us who still think of our profession as a calling.

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In the age of Local-Boy-Makes-Good Mark Foley and Toe-Tappin' Larry Craig, this scandal seems hardly worthy of New York, and in fact is somewhat retro (remember Wilbur Mills and Fanne Foxe in the Reflecting Pool?) but, hey, it's all they have at the moment.

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I see large SUVs, the Hummer in particular, as emblematic of why individual selfishness keeps us from solving our most critical problems.

Maybe you should be required to have a loved one fighting in Iraq in order to qualify for owning one.

If everybody had a hybrid, maybe we could tell OPEC to go drink petroleum mojitos.

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Even though I drew this back in December, I included it here because the topic so transfixed the country that even our esteemed Members of Congress wasted several days of the people's time on it. War and the economy can wait.

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This was a sensitive subject, since the company that owns the Sun-Sentinel also happens to own the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field.

When I came up with the idea, the sketch had to be approved all the way up to the publisher, Howard Greenberg. To their credit, both he and my editor-in-chief, Earl Maucker, approved it without reservations.

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