Each week, The Comics Curmudgeon helps explain Today's Cartoons. Republicans! All hail your new president, John Walnuts McCain! You and the rest of us will presumably be seeing a lot of his rheumy, liver-spotted mug on the teevee and the newspapers and, if you have the ill fortune to live in a "swing state," possibly in horrifying person. If you're like most decent, sensible people, you've ignored politics completely for the entire duration of the campaign so far and thus have no idea what this clown looks like. How, then, are to you distinguish him from any run-of-the-mill insane old man yammering nonsense? The cartooning community is here to help!
John McCain has large, protruding cheeks. Scientists have tentatively classified John McCain as member of family Sciuridae, based on the large, protruding skin flaps around his mouth; however, among field researchers, this is still controversial. Does McCain use the resulting extra room to transport food back to his nest for his dozens of children and grandchildren, as squirrels and chipmunks do? Or is this feature actually a secondary sex characteristic, with the cheeks puffing out as a means of attracting a younger mate?
John McCain has enormous teeth. Again, biologists are at odds as to the exact purpose of McCain's ludicrously exaggerated incisors and canines, but certain assumptions can be drawn.
Having spent roughly the last eight years campaigning for President in his now-filthy "Straight Talk Express" bus, McCain is unable to enjoy the simple comforts that you and I take for granted. His only defense against predators is to bare his teeth in hopes that they'll be too frightened to attack. And separated from a decent kitchen and home-cooked meals, McCain requires a set of teeth that will make quick work of any delicious, nourishing babies he encounters while shilling for votes.
John McCain's face is a grim, death-like mask. The GOP nominee is 148 years old, and thus his face has spent far more time smiling and glowering manfully than God or genetics intended. Who knows what combination of perverted medical science and black magic keeps it from melting off entirely like the Nazis' faces in Raiders of the Lost Ark, horrifying whatever friendly audience (the local VFW post, say, or the members of an upscale country club) he happens to be addressing at the time? We should give thanks that it holds together at all at not quibble with the results.
John McCain's face is a horrifying series of tumors stacked upon tumors. Of course, even science and voodoo can only hold out for so long before nature finally takes its course. Is America ready for a president whose face is as monstrously lumpy as this cartoon imagines? Will McCain be the first commander-in-chief to give the State of the Union address from behind a screen, or wearing a burlap sack to hide himself from a nation's easily traumatized eyes? Will Vice President Ron Paul conspire with the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and depose the president due to extreme hideousness?
John McCain is an adorable bulldog. Oh, who's a good boy? John McCain's a good boy! Oh woogie woogie snookie! We don't mind if you slobber all over the carpet or keep us in Iraq for hundreds and hundreds of years, really we don't! Let us scratch you behind the ears! So cute!
