Q Toon: Trans Exit Hotline

We watch a lot of Ovation TV in our house, to the point where there are some program episodes we can identify within the first five seconds. My better half says he knows which commercials are going to be shown during which commercial break.

A commercial that seems to be replacing the one for buying gold offers a "hotline" to get people out of solar collector contracts, pretty much like those firms offering help getting out of timeshares. I didn't even know dissatisfaction with solar energy was a thing; when I tried googling for news about it, all that came up was a report that quoted only talk radio hosts.

So anyway, that was the inspiration for this week's Q Syndicate cartoon. Donald Commodus Trump made the weird boast in panel #1 during a campaign appearance over the weekend for Lindsey Graham's sister, Darline, in South Carolina. I've quoted him verbatim, except for adding the word transgender from earlier in his diatribe.

You can tell it's the way he talks, because I wouldn't have come up with that "Nobody ever heard about it" sentence myself. It's superfluous and doesn't quite make sense; it's just Trump again boasting his strange belief that his stable genius brain discerns all sorts of things no other human being is capable of ever having conceived before.

Now, I will concede that gender reassignment surgery isn't for everybody, so it is possible that a handful of people who thought it would solve all their problems come to realize that it didn't. It's up to them and their health care professionals to decide whether to pause, halt, or reverse their transition; no responsible physician would consult with the Absolutely Corrupt President of the United States for his Rx.

There is a reason, however, that nobody ever heard about the hospitals kowtowing to Trump's order to perform reverse transgender surgery — which, for the sake of brevity, I will hereinafter call "snart surgery." (Surely nobody has ever heard about it.)

Top snart surgery would be based on traditional breast augmentation/reduction procedures; I imagine that bottom snart surgery isn't absolutely impossible, either. I doubt, however, that it would be 100% effective, and I'm absolutely certain that even if Trump were able to order snart surgery done on you, neither he nor his Republican Congress are ever gonna foot the bill. 

This Week's Sneak Peek

There's a part in this week's cartoon for a shady medical person; I ruled out RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz because the cartoon didn't need to be about them specifically. I thought of The Simpsons' Dr. Nick, but I used him once before. No reason to keep using someone else's character.

Another possibility was to give the character the head of a duck — you know, because he's a quack, get it? Get it? Get it?

I settled for giving him vaguely duckbill lips.

I Shall Return

Every so often, the statistics report for this blog informs me of a big spike in visits to my 16-year-old post of R.C. Bowman cartoons about U.S. occupation of the Philippines in 1900. I've always guessed that some professor has that post on the syllabus. 

So, just in case some student clicks on the "Philippines" label in search of some extra credit, I like to keep my eyes open for more cartoons about the archipelago's American colonial period.

"The Little Dog with the Big Voice" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, August 15, 1926

It just so happens that the Philippines were on American drawing boards in August of 1926.

President Calvin Coolidge sent a special commission headed by Colonel Carmi Thompson to the Philippines in late July to report back on conditions there 28 years after the U.S. took the islands at the end of the Spanish-American War.

Philippines Senator Sergio Osmena announced that Coolidge had promised him, "We are going to withdraw from the Philippines, but don't intend to leave you with limited resources. We desire to first assist you in promoting economic development sufficient for your self-support."

"He's Reached the Dangerous Age" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, August 6, 1926

Philippine desire for independence was nothing new. In "Ding" Darling's view, Americans were inattentive and indifferent to matters in the nation' far-off colony.

By the way, I'm not quite sure why Ding drew "Ordinary Citizen" and "Public Opinion" as two separate persons, or what relation they are to each other, since Uncle Sam is alarmed over "where our young son is." A throuple, perchance?

"High Time Somebody Was Watching" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, August 12, 1926

This cartoon makes a little more sense, even if 28 years is an awful long time to be struggling to get a fish in your boat.

Both cartoons cast (no pun intended) Governor General Leonard Wood, 66, as the person responsible for keeping the Philippines in line. The retired Major General was appointed Governor-General of the Philippines by Warren Harding, having been Governor of the southern, majority-Muslim Moro province during Teddy Roosevelt's administration.

"Rubberneck" by Robert E. Brady in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 2, 1926

Not everyone was as disinterested in the Philippines as Ding's Public Opinion appeared to be. U.S. rubber manufacturer Harvey Firestone was convinced that the Philippines were an ideal location to grow rubber trees for the American market, a commodity then almost exclusively contained to British colonies. Firestone urged the Coolidge administration to pressure the Philippine legislature to loosen property ownership laws to allow it to buy up land to grow rubber, perhaps as a prerequisite to independence.

One serious proposal would have had the U.S. annex Mindanao and other southern islands and grant independence to the rest of the Philippines.

"Guess Who'll Be the First Victim" by Jesse T. Cargill for Central Press Assn. ca. August 20, 1926

The Chicago Daily News was skeptical. "The United States, it is safe to say, will not grant independence for the sake of rubber, no matter how many native and American cliques favor such a dicker. The question of reasonable revision of land laws should be decided on its merits. Native interests should be protected, and exploitation of the islands by combines indifferent to principle or good faith should be barred."

"Another Channel Aspirant" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1926

McCutcheon's cartoon riffs on Gertrude Ederle's just-completed swim across the English Channel, and focuses on concerns that if the U.S. granted independence to the Philippines, the archipelago would soon be taken over by some other world power, such as Japan. There is a paternalistic attitude in many of the American cartoons on the Philippine issue, going back to the Spanish-American War and forward to independence in 1946.

"But I Want to Cross By Myself" by Robert Day in Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1926

"The tyrant is a new role for Uncle Sam to play," opined the Los Angeles Times, "one in which neither our cartoonists nor other people on this continent ever have dreamed of seeing him. But in the childlike mind of the excited Filipino, who clamors for independence as a small boy impatiently demands a huge piece of pie, regardless of whether or not it is likely to agree with him, our Government is as despotic as any of ancient Rome. 

"It seems impossible for any of these purblind people to appreciate the anomalous position they present to the world — the strange spectacle of 10,000,000 trying to get out of the United States, while at the same time more than 10,000,000 Europeans are anxious to get in, but must be denied admission."

"The Interested Party Seems to Be Interested" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, August 21, 1926

"It is not yet demonstrated that the routine resolutions of the Philippine legislature [demanding independence] express the majority opinion," averred the Oakland Tribune. "It is yet to be proved that the Filipinos have 'sufficient political maturity for independence.'"

Indeed, there were leaders of the Moslem minority who preferred governance by the far-off Americans to the prospect of rule by the local Catholic majority, leading the Fort Worth Telegram to conclude: "The United States should not grant independence until the Filipinos have gone through a long period of education and are a united people instead of an artificial union of  intensely hostile elements."

"The Ever-Shortening Fuse" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. August 25, 1926

As crises go, the Crisis in Philippine Affairs didn't capture Public Opinion's very long. Nor did whatever promises President Coolidge might have given Senator Osmena.

Q Toon: W-hoops

Perhaps if I had followed basketball more closely, I would remember who Royce White and Enes Kantor were; they retired from the NBA a couple years ago. 

Apparently, life outside of the limelight has been lonely for them, because they have decided to enlist in the Republican Culture War against transgender athletes by claiming to be transgender themselves as a ruse to qualify for the WNBA draft. Royce's pretense of being transgender has extended only as far as donning a blonde wig for a podcast; Kantor hasn't even committed to that much.

It can't be for the money. WNBA players, even the league's stars, make considerably less than their NBA counterparts. That's why they end up taking summer jobs overseas at the risk of becoming an international hostage, as happened to Brittney Griner.

White's and Kantor's purported reason for their ploy is that they are protesting that WNBA rules lack a definition of what a woman is and isn't. Never mind that there are no transgender women in the WNBA today, nor has any transgender woman beside these two fakers declared any intention of entering the WNBA draft. 

The sole exception has been Layshia Clarendon, a non-binary/trans woman who played on seven WNBA teams from 2013 to 2024. As I said, I don't follow basketball all that closely, but I think if there were any transgender basketballer coming up through the college system or making international waves in Croatia, I think I would have heard about it.

On the outside chance that White and Kantor are sincere in their concern for the integrity of women's basketball, trans athlete Karleigh Webb has suggested four approaches for the WNBA to "shut down the circus," as she puts it:

1. Ignore the two and refuse to draft them, then tough out the ginned-up outrage from right-wing agitators.
2. Require trans athletes to prove they have been on feminizing hormone replacement therapy for at least one year before becoming eligible to play.
3. Await the findings, expected next year, from the gender eligibility committee of FIBA, the international basketball governing association.
4. "Once the WNBA Finals end, owners, coaches and the players’ union, along with researchers and trans athletes well-versed in these policies, should come together and build an evidence-driven, basketball-specific eligibility policy. The objective shouldn’t be to balance inclusion against fairness, as though one must necessarily come at the expense of the other. The objective should be to align inclusion, competitive integrity, fairness and safety."

The ringleaders of the circus aren't likely to be assuaged by any of these suggestions. They have a vested interest in keeping the circus up and running. 

But you have to start somewhere.

fin

Honest Abe's Sneak Peek

"Prof. Lincoln in His Great Feat of Balancing" by Bobbett-Hooper SC in Vanity Fair, New York, March 23, 1861

I've found a couple sources on line for the 1860's iteration of Vanity Fair, but although the magazine's cartoonists got a fair amount of mileage out of depicting Abraham Lincoln in a tam-o-shanter and kilt, I have not yet come across that reported cartoon of him borrowing Mary Todd Lincoln's dress as a disguise.

I'll keep you apprised of my search; in the meantime, and speaking of disguises, here's a snippet from this week's upcoming cartoon:

The Dog Days of Cartooning

Or, You Cannot Be Sirius.

1986

in Iconoplastic, Poughkeepsie NY, August 1986

Our Graphical History Tour today delves deep into the Bergetoons vaults for its carefully ripened and aged cartoonistry.

Iconoplastic ("The Magazine for the Self-Interested") was published by a college classmate of mine, Mark Hopkins. The photocopied zine was a way for a bunch of us who had attended St. Olaf together to share our artwork and creative writing with each other. Most of the cartoons I sent to Mark had appeared previously in the UW-Parkside Ranger, but this was one I had drawn expressly for Iconoplastic.

Every one of the five issues of Iconoplastic was dated August, 1986; this cartoon appeared in the second of them. There was supposed to be a sixth and final issue in June of 1987, but if it was ever printed, I never got to see it.

I had begun writing the date in the margin of my cartoons, so I know that I actually drew the above cartoon in August of 1986. I'm sure that it had to do with Ronald Reagan's Missile Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

1996

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Sept. 3, 1996

Why am I including this September cartoon in a collection of my August cartoons? Well, according to my margin notes, I drew it in August. Its topic was the 1996 Republican Party platform, a laundry list of religious right priorities, which the party's nominee, Sen. Bob Dole, told reporters he hadn't read.

The composition of this cartoon is a lot like one I had drawn two months earlier, but with a slightly different cast of Republicans standing behind Dole. Appearing between him and Newt Gingrich is probably the best caricature of Pat Buchanan that I ever produced, which is a pity, since I drew plenty of other cartoons in which he was the main focus rather than an extra in the background.

I had drawn the earlier cartoon for a summer semester issue of the Post that was never published, so I wasn't concerned that some reader might have thought they had seen this cartoon before. 

2006

for Q Syndicate, August 2006

There is nothing wrong with your set.

At some point during the sketching out of this cartoon, I realized that for the dialogue to read properly — for your eyes to read the straight line before the punch line — I either needed the second dialogue balloon to cover Mildred, or to flip the drawing horizontally 180 degrees.

I decided that rather than starting the whole cartoon over, I would just write the dialogue, my signature, and the date in mirror image, then flip the whole cartoon 180 degrees in Photoshop. Being left-handed, I ink my cartoons from right to left anyway, so as to avoid smearing wet ink with the side of my hand.

Here's how the published cartoon looked.

Visually, I think the composition of the cartoon worked better this way, too. The eye sees Luke and Brian first, then Mildred, and finally the two men talking behind Luke and Brian's back.

According to my marginalia, I drew this cartoon in August as a cartoon to be held in reserve, to be released sometime when I didn't send in a cartoon on deadline, so I can't be sure when it was actually published. I think my Better Half and I went on vacation that November, although that would have been an odd time for Mildred to be watering her garden and everyone else to be wearing shorts.

Unless they lived in Florida or southern California.

2016

for Q Syndicate, August 2016

Running for President in 2016, Donald Trump responded to the Pulse Night Club massacre by claiming that his anti-immigrant policies would protect LGBTQ+ Americans.

He didn't mention that the heavily Latino clientele of the Pulse Night Club was just the sort of people who would be targeted for exile to concentration camps in shithole countries by the Corrupt Trump Regime™'s ethnic cleansing program. 

And he apparently had no clue that the T stands for Transgender, people whose persecution would join that of Latinos and Moslems as Corrupt Trump Regime™ priorities.

That, and erecting monuments to himself all over Washington, D.C.

Drawing them discomfited by what I had Trump say in this cartoon, I gave a hefty benefit of the doubt to three of his ardent supporters: Kellyanne Conway, Rudy Giuliani, and his running mate, Mike Pence. That benefit proved entirely undeserved. The three proved ready, willing, and eager to debase themselves in service of Dear Leader's alternative facts, phantom election fraud, and commitment to not just one, but two Corinthians.

Q Toon: Devices to Their Own Left

Wisconsin failed — by a whisker — to follow Democrats in the rest of the country in the march to Democratic Socialism this Tuesday. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley edged out Madison Statehouse Representative Francesca Hong in the race for the party's gubernatorial nomination.

In polls, Hong, a self-identified Democratic Socialist, had led a crowded field for months, and Republicans were eager to run against her. Not that their campaign against Crowley will be any different than their campaign against her; Tom Tiffany and his corporate backers will simply edit his face into their attack ads in place of hers.

The embarrassing tweets played up in Republican ads will be significantly older than the stuff they wanted to hang around Hong's neck (Crowley has semi-plausible deniability that he was responsible for them). We can make a drinking game for every time a commercial warns us that "David Crowley Is Too Liberal For Wisconsin." We're a heavy-drinking state, you know.

Well, anyway, Max and Leo hadn't heard the Wisconsin primary results before walking their dog in this week's cartoon. Zoran Mamdani's election as New York City Mayor heralded a string of high profile victories by young, left-wing Democrats over older, more "establishment" incumbents: Melat Kiros in Colorado; Abdul El-Sayed and William Lawrence in Michigan; Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota.

On the other hand, 

The winners in the Democrats’ moderate faction include Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), who fended off a leftist challenger; former Rep. Elaine Luria (Va.) and Richmond-area prosecutor Shannon Taylor, who won swing-district primaries; and Rep. Wesley Bell (Mo.), who prevailed in his rematch against democratic socialist former Rep. Cori Bush.

Republicans purged moderates (and anyone willing to stand up for constitutional democracy) from their number several election cycles ago, so as far as the GOP is concerned, there is no difference between moderate Democrats, liberal progressives, Democratic Socialists, Socialists, and Communists. Potayto, potahto. 

French fries, gnocchi, tater tot, lefse, spud.