Another Stroke of Genius From the Great One

Skrlin returns to the scene of the crime, as it were, as he lampoons (or is it harpoons?) Kristen Grandinetti who worked very hard in November of last year to stop Sam Fruscione from circulating a Skrlin cartoon, going so far as attempting to have the former councilman arrested for exercising his First Amendment rights. In this work of art the cartoonist dips deep into his bag of ironies by portraying the fiercely feminist Ms. Grandinetti as a seemingly old fashioned female of hearth and home busily knitting...a condom case. The "twist" of the homespun act of knitting played against the contemporary subject of the Planned Parenthood promoted prophylactic is rich beyond description. As if this weren't enough to satisfy the viewer the artist has added an additional layer to the delightful cartoon cake by echoing Grandinetti's recent Facebook Sex Ed brouhaha in which she claimed that her employer, the Niagara Falls school district, was acting in a criminally irresponsible manner by not offering what she deemed to be adequate sex education programming. In the final analysis the councilwoman and grade school teacher is pictured making a storage "case" for a condom while subliminally presenting a "case" in support of condom use. The image is so rich in double meaning and bi-verbal wordplay that it brings the cartoon to a humorous climax leaving the viewer exhausted yet deeply satiated.

Cynthia X. Winstock