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Today we present the latest, irrefutable evidence that America’s most talented journalists are free flowing to the web (emphasis on “free”), with the Calbuzz debut of award-winning editorial cartoonist Tom Meyer.
Meyer, who says he aimed to “entertain and exasperate readers” during a 28-year stint at the SF Chronicle, has also been published in the NYT, the WashPost, New Republic and National Journal, plus a whole bushel full of other places through United Features Syndicate.
Recipient of a Fischetti Award, the big-deal editorial cartoon competition named after the late, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist John Fischetti, Meyer also has been honored with a James Madison Freedom of Information Act Award – not to mention a couple of particle board plaques from the Peninsula Press Club. In his spare time, he likes to bet on dachshund races.
He’s quite simply one of the best in the business, a point we think is sharply underscored by today’s take on televising the Prop. 8 trial. Please join us in welcoming Meyer to the Calbuzz ranks.
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The Return of Dr. Hackenflack:
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In analyzing the Massachusetts Senate race, do you think Scott Brown’s nude centerfold photos in Cosmo were a really big factor?
– Lady Gaga, Poker Face, Tex.
Dear Gaga,
There was a MASSIVE gender gap on this issue: Men thought it a huge positive by +10, but women said it wasn’t that big a deal, only +4. Final length of victory = +5.
Herr Doktor,
I just heard Meg Whitman’s new statewide radio ad attacking people on welfare. Isn’t she a zillionaire or something – is this really the greatest good for the greatest number?
– Karl, Marxville
Dear Karl,
Please remember, the filthy rich are people, too. I’m sure she’s more than willing to give one of those welfare folks a good job grooming her horse or cleaning up behind it.
To Dr. P.J. Hackenflack
From Ellen from Malcolmsburg
Re: Women and Whitman
I just stumbled across Meg Whitman’s campaign video with testimonials about her from prominent women in politics, like Jillian Hasner, Amisha Patel, Jessica Patterson, Sara Myers and Sarah Pompei. She sounds like such a generous person!
Dear Ellen,
Yes, since everyone in the video is on her payroll, we think of it as eMeg’s very own welfare queen program.
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s time-space continuum: Plenty of Calbuzzers, not yet eligible to pull money out of their 401(k)s, were scratching their heads when California’s Acting Governor, Attorney General Jerry Brown, joked in Wednesday’s “Quicktake” that he planned to suspend AB32 and compared himself in the process to former Lite Gov. Mike Curb.
A Calbuzz stroll through the dustbin of history (mixed metaphor? –ed) brought back vivid memories of Curb, the cherubic-faced record* executive-turned-future-hope-of-the-Republican party. In 1979, his first year in office, Curb carried on a campaign of political performance art, purporting to seize control of the levers of power every time Brown left California to promote his nascent bid for president, which was pretty damned often.
Curb’s dumbass guerrilla effort crashed on the evening of Wednesday, May 16, when he tried once again to assert his disputed powers as acting governor, this time suspending state standards for the content of gasoline, and pretty much making a fool of himself to boot.
With Brown in D.C. , Curb with great ceremony signed a proclamation in San Francisco, rolling back tougher-than-national standards on lead and vapor pressure in gas. Not long after, an aide discovered that the word “consistent” had been substituted for the word “inconsistent” in the signed executive order, which would have given it exactly the opposite effect Curb intended.
So he made a mad, 90-mile dash to Sacramento, for a very informal meeting with then-Deputy Secretary of State Michael S. Gagan, a favorite of Sacramento’s crowded, after-work saloon crowd, who happened to live one floor below Brown’s famous “mattress on the floor” digs in an apartment near the Capitol.
Curb was met at the curb by a trio of tipped-off reporters when he pulled up to the apartment. The group included a future Calbuzzer, who provided this chronology for S.F.’s morning paper the following day:
6:59:30 – Curb hustles into the apartment house elevator accompanied by an aide and several reporters who showed up to greet him.
As the elevator door closes, a building security guard throws it open and asks, “Who let you in?’”
“You’re holding up state business,” says the aide, explaining that the deputy secretary of state is expecting the lieutenant governor.
7:00 – As the governor’s plane approaches California’s skies, the elevator slowly creaks up to the fifth floor and Curb mumbles, “There’s got to be an easier way to make a living…This is the last thing I needed this week.”
7:02:10 – Deputy Secretary of State Gagan calls the telephone recording that gives the time, as Curb signs his corrected executive order, sitting on a leather couch below a leaded glass lamp with the word “Budweiser” embossed on it.
7:03 – As Gagan, drinking a beer, completes the legal necessities of accepting the proclamation…Curb paces in the living room of the neatly furnished apartment and answers questions from reporters.
“Some people may not understand why we did this, but I think it’s a key issue,” Curb says. “I don’t think anyone with a brain doubts this is going to produce more gas.”
For the record, SF Chronicle night city editor Michael Taylor was told by the Federal Aviation Administration later that night that Brown’s plane entered California air space at the Colorado River on Jet Airway J-10 at 7:06 pm, PST. You could look it up.
* A disk designed to be played on a phonograph (an electronic device that reproduces sound by means of a stylus in contact with a grooved rotating disk).
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efies laws of arithmetic: In the wake of the Massachusetts Senate race, there are plenty of things a Republican Senate wannabe like Carly Fiorina could whack an incumbent Democrat like Barbara Boxer over – but one of them is not campaign fundraising, especially one larded with numbers that are backasswards.
“Barbara Boxer should be a very worried incumbent senator today,” sez a new press release from Hurricane Carly HQ. “Not only did Carly out-raise Boxer in just 60 days to the tune of 2 to 1, but the polls” etc. etc.
Well, not really. In fact, iCarly’s “2-to-1” claim about out raising Boxer turns out to be what Poor George W would call your fuzzy math.
In her latest campaign finance filing, Fiorina in the 4th quarter of 2009 did, in fact, report receipts of $3.58 million, compared to $1.8 million for Boxer. Problem is, $2.5 million of the total – 70 per cent – came in the form of $2.5 million loan from Carly to herself.
In contributions, it was Boxer who out-raised Fiorina almost 2-to-1 – $1.8 million to $1.08 million.
More importantly, Babs has $7.2 million in the bank, compared to the iCarly’s $2.75 million – including the self-loan. Which helps explain how the Hurricane messed up the finances at HP so effectively during her tenure there.
Today’s sign the end of civilization is near: TMZ sez Mo’Nique’s got a leg up on the competition. (You wanna see it, you gotta follow the link.)