It starts with today’s Bizarro, which turns out to have a history:
(#1)
The reporter challenges the presidential spokesman on the accuracy of his pronouncements, suggesting, with a euphemistic label that rhymes (in English), that it’s just bullshit.
From the GoComics site, in a 2/16/11 piece by R.C. Harvey, “Rants & Raves: The Bizarro Art of Don Piraro”, a review of Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro, by Dan Piraro (2009):
And his political views found their way into Bizarro. But, in an attempt to be prudent, Piraro limited the frequency of his politically tinged cartoons — until the week before the 2004 election, when he ran eight political jokes in a row, after which “I endured a storm of complaints,” he said. In one cartoon slated for publication the previous summer, he showed presidential spokesman at a press conference being asked: “Is that the truth, or the ‘Manure du Jour’?” Said Piraro: “It was decided that this cartoon would be tantamount to saying the president was full of shit and would lead to cancellations, so it was never published.”
Until today.
(Side note: the cartoon in #1 has at least two of Dan Piraro’s “secret symbols” (the stick of dynamite and the eyeball) — see this site — but has no number above Piraro’s signature.)
Searching on “manure du jour” brought up lots of playful uses of the expression, plus an elaborate site from the Penn State Agriculture and Environment Center on “Manure du Jour”, a weekly webinar series covering “Pennsylvania’s Best Practices on Animal Agriculture, Water Quality, and Air Quality” (including presentations on manure storage and handling).
Harvey’s piece on Piraro had a Bizarro (from 10/24/06) that I hadn’t seen before:
(#2)
with the evolution / Ascent of Man meme. See my 2/1/15 posting “Bizarro evolution” for a collection of other examples and links to still more — 10 in all.
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