Does someone at Skymall have a sense of humor?

I fly a lot for work, and every plane I fly on has the Skymall catalog on it. The idea is that you're a captive audience and can order a bunch of, well, crap to be shipped to your home.

The catalog offers a personalized branding iron, presumably for marking steaks. Check out who's initials they used.

It took me a little while to put this together, but I remembered this Maureen Dowd article about Bush branding pledges at the DKE fraternity at Yale. The story apparently came from Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury (who most certainly does have a sense of humor.) Trudeau evidently used it as the subject of his first cartoon based on an article of the Yale Daily News. From the Blue Lemur:

Trudeau said he penned his very first cartoon to illustrate an article in the Yale Daily News on Bush and allegations that his fraternity, DKE, had hazed incoming pledges by branding them with an iron.

The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times "it was just a coat hanger, and it didn't hurt any more than a cigarette burn."

“It does put one in mind of what his views on torture might be today,” Trudeau said.

I frequently work with graphic artists at my job, and I have found them to have just this kind of sense of humor. My guess (from the aforementioned crap sold in the catalog) is that said graphics artist (and/or photographer) managed to slip this bit of snark past some very Republican management.

So, unknown graphic artist, I salute you. And for getting this onto every plane on every U.S. airline, I raise my glass to you. Specifically, a tequila shot served in a shotgun shell chased with a beer served in a polycarbonate tankard all served at a table inspired by, evidently, A Christmas Story.

Cheers!