Comedy & Satire
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“Us” could refer to Germany, given the magazine, but note the European flag that the two bowing men are standing on—with the corpse of Ukraine laid out face down between them. If the corpse is hyperbole, the betrayal and its geopolitical consequences are very real, ↩︎
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Fischer was a politician in the Greens who served as Germany’s popular foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. ↩︎
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Written in ink partly over the English caption are some words in French I can’t quite make out. Source: The Newberry Library, John I. Monroe collection of artist-signed postcards, https://collections.newberry.org/asset-management/2KXJ8ZS64D8UI. ↩︎
My son sent me a picture of a blurry coywolf running in front of his house this afternoon. This evening he had my young granddaughter say “April Fools!” during our video chat. The photo was a product of AI.
Our fascination with such fakes doesn’t just go back to Photoshop and before that photocopiers. There were plenty of joke postcards in the early twentieth century, many of them agricultural. There were ears of corn as long as hay wagons, onions that took two men to roll up a ramp into a truck or wagon, a Maine potato that filled a whole flatbed rail car, and so on. The jackalope was also popular.
Image via Bill Lende collection of tall tale postcards, The Newberry Digital Collections, id NL12843G.
More animated satire by @Freeonis: “Oval Deception” (3 min.) at youtu.be…. Use the closed caption button (cc) for subtitles.🇺🇦
“Trump Says Recession Unfortunate but Necessary Step to Get to Depression,” The Onion, March 10, 2025, theonion.com….
The title of this cover from a prominent German news weekly borrows from a famous Ronald Reagan quote: “Axis of Evil” (Die Achse der Bösen). Only this time a Republican president is casting the United States on the side of evil. The remaining text points to the “danger of war in Europe” and asks “what Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine means for us."1 The cover also mentions a statement by Joschka Fischer in an interview: “Germany needs conscription again."2
POSTSCRIPT: See comments for connection to 1939
Knock-Out Blow to the Russian Bear: Postcard from 1904–05
“Your size and weight don’t count in my style of wrestling.”
This was the last in a series of six postcards that marked the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05).1 I chose it because its caption speaks to Russia’s current war against Ukraine. The Russian Bear’s smaller opponent says, “Your size and weight don’t count in my style of wrestling.” Unlike today, Japan, not Russia, began this war with a surprise attack. Still, observers assumed the Russian Bear would prevail. It did not, and the Tsar faced revolution at home. The bigger the beast, the harder the fall.
The war in Ukraine is different, but there, too, Russia is running up against the limits of its strength. It is facing economic collapse and worse. Rather strangely, the new-old U.S. president wants to throw his weight behind the corrupt old Russian Bear. Doing so will cost more Ukrainian lives and the United States its reputation and influence. But Ukraine will come up with new ways to stop Russia. Meanwhile, the political cartoonists will continue to do their thing, if not on postcards.
“Theodora Goes Wild,” dir. Richard Boleslawski (Columbia Pictures, 1936) is great fun. It roasts performative morality, gossip, and small-mindedness. The main attraction, though, is Irene Dunne, who soon comes to handle it all with aplomb.
📺 I really enjoy the U.S. iteration of “Have I Got News For You.” Roy Wood Jr., the host, is brilliant. I was missing Amber Ruffin, a team captain on the show, after her short-lived show on Peacock. And this is my introduction to Michael Ian Black, the other team captain. Great fun.
“Make Ukraine Guilty Again” – short cartoon by Freeonis, youtu.be…. Turn on closed captions for English subtitles.🇺🇦
I’m terrible at memes, but poking fun at the oaf is never not fun.
If you choose not to continue in your current role in the cult, we thank you for your service to your Dead God, and you will be provided with an unsummoning spell from the Gore Palace utilizing a deferred immolation program.
– “Deferred Culling Email to President Nyarlathotep’s Workforce” by Andrew Paul, www.mcsweeneys.net…, January 29, 2025.
This funny old German postcard about “the end of the world” caught my attention because of tomorrow’s big event in Washington, DC, Orange Oaf’s return to the White House. The card feels somewhat prophetic, but the earlier threat it references was celestial, not human. Many people were panicking because Earth was expected to pass through the tail of Halley’s Comet on May 19, 1910.
One of the signs to the right in the postcard advertises “Airplanes for rent | Deliverance from the apocalypse!” The other offers big jugs of gasoline, each containing enough to reach (reichend ) the moon, or pungent enough for the odor to carry (riechend ) that far. The airplanes, dirigibles, and hot air balloons for escaping to the moon look as fanciful as their purported purpose.
Source: Newberry Library, John I. Monroe collection of fantasy postcards, NL116N96.
🇺🇦 Excellent satirical primer on the Russo-Ukrainian War: a half hour of military and foreign policy animations by @Freeonis in 2024 (in Ukrainian with English subtitles), youtu.be…
An Old Putin Meme – 'Weaponizing Ridicule'
Here is a once popular meme in Russia that the thin-skinned Putin banned, thereby making it more popular (artist unknown). This is one of the examples that J. Michael Waller offers in “Weaponizing Ridicule” (Military Review, Sept.–Oct. 2017). His findings, it seems to me, are relevant to how we could deal with the big orange lump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson announces that male Republicans neutered by Donald Trump may continue to use the men’s bathrooms.
“One Against All” (animation) by Фріоніс with English subtitles (2:20), youtu.be/8LXEG1mhg… 🇺🇦
I’m nostalgic for the days when you could tell the difference between a message announcing a Cabinet appointment and a trollish shitpost.