Bizarro is brought to you today by Lassie Knows Dad is Hiding Something.Lawyers like jokes about themselves. Almost any time I do a joke about lawyers, an attorney contacts me and wants to buy the original art. You might say that's because they frequently have expendable income, but the same thing is true of doctors and I don't hear from them when I do a doctor cartoon. There's just something about the sort of personality that becomes a lawyer that enjoys self-deprecating humor.
Granted, it would require a sense of humor to live with the fact that your chosen profession is among the highest paid and most hated in society, and that many times during your career you will be required to use all of your intellectual faculties to assure that a guilty party goes unpunished. It's a pretty weird job.
I have nothing against the sort of people who become lawyers, with some exceptions. I have several friends who are attorneys and find nothing fundamentally wrong with them. They just have a different perspective on the world than I do, as they tend to respect law above justice. I think the average person is the other way around.
I suspect most lawyers would agree that courts are about "law" and not particularly interested in "justice." There are a lot of high-minded reasons for this with which I agree, but I'm not cut out to serve that system on a daily basis. If I had been the judge overseeing the O.J. case for instance, when the jury announced their "not guilty" verdict, I would have sentenced him to life in prison anyway. And that's only because I don't believe in the death penalty.
SPECIAL COMMENT NOT RELATED TO LAW OR THE ABOVE CARTOON:
Thank no one (atheist) I came out with this idea before this cartoon appeared in The New Yorker. Different cartoonists coming across the same idea independently is very common, it's just way better to be in the first position rather than the second. I'm guessing this idea has been touched upon by other cartoonists in the past, too, so I can't get too cocky. Mick Stevens is one of my favorites from New Yorker, so I'm honored to be in good company.
