National Cartoonists Day

Technically, National Cartoonist Day was yesterday, May 5th. It is held annually on that day so that cartoonists can make believe that everyone is drinking and partying in their honor rather than because every watering hole with a liquor license is serving half-priced margaritas on Cinco de Mayo.

Unsurprisingly, here at Hope n' Change we hold cartoonists past and present in the very highest of regards. And we're talking about actual ink-stained wretches here, rather than simple pixel-pasters like ourselves.  Genuine artists who are in it for the love of what they do - because there's surprisingly little money to be had, especially as print goes the way of the Dodo (a large bird upon which the natives of Mauritius once tattooed cartoons).

We won't list our heroes here as there are way too many of them, and we wouldn't want to leave anyone out. But we will give special recognition to the cartoonist who introduced us to so many others, and inspired us as no one else could: our own father, who passed away exactly 10 years ago on National Cartoonists Day. We love and miss you deeply, Pa, and are grateful that you can still make us laugh with cartoons like this one...

BONUS:  USE THE FARCE 

Okay, this cartoon really also needed to run yesterday and is simply our reaction to all the "May the 4th" memes that were galloping across the Internet. Just make believe it's still May the 5th, okay?

Field of Bad Dreams

They've already had an earful.

The voters of Indiana have spoken, in their measured, uninflected Midwestern dialect, and it wasn't good news for Ted Cruz. By a significant margin, Hoosiers went to the polls to declare that they found The Donald to be outstanding in the field. Which is indeed another Indiana joke, albeit not one with a very pleasing punchline: shortly after the results came in, Cruz said "enough" and dropped out of the race. This is clearly not the political year for either conservatives or the sane.

Not that we're saying the people of Indiana are nuts for voting for Trump. Far from it! They're just understandably angry with the status quo and wanted to show it in a manner which didn't involve actual thinking.

Now that might sound like a slam on Indiana - but we can get away with it, because we happen to be Hoosier ourselves (albeit living now in Texas). So we enjoy the same comic immunity that allowed Larry Wilmore to stand on a stage with the president of the United States and call him a niggah after earlier referring to Dr. Ben Carson as a jigaboo.  Which unfortunately proved only that whether you're hiring a president or a comedian, you really shouldn't do it based solely on skin color. A color which, if witness protection allows, Larry Wilmore is probably trying to change even now.

But back to Indiana. It's a beautiful state with endless and abundant fields, rolling hills, trees with astonishing color every Autumn, friendly people, and (unlike Texas) basements where you can actually hide from tornadoes. And if our fellow Hoosiers overwhelmingly decided to vote for The Donald, who can really blame them considering the persuasive quality of his reason and rhetoric...?

"I wrote a book about Lyin' Ted's father. Big bestseller. Huge. It's called "The Art of the Dealey Plaza!"

Frankly, the certainty that Trump will now win the GOP nomination would normally worry us. Only now that we know he's feeding the shrieking voices in his head with opposition research gleaned from supermarket tabloids, we at least expect it to be fun to hear him unload on Hillary...

Not only are we not making these up - we believe them!

BONUS: WHERE THERE'S A WILL, WE'RE AWAY

In this hilarious scene, Ted Kennedy tells Kopechne he's found an air hose for her to suck on, then unzips his fly...

Although the story is a few days old, we can't resist commenting on Will Ferrell's now-aborted "comedy" in which he intended to play an Alzheimer's-riddled Ronald Reagan who thought he was only playing the President in a movie.  Because losing your mind, memories, and every loving relationship to a nightmarish terminal disease is funny in Ferrell's world.

Then again, unlike Ferrell, maybe we need to show some empathy here. Obviously he lost his mind when he decided to produce and star in this travesty.

Stand Up Tragedy

"Don't try the veal. It's from Planned Parenthood."

In a shocking oversight, Hope n' Change wasn't invited to Barack Obama's final White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday - an annual black tie affair (even if your tie had a white mother) in which members of the news media, Hollywood celebrities, and politicians gather to make scathing remarks about what hateful, self-involved, peon-hating jackasses everyone else in the room is...while pretending that they're joking.

The level of decorum at the event can pretty much be summed up by comedian Larry Wilmore's reference to the president as a "niggah," which is being gleefully reported by the media as a term of praise and endearment. So perhaps we'll have to try using it in the future to show that, despite our ideological differences, we're still Mr. Obama's homeboys. After all, like Barry we're half-white. Granted, our other half is white, too.

Obama scored plenty of laughs with the best jokes that your tax money can buy, although he perhaps crossed a line when he said of Hillary's "Woman Card" that it's "the ace in her hole." Okay, he didn't actually say that, but we'd have happily given him the joke for free.

Preferably as a going away gift.