“Fore-armed: that’s half a octopus!” If you look at my Comics page, you’ll find some good news about Pogo Possum. There’s an official Pogo website here, as is only right and just. One thing for sure, you won’t find Pogo putting lipstick on a pig.

I’ve been a pogo fan at least since high school when Simple J. Malarkey and the Jack Acid Society delighted us (well, some of us) in my high school civics class. I also loved the strip’s spoofs of the then popular Mickey Spillane crime novels, which dressed Albert the Alligator up in a trench coat. The Wikipedia article on Pogo is actually pretty good.

Pogo’s creator, the late Walt Kelly, once wrote a piece in Atlantic, in which he defended the thesis that all humor involves the enjoyment of pain. I couldn’t find that one quickly, but here’s another that muses about children, noise language, and nonsense (so called). Constantine von Hoffman has called Kelly the first graphic novelist. His 2007 birthday salute to Kelly is worth reading. You can read Kelly’s autobiography at the Kelly Website, together with a good deal else that will delight you if you remember Pogo as I do.

Back where the lipstick meets the pigskin, the McCain campaign has now apparently adopted the big lie as a central strategy. As Michael Kinsley pointed out in a column not too long ago it’s hard, even for reporters, to deal with a big, complicated lie. I would add, especially when the lie is presented shamelessly and succinctly in a TV ad or smoothly and with utmost gravity as in the original swift boat campaign. Here’s one of the most recent McCain swift boaters. You have to admire such shamelessness, in a way.

Of course, they’ve already been caught on this one, though I’ll bet they don’t take it off the air. What I’m wondering is what makes McCain’s strategists think there’s a receptive audience for this kind of stuff that’s large enough to justify the expense. With John Kerry it was the fact that his anti-war activism had always been problematic for many Americans. McCain, generally, is trying to link Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq unfavorably to protest against Vietnam. But what specifically about Obama makes him vulnerable to the kind of lies contained in this video? Are they perhaps developing some theme other than the now familiar Sarah Palin victim trope?

Perhaps when you’re running a relentlessly negative campaign it’s useful to accuse your opponent of the same thing. Or perhaps what’s worth the expense is keeping Obama off his game, and the public distracted. The wolves are a sleazy touch that may backfire, though — more beautiful than frightening to my eye.