Auchtoon!The Golden Age
Typically, when a cartoonist makes a note to apologize for appropriating another cartoonist’s work, it’s for something widely recognized. For example, apologizing to Schultz for a “Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown” setup.
My apology is for something less well known but no less brilliant. In the 1960s Brant Parker and Johnny Hart created a newspaper comic strip called “The Wizard of Id.” And probably their best known gag from that strip had the tyrant king speechifying to a crowd of peasants, doing his best to pacify them by stressing the need for peace and harmony. “Remember the golden rule,” he says. “We must all live by the golden rule.” In the next panel, one of the peasants turns to another and says, “What the heck is the golden rule?” And in the last panel another says, “Whoever has the gold makes the rules.”
Donald Trump came to Michigan this week and delivered a speech that very much had this vibe. And in fact he did say to his subjects, er, the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen of Michigan, the golden age of America is upon us!”
Really? Seriously? Because that’s not what us peasants, er, citizens are experiencing.
