This Week's Sneak Peek

 I tasked myself with another outdoor setting at night this week:

That works really well in grayscale; I know of just one publication that prints my cartoons that way. It poses a challenge in colorizing the cartoon, as the Moody Blues said:

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray, and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion

✍

I learned this weekend of the death of Jerry Fearing, 94, editorial cartoonist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, and the papers that merged into it, from about 1957 to 1994. In his memory, here is the cartoon he drew after the death of Senator Hubert Humphrey in 1978:

The Long, Slow Race to the Finish

Our Graphical History Tour today finds the 1924 election campaigns heading into the final stretch, wrapping it up with a bow, and firing their last salvos. 

"Trying to Attract the Attention of the Enemy" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 17, 1924

From John McCutcheon's perch in the Republican stands, the U.S. presidential contest had come down to one between his party's incumbent President Calvin Coolidge and its defector to the Progressive Party, Senator Robert LaFollette. He cast Democratic nominee John Davis as the third-party also-ran.

"I Don't Believe That Chap Can Read" by Clifford Berryman in Washington [DC] Evening Star, Oct. 6, 1924

Democratic partisans put a brave face on things — such was their job, after all — in spite of polls and straw votes giving a marked advantage to the Republicans.

Straw votes in presidential contests date back one century further to 1824; and if the press generally reported them as indicating present mood rather than forecasting the official vote, editorial cartoonists were not alone in reading them as predictions. The straw polls might be limited to the students at a particular university, or members of a certain profession, or just passers-by at a busy street corner.

Opinion polls came along more recently, and supposedly were more scientific; the Literary Digest poll, launched in 1916, had successfully predicted the presidential races in that year and 1920. The first truly national poll, the Literary Digest mailed post cards around the country and tallied the results of those that were returned.

"The Dark Outlook" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Oct. 20, 1924

Tom Foley, who favored LaFollette, posed a scenario that minimized Republicans' chances by overstating LaFollette's and Davis's. In the end, LaFollette carried only his home state of Wisconsin; and Davis failed to win New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, or Delaware.

I won't even get into Foley's forecast of Upper Michigan casting separate electoral votes from Lower Michigan.

"Who Was It Who Traded Their Birthright..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Oct. 31, 1924

For the time being, Republicans' main worry was the possibility that LaFollette's candidacy could result in none of the three major presidential candidates reaching an electoral college majority. In that case, the election of a President would be decided in the House of Representatives, and the Vice President chosen in the Senate.

By the way, the answer to Darling's question was Esav Ben-Yitzchak, if you're wondering.

"What It Will Mean" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 24, 1924

GOP stalwart Charles Kuhn devoted nearly a dozen cartoons in October of 1924 to dire predictions of chicanery and chaos if the election were to be given to Congress to decide. (And still Kuhn had not ventured a comment on the Klan-ridden statewide races in his home state of Indiana.)

The Republican congressional majorities in both houses included some Progressives who could not be counted on to support Calvin Coolidge. Prominent Progressives Hiram Johnson (R-CA) and William Borah (R-ID) promised to support the Republican ticket, but Iowa Senator Smith W. Brookhart stirred things up by declaring himself for LaFollette.

"They've All Gone Wrong But Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Oct. 3, 1924

Charles Kuhn may have had no opinions about Indiana politics in the summer and fall of 1924, but other editorial cartoonists were happy to take note of races close to home. In Ohio, Governor Alvin "Honest Vic" Donahey had some reliable campaign help as he ran for a second term...

"This Looks Pretty Good to Me" by James "Hal" Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 14, 1924

His younger brother, James Harrison Donahey, was the front page editorial cartoonist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. From that perch, "Hal" repeatedly sang the praises of his older brother...

"My, What a Clatter" by James H. Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 24, 1924

...and pooh-poohed the corruption charges against "Honest Vic" made by his Republican opponent, former Governor Harry L. Davis. (I could have made a post here made up of Donahey's in-kind contributions to his brother's campaign, but I might not have been able to come up with much to say about the cartoons after the first four or five of them.)

"The Little Stick" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 4, 1924

Speaking of family, New York Republicans nominated as their gubernatorial candidate against Democrat Al Smith Theodore Roosevelt III, son of the late president. Sullied by the Teapot Dome scandal while Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Harding administration but cleared of any wrong-doing, he returned criticism from his cousin Franklin: "He's a maverick! He does not wear the brand of our family."

"With All the Heirlooms" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, Sept. 26, 1924

As we discussed last week, elections were held across the pond in the United Kingdom, too. The specific issues forcing Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government to stand for election were reported in the U.S. press, but I'm not finding many American cartoons getting into the particulars.

"We Got Company" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 16, 1925

There was certainly delight in some quarters, however, at his fall. 

"Well, Well, Still They Come" by Dorman Smith for NEA, ca. Oct. 25, 1924

Germany was headed for a snap election as well. The Reichstag was dissolved on October 20, with elections set for December 7. Given that it was Germany's second election that year, Americans probably greeted the news with a yawn — just another change of government in hapless Deutschland — but Germany was in fact just then entering into its so-called "Glückliche Zwanzigers," the brief period of economic recovery that ended with the global crash at decade's end.

"The Dancing-Master and the Bag-Piper" by K.A. Suvanto in Daily Worker, Chicago, Oct. 8, 1924

If you caught last week's sampling of cartoons by Montreal Star cartoonist A.G. Racey, you remember that the opposition to the Labour government charged that MacDonald failed to prosecute a communist newspaper for advocating mutiny in his majesty’s armed services and that he was an unwitting dupe of Soviet Russia. 

The commies at the Daily Worker in Chicago argued instead that MacDonald was a stooge of British capitalists.

"Took Me Just Three Weeks" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Oct. 30, 1924 

The British Parliament dissolved on October 9, and its Conservative Party won in a landslide on October 29. This Berryman cartoon just goes to show that Americans' longing for a shorter election season is nothing new.

And yet, our election season just keeps getting longer and longer, anyway.

Q Toon: Proof Through the Night

Something a little lighter this week:

I like to take note of National Coming Out Day when I can, even when it occurs during the most critical and fraught election season since 1860.

It's a holiday only a few decades old, offering an impetus, or at least an excuse, for LGBTQ+ people of any age who have been in the closet, or just realizing who they are, to celebrate themselves in public. To be honest with the people they love, they work with, or they meet. To be unashamed of the ones they love.

In some ways, there is less to lose by coming out now than there was on the first NCOD in 1988. Being out is not going to get you dishonorably discharged from military service. You can still be a big Hollywood star, or a highly paid athlete, or Senator, or cabinet secretary, or Ambassador to Luxembourg. Or pastor, doctor, nurse, school teacher, truck driver, or Tik Tok influencer.

Or parent.

True, there is still the possibility that coming out could leave you estranged from family, church, or friends. But it's a possibility that has become more remote for more and more of us, thanks to the brave men and women who have come out before you.

And your coming out will make that possibility even more remote for those who come after you, believe it or not.

If the fireworks surrounding your coming out experience are rough, take heart. I promise you that you will find new family, church, or friends. Your old family, church or friends might even come around someday. 

Or they might surprise you and keep loving you for who you are... just like they did before.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I just got back yesterday from this year's combined convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists.

It was a good meeting, aside from getting lost on the first day walking from the hotel to the Musée McCord-Stewart Museum because I read the map upside-down. I did stumble upon the gay district of Rue Ste. Catherine; by then, I was relying on Google Maps to get me headed back in the right direction. But because Google Maps thought I was driving, the app kept insisting that I turn off in the wrong direction just to get off the pedestrian mall.

It didn't like me walking against traffic on one-way streets, either, repeatedly demanding that I turn right and right two more times even though my destination was ahead and to the left.

Detail from "Some of the Strange Gods Worshipped in Johnny Canuck's Temple of Fame" by Charles W. Jefferies in The Moon, Montréal, Aug. 9, 1902

Well, I'm sure that I will find something else to say about the convention, if only to post a review of the book I bought at the Musée once I've finished reading it.

And to thank Christian Vachon, curator of the Musée and 1er recipient of the ACC's Golden Gable Award, for sending a link to the McClord-Stewart and further information about Saturday's Graphical History Tour subject, Arthur G. Racey. (Did you know that it was a Canadian who, Vachon convincingly argues, invented the cartoon characterization of Uncle Sam?)

My trip home started with a red-eye flight from Montréal to Toronto, so by the time I renewed acquaintance with my better half, unpacked, had an overdue meal, and sat down at my drawing board, I was falling asleep.

Come back in a few days to see what a mess I made of this week's cartoon.

A.G. Racey

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists are meeting with our Canadian brethren and sistren in Montréal this weekend, so today's Graphical History Tour celebrates the work 100 years ago this month of Montreal Daily Star editorial cartoonist A.G. Racey.

"The Firecracker" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 1, 1924

Quebecker Arthur George Racey (1870-1941) drew editorial cartoons for Montreal's Daily Star and Witness for 40 years starting in 1899. According to his 1922 book, Canadian Men of Affairs in Cartoon, he "enjoyed a position of unique prominence and popularity as a chronicler of the world, events and men. His work in the Montreal Daily Star is known all around the British Empire and beyond."

"Where Does It Come From" by A.G. Racey  in Montreal Daily Star, October 18, 1924

So let's start beyond the British Empire. From the Far East: Japan threatened to scuttle a negotiated League of Nations agreement on armaments reduction. Meanwhile, civil war had erupted in China, which factored into the Japanese government's reluctance to agree to military cuts.

Racey's is one of the least racist cartoons about the Chinese crisis that I've come across; admittedly, American cartoonists set a pretty low bar in that regard.

"Churchill and His Hats" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star,  September 30, 1924

In this early cartoon of Winston Churchill, he's missing the cigar and extra pounds that we usually picture him with nowadays. Apparently, in an era when absolutely everybody wore hats, Churchill was known for also wearing hats.

Churchill, representing Dundee, Scotland in Parliament as a Liberal, had been ousted from office in the 1922 election by candidates of the Labour and Scottish Prohibition Parties. With new elections called in October of 1924, Churchill would be elected again, but this time as a Conservative representing Epping.

The Daily Star was an Anglophile newspaper, allied with the Conservative Party in London and Toronto — Canada being a subject of the crown a century ago — so a prospective change in Tory leadership involving the wartime Secretary of State for War was certainly of interest to its subscribers. As it happened, Winston Churchill would have to wait another 15 years to take the helm of his once and future party.

"The Foundering Ship" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 4, 1924

The news dominating the British Empire, including Canada, were parliamentary elections called only nine months into the administration of Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the first of his party to hold the post. One of MacDonald's first foreign policy actions was to extend official recognition to the Soviet Union, and to open negotiations with the Russians toward a treaty on Anglo-Soviet trade and the repayment Imperial Russian loans to British bondholders.

MacDonald's minority government lost a vote of no confidence over the "Campbell Case," its decision not to prosecute the Communist Party Workers Weekly and its acting editor, J.R. Campbell, for a July 25 "Open Letter to the Fighting Forces" urging British servicemen to mutiny in the event of war.

"And He Needs It So Badly for Propaganda" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 22, 1924

Clearly, Racey and his editors shared the view of Britain's Conservatives and Liberals against the MacDonald Soviet-friendly foreign policy, and his cartoons amplify the Red Scare issue that was central to the Conservatives' campaign.

"St. George for England" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 27, 1924

In case it's too small to read on your device, the spear wielded by "Conservatism" against "Moscow Dominated Red Communism" is labeled "patriotism." I do not, however, believe that Racey intended to call the "British Electorate" a horse's ass.

"Mad Clear Through" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, October 28, 1924

Four days before the election in what we would today call an October surprise, the London Daily Mail published a letter, purportedly by Grigori Zinoviev, President of the Communist International (Commintern), intercepted by Great Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. The gist of the letter was that normalization of British-Soviet relations would facilitate the spread of Communist influence throughout the British Empire, culminating in revolution by its workers and soldiers.

"A Hallowe'en Tragedy" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, October 31, 1924

The letter is now believed to have been a forgery, but it nevertheless doomed the MacDonald government. Conservatives won a decisive majority in Parliament; Labour lost 40 seats.

Racey's cartoon overlooks one other development with the 1924 election: the Liberal Party lost 118 of its 158 seats in Parliament. Formerly the main rival to the Conservatives, the Liberals have been a  minority third party ever since.

"The Mote and the Beam" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, October 23, 1924

With so much excitement over the British elections, Racey hardly had time in October to address any Canadian issues. (In case you're wondering, he drew nothing about the election underway south of the border that month.) 

He did squeeze in this commentary on Canadian complicity in subversion of Prohibition in the United States. Here the province of Ontario, nose darkened by "manufacture of booze," lectures a grinning Quebec, whose nose is stained by "sale of booze."

The latest cartoons of Arthur Racey that I've found were in January, 1941; he died on December 21, 1941 after having been ill for several months. Just as the Parti Québecois was coming to power in Montréal, the Anglophile Montreal Star shut down in September, 1979, unable to recover from a strike of its press workers. 

Hocus Pocus

This year's vice presidential candidates more or less held their own during their debate performance the other evening, or at least that's the conventional wisdom so far. They voiced agreement with each other several times and mostly avoided patently obvious lies on a Trumpian scale.

Which, since Trump got his whopper about Haitian immigrant petivores from his running mate, is remarkable.

For vice presidential candidates, Job Number One is not to fnck up. Check, and check.

Job Number Two is to brown-nose the boss. For JD BH Vance, that meant pretending that the Corrupt Trump Administration™ was a halcyon quadrennium of universal peace, bipartisan comity, and economic miracles. (Pay no attention to Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan, impeachments I and II, Nancy Pelosi tearing up a state of the union speech, cramming dogmatic right-wingers onto the Supreme Court, and a nation struggling to find toilet paper, diapers, infant formula, and places to bury COVID fatalities.) 

Why, Trump even saved Obamacare, and we didn't even notice it at the time! It just goes to show what a modest fellow Donald J. Trump truly is.

Late in the debate, after Vance risibly claimed that Trump “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th,” Tim Walz tried to get Vance to confess that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. But Vance refused to take the bait, replying instead, “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

His focus on the past is mighty gauzy, that's for sure.

Q Toon: Ad Insultiam

There's a month to go until Election Day, and Republicans have broken out the transphobia on TV.

The Trump campaign has begun running trans-bashing ads charging that Kamala Harris supports transgender therapy for children "without their parents' consent," as well as gender corrective surgery for prison inmates and undocumented immigrants. The ads include footage of Harris answering questions from a transgender interviewer (Wait — isn't the Republican knock on Harris that she won't sit down for interviews?) followed by still shots of her with drag performers — at least one of which doesn't look photoshopped together — and Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine.

You may not recognize Levine’s name; but transphobes find her every bit as frightening as those of us on the other side found Roger Severino in Trump’s HHS. And rest assured that right-wing media are holding her up as a scary bugaboo every chance they can get.

Here in Wisconsin, Republican senatorial candidate Eric Hovde and the PACs supporting him have been running ads making the same accusations against Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin. One assumes that Republicans are running this as a one-size-fits-all ad against other Democrats in close races around the country; Baldwin just happens to be one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ candidates this year.

We creative types gripe about AI — Artificial Intelligence — infringing on our turf. Someone quipped something to the effect of AI allowing wealth access to creativity without allowing creativity access to wealth. Or something like that. I tried googling it, but Google just gave me inspirational quotations about attaining financial security.

Anyway, you'll miss us creative types when we're gone, I promise you. But nobody is going to shed a tear when AI puts the campaign admeisters out of work. I half suspect that the emails flooding my inbox from Sherrod Brown (personal!), Elisa Slotkin, Jon Tester, Tim Walz, Barack Obama, Michele Obama, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Adam Kinzinger, Gwen Walz, Doug Emhoff, Chasten Buttigieg, and Moo Dang, the baby hippopotamus, each of them supposedly writing me ten or twelve times a day, must be spewed forth from AI servers in Cupertino. Some guy probably fed in the parameters to Watson 9000 four or five years ago: show me a desperate candidate up against a funding deadline and facing a barrage of attacks by a menacing cabal threatening all that America holds dear. 

I doubt that anyone will shed a tear if and when the job of grinding out political attack ads gets snatched away from the Don Drapers and Darrin Stephenses of Madison Avenue and K Street. Turning the work over to soulless mainframes in the cloud instead of the soulless operatives doing it now might scarcely be noticed by the rest of us.

Unless we happen to spot the surplus fingers and triple-jointed hips in the grainy, slow motion, black-and-white videos of Candidates X.