Taking their shots

According to economists, without the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the cartoons seen here would be better. Maybe 20% funnier, 17 basis points more sarcastic and a dozen or so satire-hours more insightful. I base that on the annual spate of economic reports claiming billions of dollars in lost productivity because of on-the-job attention paid to the March games.

Without the attention-diverting, time-sucking hoopfest, could Pat Oliphant’s hapless Democrats have taken their blame game to the next level? Would Signe Wilkinson’s heavy-machinery parade for outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton have hummed along on all cylinders? And might presidential advisor Claude Allen have extended his alleged five-finger discounting stats into six or even seven figures in Tom Toles’ rendition? We’ll never know until these counterproductive brackets are banned, banned like Pete Rose on steroids ripping the bodice from Janet Jackson’s breast. Only then can cartoonists such as Rob Rogers be free to concentrate on the real Mideast Regional.