—Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes, 1989
My husband, son and I are inveterate cartoon readers and when a cartoon is especially good, we save it.
They get a position on our refrigerator for a period of time and then get cycled off when something else good comes along.
I'm not sure why but I've been saving cartoons we like for over 25 years now. And I know this because the three of us sat down last night to sort through our collection to see if there was anything we wanted to toss.
I have to say, the dispose-of pile was miniscule.
But that, to me, was not as remarkable as how timely most of these cartoons still are. Change a name here or there and you could reprint them today.
This re-realization bolstered my feeling that ignoring most of what passes for politics and media in this country is not only a sane response to the garbage flowing our way, it is the only response that makes sense.
Some days, I just like the feeling of being justified and having my opinion backed up by such experts as Opus and Hobbes and Calvin and Mike Doonesbury and the whole family in For Better or For Worse and the characters in Shoe with an occasional Charlie Brown thrown in for good measure just sweetens that feeling.
So "click" the off buttons in your life, the ones connected to "talk" radio (actually, I think it should be "shout" radio), your television, even the hyper-partisan-websites of your chosen belief system. Remember, no matter how good the intentions of the people running these shows, their vested interest is really advertising sales.
You don't owe them your peace of mind. Honest. Turn it all off. You'll feel much better in the morning.
And if you doze off Rip-Van-Winkle-like for the next 25 years, you won't have missed a thing.
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