Voters Horrified by Romney’s “Freaky” Mormon Belief that Jesus Rose from the Dead

College Station, TX - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tried to assuage voters’ concerns about his being Mormon this Thursday with a speech about his faith. But it may have backfired.

“I assumed Mormonism was pretty weird already. Now I hear from Mitt that his people believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead! Yeah, right. Jesus is a zombie. Whatever you say, wacky fella,” said Lisa Stansfield as she put on her coat after hearing the speech. “We don’t need a guy believing in that kind of sci-fi stuff in our White House. We need a guy who goes by the plain old Bible.”

“Apparently, the Mormons also have this belief that, in ancient times, God killed this one guy’s livestock, wife, and children just to test him. God doesn’t do that kind of stuff in the normal Christian religions, and there aren’t people with names like Job in those religions either,” said another attendee, Deborah Gibbons, a minister at a nearby Baptist church.

“I did appreciate that Mormons didn’t allow black people into their churches, at least until 1978. That was good to find out. But, yeah, their other beliefs are very strange,” chimed in Stan McClintock, who also watched the speech. “Mary being a virgin, another Mormon belief according to Romney, seems a bit odd seeing as how she HAD A FREAKING KID!” he continued sarcastically, eliciting laughter from other exiting attendees.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney

We’ve talked about traditional newspaper-based political cartoons. But, now in the new age of the Internet, it only makes sense to discuss the exciting new innovation that’s raising the level of political cartoon: the Photoshopped one-panels.

Let’s just start with an example from internetweekly.org:

Look at it! Ha! Ha! Ha! Rove and Gonzalez in the Keystone Cops (not “Kops,” actually) outfits!!! Now, if you thought of this joke, your simple brain probably wouldn’t even have recognized it as humor due merely to it not being funny in the slightest. The idea would have passed by almost unnoticed in the same way thoughts such as “It’s kind of cold in the office today” or “My left hand is this one over here and my right hand is that one over there.” But the person who did this panel not only thought of the joke but also held on to it and wrote it down as an idea to remember, thus making them the satirist he/she calls him/herself. And being a professional, he/she no doubt tested the joke by telling it to someone (”Rove and uh Gonzalez are like the Keystone Cops, huh?”) and, after getting the polite sort-of tired half-smile to prove to him/her that, yes, indeed, the joke is hilarious, only then did he/she commit to opening Photoshop and making this thing.

And what a thing it is! First of all, it’s very funny: This is not just a picture of Rove and Gonzalez; it’s a picture of them as other wacky vintage characters.

Also, the statement made by the cartoon goes far beyond just a few laughs, as all good satire does. It makes a statement few of us would dare make about our politicians; that we think they’re dumb. And this juxtaposition of Rove and Gonzalez as Keystone Cops does it so well. The Keystone Cops were incompetent, clumsy boobs. And that’s exactly what Gonzalez and Rove, especially, are! No one would call them, instead, calculating, manipulative, or sly. This picture is worth exactly the number of words it would take to describe it: “Rove and Gonzalez are like the Keystone Cops.” It’s difficult to measure how much this cartoon contributed to Gonazalez’s and Rove’s resignations, but chances are it had a significant, if not nil, impact.

Finally, this type of political cartoon is very difficult to pull off. For example, the panel below was made by our staff, but it did take six minutes to think of and execute.

See how it’s politicians but as”Leave It to Beaver” characters? This sufficiently meets the definition of satire.

Simic: The Most Power-Abusing Poet Laureate in History?

Sour old fangs plucked and

Raining ugly from a swollen maw

Which receives a new savory mouthful from above by the tears of its beast

It looks back with downpulled eyes at the blanched columns

As it strides away to that forest. All green black thick unknown. Just forest.

Warshington, DC - After reading this cocky rebuke from Poet Laureate Charles Simic, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) throws the letter down in anger. Leahy, as well as many senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle, believe the surrealist poet may have been overstepping his Constitutional powers lately. In one incident, earlier this year, Simic convened a secret group of CIA operatives to monitor every item purchased in the United States with a credit card held by anyone with an Arabic- or East Asian-”sounding” last name, even if they’re an American citizen. The group was also to apprehend, question, and if it was felt necessary or almost necessary, torture those card holders. The crumpled letter is Simic’s reply to Leahy’s attempts to bring the 69-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner in for a committee investigation.

“In this riposte, Charles is obviously saying, although in a more roundabout way than probably necessary, that he is not a part of the executive branch. Which is supposed to mean that the Constitutional limitations on that branch do not apply to him,” Leahy explains. The chairman’s attempts to rein Simic in are increasingly frustrated by the fact that the poet could probably also claim he is not beholden to the rules for the legislative or the judicial branches as well. “We’ve got to stop this abuse of power, though. And we’ll find a way,” Leahy promises.

“Charlie’s a good man. Tries hard. I stand by him. Furry… He does what poets do excellently,” said President Bush when asked to comment on the many calls for the laureate’s resignation. Also, several worry that the president may not understand the resignation letter even if he got it. “If it’s in any kind of verse, the president may find himself in a fix trying to interpret it,” warns House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But if he has anything to say about it, Simic isn’t going to be resigning soon. “I’m completely working within the bounds of my office although, admittedly, in a more innovative capacity than my predecessors. Some of them wrote in pure rhyming verse. Some with free-verse. I’m moving into a non-verse, human rights violation-type of scheme. And I think it’s quite powerful,” said Simic.

“No one’s used the office of the poet laureate nearly to this extent ever before in the United States,” says Ted Kooser, laureate from 2004-2006 and author of the massively popular collection “Delights & Shadows.” “The most power any laureate before Simic assumed was when [Rita] Dove, the only limerickcist to hold the post, declared the ‘Man from Nantucket’ should be rewritten with the Man’s dick not so long as that he could actually suck it. This way, parents could feel better about sharing this classic with their children. But what Simic is doing is equivalent to, not only putting the length back into the Man’s dick, but doing so to the point that the dick is so massive, its shadow darkens not just our land, but the whole world and its future and its past,” said Kooser fully aware and proud of his metaphor.

Professional Charles Simic look-a-like