Keeping my head above water

This cartoon, which ran in the American Prospect in December of 2001, riffs on a Hannity & Colmes-style show called “The Shouting Zone.”

Well, once again, reality outpaces satire:

Note also the fourth panel in that cartoon, in which — crazy, over the top satirist that I am — I have the conservative suggesting that the evildoers should be “tortured until they spill their guts.” This was, of course, well before the Abu Ghraib revelations, back when the very notion that anyone would condone the torture of detainees still seemed like — well — outrageous satire.

That’s how far we’ve come, and how quickly.