The Transition Era; Part 5: A New Way To Insist News Media Sucks And Muir Could Do It Better!

 So we move onto Jan and Damon, in what is the last Era where they will be central characters. At the start of the Compound Era, they will have already declined into supporting cast, and by the time we reach the Gunpowder County Era, they will be cameo fodder. And looking at what happens here, it's easy to see what Muir's basic idea was. This was again, essentially, a soft reboot, and he was going to try and return the cast into new versions of their original functions. Sam and Zed were going to go back to being 'slice of life' characters who occasionally did politics, and Jan and Damon were going to serve as DbD's primary political story engine. And that means taking a look at the pair's politics and characters at this point.

Damon is easy. As I said, he is unique among the original Core Four in not changing. But Transition Era Jan exists in a very special space, much like the Era itself. She has not completely shifted into being the liberal who agrees with everything the Right says and thinks her own side are radicals, crooks and wretches. Oh, that is gradually becoming her primary function, but not yet. She will still occasionally spout a bad approximation of a liberal policy or belief so that it may be mocked and attacked. And sometimes she will do something that's a sort of mashup, uttering what Muir imagines is the maximum allowable liberalism a person can have while not being an evil fool. To turn back the clock a bit, at the end of the Iraqi arc, to preserve an illusion of nuance Jan doesn't become an out-and-out supporter of the war.  She declares that she still feels that obviously the US shouldn't be there. But she then states that just as obviously the troops are doing a bang-up job, and they obviously all believe in the cause, and you'd have to be fool to see it differently--in essence, declaring all the propaganda depicted valid. 

As one can see, this is neither a sustainable nor an intellectually honest position for the character, and yes, by the end of the era, Jan will have moved almost completely to her new role of 'Fox News Liberal'. But another aspect is with the combination of this ongoing character reform, which left her in a strange and vague state of flux, and the loss of her job destroying almost all of her non-political character boundaries, Jan wound up emphasizing the closest approximation to a character trait she had left. She began to constantly remind people that she had been in marketing. Constantly. Over the next half-decade, one of Jan's most common character beats was mentioning marketing. It was a fascinating bit where Muir was actually doing something amusing, but not by intent. Everything it seemed had to do with marketing to Jan, in the manner of the famous episode of Car 54, Where are You? where we find everything reminds Officer Gunther Toody of Lower Manhattan at sunset, from the Jersey side.

Of course the other amusing bit is that as Jan had now shifted to the 'Good and Clever' side of the equation, everyone kept insisting now that Jan was just a wiz at marketing. This is structurally funny, firstly because anyone reading the old strips can see the cast's (and Muir's) contempt for what they saw as Jan's unproductive, immaterial role in the firm, an attitude that was being quietly magicked away. But even more amusing was a simple fact--it had been all but stated in the early years of the strip that Jan was bad at her job. It was a big part of her schtick, the wannabe liberal savior who thought she was a master at selling things who wasn't. And now, just as the cast were acting as if they'd always respected her career, they also were pretending she'd always been great at it. Which of course, led to the final bit--Muir clearly has no idea what marketing actually does, so the audience was subjected to Jan using 'marketing' the way that Golden Age comics used 'radiation' as a vague buzzword. 

The other point to remember is that the pair's relationship continued to be a deeply uncomfortable thing throughout this time, with Damon continued to treat his girlfriend--and later wife--with various brands of disrespect. The horndog advances continued. So did the belittling of her views.

So with Transition Era Jan and Damon pretty much laid out, the question then becomes... what does Muir do with these two characters in the new era?

Why, he has them start a podcast of course. Naturally. Who wouldn't want to watch these two idiots discuss politics, eh?

To be fair, this was at least not a completely unreasonable course of action for the pair--Jan and Damon were independently wealthy even before her father's ludicrous funds were considered. They could reasonably do what they wanted with their lives. The problem of course is Muir assumes they have insights worth communicating, and that they would be successful at this. Indeed, the course of this... well, it's not a storyline, so let's call it a plot element... makes it clear that not only does Muir have no idea what a good podcast should look like, he has no idea how one would function. Over the next few years, it will generally act as some sort of very low maintenance news station, alternating with "he said/she said" debates done  with Muir's usual insight, which as one can guess, wasn't much. The podcast began with the name 'Trainwreck', suggested by Sam, but quickly switched to the name 'Black and White', which was obviously about as ridiculous and poorly considered. The running theme of it all, right from the start, was that this was how news should be done and was another sign that the MSM was in real trouble, man! 

That what the pair were producing here was turgid and witless, something with all the drama and depth of watching paint dry was quietly ignored. As usual, because Muir was writing this, everyone treated this damn thing like it was an online heavyweight. And El Dorado Dad was on hand to hand the pair plentiful Plot Coupons, as we will see in the future.

Now, this is the first of what would become a fairly standard recurring element of DbD, some of the cast are doing some news thing. In many ways it is the model of them all and possibly the most successful--Muir kept it running for years and unlike many later takes, it has an ending or something close to it. In those later takes on the idea, Muir would simply get bored (for reasons we'll get into as we cover this iteration, because the problem is inherit to it) and just stop writing about it. But the most obvious effect of this is that by starting to split his cast into two semi-distinct groupings Muir began the process that would sideline Jan and Damon, turning them from main characters into background details. Not least of all because where Muir thinks he's giving them a distinct job, he's saddling them with a function that Sam and Zed do just as well. Which would be demonstrated almost immediately when Zed bumped into Muir's favored presidential candidate Fred Thompson. In Home Depot.

Like I keep saying, let it wash over you.

Urrr... Whut? HWHUT?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Adventures of Captain Africa.

At the time of this writing, in strip Muir has mistakenly placed the signing of the Declaration twenty-six years after the Boston Massacre. It was, in fact, six years and four months, the Massacre occurring March 5th, 1770. (I put this down because Muir isn't above re-editing boo-boos like this out afterwards, so I'm attempting to immortalize the error.) And that clumsy mistake typifies this whole storyline, such as it is. Muir is, as he has in fact been doing from almost the beginning of the strip, trying to appropriate the Founding Fathers for his own politics. But Muir doesn't understand them, barely engages with them. He doesn't really want to learn things because he wants myth, which is why you get things like the clumsy misdating, Muir not getting the facts right because he didn't even learn them to begin with. 

But Muir's bad at myth too. As we see with this entire storyline. And his inability to notice that Crispus Attucks puts the lie to the 'White Men' bullshit he's been pushing with ever-increasing force over the last decade. Hell, I'm fully expecting him to explain that this shows how extra right he is soon. He keeps to his pattern.

And That's Why Massive Corruption Is Good Actually!

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Roar of the Iron Horse.

It's kind of amusing to see so many strands of Muir being lazy sewn together here. We've got DEI used as a vague buzzword for stuff Muir doesn't like, the arrogant, ignorant assertion that liberalism and leftism are just bad and ruin things, they JUST do, he doesn't need to prove it, Muir swallowing a blatant obvious falsehood to explain away something shameful and thinking this proves how clever, how with it, how patriotic he is. It's such a sterling display of all the awfulness and stupidity that make him... well, him.

Has He Mentioned How Hard It Is To Be White Lately?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Pirates of the High Seas.

The eternal whine of Muir's cast that they are the most persecuted people EVAH.

God, it's so tiresome.

His Father's Son, That One.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Atom Man vs. Superman.

...

I'm going to pass commenting on Muir's new favorite racist phrase and Javier fully taking his father's mantle to note that apparently that branch of the cast have gone back to Argentina once again, so yeah, Muir gave up on reintegrating them yet again.

The Mystery Business(TM) Era; Part 5; Ol' Zip, He Be A Larned Skolar!

And now we move to the next member of the cast, the one built from the start to be blatantly political, the one who got the first little storyline in the strip, Damon. I should warn you that this is going to be a long one, as this is likely going to be the only one of these little essays focused on Damon. (He will likely be discussed in future essays, but only as part of the ensemble.) Part of this is, as I've noted, Damon has faded in importance considerably over the years, something that started during the Transition Era. I've compared him to Barney Google for how he's collapsed into the background of a strip he used to be a star of, but perhaps a better comparison would be Peanuts' Shermy, a character everybody but real Charles Schultz fans are going to go "Who?" about, which really proves my point. (The best part is this gives Jan a counterpart in the form of Patty, and no, not Peppermint Patty, this is the original Patty in Peanuts who faded into the background early along with Shermy.) Damon's gone from one of the central members of the ensemble cast to popping up every now and then, even when Muir tries to feature him more, his place taken by new characters, but also by a pair of old regulars who have become even more central to the strip.

But there's another reason for this--Damon is one of the easiest characters to write about. Characters in Day by Day don't generally develop, but they do change as Muir moves them into different roles, and that is something we will talk about in the future. For Straw Liberals, this can sometimes mimic character development, but it isn't really. But again, that's for the future. For a clearer example, Zed and Sam were a pair of urban professionals, and are now a pair of rural rednecks while keeping many of the same essential character traits. Change. Not development. But Damon though, doesn't change. His role in the strip remains exactly the same throughout. The Damon of these modern times is the same character that Muir started with, serving the same function. He's just drawn differently. Damon's circumstances may have changed, but this doesn't alter him, because again, Muir's characters do not develop. They sit in their slot, and they stay in their slot, unless Muir suddenly decides they should be in a different slot. And that, as I've noted before, will note in this, and will likely note in future installments, is why Damon just faded into the background. Muir changes much more than the characters he writes, and the Muir of today has little need for Damon, even if this lack of need does seem to feel somewhat awkward to him, resulting in the occasional attempt to push him forward back into the main cast that inevitably fails, and then he slides back into the background again.

Now, a quick explanation of the title of this installment that will seem like a digression at first--this is a line (or rather a version of a line) from an infamous minstrel show song, about one of the more notable minstrel characters. (It was also set to the tune we now largely know as 'Turkey in the Straw' one of the reasons that tune has acquired... implications of late.) Zip Coon, who so far as we can tell is the fictional character who made that word a racist slur, was different from some of the other minstrel show standards, like Jim Crow or Tambo and Mr. Bones. Where they were largely about portraying Blacks as lovable, slightly shiftless dimwits who whites could easily feel superior to, Zip... well, he had a somewhat more sinister agenda. Oh, Zip was just as stupid as Jim and the rest, but he didn't think he was. Zip thought he was clever, and that gave him airs. Yes, Zip was the original uppity negro, and most minstrels shows were filled with his efforts to bamboozle others with ridiculous high-flown language, including, as a rule, at least one ludicrous monologue filled with malapropisms, actual nonsense words, dog Latin, and sometimes even pig Latin. The underlying idea, for whites, was that Blacks might imagine they're smart, but they're wrong, and that the Black People who do it are prone to become incompetent crooks. That said, Zip was arguably one of the only elements of minstrel shows that had any complexity. Part of what made Zip amusing to audiences is that even as he attempts his ludicrous falsehoods, on some level he buys his own bullshit. As he speaks obvious nonsense, he imagines that this torrent of words is doubtless showing everyone how ingenious he is. Zip was paradoxically both lazy and shiftless, and yet constantly scheming. And if fans of old radio shows are thinking, wait, this sounds familiar, yes, this is the character type that the Kingfish, of Amos 'n' Andy fame, emerged from and from him quite a few other comic schemers. Now, as should be clear, Damon is a modern bit of minstrelsy, a white man creating a Black character to make jokes about Black people and one might be tempted to consider him a descendant of Zip. But he's not. Oh, Damon is something much worse.

Damon is a Black character who possesses only a nominal Blackness. For all that Damon shouts that liberals and Democrats only judge him by his skin, that is the only claim to Blackness as a character that he has. Damon has no connection nor interest in Black culture and Black history. Indeed, he even possesses no Black relatives, being by his account, an orphan with no family. He is completely severed from the Black experience, not only by upbringing, but by author fiat. Damon faces no hindrances by being Black. In the upside-down world Muir has crafted, the only problem his race causes him is the irritation of arrogant liberals pestering him about not fulfilling his stereotype, and about the only way he interacts with Black culture is to dismiss it. The only narrative functions of Damon's Blackness are to allow him to rail against the "real racism" of liberals and leftism and all their social programs, and to give Muir cover to announce radical conservative politics and dismiss liberal concerns. He is white man playing a Black man to tell other whiny, bigoted white racists that yes, everything you think about race and politics is correct, and the people who claim otherwise are just stupid and deluded. An actual worse form of a minstrel show character.

And that is really why Damon has fallen to the wayside. Muir no longer feels he needs to have a Black character say this. Zed and Sam can announce this racist blather openly, the Redneck Elite explaining everybody's proper place to them. Which leaves Damon hanging around, increasingly useless in a strip that clearly thought he was going to be a main feature.

The Imaginary Black Guy Is Happy He Can Be Racist In Texas.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Miracle Rider.

There is something grim and joyless in how Muir tries to use shit like this to  make himself out the fun guy, when he actually comes across as the bitter, brittle racist whinging about he can't use slurs anymore and that sucks.

He Doesn't Know What That Means. He Just Knows That Bringing In Cranky Racist Texas Judges Would Fix It.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because A School Story.

Muir's ability to turn everything he reads into proof that we need more reactionaries in power is most certainly a thing.

Putting More Power In The Hands Of Unaccountable, Unelected Billionaires! A Victory For The Volk!

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.

They destabilized their caucus and nearly caused a shutdown, only for nearly the same bill to pass minus some cancer research funding.

Muir thinks this is victory.

I Await Damon And Jan's Move To Russia.

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl).

At this point, it's sort of fascinating how Damon and Jan now only exist to provide bailouts to the compound and to give crazy anti-government rants with a slightly more polished air than Sam and Zed's Redneckistan versions. 

Why Hasn't The Heretic Cheney Been Stoned To Death, As Is Right And Proper?

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Sword of Wisdom, Demon in the Heart.

 ...I'm remembering the classic Simpsons episode where a declaration that a deep frier can fry a buffalo in a few minutes causes Homer to declare he wants a fried buffalo now.

Remember When Damon And Jan Were Main Characters?

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because the Deadly Rabbits.

As Muir waves his fist at all the young kids who seem to think socialism isn't so bad, and don't understand that it inevitably leads to Stalinism, and ignore all the times it didn't, that's just the conspiracy, let us consider this latest effort to get Damon and Jan to be relevant to the strip again, when they've largely devolved into side-characters not least because there's no longer any political differences between the pair.

They Are Faltering And Weak, And W-We Are Mighty And Strong...

 It's the Day's Day of Days! Because With God's Help, Peace.

The projection here is epic beyond Muir's normal measure, because Muir is not only projecting Republican opportunism onto the Democrats, he's projecting his own ideological about-faces, which have had him swap from neo-con hawk to neo-isolationist, all with the idea of 'owning the libs' and explaining how they're the real racists.

And it has clearly been draining for him.

The Filthy Urbanites Shall Pay!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because The Passion of Anna (1969).

And remember, the death plague doesn't matter. Portland is awful, and umm, ignore the federal agents who got sent there, that is also not an issue.

Muir's Imaginary Black Friend Sets Everyone Straight Again.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because see the monkey.

Muir's continued hostility to kneeling remains a fascinating summing up of his entire view of masculinity--a great deal of bluster and shouting to conceal deep fragility and weakness.

Moving To Twitter For Nazis Is A GOOD Thing!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because mailed through a porthole.

Ahh, yes, Gab. The Alt-Right's effort at a Twitter replacement that was supposed to take the world by storm, and now sputters on the fringes between lawsuits.

Muir's remove from reality gets ever more pronounced.

The Imaginary Black Man Sets Us All Straight.

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because Canadian Club.

It's worth pointing out that Damon has botched the saying here, rendering it nonsensical, because of course he has.

"Not Our Fault! Never Our Fault! Never, Ever, Never Ever Our Fault!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because I saw Waddy in the Rattlesnake Cafe.

Nice to see that Muir's Imaginary Black Friend is ready to explain that Democrats are the real racists, and that also, God is on the side of those who applaud tyrants.

Lying Filth, The Lot Of Them!

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because love bazooka.

He says this on the day that its shown that white supremacists have posed as BLM protesters to help set up violent confrontations. But hey, if you're only going to show the most distorted version of what your opponents are saying so you can sneer at them, why bother caring how it looks?

"You're The Only Good Sort Of Liberal, Hon--The Kind That Believes Conservatives Are Right!"

It's the Day's Day of Days! Because me and room service are living in sin.

It's always fun watching the hivemind pretend it doesn't exist.