Oh Man! Hospitality

by · November 23, 2018

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Clare Briggs

Clare Briggs

Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.

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33 Responses

  1. Avatar Jaybird says:
    November 23, 2018 at 9:32 pm

    I had to read this twice.

    This is about Prohibition.Report

    • Avatar Will Truman in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 24, 2018 at 9:29 am

      If it? Reads more like “My friend has entered the next stage in life and I haven’t and he’s not fun anymore…

      (Having gotten married in roughly the middle of my peer group, I have been on both sides of this one.)Report

    • Avatar PD Shaw in reply to Jaybird says:
      November 24, 2018 at 10:44 am

      I think its about prohibition too, but probably because I read this comment first. I also remembered the previous entry, see atomickristin, in which the man complains that if the government can ban alcohol, why not ban meat or candy?

      So, here, the man is lonesome and wants a drink, and he goes to a friends house where he is plied with candy and tobacco, but the dietary vices are not substitutes for the social vice.Report

      • Avatar Will Truman in reply to PD Shaw says:
        November 24, 2018 at 10:52 am

        To be fair, the different vices provide a quite different experience!

        I almost commented about whether tobacco was really seen as a vice, but while the degree to which it was seen as a vice generally is disputable in other comics it is clear that Briggs did believe tobacco to be unhealthy. (Which is kind of funny, because spokesperson for cigar companies was one of his more lucrative gigs.)Report

        • Avatar PD Shaw in reply to Will Truman says:
          November 24, 2018 at 11:19 am

          “Vice” may be too strong a word. But I do think the Mormon views on meat, tobacco, coffee, tea and booze reflected broader 19th century folk views that these are problems at least if consumed immoderately.Report

  2. Avatar atomickristin says:
    November 24, 2018 at 9:22 am

    But what he really wanted was to be happily at home with his wife like in that other Clare Briggs Prohibition cartoon. https://ordinary-times.com/2018/11/02/oh-man-prohibition/

    Everyone is like “oh no don’t get her started”Report

    • Avatar Will Truman in reply to atomickristin says:
      November 24, 2018 at 9:26 am

      Which he? One guy seems very happily married. The other guy seems single and resentful.Report

      • Avatar atomickristin in reply to Will Truman says:
        November 24, 2018 at 9:41 am

        I’m (gently!!) poking fun at the idea that in the previous cartoon I linked to, the protagonist was happily at home with his wife. Several people claimed that was the case, but as I already talked about far too much LOL I maintain the wife was the spoiler in that one.

        This cartoon has a similar theme – he can’t have fun without alcohol. Even though everyone is being perfectly hospitable he doesn’t see any of it because the lack of alcohol.Report

  3. Avatar Saul Degraw says:
    November 24, 2018 at 11:46 am

    From what I’ve read about prohibition, it wasn’t too hard to get a drink. Speak-easys were a plenty. You were allowed to brew or vint or distill at home. There were copious religious and medical exemptions.

    So the guy misses the scene of the bar and male-only bonhomie.Report

    • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Saul Degraw says:
      November 24, 2018 at 11:54 am

      Alternatively, there could have been lots of people that couldn’t figure out how to get a drink during prohibition….Report

      • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:
        November 24, 2018 at 1:11 pm

        Before Colorado legalized it, I am not sure that I knew where to buy weed.

        I mean, I guess I know that I could have bought some in Acacia Park downtown… but what would that have meant? Going downtown, walking through the park, and… what? Wander around muttering “bud, bud, looking for bud”? And then hope a guy/gal said “I got the hookup” and then we do an exchange? And then I hope that s/he’s not a narc?

        And all this when, let’s face it, I look like a narc?

        I mean, for you: before it got legalized, did you know where/how to buy weed?Report

        • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 24, 2018 at 1:25 pm

          Oh, I forgot the obvious point: I have a couple of friends that I’m pretty sure would have been able to hook me up had I asked. I didn’t ask and they didn’t really talk about it… but if I had asked, I’m sure that they’d have shared.

          The only way that I’d have known to get weed that didn’t involve dealing with people I would have categorized as “criminals” in my head would be to deal with people like Ed.Report

        • Avatar Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm

          In the Bay Area? The only way it could have been easier is if it had been a category in Craigslist.Report

          • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:
            November 24, 2018 at 2:43 pm

            Hrm. I suppose that that’s a good point.

            I wonder how much of the country was for alcohol the way that the Bay Area was for weed.

            Enough for Prohibition to fail, I guess.Report

            • Avatar Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:
              November 24, 2018 at 3:12 pm

              I’m curious about that too. New York were full of speakeasies, and no doubt also Atlantic City, San Francisco, etc. Probably all big cities. And it’s hard to picture places with a long history of brewing, like Milwaukee and St. Louis, really going dry.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:
                November 24, 2018 at 3:20 pm

                I’m trying to think now what would be a good analogy.

                Trying to buy… LSD? Ecstasy?

                If I wanted to buy some, I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start. And I live near a college!

                (I have officially reached the age where I cannot possibly *NOT* look like a narc.)Report

              • Avatar Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 24, 2018 at 3:29 pm

                I am not trying to get you started on a life of drug abuse, but …

                I’m sure you know people who know people, or at least know people who know people. And Maribou must know some faculty through her job, who no doubt know people who know people who research psychoactive substances, and thus know people as part of their job. And none of these chains are going to turn you in for asking.Report

              • Avatar Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:
                November 24, 2018 at 3:43 pm

                Hey, I’m just trying to think of what it’d have been like during Prohibition to find hooch.

                I know that Colorado Springs was swimming in marijuana back before medicinal was legalized (let alone recreational) but I don’t know how I would have gone about buying some.

                That might be a reflection of how square I am rather than how tough it would have been to get.

                I suppose that that is always the issue with black markets. The worst part of prohibition wasn’t the people who drank surreptitiously. It was that they had to know a guy who knew a guy to do so.

                Civil Society works better when your square people don’t have to know a guy who knows a guy.Report

              • Avatar Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:
                November 24, 2018 at 4:12 pm

                And Prohibition was before they took your car if the guy you tried to buy contraband from turned out to be a cop.Report

              • Avatar Michael Cain in reply to Mike Schilling says:
                November 24, 2018 at 3:26 pm

                Per my Grandparents Cain, in the small town in south-central Iowa where they lived, Tony with an orchard just outside town made wine from various fruits, assorted people brewed beer, and a couple of local moonshiners competed on quality. Law enforcement apparently wasn’t interested because: the market was a very rural county or two, no other crimes were involved, and the local judge probably drank Tony’s wine.Report

          • Avatar Mike Schilling in reply to Mike Schilling says:
            November 24, 2018 at 3:20 pm

            Missed Dope Connections:

            You were dealing buds near the Japanese Tea Garden last Wednesday, around noon. I walked by and we made eye contact a few times, but I just kept going. Regrets. I’ve been back a few times but didn’t see you. Let me know where and when!Report

        • Avatar Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 24, 2018 at 5:56 pm

          Like medical marijuana, there was an excemption for medically prescribed alcohol and doctors could prescribe the full range of products.

          There were also religious exemptions. Short, this wasn’t acid levels of ban.Report

        • Avatar Burt Likko in reply to Jaybird says:
          November 25, 2018 at 11:17 am

          The College Republicans always had a contingent that loved their weed. If they were getting it, it couldn’t have been that hard.Report

    • Avatar LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:
      November 24, 2018 at 9:57 pm

      What he misses is the scene of the saloon. One of the modern bar as we know it is a creation of Prohibition. Before Prohibition, nearly all drinking establishments were male only preserves. Women who drank, drank at home or at certain social events. Since speak-easies needed a broader customer base then the old saloons. Liquor and spirits of dubious quality were more widely available than beer and wine. This made cocktails more prevalent. All of this combined created the modern bar, where men and women drank together.Report

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