Bad for business

In a land full of stupid ideas, the stupidest may be for-profit prisons.

Thanx to Charles P. Pierce.

Is Garfield supposed to be funny?

The article says, “Unlike New Yorker cartoons, in which, you are actually missing the joke, Garfield is in fact not even designed to be funny.”

First of all, one does not “miss the joke” in traditional (not Charles Addams) New Yorker cartoons; one recognizes that it is a joke, without actually laughing. And Garfield was originally funny. It has merely followed the standard life cycle of comic strips, in which it starts out funny and winds up coasting on people’s memories of how funny it used to be (Peanuts, Dilbert). I suspect there was a time when Beetle Bailey was funny, although I personally do not remember it.