Somehow, right-wingers were able to turn news of a bank failure (or two) into a conversation about "wokeness."

As you've probably heard by now, a combination of too many treasury bonds, greedy bankers, dumb tech bros "” and bipartisan legislation that weakened banking regulation "” turned into a big scary bank failure that sent shockwaves through global financial markets.

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank can be explained by reviewing actual numbers and examining a paper trail of poor financial decisions made at SVB and in the halls of Congress.

Instead of talking about that, right-wing media and politicians are pointing the finger at Silicon Valley Bank's supposedly excessive (and financially risky) wokeness.

If that makes no logical sense to you, don't worry, it's not supposed to. It's just another example of Republicans trying to distract you from uncomfortable facts. Nothing more than another load of linguistic misdirection from the right.

Think of them like a deep sea anglerfish, only much uglier.

I was only a few years into my cartooning career at this point, and cannot overstate how appallingly one-sided the news coverage was during the buildup to the invasion. I didn't have cable at the time, so I watched a lot of NBC, which featured an endless parade of hawkish "experts." For those who've forgotten, or weren't old enough, Phil Donahue was a rare TV personality who dared to criticize the invasion. MSNBC fired him, citing low ratings --- even though his was the highest-rated show on the network.

Later, memos surfaced that he was in fact canned because NBC execs considered him a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war."