Roll Over, Hercules — Cleaning The Augean Stables Was A Picnic Compared To The "Job" Given To Pest Exterminators (Including Bedbugs) When The White House Is Vacated By Its Current Occupants On January 21, 2021

Yesterday's In Box contained e-mail from Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) containing both today's TMW-'toon and the following message:

With two different bedbug controversies in political news last week, it seemed like time to dust off my “Bedbug Man” character. Don’t feel bad if you’ve never seen him before — he only made one appearance, about eight years ago (coming out of hiding to harass Obama about something I disagreed with, inspiring one commenter to applaud me for noting that Obama’s critics were vermin, which was not quite the point I was hoping to make). I came up with the character after having a run-in with bedbugs myself, when I went on a NASA tweetup to see the launch of the Mars Curiosity rover — friends who stayed at the same bed and breakfast I was at had no problems, and in retrospect I think I rented an infested car. In any case, man, what a hassle. I figured it out early enough not to bring any of them into my home with me — threw away my luggage, washed all my clothes on an ultra-hot setting, etc., and managed to dodge that bullet. But I had bedbugs on my mind at the time.

So, if you are fortunate enough to have absolutely no idea what the Bret Stephens thing is about — here’s a quick rundown. Meanwhile, Trump is hoping to profit from the next G7 meeting by holding it at his own [Doral, FL] resort — which, as it turns out, has settled at least one lawsuit due to bedbugs. So I had to work that in, there at the end, it just would have been a weird omission, otherwise. I don’t know why it occurred to me to show Trump tweeting his response to Bedbug Man, rather than talking to him directly, but it made me laugh.

Admittedly, none of this is the most important news we are facing, but man, sometimes — if only for my own mental health — I need to just have a little fun. On top of that, I realized it was one of those early-deadline weeks due to the three day weekend and I needed to get something done much sooner than usual. I always have a vague idea that they’re coming, and yet they surprise me every time. It’s like I’m some sort of cartoon-producing animal, which I guess is arguably an accurate description.

Enjoy your weekend, if you are one of those lucky people with a “job” who gets to take “days off”!

Until next time….


Dan/Tom

With that, this blogger hopes that Dan/Tom "had some fun" after posting this accompanying message to his subscribers, If this is a (fair & balanced) modest wish, so be it.

[x TMW]
The Adventures of Bedbug-Man
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political blog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]

Copyright © 2019 This Modern World/Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)




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