This Week's Sneak Peek

We've been spending hours ever day at Casa de Bergetoons trying to build a gazebo on the back patio this month, so I got a very late start on this week's cartoon. I came up with an idea I liked early in the day, so I wasn't worried about that.

Then the rug got pulled out from underneath my drawing board.

This sketch actually is not from this week's cartoon. I kind of wish I had bothered to scan what I had drawn before learning that Mitch McConnell's staff had published a photo of the Senator smiling in the hospital with his wife, Secretary Elaine Chao, as proof that he had not rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

It turns out that at least two other editorial cartoonists had drawn cartoons that were fairly similar to the cartoon I had started. That is pretty much the same reason that I never finished the above cartoon back in 2020.

I was very pleased with both caricatures. But last night's is erased and gone.

Bereft of graphite, it rests in peace.

It is an ex-caricature.

Reports of His Death Are Greatly Appreciated

Graphical History Tour looks forward to remembering Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), reported to be serving out the remainder of his congressional term in a vegetative state.

McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984, ousting a Democratic incumbent in the Reagan landslide that year. I drew no cartoons about McConnell that early in his career; perhaps Joel Pett can put a retrospective of his Lexington Herald Leader cartoons of the McConnell record. I'll leave it to him.

McConnell has been no stranger to purposeful inactivity.

March, 2019

McConnell's facial features, especially with his eyeglasses, suited him to caricature as an owl or a tortoise; influenced by Jon Stewart's characterization of him on The Daily Show, I drew McConnell as a turtle again and again. 

This cartoon dealt with Democrats' "Equality Act" to extend existing federal anti-discrimination protections in employment, housing, credit, jury selection, and education to include persons on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. The legislation passed the House, but McConnell kept it off the Senate's agenda.

February, 2016

McConnell's longest lasting legacy is likely to be the Republican supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The GOP had enjoyed a 5-to-4 majority on the Court when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, leaving an evenly split Court and one empty seat for President Barack Obama to fill. McConnell declared that the Senate would refuse to consider Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland, supposedly because there would be a new president eleven months later.

"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice," McConnell wrote, discounting the voice of the American people in 2008 and 2012. "Therefore this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

September, 2020

Four years later, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, a mere seven weeks before another presidential election. Rather than let the American people weigh in on the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice, McConnell rammed Donald Trump's choice, Amy Coney Barrett, through the Senate faster than any SCOTUS nominee since President Martin Van Buren's nomination of Peter Vivian Daniel one week before leaving office in 1841.

July, 2018

Having declared during President Obama's first term that McConnell's primary goal was to make sure that Obama wouldn't serve a second one, McConnell's primary goal in Trump's first term was to make sure that Trump got everything he wanted.

Trump would name Brett Kavanaugh, not the Dictator of North Korea, to this particular Supreme Court vacancy. McConnell couldn't keep Democrats from asking Kavanaugh about sexual assault allegations; but as long as McConnell kept Republicans in line, Democrats couldn't keep Kavanaugh off the Court.

November, 2018

On the other hand, McConnell and his Republicans had blockaded several of President Obama's lower court nominations from getting through the Senate. While in the minority, Senate Republicans repeatedly filibustered Obama's nominations, and denied cloture votes to end debate; Senate Majority Harry Reid responded by limiting debate on district and circuit court nominations to 30 hours, and lowering the needed vote to confirm to 50% — the so-called "nuclear option."

When Republicans won a Senate majority in 2014, McConnell changed Senate rules so that even a single GOP Senator could block a judicial appointment.

"A large number of vacancies were from states with two Republican senators or one Republican and one Democrat," [Sheldon Goldman, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst] explained. "Until McConnell and the Republicans upended the practice of senatorial courtesy, both senators had to sign off on the recommended judicial nominees. Republican senators did their best to delay the process. As we now know, that tactic of obstruct and delay was successful."

"That Obama left office with so many unfilled vacancies was largely by design — by Mitch McConnell," said the University of Vermont’s Lisa Holmes.

December, 2019

McConnell's ploy left 105 judicial vacancies — not counting that seat on the Supreme Court —waiting for Donald Trump to fill on his first inauguration day. He proceeded to nominate the most right-wing, reactionary ideologues the Heritage Foundation could dredge up, one after another. They included ten nominees in his first term rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association, seven of whom were confirmed by the Senate anyway.

January, 2022

McConnell (and now John Thune) had the advantage of having Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, and John Fetterman willing, even eager, to reach across the aisle to make deals and pass legislation. For their part, Republicans have been content to let Democrats reach toward them; but the only Republicans who dare to reach across the aisle are the ones who are going home soon because they lost a primary race against someone even more opposed to bipartisan cooperation.

January, 2020

No assessment of McConnell's legacy would be complete without bringing up his role in the two impeachment trials (so far) of Donald Commodus Trump.

When the House voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2019, McConnell denied House managers' request to call four witnesses for the Senate trial, explaining, "The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury. To hear a trial. Not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it."

McConnell reportedly supported the second impeachment of Trump for inciting the January 3, 2021 storming of the Capitol. The Senate calendar prevented the trial from starting until after Trump was out of office, which McConnell used as his excuse for voting with 42 other Republican Senators for acquittal. 

He told the nation, however, "There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day."

Thus, Mitch McConnell, and the 42 other Republicans Senators who put party above country and acquitted on a technicality a scoundrel they knew to be guilty, deserve their share of the blame for returning that fascist tyrant to the White House four years later.

Q Toon: What's In a Name

On the last day of Pride Month, Matthew Vines, evangelical author of God and the Gay Christian, published an op-ed in the New York Times headlined "I'm Gay, Not Queer. It Matters." In the essay, he complains that use of the “queer” label has contributed to a decrease in support for the LGBTQ+ community, not only among conservatives, but among the public at large.

The word queer “carries an adversarial charge that ‘gay’ does not,” Vines writes. Furthermore, “because the word ‘queer’ can describe any departure from social norms, it becomes an open door through which almost anyone can walk. Polyamorous? Queer. Vaguely uncomfortable with gender expectations? Possibly queer, too.” 

The word had been an antigay slur when activists chanted "We're here, we're queer, get over it" at 1970's Pride marches.  The point was originally to defang the word; later, as the word "lesbigay" proved inadequately inclusive, some advocated for "queer" as a more pronounceable name than "LGBTQIAA2S..." Easier to remember, too.

Vines, by the way, used “L.G.B.T.Q.,” periods and all, three times throughout his op-ed. I don't think that is a N.Y.T. stylebook thing. A.F.A.I.K.

Certainly, Vines is not the only gay man uncomfortable identifying as queer. But then, not every guy in the LGBTQ+ community identifies as gay, either. Or homosexual, on the down low, Two Spirit, M4M, a Friend of Dorothy, Uranian, malakoi, or any other particular sexual proclivity off to the right of the + sign.

But to disregard the most visible, provocative members of our community is to forget that we didn't come as far as we have by meekly accepting police raids of our gathering places and homes; by having to lie to family, friends, employers, and government; or by dying alone and quietly as a cruel disease cut hundreds of thousands of us down in the prime of life.

The queers of ACT-UP and the Stonewall Inn "carrie[d] an adversarial charge," because they had to in order to move society forward.

Without them, Matthew Vines might still identify as a gay evangelical author. But quite likely an unpublished and unemployed one. 

...

This Week's Sneak Peek

 Max and Leo are back already:

There was a chance that I wouldn't have a cartoon here today.

A powerful wind storm blew through here on Friday afternoon, knocking out the power to us and 720 other WE Energies customers. We had just taken delivery of the building materials for a gazebo, and barely had enough time to take our flag down when it hit.

At first, we were told that electricity would be restored around 10:00 p.m.; but by evening, WE Energies was telling us that the cause of the outage was unknown and not to expect the power back on until Monday.

Happily, we got power back on at 4:33 a.m. (we both happened to be awake); some nearby areas got their electricity back after 7:00 in the morning. I didn't have to draw by candle light, or send my cartoon in by carrier pigeon.

All in all, we were pretty lucky. The same storm capsized a boat on Lake Geneva, drowning three children. Homes around us lost trees and fences. I hear there was some flooding around the state.

I hope your Fourth was safe, sane, and enjoyable, leaving you nothing to clean up other than the usual firecracker debris, cake pans, grills, and beer cans.

Happy Dyscentennial, Everybody

"Centennial Mirror" by American Oleograph Co., 1876. From Library of Congress 

I don't have a cartoon for the U.S. semicentennial in 1826, which the nation celebrated by killing off John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, so let's start our Graphical History Tour of Multimodiennial July Fourths with this political cartoon from the centennial year of 1876.

"Donkeys at the Centennial" by Frank Bellew in Harper's Weekly, New York, July 1, 1876

There must have been more celebratory cartoons about the U.S. turning 100, but Harper's Weekly's sole contribution that week was all about Democrats criticizing, I believe, the Centennial International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine. 

President Ulysses S. Grant opened the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia on May 10, 1876, where it ran for the next six months. U.S. exhibits included entries from 21 states on all topics covered by its official name, as well as on Native American heritage and the rights (such as they were) of women and the abolition of slavery. That last exhibit must have rankled southern Democrats and their sympathizers in the North.

If that wasn't the inspiration for Frank Bellew's cartoon, perhaps it had to do with Edward Mitchell Bannister's painting Under the Oaks, which was awarded first prize at the Exhibition until he arrived to accept the honor and the judges discovered that Bannister was Black. Only vehement protest by Bannister's fellow artists kept the judges from revoking their decision.

"The Centennial Transfer" in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, New York, May 17, 1876

This cartoon from a critic of Grant's Republican administration probably took some of its inspiration from scandals in the Interior and War Departments exposed by investigations conducted by the Democratic majority in the House. 

General Joseph R. Hawley, a Republican politician from Connecticut, was president of the United States Centennial Commission. John Welsh was the president of the Centennial Board of Finance. In the cartoon, Welsh and Hawley present President Grant with the Centennial Exhibition building, and the insinuation is that Grant was not in control of graft and fraud in his cabinet.

The cartoon bore no signature, so I can't be certain whether it was the work of  Matt Morgan, Joseph Keppler, or some other Leslie's cartoonist.

1926

"Onward the Nation Goes Conquering the Heights" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 1926

A while back, our Graphical History Tour observed the rise and fall of Miss Columbia as a symbol of the United States. She was still around to celebrate the nation's sesquicentennial in 1926, at least on the drawing boards of cartoonists old enough to remember the centennial.

As in 1876, the nation's premier party was in Philadelphia, hosting a World's Fair from May 31 to November 30. Controversy — including lawsuits and fines levied against workers — arose from having the fair open on July 4, because it was a Sunday: "Blue" laws forbade non-essential business from operating on the Lord's Day.

The Sesquicentennial International Exposition opened anyway.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted "That the sesquicentennial of our independence should fall on a Sunday adds to the impressiveness of the anniversary. This holiday will doubtless be not only safe and sane, but more than usually solemn. A degree of solemnity will not be out of place... "

"The Forty-Eight Stars of Liberty" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, July 4, 1926

John Adams had written that Independence Day (by which he meant July 2) should be commemorated "by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty..."

"Ding" Darling, however, who was born in 1876, predicted that not everybody would appreciate a degree of solemnity just because the Fourth fell on the Lord's Day in his fiftieth year.

"Celebrating the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 4, 1926

Of course, John Adams also called for "pomp and parades, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from time forward forevermore."

Boys — and occasionally men — celebrating life, liberty, and the pursuit of bodily injury with  firecrackers was a longstanding staple of Independence Day editorial cartoons. So we'll let Mr. Darling's entry stand for all the other cherry bomb toons for this particular year.

"Quite a Husky Kid for His Age" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. July 3, 1926

The United States often thought of itself, and been regarded by the major European powers, as a youngster among nations. By 1926, however, there were younger eastern European and near Asian countries that emerged from the rubble of World War I. 

One could interpret Dorman Smith's cartoon to suggest that the U.S. was starting to get too big for its britches; maybe he was hinting that it was time for the kid to graduate into some big boy pants.

"There's a Tie That Binds Us Still" by J.P. Alley in Commercial Appeal, Memphis, July 4, 1926

If Dorman Smith had Mother Earth happy for America's birthday, J.P. Alley focuses on one foreign nation, citing the improvement in American relations with our erstwhile colonial master since our break-up. 

Editorial cartoonists being a rather cantankerous sort, there were some political jabs on certain editorial pages that July 4.

"The Bad, Old-Fashioned Fourth" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 4, 1926

Okay, just one more cartoon of things going bang bang. Nelson Harding brings up congressional hearings on the millions of dollars being poured into primary election races for statehouse and the U.S. Senate that spring. 

The other night, I heard Ali Velshi state that the fight to control campaign spending has been going on for half a century. This cartoon demonstrates that the fight has been going on at least twice as long.

"Re-Declaring Our Independence" by O.C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, July 5, 1926

Oscar Chopin used the holiday to reiterate his faith in isolationism, shared by many Republicans and the Hearst newspapers for which he drew.

This cartoon looks an awful lot like the template used for a cartoon of his we visited four years ago.

"The Sesqui Centennial in Cartoons" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily Worker, Chicago, July 3, 1926

Communist labor cartoonist Hay Bales offered this sour history of the United States for the nation's sesquicentennial.

In his telling, the North won the Civil War because of its advantage in industrial and financial capital, resulting in a centralized federal government. He termed the Spanish-American War "the first military move of the U.S. in the field of imperialist conquest" (Mexico and Native American nations might beg to differ); he attributed U.S. entry into World War I to the same motivation.

1976

by Ranan Lurie for Los Angeles Times, ca. July 3, 1976

Jumping ahead another fifty years, Miss Columbia had been replaced on American drawing boards by the Statue of Liberty (a trend already begun by 1926).

by Tony Auth in Philadelphia Inquirer, July 4, 1976

The U.S. Bicentennial was greeted with an explosion of clip art, per Tony Auth and Frank Interlandi.

"Happy Birthday, America" by Frank Interlandi in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1976

As well as explosions of the pyrotechnical ooh and ahh variety.

"I Hope They Know How Lucky They Are" by Douglas Borgstedt for Copley News Service, July 4, 1976

Douglas Borgstedt used the holiday to highlight the difference in liberty in the United States and in the Eastern Bloc nations controlled by Moscow.

by Dwayne Powell in Raleigh Times & Observer, July 4, 1976

May I say that it's nice to see that, with all these cartoons starring George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Miss Columbia, Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, and the Bald Eagle, someone finally remembered to give Thomas Jefferson some credit for the Declaration of Independence.

Incidentally, you may have noticed the absence from these cartoons from 1926 and 1976 of the president in office at the time. Hay Bales included Woodrow Wilson in his sesquicentennial cartoon, but the man had been dead for two years, and was no hero of the radical movement besides. 

But while Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin Coolidge, and Gerald Ford certainly participated in special Independence Day celebrations, they in no way turned them into spectacles of personal self-aggrandizement.

Those of us who experienced the Bicentennial have regrets that the spirit of coming together in celebration then is not what we are witnessing now. To a certain extent, that's because we were young then and now we're not. A recent Christian Science Monitor column, "Can a Divided U.S. Celebrate Its 250th Together?" tried to sum up the tenor of the time:

Back then, the nation also felt fractious, stressed, and war-weary, says Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University and author of “Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s.” Crime was up. Energy prices were high. New York City, the flotilla’s host, had become a byword for urban dysfunction and debt. Some questioned whether it was even safe for Operation Sail.

President Gerald Ford, who had assumed office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, was among those who “hoped to use the bicentennial to ‘turn the page’ and ‘begin a new chapter’ with a patriotic and unifying celebration,” says Professor Stein via email. They largely succeeded, and many still remember the parties and parades held across the country.

"When in the Course of Current Events" by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1976

Let's not pretend, however, that the Bicentennial occurred during an unadulterated Era of Good Feeling. If there were editorial cartoons to spoil the party in 1926, there were a few of the same in 1976. Paul Conrad pointed out that there were still Americans seeking a "more perfect union": immigrant workers, laborers, women, Blacks, and Native Americans.

"Birthday Hangover" by Frank in Pittsburgh Courier, July 10, 1976

This cartoonist enumerated a number of Black Americans' complaints in the aftermath of the Bicentennial, including our since forgotten backing of an anticommunist militia battling for control of Angola after its independence from Portugal in 1975, and governmental tolerance of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Conservatives found reason to grouse, too:

Eugene Payne on WSOC-TV, Charlotte NC, ca. July, 1976

I'm guessing that Eugene Payne's cartoon was in color on TV, but unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot of it.

Jerry Falwell had not yet founded his Moral Majority political action machine, but a backlash was growing against the trend toward permissiveness, civil liberties, and pluralism of the previous decade. In a few years, it would gel into a partisan force empowering the Republican Party, even after its preachers were exposed as hypocrites for their enthusiastic support of the present completely amoral GOP standard bearer.

But that's a topic for...

2026

"American Colosseum" by Howard McWilliam in The Week, June 12, 2026

I won't be surprised to see a few celebratory editorial cartoons show up today, but I think the sub-head on this recent cover of The Week accurately sums up how most of us feel about the nation's semiquincentennial. Joel Pett had a cartoon this week that expresses my sentiments perfectly.

It's not just us woke liberal dummocrats, either; The Week's June 12 edition paraphrases some conservatives' opinions:

"America's 250th birthday party 'won't be much of a celebration at all.'" ― Jeffrey Blehar, National Review

"Gladiatorial combat is just one way Trump has turned our national birthday into 'a royalist celebration of himself.'... Trump has 'made a pitiful shambles of what should have been a glorious moment.'" ― David Frum, The Atlantic

"Rather than be demoralized by Trump's effort to hijack our holiday, we can view this July 4 as an opportunity for a renewed dedication to the real meaning of Independence Day. We can look away from Trump's sad simulacrum of kingly spectacles in Washington, D.C." ―William Kristol, The Bulwark

2076

To those of you who will be around to celebrate the Tricentennial: first of all, I hope that there is one. I hope that it finds you during more harmonious times.

Mind you, "more harmonious," like "a more perfect union," is in the eye of the beholder.

Q Toon: When They Go Low

Some weeks, there seems to be a dearth of topics for LGBTQ+ cartoons.

This was not one of those weeks.

Some anonymous caller to Michigan Child Protective Services made a false complaint against Pete Buttigieg. An openly gay candidate for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat was forcibly shooed away from a transgender pride event in San Francisco by pro-Palestinian activists making wildly unfair accusations against him because he's Jewish. Also in San Francisco, four pitchers on the local baseball team thought the Giants' LGBTQ Pride Game would be a good idea to tell LGBTQ fans just what they thought of them. And it would have been a good time to draw anything about the U.S. semiquincentennial.

I went with the first story, in part because Michigan's Between the Lines is one of my client papers, but also because the story is truly outrageous.

Buttigieg described in his Substack the attack on his family, likening it to "SWATting":

Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.

I showed them in, invited them on the deck so that we could hear each other over the barking dog, and asked what was going on. They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day. I could not be present at the children’s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation.

I was bewildered and troubled, but tried to stay calm. I’m used to any number of falsehoods, attacks, and serious problems being thrown my way. What I didn’t understand was what could have led to this kind of visit. Then, the CPS worker told me something that made my stomach turn: I was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day. They asked if I had relatives nearby or could perhaps stay at a hotel for the night. [...]

An anonymous caller had contacted CPS. The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.

That was all. The officer had a couple of obvious questions. He asked if I had been to the town where the woman claimed she had met me. I have not. Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor. Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.

Buttigieg holds open the possibility that he and his husband will pursue civil damages against the anonymous allegator. Michigan could also file criminal charges against the man for false reporting. That presumes that the person's cloak of anonymity can be drawn back in the first place. Unmasking the Mystery Woman from Alabama may well be impossible, if she exists at all.

There isn't much else that can be done about this sort of attack by false police report. Child Protective Services must take such allegations seriously, even against public figures. Sometimes the allegations turn out to be true — often when the public figure is some stridently antigay Republican preacher type.

If this kind of attack becomes more common — and make no mistake: LGBTQ parents are not the only people susceptible to this — somebody is going to have to give it a name.

But for now, Bearing False Witness will have to do.

These Weeds' Sneak Peek

Our profession lost one of its princes this week. Paul Fell drew editorial cartoons for the Lincoln [Nebraska] Journal for 23 years, until his editors learned that he had donated to the political campaign of a friend. The crisp, clean, whimsical style of his drawing often belied a strong bite behind whatever point he was making that day. Catch his oeuvre here.

He made me feel welcome and one of the club shortly after I arrived for my first American Association of Editorial Cartoonists convention, in 2015, and I'm seeing the same story from many other AAEC members.

Arlene and Paul Fell, with Steve Greenberg

P.S.: His family is keeping his Substack active, with plans to published some new works Paul left behind.