I GO POGO (1980) – A possum for president? This stop-motion animation rendition of Walt Kelly’s iconic comic strip Pogo is, sad to say, even more aimless and unentertaining than the 1969 conventional animation show The Pogo Special Birthday Special. That IS the actual title, by the way. The approach to that half-hour cartoon special was, as the title indicates, so cloyingly cutesy that even Walt Kelly himself disliked it.
Walt Kelly passed away in 1973 so at least he didn’t have to see this second travesty of his brilliant series. Pogo (1948-1975) featured cartoon animals who lived in the Okefenokee Swamp and were as cute and memorable as anything that Disney or Hanna-Barbera ever produced. Like the much later children’s franchise The Muppets, Pogo appealed to adults as well as children, and even sprinkled in a fair amount of political and social commentary.
Kelly was a master of making his political allegories blend so seamlessly into the tales of his cartoon animals that the deeper meaning would go over children’s heads as they enjoyed the antics of the Okefenokee Swamp’s denizens. For a comparison, think of how Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was a very biting satire but the story outline is so perfect it survived as a children’s tale long after the political and social topics that Swift was writing about faded into history.
And though each side of the American political aisle tries to claim Walt Kelly as their own he was actually my kind of guy and took shots at BOTH SIDES. The political left could point to the way that Kelly’s 1950s cat character Simple J. Malarkey was an unflattering caricature of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, but the right could point to Walt’s cowbird characters who embodied pretentious, parasitic communist activists.
Blame the 1969 television special and this 1980 bomb for helping to consign these brilliant cartoon figures to oblivion, even though they once rivaled the Disney Empire in merchandising. Peanuts and Winnie the Pooh had nothing on Pogo and company. Continue reading
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog will once again jump in on this topic. Just as it’s repulsive when Republican presidents try to define what does or does not make someone “pro-American” it’s every bit as nauseating when a Democrat president does it. Even more pathetic is the way that senile yet corrupt Joe Biden tried to tie it in with the mass-trespassing incident which Democrat party demagogues pretend was an “insurrection.” LMAO! 
YOU CAN’T BE CALLOUS ABOUT THE SUFFERING YOUR POLICIES HAVE INFLICTED ON THE WORKING CLASS AND THE POOR AND BE PRO-AMERICAN.
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog takes another look at recent political cartoons, many of them about career criminal Joe Biden and the Biden Crime Family. 
Up first below is yet another reminder about how illegitimate the Democrats’ absurd January 6th Committee is, with Democrat violence once again sweeping the nation and with Democrats calling for the violent deaths of government figures. 
Here at Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog I’ve long pointed out that one of the many things that drove so many like me away from the Democrats is the way that financially comfortable Democrats are every bit as callous and uncaring toward the working class and the poor as the richest snobs ever were. 
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at some recent political cartoons and the failures of elected Democrats and Republicans. (Plus, how about Joe Biden’s latest senile gibberish. He actually said “How did we get to the place where, you know, Putin decides he’s gonna just invade Russia?”)
A SHOGGOTH ON THE ROOF (2000) – This comedic short film is a 19 1/2-minute mock documentary from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It was a very early effort to mimic the Found Footage approach of the previous year’s Blair Witch Project and centered around a fictional musical parody of Fiddler on the Roof using Shoggoth monsters plus other characters and situations from H.P. Lovecraft’s horror tales. 
The tongue in cheek story began with found film footage of what appeared to be stage rehearsals for the nonexistent musical A Shoggoth on the Roof. A tape of that footage was received by members of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, who then set out to investigate its bona fides while filming their own efforts in mock documentary style. 
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog presents another item from Mary Harris Jones, better known as “Mother” Jones. This pioneering lady stays in touch with Balladeer’s Blog despite having passed away long ago. Now THAT’S dedication. 
MOTHER JONES: Thank you, Balladeer. I want to jump in with some of the latest dispatches from the Biden Regime’s war on the rest of us, a war they wage alongside complicit Republican office-holders like Cocaine Mitch McConnell. 
Balladeer's Blog 