Not the worst thing he could’ve said, but if (when) that turns out not to be true or the surgery’s inaccessible for Marcie’s family, that’s gonna bite him in the ass.
I don’t think its hard to put the pieces together from this point. A treatment is available, but Marcie’s family can’t afford it. Sal tries to raise the money for years through legitimate means, but after a few years realizes its never going to be enough, so she decides to rob a gas station.
Sal’s 12 at this point and the robbery is when she’s 13. I’m guessing something drastic happened to convince her the robbery was the best way to get money if that’s the case.
Yeah this seems like a pretty ill-thought statement on every level. Does he even know what the injury was, specifically? I’m no expert on throat injuries but I would lay good money there isn’t always a surgery for that.
What else is he supposed to say here, “Yes, you’ve irreparably maimed your best friend. This is why we prefer your brother.”? He’s her dad, he’s trying to make her feel better.
To Sal, that might still sound the same. It kinda woukld to me (or it at least sounds a little heartless?).
Because saying that it’s okay (…which just means, it will be okay eventually. People who have major injuries that change their phyical abilities often go through traumatic stuff.) doesn’t just make it okay, especially right now. It’s not okay that Marcie lost her ability to speak so young. It’s very much not okay.
(The point I’m probably trying to make is, right now it’s a really bad injury, and it’s understandable to feel bad about that and be scared that it might never heal and become the way it was before again. There’s a time and a place to explain to your kid that disabled people can have just as a happy and fulfilling life as ablebodied people, it’s just not now.)
I don’t really agree with this. To me, I’d feel better hearing my friend’s life’s not ruined and she can in fact still be happy and ‘it’s okay to feel bad and be scared’ is not what Charles said either. It’s one thing to say ‘Maybe not and it’s okay to be upset about that and worried about her’ and another to say ‘eh, I’m sure they can fix it’. One’s a false reassurance and not helpful at all because Marcie’s disability is not going away and someone needs to prepare Sal for that reality.
Clearly he didn’t know what the injury was, let alone that Marcie wouldn’t recover from it. As an immediate first reaction (especially absent any definitive reason not to), parents offer reassurance and comfort to their children, particularly younger ones. A more nuanced response could/would follow when more information is available.
Sal isn’t a young child here, she’s 12. And you can say something comforting without going immediately to false assurance, especially when as you said he doesn’t know what the injury is.
Sal blames herself but that doesn’t mean it was her fault or she actually hurt Marcie herself. Maybe Sal got in a fight and Marcie tried to pull her out of it, didn’t listen and got punched/kicked/stabbed in the throat for her trouble? Maybe somebody wanted to upset her by attacking her “little friend” who she usually protected? (Remember the previous flashback with the guy who sent Marcie flying who Sal beat up, end result Sal got in trouble for attacking a good student and he faced no consequences for hurting a smaller kiddo coz she shouldn’t have been there?)
Small correction – Sal beat the kid up BECAUSE he didn’t face consequences when she reported him. We never saw what the consequences were for her beating him up.
Sal blamed herself for Marcie’s injury in yesterday’s comic, but she didn’t say anything about that here. So unless he heard something in the call about it being her fault, her dad shouldn’t have any reason to think it was.
Whatever Sal’s “involvement” was, I’m guessing it’s the kind where no one else would think of it as her fault, just something she thinks she could have prevented.
Honestly, I don’t really care if Charles didn’t have a perfect response – he’s in the tough position of trying to process what’s going on and reassure his daughter on the verge of tears. Whether or not surgery specifically fixes it, reminding her she might be able to recover isn’t awful.
He may well look back at this exchange later that night and go “wait, I should’ve said that”, but who hasn’t?
She attacked Marcie’s tormentors, causing them to attack Marcie with renewed vigor.
Remember when Sal said that Amazi-girl escalates situations instead of resolving them? Then told Amazi-girl that Amazi-girl probably does superheroics because of “the same shit that fueled me years ago”?
Yeah. Sal tried vigilantism and it landed Marcie in the ER with a permanent condition.
I’m not really sure what the answer would be in that situation then, since Sal tried the ‘right’ way to handle Marcie’s tormenters and all it did was get Marcie punished. I really don’t know what she can do at that point.
Sometimes, in the system, there is no right answer except “The serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
Outside the system… well, it’s hard to operate there for long.
Sometimes we can’t help kids in trouble. I still remember the little homeless girl I saw begging with her mother years ago. Just a brief look as I drove by, but she was so bright-eyed – she reminds me of my daughter now. Sometimes I wish I’d stopped to offer to tutor her or something – but a strange 6’2″ man offering to spend one on one time with a five year old? No, that’s not the answer.
Meanwhile, there are over 500 kids still separated from their parents by our government’s direct and deliberate action, some of whom will never be reunited. What can be done about that? Why am I not seeing any significant grassroots activism about it?
Because of two probelems 1) the Golden Rule, the one with the money makes the rule. In this case because Congress has the best politicians money can buy, and the people like the Koch Brothers have the money to buy them. And 2) too many people don’t talk to their neighbor’s, they don’t engage in discourse, they get their News from their smart phones’ CNN feed, or the Fox feed, or Brightbart, and nowhere else.
Probably the reason you’re not seeing any significant grassroots activism is that the media is trying to downplay it. There HAVE been protests and the like. (Have you heard about the “Occupy ICE” protests?) I would search for ICE protests near your city and see what you come up with.)
I think that once the administration’s failed (the school administration in this case) the best ‘in system’ thing to do would be A) Yelling and or/verbally telling off whoever was being shit and telling everyone what he did and how the school failed to react, consequences wise, and B) Supporting Marcie, taking care of victims wise. Accepting something wrong consequence free doesn’t seem like Sal’s style.
Apparently the right thing to do is actually to tell an adult? IME they then either minimise what’s happening (thanks Mum, that…. wasn’t at all damaging, no really), tell you that if you punch back once, hard enough, they won’t bother you again (ummm… try “enlist 2 friends and thereafter attack you at least 3 against one” instead, Dad), or act like reporting the bullying is as much of an issue for them as the bullying (no seriously, former teacher: that is how you make children feel when you tell them that if they hear about any further incidents, you and your tormentor will both be sent to the headmistress (female principal). I thought I was being told off and threatened with serious consequences for trying to get them to do something).
With the teacher thing… A different teacher on being disturbed by a small child screaming, persistently as loudly as she could, on looking out to see her surrounded by 15 boys, told her to stop screaming before she broke a window. I was actually going for impenetrable shield bubble of piercing ear pain, because their stated reason for being in that circle around me was to all beat me up together… I’m not sure if reading a situation, de-escalation, etc were covered in their training or included in their explicitly listed duties at all, but my impression was that they were not.
Apparently schools are generally better at actually tackling it these days..? I’m not convinced but they couldn’t really be much worse without trying. Although it was when I was 17, at a school with an anti-bullying charter, that my dad had to write a letter to one of the heads of sixth form telling her that my friends were telling him that her treatment of me was verging on bullying so could she please not do that…
Don’t tell nobody what I wanna do
If they find out, you know that they’ll never let me through
And it’s no fun being an Illegal Alien
Not the first time this song has played here, and probably won’t be the last.
Actually, they have Linda’s hair color- look at Walky’s hair closely and you see the hair at the top is similar to Linda’s grayish brown hair. It’s been part of them since the start, the dark brown hair has to come from Charles but can be explained away as it being due to his premature graying…
Mmmh, I do hope Charles turns out to be like Hank Brown and puts his daughter above whatever biases Linda (and presumably he) have. We wouldn’t really see whether he’s like that in a flashback, but he’s always read to me as well-meaning, at least.
He’s a well meaning wall flower. At least in the Walkyverse he bonds with his kids a lot more when Linda is out of the picture. I assume something similar will happen in this universe eventually. Plenty of people want to pick him apart for letting some bad things happen, but it’s pretty easy to understand if you’re a quite person
“understandable” and “bad parenting” are not mutually exclusive.
like, my dad was a really nice guy, and really fun to be around, but his lack of executive functioning meant I stayed with my mum despite being scared of her, so that I’d at least get regular meals. 😛
Yeah… that’s a solid example of that distinction. By which I mean, I’m sorry you went through that, Inahc!
It seems likely to me that Charles doesn’t do anything actively harmful to the kids, and that all the harmful parenting comes from Linda. But the part that really matters is that the twins are suffering shitty parenting, and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for being frustrated with Charles for not cancelling out Linda’s behavior.
Not clear to me why you think that. I guess we’ve seen more of her being bad, but then we’ve seen more of her in general. The hair thing was all him, though.
Sal doesn’t seem to distinguish. Nor does Walky, when he’s forced to look at it.
I guess I wasn’t drawing anything conclusive from the hair thing (though yeah that indicates bad things about Charles’), and was focusing mostly on what (little) we’ve seen of his personality- that he’s mostly positive and generally quiet (maybe deferring to Linda?). But you’re absolutely right, I’m not drawing my read from anything concrete. And it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) matter to the kids, who are the important ones here.
Hmmm. Not the way I’d personally recommend handling it (I wouldn’t recommend giving kids false assurances, however understandable) and that’s certainly not a nice way to refer to Marcie and her family, he’s also not yelling, lecturing her on how she’s a failure, insulting her to her face, or ignoring her for five fucking years while she’s in another state so…congrats, Chuck, on not being actively shitty for once?
Also, about that alt text – I realize its likely a joke, but it’s still weird to get personal details about shitty parents like Charles going by ‘Chuck’ or ‘Charlie’ (referenced on tumblr) or Linda having a taste for dirty jokes in the Walkyverse. It’s just…no. Does not compute.
I know, but it feels like finding out Mary like anime nothing really wrong with it, it’s just the kind of personal details that make me do a double take.
Never hesitate to call out people on their shitty behavior, or on the attitudes that lead to that behavior. But always remember they’re still people. Dehumanizing them is the first step to being just as shitty as they are.
Also, dehumanizing shitty people makes it harder to recognize other shitty people.
“I know X does that. He’s a monster. Y’s always been nice. He can’t be a monster like X. Z must be exaggerating about what he did.”
Yup. :/ It’s uncomfortable because it’s so much easier on the brain to just write someone off as “bad person” and not have to think beyond that. Sometimes that’s an important survival skill, sometimes it’s… maladaptive.
It’s funny – I was actually pleased with him when I first saw this strip, but after thinking about it and writing that out it ended up sounding…not. I guess when you put it that way, it’s hard to be pleased with him.
Personally, I think telling Sal, ‘Maybe she won’t, but she can still have a happy life even if she can’t talk, and you’ll be there for her every step of the way, right?’ would have been better. But this is nicer than my usual expectations of the Walkertons so yeah, good job, Chuck.
I just assume by now most parents in this strip have some casually ableist beliefs. Tends to be the norm among society anyway, especially if they have no practical experience with one.
Fair enough. I still say any sort of acknowledgement of reality along the lines of ‘Maybe not, but you’ll still be there for her right?’ would be better.
Oh absolutely. And your suggestion would be ideal, it’s just me being jaded and not expecting that level of understanding from Charles, because like. Charles.
Again – more than fair enough. I’m at the point where I expect precious little from the Walkerton parents. At this point, I’ll settle for a strip where Linda speaks to Sal without yelling at her.
First of all, Sal’s 12, not a damn five year old here, and second of all, it’s really not that hard to say something comforting without resorting to false reassurances.
Frankly, Charles’ way is pissing me off the more I look at it.
You can totally live happily with all kinds of disabilities, but there’s a time and a place for that explanation, and it’s not right now.
Because telling that Sal, who obviously blames herself, is just gonna make her feel worse right now.
I’d argue Charles absolutely does not deserve a place on that list. Good moment or not, he’s still the one who insulted Sal to her face and almost every time Sal brings up her problems at home, it’s with her parents plural, not just her mother.
There’s a variety of good parents in this strip without Charles,
To clarify, I was saying that more in reference to a general lack of good parents that came to mind off the top of my head. Carla’s parents, Dina’s parents, Dorothy’s parents, Joyce’s parents at least place, Amber’s mom . . . Unless I’m missing someone, there’s still a spot in the top 10.
Most of the spots in the top 10 list are filled by parents we only know of by rumor or lack of rumor of horrible things.
If you limit it to the main characters, there are probably few enough that there’s overlap between the top 10 and bottom 10. 🙂
Expanding it a bit: Sierra’s dad faced down Blaine and we don’t know anything bad about either of her folks, so he at least gets a spot.
We don’t know anything negative about Marcie’s parents, though they haven’t appeared or even been mentioned much.
Mike’s parents seem nice, though they somehow managed to produce Mike which is a point against them.
“that’s certainly not a nice way to refer to Marcie and her family”
It’s not nice, but it was the normal term used for families like Marcie’s. “Undocumented immigrants” was not commonly used until some years ago, when something shifted and that phrase started to be used by pro-immigration folks. Given the timeline, he isn’t wrong for using that search term – especially since that would be how pro-immigrant pages of the era would refer to undocumented people.
I say this because of my own experience with the term – I live in Mexico, but work in California, watch US TV channels growing up, and travelled across the US in the mid 2000s.
(I used Google Trends to search for ‘illegal immigrant’ and ‘undocumented immigrant’, the former appeared much more than the latter until 2016, when Trolldemort started making waves.)
This would be around 2012 right now (as it’s about 6 years earlier than the current story which always takes place Right Now). It may not have been as common, but it wasn’t unheard of – around the same time, there was a lot of attention surrounding how ‘illegal immigrant’ wasn’t really a great term and the term ‘undocumented’ (or, alternatively, unauthorized) was pushed in 2010. Especially since we know A) Charles and Linda have a great deal of racism issues and B) Other people were calling Marcie ‘illegal’ and definitely not very nice about it (their principal) I’m not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt here.
Yes. Let’s condemn him for not being a perfect person as he does a bit of quick research on the chances of Marcie getting decent care.
Humans fail. Period. No one is perfect. Everyone stumbles. He’s trying.
There will be a day when your own grandchildren, (presuming you ever have any, of course,) cringe at something you say. You’ll see nothing wrong with it. It was fair in your day. Even if you bend and choose to avoid whatever it is that makes them cringe, you’ll slip occasionally.
On that day, I hope you remember that you once held a fictional character to a higher standard than any human can manage.
Charles has already been pretty shit and so yeah, I’m not inclined to be charitable about things he does. And frankly, I’d hope that I wouldn’t have stopped learning and by the time I’d have grandkids who’d cringe at something I’d have said, I’d remember that and say something along the lines of ‘You’re right, that was pretty crappy, but I’ve since learned to be better.’
Never seen that happen – we don’t have health care because our budget gets blown on stupid shit like the military spending. And I don’t mean sending them overseas – I mean supplies and weapons and things we don’t need half the time.
The problem is less the amount of money spent on healthcare, and more the way it’s spent. There are some very deep, systemic factors that vastly inflate the cost of healthcare in the US, and very few on either the right or the left are addressing them. Until those problems are addressed, pouring more money into the system won’t help much.
It’ll help make a few people very rich. That’s not nothing.
But, yes. I generally abhor there being more laws, but one that forced one cost for insurance companies, and the same cost for cash payments, rather than giving insurance companies massive “discounts” for bringing in all these customers, (and in reality, slapping a massive markup on the no-insurance price,) would go a long way toward making medicine affordable again.
The trope that X is freeloading on the US defense budget is a very common one. A variation is the “If it weren’t for us you’d be speaking German!” idea, which implies that Britain and its allies were sitting around twiddling their thumbs before the US entered WW2.
They weren’t, but on their own they were losing. Though arguably the Lend Lease supplies made as much of a difference and the Soviet front even more so.
It was starting to get somewhat better with Obamacare, until the 2016 election. Because Republicans think only rich people deserve to be able to afford decent healthcare.
Most European armies are pretty much a joke. For the record, instead of pushing them to spend more, I’d prefer to see the US spend less. Our “defense” budget is a bloated, pork-laden mess, and there’s no reason it couldn’t be cut significantly without critically endangering national security.
Cookie for you if you can tell me what is LITERALLY the only member of NATO that has ever made use of the treaty to call for help from other countries.
It not so that European health care is payed for by taxes. The military budget shouldn’t factor in at all.
Germany had compulsory health care insurance which is deducted from your income automatically just like taxes are. If you earn to much, there’s a line after which you can decide to switch to private insurance but you have to be insures.
The compulsory health care takes a percentage of you income, so people who earn a lot pay more than people who don’t. It’s a solidarity system.
The system has problems with increasing costs, too, as there are much more things possible than 100 years ago and they cost. Though I don’t think doctors’ insurance is as expensive over here than in the US (though increasing insurance costs drive midwives to give up their work right now.)
So if you earn minimum wage or not earn at all and are legally here, you get a decent health care. If you earn more, you can pay for additional stuff like single rooms in hospital. If you are undocumented, you are treated for emergencies and get a bill, like any visiting tourists but getting health care for small or chronic stuff is nearly impossible if you are undocumented.
In the Netherlands, at least, Marcie’s situation would not have been ideal, either, I think. Also we (the Dutch) have been cutting costs on the military since the end of the cold war to the point where there soldiers don’t have enough ammo to be properly trained, let alone fight.
So “universal health care and armies”… I think you’re thinking of the UK…
Healthcare has been a problem since long before 2008. That’s why it was a main campaign issue in 2008. And why Democrats tried and failed to reform the system during the Clinton administration as well.
Nor is it really on a starvation diet. One big problem with US healthcare is how much we spend on it. Per capita, more than any other developed nation. A proper reform would very likely be cheaper – but it would shift from an individual “market” system to a taxation based one, which would be socialism.
Yeah, wow. Completely missed it. US privilege, I guess.
So used to hearing the talking point about not taking the bankers to the wall in the US, I just assumed.
and canada, iirc, has a submarine in the middle of the prairies. and we had some problem about a decade ago with our soldiers not having the right clothing for where they were being sent.
of course, our borders are pretty indefensible in the first place, so the canadian army is more about helping out allies and doing “peacekeeping” missions.
So do we have any actual evidence the family are undocumented, or is it going off of assumptions here, Charles? (I’m gonna bet it’s the latter until we get confirmation from Marcie or Sal just because I don’t trust our sources AT ALL and really don’t think it would be something Marcie’s parents would disclose to people who clearly dislike Marcie being friends with their daughter.)
(Seriously. If Linda knew for a fact they were undocumented do you really think she’d continue to let Sal associate with Marcie? Do you really think she would give a shit that this was Sal’s closest friend she was talking about here?)
Hence, my “take that as you will”. Yeah, there’s been a whole lot of assumptions by other characters – Robin, the school principal from several flashbacks ago, and now Charles here – but there hasn’t been any solid evidence to date.
Yeah but given who Robin’s an analogue of, even knowing she herself is Latina I still can’t take it as a given she wouldn’t go after, say, naturalized citizens. Not after this week.
So, looking more likely but again the whole ‘whoops picked the wrong politician to base a character’s new persona off of so Robin is no longer funny nor redeemable’ factor makes it hard to say.
Absolutely. I just find it very telling that this is Charles’s first response as it was for Linda (or the principal, don’t recall) and yet Sal is still allowed to hang out with her. Which suggests to me they DON’T know, and don’t have any better reasons for suspecting than prejudice because Linda would be all over said reasons. (They still could be, but I suspect if so that it’s a situation where the Walkertons do not know except for Sal, who’s informed of the precariousness later on.)
Principal said she might be undocumented, and Linda’s the one who called Marcie a little vagabond who’d be knocking over convenience stores to get her mother’s attention because Marcie was playing alone.
At this point, they’re far more likely to know than we are and while nothing authoritative’s been shown, I suspect they probably are.
There’s been plenty of time in comic now for any suspicions Charles had to be confirmed or denied. Even if it was only a suspicion, it’s a reasonable thing to check on. It’s not like he’s broadcasting it. Charitably, he could be looking to see what the options are in the worst case scenario.
Of course, that’s all very likely giving Charles too much credit.
There’s the problem – I’m really not inclined to be charitable to the Walkerton parents. That said, I agree at this point it’s looking more likely, if only because Willis probably wouldn’t bother specifically hinting at it this much if it weren’t true, regardless of the specific characters spouting (or being implied to spout) it not being super reliable.
The thing is, it’s coming from characters who are actively set up as unreliable on this subject. It’s not overthinking things when you know the source cannot be trusted. It’d be like taking Blaine on his word for anything.
During the prior incident with Marcie getting attacked at school (Sal’s hair was different, different incident) the principal cited the “illegal” aspect as one reason they didn’t want to make a fuss and get the poor attacker with a “bright future” in trouble.
“Papa said we’re lucky. It’s nothing I’d hafta go to a doctor for.” Cost of healthcare aside, showing up at a hospital with no citizenship papers or a way to pay for things can lead to some people reporting you.
I have (well, HAD, most managed to legalize their situation) undocumented relatives and acquaintances in the US, specifically in California during the late 80s / early 90s, and Tennessee in the mid to late 2000s. Those who had children, also had to leave them alone for most of the day while they worked.
Again, I speak from personal experience in those two states.
Sal’s hair is different, Sal’s top is different, plus Marcie is on the other side of the chain link fence.
I’m guessing that if someone else attacked Marcie for whatever provocation, Sal would feel angry at the attacker, not guilty. So I’m going with something else — knowing the personalities of these two, I’m guessing a stunt gone wrong.
The chain-link fence doesn’t go the entire way around the school (that chapter begins with Leland throwing Marcie into a pit “just outside of school grounds”, which is how he got away with it), so that at least wouldn’t be a barrier to one of the kids at the school attacking her.
The pit was on school grounds. Leland got away with it because Marcie wasn’t a student at that school and so the principal decided the best way to handle it was to bar Marcie from being on school grounds because it was REALLY all her fault, wasn’t it?
Hm, I had read the principal’s line as accusing Sal as the one at fault for inviting her friend to a place she shouldn’t be, but looking at it again, yeah they’re totally just throwing all the blame on Marcie.
Your reasoning doesn’t take into account that it could be on a different day, and we don’t know how much damage Sal did to Leland, but that it did involve his neck. I say revenge is still a possibility, and her best friend needing immediate help would still take precedence in her mind than anger, which gives her time to feel bad, especially since the principle (or whomever) of her school essentially said it was her fault for Marcie getting hurt last time since she was trespassing.
I disagree. The hair is different. I’d say several months, at least, if not a couple years, have passed between the two events.
I mean, she could have had her hair straightened after school that very day, but the odds are longer.
Looking at the shirts, she has more chest in this strip, so probably at least a year. Same TYPE of shirt, although this one is silkscreened, and the last one was plain.
Maaaybe…
However, in the convenience store flashback, her hair was kinky, and in this strip it’s been flattened. Now, we know, from Parents Day, how quickly it can lose its conditioning, but I don’t think that followed very close behind this.
A year or less, actually. Indication is they were 12 when the accident happened, 13 during the holdup. Not entirely inconceivable timeframe, in other words.
Basically, yeah. I think what I was thinking of was how Walky was in this sequence: he’s trying to be positive and supportive but he’s way out of his depth and can’t meaningfully help. And maybe he kinda makes a fool of himself for trying.
Walky pretty quickly realized he was so out of his depth, but I don’t know if we’re gonna see enough of Charles to see if he acts the same. But I’m inclined to agree that Walky’s more perceptive- that, and he’s learned a decent bit since the start of the comic.
Oh no. Child Sal also had to get her hair straightened. 🙁
I was a biracial kiddo too, and I remember having to sit through three hours of my curly hair getting blow dried (or straightened, by the time I was in middle school). I had to unlearn straight hair = pretty and curly hair = ugly and gross as an adult because of it. My mom wasn’t even white! Both parents were afro carribbean, but since my mom was paler she followed american white woman standards since she was a first gen american.
In the flashback, Sal is 12, and she’s 18 in the main story, so the phone is from 2012 give or take a year. iPhone 4S? Galaxy 3?
That’s as of tonight. By the time someone six years in the future links to this strip, the phone will be from 2018 and our future selves will be asserting that the phone is too big or too small for the era.
Eh, in the sliding timeline of the dumbiverse, this is around, what 2011-ish? I don’t think I heard of a big push to change the popular term until 2014.
Yeah, but he called Walky “cowboy” in a strip referenced above. Not indicative of much, IMHO, aside from treating the twins equally, at least regarding nicknames.
Oh wow, I forgot he called Walky ‘cowboy’ – that’s still cute! Charles may be a shit father but this is definitely clearing the low bar I have for the Walkerton’s parenting.
I think Charles just realized he kinda painted himself into a corner trying to be reasurring and seeing if there is a way out… never a easy position to be in.
Almost every other aspect of Dumbing of Age in Sweden: Stays the same, because people making dumb choices are people making dumb choices wherever they are.
That’s not 100% true. Asylum seekers get access to universal healthcare in Sweden, but they aren’t undocumented; there’s an asylum application process during which they can get rejected (and potentially deported). Adult undocumented migrants only get access to urgent care, prenatal care, abortion care, and birth control. Undocumented minors have full access to health care, though.
Sal’s hair was curly at the holdup and there was already police arresting Sal, so she would need to have called the ambulance for Marcie if that was the case. So its two different times.
I have to admit, I hope that Sal didn’t try to rob the convenience store to pay for Marcie’s treatment. It just seems a bit too… sappy. As opposed to “Fuck this, this world is terrible, I’m going to mess things up.” But I suppose we’ll see.
And I think this cements Charles (for the moment) as my favorite among the evil parents, just in that he’s not actively, maliciously evil, and frankly I feel DoA can use that. Not every evil parent is a Blaine/Toedad/Linda/Carol/Sir/etc. BBCC pointed up above that he insulted Sal to her face, but I don’t get the sense that he’s at all aware that that’s what he did. I mean, yes, he’s been in about five strips so far, but… I dunno, he strikes me as being a bit like a 30-year older version of Danny at his worst. Stupid and oblivious, sure, but not intentionally mean. The last two panels strike me as pretty Danny: quick, let’s say something reassuring! Oh shit, even if that’s true, we live in a proudly non-communist country where you have to pay for healthcare. Damn, this may be more complicated than I thought…
I mean, surely his Google search isn’t as bad as Billie calling the maid to ask where her father sent all the homeless people. Though if in the next strip Sal finds out what Charles is looking up, it might explain why she looked quite as aghast in that one strip. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/nina/
Sal’s dad reminds me of a less violent version of my dad. By which I mean: My dad meant well, but his own upbringing taught him that a patriarch enforces his authority with violence. Whenever he feels challenged or cornered he’d lash out.
My dad is autistic like me (or at least SUUUPER BAPy – he never got a formal diagnosis) so he often says the first thing to come to mind. That led him to accidentally be hurtful a lot of the time like Sal’s dad and Walky.
I like the portrayal of well meaning parents who screw up likeCharles, Hank, and Amber’s mom (is her name Diane? I am on my phone and can’t remember). Not all abusive parents intend to be abusive. Some can’t do better due to personal circumstances and some don’t know how to do better.
I would argue it’s very difficult to miss how saying ‘too bad’ in response to your daughter having a new hairstyle could be hurtful, even if he didn’t know about the racial implications. And I’ll admit I still don’t have that much confidence in Charles mostly based on the fact almost every time Sal brings up her problems at home, it’s with both her parents (including on things like lecturing her about how she’s a failure, how they preferred Walky, etc.) but I think that’s the point with the Walkertons. They don’t generally seem, at first glance, like they’re bad parents and they probably wouldn’t think of themselves as such. You have to stop and think about it to realize that wait that thing they said wasn’t actually that great. So I expect a certain amount of decent interactions – but I also think out of the two, Linda is more obvious.
Hurtful, yes, but not ill-intentioned. He probably doesn’t see how it could be that serious — it’s just a haircut, he’s just mentioning his own view, there’s nothing wrong with her haircut, he just liked the other one better… “That’s too bad” is a pretty casual phrase. If you challenged him on it, he’d probably say you were misinterpreting (or too sensitive).
But as you say, you have to stop and think about what they say to notice the problems, and it’s pretty clear that neither Charles nor Linda is prone to thinking about what they say. Not in the sense that they just blurt out whatever: they may even consider what they’re going to say sometimes. But they don’t examine it or see how it might sound to others. It’s… a pretty privileged kind of obliviousness I see in them, Charles in particular (again, from what we’ve seen — I mean, this is all of the 10th strip he’s been in). I mean, come on, how could you possibly suggest he neglects his daughter? He actually noticed her existence during the visit!
Linda, of course, would bite your head off if you pointed any of this out to her. How dare you suggest she’s biased in any way? After all, at the audition, when she was told to bring up her child, she immediately mentioned that there were two of them. How’s that being unfair? It’s not her fault they could only audition one of them. Really now.
(There is a certain amount of sarcasm in the above.)
Of all the parents, I can really only think of Blaine (and probably Clint) as “ill-intentioned”.
Even Ross was trying to do the right thing, it’s just that his idea of the right thing was horribly wrong.
But if you’re a parent and you can’t see the hurt in your child when you say something like that, you’re definitely not doing it right.
That’s really not better in my view. Intent really only matters in that if it were on purpose, it’d be a lot worse, but it doesn’t really change the impact and Charles being oblivious does not make him a better parent. And there’s something to be said for tact – if there’s no good way to mention something (like preferring someone’s hair another way after their style’s changed) you need to learn to keep your mouth shut. That’s something most people learn as kids (that honest doesn’t necessarily mean popping out whatever you think) and Charles is a grown man. Again, I find it hard to believe he couldn’t see how saying ‘too bad’ could be insulting or hurtful and the fact he’d probably double down instead of just saying sorry doesn’t make me more inclined to be charitable. Obviously YMMV on that though, and I can definitely see why out of the crappy parents, he’d come off better, especially when we’ve got Blaine lurking around. The way I see things, between Charles and his wife, Linda is the one who either yells a lot or completely ignores the kid and Charles pokes at sore spots until they’re liable to burst (if unintentionally as you posit) and neither of those are good for Sal.
Okay, I will admit that I’m pretty freaking sick of my phone saying “abs” instead of “and” (hint: I’M NEVER TRYING TO SAY ABS), but I am still a firm goblinoid and nothing can stop me.
I don’t know even know how you would swipe instead of typing on a phone? I will sometimes select a specific word if it appears above the keyboard—is that what you mean by swiping? I admit that I’m old and self-taught on smartphones.
There are software keyboards where instead of hitting each character separately, you drag your finger vaguely over them in order and it figured out what you meant.
I was really attached to it at one point, but then I had to use an apple device for a few days and it didn’t do swipe. After getting past the annoyance, I noticed it was actually much easier on my thumb, and autocorrect is good enough now to compensate for most typos.
I feel like some people are over analyzing what Charles said. He’s trying to be reassuring and that’s the best possible thing he can do in this situation. As for the Google search… at least he’s not saying it out loud?
Two things:
1) We are expecting the father of Walky and Sal to always say the right thing? Did the laws of heredity and/or nurturing get repealed or something? Walky says the first thing that comes to his mind, always. Yeah, people have get more responsible when they get older, have children, etc. but they don’t automatically be made perfect because they’re a parent.
2) Maybe he’s worried about something ELSE—like, his legal and monetary responsibility if Sal did, even accidentally, cause the injury? If Marcie’s parents don’t have insurance, even undocumented immigrants can hire lawyers and sue because of injuries caused by another party. He didn’t say that out loud–that would have been crass indeed—but he’d be less than human if he didn’t THINK about it, and try to check it out.
I used to say ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘illegals’ until I learnt better. People aren’t automatically terrible because they failed to think through everything all at once. As distinct from the person who harasses others while arguing in favor of the term and refuses to listen to a better perspective.
Somehow I don’t see Sal as robbing a store for cigarette money. Now I’m thinking she did it to try to help Marcie.
I went to dive on Sal’s tag to see if there’s more stuff I’m forgetting about Marcie but the early strips just made me think about the first days of college and cry a lot, so I think I’ll leave the investigations to other folks
Loading ...
OW
Not the worst thing he could’ve said, but if (when) that turns out not to be true or the surgery’s inaccessible for Marcie’s family, that’s gonna bite him in the ass.
I think he’s checking to see how much he needs to minimize assurances. If it looks REALLY bad, he might try to soften the blow.
I don’t think its hard to put the pieces together from this point. A treatment is available, but Marcie’s family can’t afford it. Sal tries to raise the money for years through legitimate means, but after a few years realizes its never going to be enough, so she decides to rob a gas station.
Sal’s 12 at this point and the robbery is when she’s 13. I’m guessing something drastic happened to convince her the robbery was the best way to get money if that’s the case.
At that age i guess a year can feel like forever.
is this really the time chuck
I’d say that right the hell now is the perfect time to find out if he’s blowing sunshine up people’s asses, yes.
Surgery fixes everything!
Yeah this seems like a pretty ill-thought statement on every level. Does he even know what the injury was, specifically? I’m no expert on throat injuries but I would lay good money there isn’t always a surgery for that.
What else is he supposed to say here
What else is he supposed to say here, “Yes, you’ve irreparably maimed your best friend. This is why we prefer your brother.”? He’s her dad, he’s trying to make her feel better.
How about ‘Maybe she won’t, but that’s okay, you’ll still be there for her, right honey?’
To Sal, that might still sound the same. It kinda woukld to me (or it at least sounds a little heartless?).
Because saying that it’s okay (…which just means, it will be okay eventually. People who have major injuries that change their phyical abilities often go through traumatic stuff.) doesn’t just make it okay, especially right now. It’s not okay that Marcie lost her ability to speak so young. It’s very much not okay.
(The point I’m probably trying to make is, right now it’s a really bad injury, and it’s understandable to feel bad about that and be scared that it might never heal and become the way it was before again. There’s a time and a place to explain to your kid that disabled people can have just as a happy and fulfilling life as ablebodied people, it’s just not now.)
I don’t really agree with this. To me, I’d feel better hearing my friend’s life’s not ruined and she can in fact still be happy and ‘it’s okay to feel bad and be scared’ is not what Charles said either. It’s one thing to say ‘Maybe not and it’s okay to be upset about that and worried about her’ and another to say ‘eh, I’m sure they can fix it’. One’s a false reassurance and not helpful at all because Marcie’s disability is not going away and someone needs to prepare Sal for that reality.
Clearly he didn’t know what the injury was, let alone that Marcie wouldn’t recover from it. As an immediate first reaction (especially absent any definitive reason not to), parents offer reassurance and comfort to their children, particularly younger ones. A more nuanced response could/would follow when more information is available.
Sal isn’t a young child here, she’s 12. And you can say something comforting without going immediately to false assurance, especially when as you said he doesn’t know what the injury is.
Sal blames herself but that doesn’t mean it was her fault or she actually hurt Marcie herself. Maybe Sal got in a fight and Marcie tried to pull her out of it, didn’t listen and got punched/kicked/stabbed in the throat for her trouble? Maybe somebody wanted to upset her by attacking her “little friend” who she usually protected? (Remember the previous flashback with the guy who sent Marcie flying who Sal beat up, end result Sal got in trouble for attacking a good student and he faced no consequences for hurting a smaller kiddo coz she shouldn’t have been there?)
Small correction – Sal beat the kid up BECAUSE he didn’t face consequences when she reported him. We never saw what the consequences were for her beating him up.
Sal blamed herself for Marcie’s injury in yesterday’s comic, but she didn’t say anything about that here. So unless he heard something in the call about it being her fault, her dad shouldn’t have any reason to think it was.
Whatever Sal’s “involvement” was, I’m guessing it’s the kind where no one else would think of it as her fault, just something she thinks she could have prevented.
Honestly, I don’t really care if Charles didn’t have a perfect response – he’s in the tough position of trying to process what’s going on and reassure his daughter on the verge of tears. Whether or not surgery specifically fixes it, reminding her she might be able to recover isn’t awful.
He may well look back at this exchange later that night and go “wait, I should’ve said that”, but who hasn’t?
I don’t really blame him, but I would say it’s probably not a good response to deny the fact there’s a good chance she won’t be able to talk.
If it isn’t my old friend Mr. McCraig. With a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg.
Jesus Sal, what did you do?
i assume its something throat related?
My guess is she dared her to drink bleach.
Saying things like this only makes the darkness more powerful and tempting.
Tide Pod Challenge!
Perfect comment/gravatar combo
She attacked Marcie’s tormentors, causing them to attack Marcie with renewed vigor.
Remember when Sal said that Amazi-girl escalates situations instead of resolving them? Then told Amazi-girl that Amazi-girl probably does superheroics because of “the same shit that fueled me years ago”?
Yeah. Sal tried vigilantism and it landed Marcie in the ER with a permanent condition.
I’m not really sure what the answer would be in that situation then, since Sal tried the ‘right’ way to handle Marcie’s tormenters and all it did was get Marcie punished. I really don’t know what she can do at that point.
Sometimes, in the system, there is no right answer except “The serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
Outside the system… well, it’s hard to operate there for long.
Sometimes we can’t help kids in trouble. I still remember the little homeless girl I saw begging with her mother years ago. Just a brief look as I drove by, but she was so bright-eyed – she reminds me of my daughter now. Sometimes I wish I’d stopped to offer to tutor her or something – but a strange 6’2″ man offering to spend one on one time with a five year old? No, that’s not the answer.
Meanwhile, there are over 500 kids still separated from their parents by our government’s direct and deliberate action, some of whom will never be reunited. What can be done about that? Why am I not seeing any significant grassroots activism about it?
Because of two probelems 1) the Golden Rule, the one with the money makes the rule. In this case because Congress has the best politicians money can buy, and the people like the Koch Brothers have the money to buy them. And 2) too many people don’t talk to their neighbor’s, they don’t engage in discourse, they get their News from their smart phones’ CNN feed, or the Fox feed, or Brightbart, and nowhere else.
Probably the reason you’re not seeing any significant grassroots activism is that the media is trying to downplay it. There HAVE been protests and the like. (Have you heard about the “Occupy ICE” protests?) I would search for ICE protests near your city and see what you come up with.)
I think that once the administration’s failed (the school administration in this case) the best ‘in system’ thing to do would be A) Yelling and or/verbally telling off whoever was being shit and telling everyone what he did and how the school failed to react, consequences wise, and B) Supporting Marcie, taking care of victims wise. Accepting something wrong consequence free doesn’t seem like Sal’s style.
Apparently the right thing to do is actually to tell an adult? IME they then either minimise what’s happening (thanks Mum, that…. wasn’t at all damaging, no really), tell you that if you punch back once, hard enough, they won’t bother you again (ummm… try “enlist 2 friends and thereafter attack you at least 3 against one” instead, Dad), or act like reporting the bullying is as much of an issue for them as the bullying (no seriously, former teacher: that is how you make children feel when you tell them that if they hear about any further incidents, you and your tormentor will both be sent to the headmistress (female principal). I thought I was being told off and threatened with serious consequences for trying to get them to do something).
With the teacher thing… A different teacher on being disturbed by a small child screaming, persistently as loudly as she could, on looking out to see her surrounded by 15 boys, told her to stop screaming before she broke a window. I was actually going for impenetrable shield bubble of piercing ear pain, because their stated reason for being in that circle around me was to all beat me up together… I’m not sure if reading a situation, de-escalation, etc were covered in their training or included in their explicitly listed duties at all, but my impression was that they were not.
Apparently schools are generally better at actually tackling it these days..? I’m not convinced but they couldn’t really be much worse without trying. Although it was when I was 17, at a school with an anti-bullying charter, that my dad had to write a letter to one of the heads of sixth form telling her that my friends were telling him that her treatment of me was verging on bullying so could she please not do that…
Don’t tell nobody what I wanna do
If they find out, you know that they’ll never let me through
And it’s no fun being an Illegal Alien
Not the first time this song has played here, and probably won’t be the last.
Today’s strip is sponsored by HobbyLink Japan, now selling new Iron Giant figures.
Genesis – Illegal Alien
Is Charles’ hair brown? I figured the Walkertons got their black hair from somebody, and it definitely isn’t Linda.
His hair is graying
The Walkerton’s hair is brown. Dark brown, but brown (see: Joyce referring to Sal’s hair as a luxurious chocolate river).
Something something reference to Pure Imagination.
Actually, they have Linda’s hair color- look at Walky’s hair closely and you see the hair at the top is similar to Linda’s grayish brown hair. It’s been part of them since the start, the dark brown hair has to come from Charles but can be explained away as it being due to his premature graying…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/fancypantslounge/
Poor Sal. Poor Marcie. Poor me.
Mmmh, I do hope Charles turns out to be like Hank Brown and puts his daughter above whatever biases Linda (and presumably he) have. We wouldn’t really see whether he’s like that in a flashback, but he’s always read to me as well-meaning, at least.
He’s a well meaning wall flower. At least in the Walkyverse he bonds with his kids a lot more when Linda is out of the picture. I assume something similar will happen in this universe eventually. Plenty of people want to pick him apart for letting some bad things happen, but it’s pretty easy to understand if you’re a quite person
“understandable” and “bad parenting” are not mutually exclusive.
like, my dad was a really nice guy, and really fun to be around, but his lack of executive functioning meant I stayed with my mum despite being scared of her, so that I’d at least get regular meals. 😛
Yeah… that’s a solid example of that distinction. By which I mean, I’m sorry you went through that, Inahc!
It seems likely to me that Charles doesn’t do anything actively harmful to the kids, and that all the harmful parenting comes from Linda. But the part that really matters is that the twins are suffering shitty parenting, and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for being frustrated with Charles for not cancelling out Linda’s behavior.
Not clear to me why you think that. I guess we’ve seen more of her being bad, but then we’ve seen more of her in general. The hair thing was all him, though.
Sal doesn’t seem to distinguish. Nor does Walky, when he’s forced to look at it.
I guess I wasn’t drawing anything conclusive from the hair thing (though yeah that indicates bad things about Charles’), and was focusing mostly on what (little) we’ve seen of his personality- that he’s mostly positive and generally quiet (maybe deferring to Linda?). But you’re absolutely right, I’m not drawing my read from anything concrete. And it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) matter to the kids, who are the important ones here.
Oof.
Uhh, at least he’s trying to cheer Sal up. Dreading the mom.
Hmmm. Not the way I’d personally recommend handling it (I wouldn’t recommend giving kids false assurances, however understandable) and that’s certainly not a nice way to refer to Marcie and her family, he’s also not yelling, lecturing her on how she’s a failure, insulting her to her face, or ignoring her for five fucking years while she’s in another state so…congrats, Chuck, on not being actively shitty for once?
Like, congrats, you cleared a low bar. Here’s your prize: https://amandavsimagination.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/not-as-much-of-a-jerk-as-you-could-have-been-award.jpg
Also, about that alt text – I realize its likely a joke, but it’s still weird to get personal details about shitty parents like Charles going by ‘Chuck’ or ‘Charlie’ (referenced on tumblr) or Linda having a taste for dirty jokes in the Walkyverse. It’s just…no. Does not compute.
Even shitty people are still people.
I know, but it feels like finding out Mary like anime nothing really wrong with it, it’s just the kind of personal details that make me do a double take.
Never hesitate to call out people on their shitty behavior, or on the attitudes that lead to that behavior. But always remember they’re still people. Dehumanizing them is the first step to being just as shitty as they are.
Also, dehumanizing shitty people makes it harder to recognize other shitty people.
“I know X does that. He’s a monster. Y’s always been nice. He can’t be a monster like X. Z must be exaggerating about what he did.”
Yup. :/ It’s uncomfortable because it’s so much easier on the brain to just write someone off as “bad person” and not have to think beyond that. Sometimes that’s an important survival skill, sometimes it’s… maladaptive.
Congrats Charles, this is Not Your Worst Appearance In This Strip! I would say ‘best’, but the bar’s too low for that.
It’s funny – I was actually pleased with him when I first saw this strip, but after thinking about it and writing that out it ended up sounding…not. I guess when you put it that way, it’s hard to be pleased with him.
Personally, I think telling Sal, ‘Maybe she won’t, but she can still have a happy life even if she can’t talk, and you’ll be there for her every step of the way, right?’ would have been better. But this is nicer than my usual expectations of the Walkertons so yeah, good job, Chuck.
I just assume by now most parents in this strip have some casually ableist beliefs. Tends to be the norm among society anyway, especially if they have no practical experience with one.
Fair enough. I still say any sort of acknowledgement of reality along the lines of ‘Maybe not, but you’ll still be there for her right?’ would be better.
Oh absolutely. And your suggestion would be ideal, it’s just me being jaded and not expecting that level of understanding from Charles, because like. Charles.
Again – more than fair enough. I’m at the point where I expect precious little from the Walkerton parents. At this point, I’ll settle for a strip where Linda speaks to Sal without yelling at her.
How long did it take you to come up with a perfect response?
Clock’s ticking.
5 seconds of thought.
Were you in an emotionally fraught situation, trying to comfort a very young person who depends on you for every type of security there is?
First of all, Sal’s 12, not a damn five year old here, and second of all, it’s really not that hard to say something comforting without resorting to false reassurances.
Frankly, Charles’ way is pissing me off the more I look at it.
You can totally live happily with all kinds of disabilities, but there’s a time and a place for that explanation, and it’s not right now.
Because telling that Sal, who obviously blames herself, is just gonna make her feel worse right now.
If not now, when? Because Marcie’s disability isn’t going anywhere and offering false reassurance isn’t a good idea either, imo.
Because as long as there is still hope, it’s better to hope than be a mess of terrible feelings and worries.
I think this earns him a place in the “Top 10 DoA parents” list. It . . . doesn’t have a lot of candidates.
He also gets points for being less racist than his wife, probably.
I’d argue Charles absolutely does not deserve a place on that list. Good moment or not, he’s still the one who insulted Sal to her face and almost every time Sal brings up her problems at home, it’s with her parents plural, not just her mother.
There’s a variety of good parents in this strip without Charles,
To clarify, I was saying that more in reference to a general lack of good parents that came to mind off the top of my head. Carla’s parents, Dina’s parents, Dorothy’s parents, Joyce’s parents at least place, Amber’s mom . . . Unless I’m missing someone, there’s still a spot in the top 10.
Most of the spots in the top 10 list are filled by parents we only know of by rumor or lack of rumor of horrible things.
If you limit it to the main characters, there are probably few enough that there’s overlap between the top 10 and bottom 10. 🙂
Expanding it a bit: Sierra’s dad faced down Blaine and we don’t know anything bad about either of her folks, so he at least gets a spot.
We don’t know anything negative about Marcie’s parents, though they haven’t appeared or even been mentioned much.
Mike’s parents seem nice, though they somehow managed to produce Mike which is a point against them.
You don’t get points for not being racist. You just don’t get them deducted.
“that’s certainly not a nice way to refer to Marcie and her family”
It’s not nice, but it was the normal term used for families like Marcie’s. “Undocumented immigrants” was not commonly used until some years ago, when something shifted and that phrase started to be used by pro-immigration folks. Given the timeline, he isn’t wrong for using that search term – especially since that would be how pro-immigrant pages of the era would refer to undocumented people.
I say this because of my own experience with the term – I live in Mexico, but work in California, watch US TV channels growing up, and travelled across the US in the mid 2000s.
(I used Google Trends to search for ‘illegal immigrant’ and ‘undocumented immigrant’, the former appeared much more than the latter until 2016, when Trolldemort started making waves.)
This would be around 2012 right now (as it’s about 6 years earlier than the current story which always takes place Right Now). It may not have been as common, but it wasn’t unheard of – around the same time, there was a lot of attention surrounding how ‘illegal immigrant’ wasn’t really a great term and the term ‘undocumented’ (or, alternatively, unauthorized) was pushed in 2010. Especially since we know A) Charles and Linda have a great deal of racism issues and B) Other people were calling Marcie ‘illegal’ and definitely not very nice about it (their principal) I’m not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt here.
Yes. Let’s condemn him for not being a perfect person as he does a bit of quick research on the chances of Marcie getting decent care.
Humans fail. Period. No one is perfect. Everyone stumbles. He’s trying.
There will be a day when your own grandchildren, (presuming you ever have any, of course,) cringe at something you say. You’ll see nothing wrong with it. It was fair in your day. Even if you bend and choose to avoid whatever it is that makes them cringe, you’ll slip occasionally.
On that day, I hope you remember that you once held a fictional character to a higher standard than any human can manage.
Charles has already been pretty shit and so yeah, I’m not inclined to be charitable about things he does. And frankly, I’d hope that I wouldn’t have stopped learning and by the time I’d have grandkids who’d cringe at something I’d have said, I’d remember that and say something along the lines of ‘You’re right, that was pretty crappy, but I’ve since learned to be better.’
Hooray, Charles is not being quite as terrible as he could be. He gets a gold star sticker.
Eh, silver maybe.
Whole lotta backstory goin’ on. Bonus: vulnerable Sal.
I think we’re about to see why Sal was trying to rob that store.
I can’t help but suspect this is VERY related to Amber turning the tables.
So while Amber was traumatized so was Sal, but Sal hides it better.
Amber was also under Blaine’s influence. Chuck’s a bad father but not Blaine bad.
DAMMIT, AMERICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM!!!! HOW IS IT THAT EUROPEANS CAN GET UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE AND ARMIES WHILE THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT CUTS CORNERS?!
Cue some American claiming it’s because America spent a bunch of money defending Europe. Strings attached? What strings attached?
Never seen that happen – we don’t have health care because our budget gets blown on stupid shit like the military spending. And I don’t mean sending them overseas – I mean supplies and weapons and things we don’t need half the time.
I wanna go to Canada…
The problem is less the amount of money spent on healthcare, and more the way it’s spent. There are some very deep, systemic factors that vastly inflate the cost of healthcare in the US, and very few on either the right or the left are addressing them. Until those problems are addressed, pouring more money into the system won’t help much.
It’ll help make a few people very rich. That’s not nothing.
But, yes. I generally abhor there being more laws, but one that forced one cost for insurance companies, and the same cost for cash payments, rather than giving insurance companies massive “discounts” for bringing in all these customers, (and in reality, slapping a massive markup on the no-insurance price,) would go a long way toward making medicine affordable again.
A link, illustrating what I’m talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDOQpfaUc8
The trope that X is freeloading on the US defense budget is a very common one. A variation is the “If it weren’t for us you’d be speaking German!” idea, which implies that Britain and its allies were sitting around twiddling their thumbs before the US entered WW2.
They weren’t, but on their own they were losing. Though arguably the Lend Lease supplies made as much of a difference and the Soviet front even more so.
It was starting to get somewhat better with Obamacare, until the 2016 election. Because Republicans think only rich people deserve to be able to afford decent healthcare.
Most European armies are pretty much a joke. For the record, instead of pushing them to spend more, I’d prefer to see the US spend less. Our “defense” budget is a bloated, pork-laden mess, and there’s no reason it couldn’t be cut significantly without critically endangering national security.
Cookie for you if you can tell me what is LITERALLY the only member of NATO that has ever made use of the treaty to call for help from other countries.
It not so that European health care is payed for by taxes. The military budget shouldn’t factor in at all.
Germany had compulsory health care insurance which is deducted from your income automatically just like taxes are. If you earn to much, there’s a line after which you can decide to switch to private insurance but you have to be insures.
The compulsory health care takes a percentage of you income, so people who earn a lot pay more than people who don’t. It’s a solidarity system.
The system has problems with increasing costs, too, as there are much more things possible than 100 years ago and they cost. Though I don’t think doctors’ insurance is as expensive over here than in the US (though increasing insurance costs drive midwives to give up their work right now.)
So if you earn minimum wage or not earn at all and are legally here, you get a decent health care. If you earn more, you can pay for additional stuff like single rooms in hospital. If you are undocumented, you are treated for emergencies and get a bill, like any visiting tourists but getting health care for small or chronic stuff is nearly impossible if you are undocumented.
In the Netherlands, at least, Marcie’s situation would not have been ideal, either, I think. Also we (the Dutch) have been cutting costs on the military since the end of the cold war to the point where there soldiers don’t have enough ammo to be properly trained, let alone fight.
So “universal health care and armies”… I think you’re thinking of the UK…
Heh, UK armed services, healthcare and social security are on a starvation diet because somebody wouldn’t let the banks go to the wall in 2008.
And the bankers get away with it. Again.
That’s not really true or relevant.
Healthcare has been a problem since long before 2008. That’s why it was a main campaign issue in 2008. And why Democrats tried and failed to reform the system during the Clinton administration as well.
Nor is it really on a starvation diet. One big problem with US healthcare is how much we spend on it. Per capita, more than any other developed nation. A proper reform would very likely be cheaper – but it would shift from an individual “market” system to a taxation based one, which would be socialism.
They said “UK”, and they might have meant it.
Yeah, wow. Completely missed it. US privilege, I guess.
So used to hearing the talking point about not taking the bankers to the wall in the US, I just assumed.
Never mind then. Carry on.
We have aircraft carriers without aircraft. We’re that competent.
and canada, iirc, has a submarine in the middle of the prairies. and we had some problem about a decade ago with our soldiers not having the right clothing for where they were being sent.
of course, our borders are pretty indefensible in the first place, so the canadian army is more about helping out allies and doing “peacekeeping” missions.
So do we have any actual evidence the family are undocumented, or is it going off of assumptions here, Charles? (I’m gonna bet it’s the latter until we get confirmation from Marcie or Sal just because I don’t trust our sources AT ALL and really don’t think it would be something Marcie’s parents would disclose to people who clearly dislike Marcie being friends with their daughter.)
(Seriously. If Linda knew for a fact they were undocumented do you really think she’d continue to let Sal associate with Marcie? Do you really think she would give a shit that this was Sal’s closest friend she was talking about here?)
For what it’s worth, Sal’s mentioned before how Robin would “deport [Marcie’s] parents if she got the chance”, so take that how you will.
Considering how plenty of legal immigrants and citizens have been deported, that says less than you’d think.
Hence, my “take that as you will”. Yeah, there’s been a whole lot of assumptions by other characters – Robin, the school principal from several flashbacks ago, and now Charles here – but there hasn’t been any solid evidence to date.
Not that it should matter.
Yeah, it’s hard to tell because none of the people who’ve implied or said it (or have been said to take action that would imply it) are reliable.
Robin might want them deported even if they are landed immigrants.
Yeah but given who Robin’s an analogue of, even knowing she herself is Latina I still can’t take it as a given she wouldn’t go after, say, naturalized citizens. Not after this week.
So, looking more likely but again the whole ‘whoops picked the wrong politician to base a character’s new persona off of so Robin is no longer funny nor redeemable’ factor makes it hard to say.
Also, there’s a difference in the question of “are they undocumented” vs “do Linda and Charles KNOW they’re undocumented.”
Absolutely. I just find it very telling that this is Charles’s first response as it was for Linda (or the principal, don’t recall) and yet Sal is still allowed to hang out with her. Which suggests to me they DON’T know, and don’t have any better reasons for suspecting than prejudice because Linda would be all over said reasons. (They still could be, but I suspect if so that it’s a situation where the Walkertons do not know except for Sal, who’s informed of the precariousness later on.)
Principal said she might be undocumented, and Linda’s the one who called Marcie a little vagabond who’d be knocking over convenience stores to get her mother’s attention because Marcie was playing alone.
At this point, they’re far more likely to know than we are and while nothing authoritative’s been shown, I suspect they probably are.
There’s been plenty of time in comic now for any suspicions Charles had to be confirmed or denied. Even if it was only a suspicion, it’s a reasonable thing to check on. It’s not like he’s broadcasting it. Charitably, he could be looking to see what the options are in the worst case scenario.
Of course, that’s all very likely giving Charles too much credit.
There’s the problem – I’m really not inclined to be charitable to the Walkerton parents. That said, I agree at this point it’s looking more likely, if only because Willis probably wouldn’t bother specifically hinting at it this much if it weren’t true, regardless of the specific characters spouting (or being implied to spout) it not being super reliable.
Overthinking it. Take it at face value until something different is put forth in the actual story.
The thing is, it’s coming from characters who are actively set up as unreliable on this subject. It’s not overthinking things when you know the source cannot be trusted. It’d be like taking Blaine on his word for anything.
Except that we have literally zero information one way or another. Literally the only thing we have is this guy’s internal monologue.
During the prior incident with Marcie getting attacked at school (Sal’s hair was different, different incident) the principal cited the “illegal” aspect as one reason they didn’t want to make a fuss and get the poor attacker with a “bright future” in trouble.
*slaps forehead* That’s another thing I forgot about. I only searched for strips featuring Marcie. Oy.
There have been… hints.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/castlemarcie/
Linda mentions “what kind of parent lets her kid roam free like that?” Parents who work all day and can’t take care of their child do.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/balances/
“Papa said we’re lucky. It’s nothing I’d hafta go to a doctor for.” Cost of healthcare aside, showing up at a hospital with no citizenship papers or a way to pay for things can lead to some people reporting you.
But either of those could also just be “poor, working lousy jobs without healthcare.”
The first doesn’t even really hint at undocumented.
I have (well, HAD, most managed to legalize their situation) undocumented relatives and acquaintances in the US, specifically in California during the late 80s / early 90s, and Tennessee in the mid to late 2000s. Those who had children, also had to leave them alone for most of the day while they worked.
Again, I speak from personal experience in those two states.
I’m inclined to agree, Foxhack. Lots of hinting and it’s very likely true at this point, but no 100% confirmation yet.
Ah, yes, I keep forgetting just how much I loathe Linda.
I don’t know that we have any indication that Sal was allowed to spend time with Marcie, just that she was spending time with her.
I think I figured it out. Sorry, someone probably posted this earlier: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/balances/
Remember Sal attacked Leland? Probably Leland attacked Marcie right back.
Sal’s hair is different, Sal’s top is different, plus Marcie is on the other side of the chain link fence.
I’m guessing that if someone else attacked Marcie for whatever provocation, Sal would feel angry at the attacker, not guilty. So I’m going with something else — knowing the personalities of these two, I’m guessing a stunt gone wrong.
The chain-link fence doesn’t go the entire way around the school (that chapter begins with Leland throwing Marcie into a pit “just outside of school grounds”, which is how he got away with it), so that at least wouldn’t be a barrier to one of the kids at the school attacking her.
The pit was on school grounds. Leland got away with it because Marcie wasn’t a student at that school and so the principal decided the best way to handle it was to bar Marcie from being on school grounds because it was REALLY all her fault, wasn’t it?
Hm, I had read the principal’s line as accusing Sal as the one at fault for inviting her friend to a place she shouldn’t be, but looking at it again, yeah they’re totally just throwing all the blame on Marcie.
So maybe Leland took time to get his revenge.
The nice thing about the link is that it also shows it was tit for tat. Sal feels guilty because she went for Leland’s neck.
Marcie tried to stop her. It also ties into “everything balances out in the end”. That foreshadowing is too good to pass up.
Your reasoning doesn’t take into account that it could be on a different day, and we don’t know how much damage Sal did to Leland, but that it did involve his neck. I say revenge is still a possibility, and her best friend needing immediate help would still take precedence in her mind than anger, which gives her time to feel bad, especially since the principle (or whomever) of her school essentially said it was her fault for Marcie getting hurt last time since she was trespassing.
I disagree. The hair is different. I’d say several months, at least, if not a couple years, have passed between the two events.
I mean, she could have had her hair straightened after school that very day, but the odds are longer.
Looking at the shirts, she has more chest in this strip, so probably at least a year. Same TYPE of shirt, although this one is silkscreened, and the last one was plain.
I’d say definitely years. Sal, Marcie, Walky, and Billie all look a lot younger than 12, there. Probably closer to 6.
In this comic, the villain tends to be a grown-up. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if teenage Leland is the rapist’s getaway driver.
…huh. he could’ve handled that a lot worse than he did.
Hm. I wonder if this is what led to Sal holding up a convenience store. Trying to get money for a surgery for Marcie?
Yeah, that was my thought. And imagine Amber’s feelings if/when she learns that.
Maaaybe…
However, in the convenience store flashback, her hair was kinky, and in this strip it’s been flattened. Now, we know, from Parents Day, how quickly it can lose its conditioning, but I don’t think that followed very close behind this.
I strongly doubt it, that was years later. And I think whatever surgery Marcie needs, she needs now. If surgery even helps.
A year or less, actually. Indication is they were 12 when the accident happened, 13 during the holdup. Not entirely inconceivable timeframe, in other words.
Why do I feel like Walky somehow gets his Walkyness from Charles.
I was feeling that, too. He’s showing a certain, uh, naivete(?) that feels Walky-ish (moreso earlier Walky, of course).
Obliviousness to the impact of his phrasing, maybe? At least Walky’s a bit more perceptive.
Basically, yeah. I think what I was thinking of was how Walky was in this sequence: he’s trying to be positive and supportive but he’s way out of his depth and can’t meaningfully help. And maybe he kinda makes a fool of himself for trying.
Walky pretty quickly realized he was so out of his depth, but I don’t know if we’re gonna see enough of Charles to see if he acts the same. But I’m inclined to agree that Walky’s more perceptive- that, and he’s learned a decent bit since the start of the comic.
Huh.
That’s the nickname my dad goes by too….interesting.
It also makes me remember my parents occasionally joking that with his middle name my dad’s name “sounded like a black man” and *cringes* yikes..
i love my parents but some of the things they said now make me cringe a little.
Oh no. Child Sal also had to get her hair straightened. 🙁
I was a biracial kiddo too, and I remember having to sit through three hours of my curly hair getting blow dried (or straightened, by the time I was in middle school). I had to unlearn straight hair = pretty and curly hair = ugly and gross as an adult because of it. My mom wasn’t even white! Both parents were afro carribbean, but since my mom was paler she followed american white woman standards since she was a first gen american.
Well, better Charles than Linda at this point. She’d cast all the blame on Sal.
That’s a nice phone he’s got there. What year is the non-flashbacks supposed to be again?
Whenever.
Time convenient time
In the flashback, Sal is 12, and she’s 18 in the main story, so the phone is from 2012 give or take a year. iPhone 4S? Galaxy 3?
That’s as of tonight. By the time someone six years in the future links to this strip, the phone will be from 2018 and our future selves will be asserting that the phone is too big or too small for the era.
‘Now’. The present is always the present, due to the sliding timescale.
I’ll take that to mean “suspension of disbelief, don’t think too much on things like time periods”. Outside of canonical occurrences of course.
Six years before the main story.
It’s…. NOT the worst parenting I’ve seen in this comic so far?
Oh, Marcie. Sweetie. Oh Jesus.
I was so focused I didn’t realize… uh, mister dad? Not cool, really.
Eh, in the sliding timeline of the dumbiverse, this is around, what 2011-ish? I don’t think I heard of a big push to change the popular term until 2014.
At least dad is dadding right. Hugs and comfort and shutting up about things.
I like the “cowgirl’ nickname, and it tells us a lot about her active tendencies.
Yeah, but he called Walky “cowboy” in a strip referenced above. Not indicative of much, IMHO, aside from treating the twins equally, at least regarding nicknames.
Its still kinda cute. I don’t like Charles but the nickname bit was nice
Oh wow, I forgot he called Walky ‘cowboy’ – that’s still cute! Charles may be a shit father but this is definitely clearing the low bar I have for the Walkerton’s parenting.
I think Charles just realized he kinda painted himself into a corner trying to be reasurring and seeing if there is a way out… never a easy position to be in.
Well, at this point anything OTHER than reassuring would be horrible, so I say he hit the right note.
Dumbing of Age in Sweden: “Do children without papers get free health care?”
“Yes.”
Also Dumbing of Age in Sweden: “Does EVERY single piece of dorm furniture come from IKEA?”
“Yes.”
Almost every other aspect of Dumbing of Age in Sweden: Stays the same, because people making dumb choices are people making dumb choices wherever they are.
As if every single dorm furniture doesn’t come from IKEA everywhere.
IKEA furniture is too high quality to be dorm furniture around here.
You can replace Sweden with Portugal there and it’s still true. Man, I can’t WAIT until someone goes:
“See? Unbridled, fuck-the-poor capitalism makes for better storylines, who cares if it fucks over real people! CHECKMATE LIBERALS! ‘MURICA!”
See? Unbridled, fuck-the-poor capitalism makes for better storylines, who cares if it fucks over real people! CHECKMATE LIBERALS! ‘MURICA!
(I mean, I’m Canadian, but I didn’t wait you to have to wait too long.)
Why, thank you. Canadians really ARE a considerate lot, aren’t you?
That’s not 100% true. Asylum seekers get access to universal healthcare in Sweden, but they aren’t undocumented; there’s an asylum application process during which they can get rejected (and potentially deported). Adult undocumented migrants only get access to urgent care, prenatal care, abortion care, and birth control. Undocumented minors have full access to health care, though.
Not quite sure of the timeline, but were “swipey-swipe” phones even a thing at this point? I thought it was all Crackberries and flip-phones…
Waaait, iPhone 3G was 2008. OVER A DECADE AGO.
*grumble* getoffmylawn…
Dude this was roughly 2012 so smart phones were very much in.
So, are we thinking that Sal was trying to steal from the store to get money for Marcie’s surgery/bills?
Or that Sal and Marcie were stealing from the store, and Amber didn’t just cut Sal that day?
Sal’s hair was curly at the holdup and there was already police arresting Sal, so she would need to have called the ambulance for Marcie if that was the case. So its two different times.
I have to admit, I hope that Sal didn’t try to rob the convenience store to pay for Marcie’s treatment. It just seems a bit too… sappy. As opposed to “Fuck this, this world is terrible, I’m going to mess things up.” But I suppose we’ll see.
And I think this cements Charles (for the moment) as my favorite among the evil parents, just in that he’s not actively, maliciously evil, and frankly I feel DoA can use that. Not every evil parent is a Blaine/Toedad/Linda/Carol/Sir/etc. BBCC pointed up above that he insulted Sal to her face, but I don’t get the sense that he’s at all aware that that’s what he did. I mean, yes, he’s been in about five strips so far, but… I dunno, he strikes me as being a bit like a 30-year older version of Danny at his worst. Stupid and oblivious, sure, but not intentionally mean. The last two panels strike me as pretty Danny: quick, let’s say something reassuring! Oh shit, even if that’s true, we live in a proudly non-communist country where you have to pay for healthcare. Damn, this may be more complicated than I thought…
I mean, surely his Google search isn’t as bad as Billie calling the maid to ask where her father sent all the homeless people. Though if in the next strip Sal finds out what Charles is looking up, it might explain why she looked quite as aghast in that one strip. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/nina/
All of this may also explain why she was so willing to save Amazi-Girl, and so shaken by what almost happened to her. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/proud-2/
That’s pretty much my feeling on the robbery.
Sal’s dad reminds me of a less violent version of my dad. By which I mean: My dad meant well, but his own upbringing taught him that a patriarch enforces his authority with violence. Whenever he feels challenged or cornered he’d lash out.
My dad is autistic like me (or at least SUUUPER BAPy – he never got a formal diagnosis) so he often says the first thing to come to mind. That led him to accidentally be hurtful a lot of the time like Sal’s dad and Walky.
I like the portrayal of well meaning parents who screw up likeCharles, Hank, and Amber’s mom (is her name Diane? I am on my phone and can’t remember). Not all abusive parents intend to be abusive. Some can’t do better due to personal circumstances and some don’t know how to do better.
I would argue it’s very difficult to miss how saying ‘too bad’ in response to your daughter having a new hairstyle could be hurtful, even if he didn’t know about the racial implications. And I’ll admit I still don’t have that much confidence in Charles mostly based on the fact almost every time Sal brings up her problems at home, it’s with both her parents (including on things like lecturing her about how she’s a failure, how they preferred Walky, etc.) but I think that’s the point with the Walkertons. They don’t generally seem, at first glance, like they’re bad parents and they probably wouldn’t think of themselves as such. You have to stop and think about it to realize that wait that thing they said wasn’t actually that great. So I expect a certain amount of decent interactions – but I also think out of the two, Linda is more obvious.
Hurtful, yes, but not ill-intentioned. He probably doesn’t see how it could be that serious — it’s just a haircut, he’s just mentioning his own view, there’s nothing wrong with her haircut, he just liked the other one better… “That’s too bad” is a pretty casual phrase. If you challenged him on it, he’d probably say you were misinterpreting (or too sensitive).
But as you say, you have to stop and think about what they say to notice the problems, and it’s pretty clear that neither Charles nor Linda is prone to thinking about what they say. Not in the sense that they just blurt out whatever: they may even consider what they’re going to say sometimes. But they don’t examine it or see how it might sound to others. It’s… a pretty privileged kind of obliviousness I see in them, Charles in particular (again, from what we’ve seen — I mean, this is all of the 10th strip he’s been in). I mean, come on, how could you possibly suggest he neglects his daughter? He actually noticed her existence during the visit!
Linda, of course, would bite your head off if you pointed any of this out to her. How dare you suggest she’s biased in any way? After all, at the audition, when she was told to bring up her child, she immediately mentioned that there were two of them. How’s that being unfair? It’s not her fault they could only audition one of them. Really now.
(There is a certain amount of sarcasm in the above.)
Of all the parents, I can really only think of Blaine (and probably Clint) as “ill-intentioned”.
Even Ross was trying to do the right thing, it’s just that his idea of the right thing was horribly wrong.
But if you’re a parent and you can’t see the hurt in your child when you say something like that, you’re definitely not doing it right.
That’s really not better in my view. Intent really only matters in that if it were on purpose, it’d be a lot worse, but it doesn’t really change the impact and Charles being oblivious does not make him a better parent. And there’s something to be said for tact – if there’s no good way to mention something (like preferring someone’s hair another way after their style’s changed) you need to learn to keep your mouth shut. That’s something most people learn as kids (that honest doesn’t necessarily mean popping out whatever you think) and Charles is a grown man. Again, I find it hard to believe he couldn’t see how saying ‘too bad’ could be insulting or hurtful and the fact he’d probably double down instead of just saying sorry doesn’t make me more inclined to be charitable. Obviously YMMV on that though, and I can definitely see why out of the crappy parents, he’d come off better, especially when we’ve got Blaine lurking around. The way I see things, between Charles and his wife, Linda is the one who either yells a lot or completely ignores the kid and Charles pokes at sore spots until they’re liable to burst (if unintentionally as you posit) and neither of those are good for Sal.
Charles strikes me as a lot like Walky. Willfully oblivious.
So Amber and Sal have more in common that they think. And underlying feeling of guilt/anxiety whenever they see a certain person.
Does he type using the Swype function? Just tap the letters individually, jackass.
No.
Swype users are actual goblinoids.
My roommate uses swipe function and gets the weirdest “typos” ever.
He refuses to tap no matter how many times it’s wrong, or how angry he gets.
Okay, I will admit that I’m pretty freaking sick of my phone saying “abs” instead of “and” (hint: I’M NEVER TRYING TO SAY ABS), but I am still a firm goblinoid and nothing can stop me.
hisses from the goblin pile
I don’t know even know how you would swipe instead of typing on a phone? I will sometimes select a specific word if it appears above the keyboard—is that what you mean by swiping? I admit that I’m old and self-taught on smartphones.
There are software keyboards where instead of hitting each character separately, you drag your finger vaguely over them in order and it figured out what you meant.
I was really attached to it at one point, but then I had to use an apple device for a few days and it didn’t do swipe. After getting past the annoyance, I noticed it was actually much easier on my thumb, and autocorrect is good enough now to compensate for most typos.
So is she going to rob that store in hopes to get money to help Marcie?
That’s what I was thinking.
I feel like some people are over analyzing what Charles said. He’s trying to be reassuring and that’s the best possible thing he can do in this situation. As for the Google search… at least he’s not saying it out loud?
Guys. Guys. We’re missing the important part of this strip.
Sal’s wearing a Natural History (Museum, I presume) shirt with a Pachycephalosaurid on it. Figures she’d like the thick-skulled headbutters.
How long till youngerDina shows up from behind a door to discuss it with her?
Two things:
1) We are expecting the father of Walky and Sal to always say the right thing? Did the laws of heredity and/or nurturing get repealed or something? Walky says the first thing that comes to his mind, always. Yeah, people have get more responsible when they get older, have children, etc. but they don’t automatically be made perfect because they’re a parent.
2) Maybe he’s worried about something ELSE—like, his legal and monetary responsibility if Sal did, even accidentally, cause the injury? If Marcie’s parents don’t have insurance, even undocumented immigrants can hire lawyers and sue because of injuries caused by another party. He didn’t say that out loud–that would have been crass indeed—but he’d be less than human if he didn’t THINK about it, and try to check it out.
he’d be less than human if his mind didn’t automatically jump from “my kid’s friend is in hospital” to “will her parents sue me?” ?
america is weird. :/
But, apparently, MOAR “HUMAN”.
And they can keep them. I’ve seen “humans”, do not want.
I used to say ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘illegals’ until I learnt better. People aren’t automatically terrible because they failed to think through everything all at once. As distinct from the person who harasses others while arguing in favor of the term and refuses to listen to a better perspective.
Somehow I don’t see Sal as robbing a store for cigarette money. Now I’m thinking she did it to try to help Marcie.
That shift from active sense to passive sense in the second panel is heartbreaking.
“I did something….
Something happened…”
I went to dive on Sal’s tag to see if there’s more stuff I’m forgetting about Marcie but the early strips just made me think about the first days of college and cry a lot, so I think I’ll leave the investigations to other folks
yikes
SAL ALSO LIKES DINOS