Rx Against COVID Memory Fog

Senator Randy Paul (R-KY) led a star chamber hearing this week aimed at trapping Dr. Anthony Fauci into somehow committing perjury. Even if only about the color of his tie. 

So today's Graphical History Tour offers a little reminder of what the world was going through a mere six years ago.

March, 2020

We first heard of this novel virus as a problem in far-off China and aboard cruise ships. The Trump Administration responded by trying to quarantine cruise ship passengers, naming Vice President Mike Pence in charge of addressing the health threat, and calling communicable disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci out of retirement for his expertise.

March, 2020

In the days between my drawing this cartoon and its publication anywhere, hairdressers — and just about every other public service industry — were closing up their shops. The nation hunkered down, stopping first to empty store shelves of toilet paper.

April, 2020

Within the first weeks, everybody was working from home except doctors, nurses, emergency responders, and grocery store employees. Schools tried to figure out how to teach students remotely. Senior citizen homes closed their doors to visitors. Afternoon and late night chat shows shut down immediately; the halting of other television and movie production would take a while to affect viewers. Major League Baseball played to empty stadiums.

Meanwhile, bodies piled up in makeshift morgues.

March, 2020

We didn't know much about the corona virus, which was all that much scarier for everyone. What little we were learning did not inspire confidence: it could spread through the air, the body had no natural defense against it, and any vaccine or cure was yet to be found.

Donald Trump soon discovered that by going on live television to brief the nation about the pandemic, he could command the media's undivided attention. It did not matter at all whether he had the slightest idea what he was talking about; he could just make any shit up as long as it fed his bottomless ego to be on TV.

He even boasted about getting bigger ratings than the Superbowl.

March, 2020

We didn't see much any more of Vice President Pence, supposedly the nation's COVID Czar. I guess he went back to his previous job as the president's golf caddy and Ambassador to Televangelistan.

For his part, Trump promised that the pandemic would be over by Easter, then by Mothers' Day, then by Flag Day, then by summer. Operating without a medical license, he prescribed disinfectant, horse deworming medicine, and shining bright light up one's rectum — none of which treatments had any basis in scientific fact.

April, 2020

When Kim Jong Il, Supreme Leader of North Korea, disappeared from public view for several weeks, there was speculation that he might be dead (he isn't). When dark humor is all a cartoonist has to offer, well, the darker the better.

May, 2020

Despite reports of COVID tearing through church choirs before The Shutdown, it didn't take long for the religious right to complain against social distancing. Not being allowed to pack the pews severely impacted the health of brick and mortar evangelists' bank balances, so Trump told the nation to reopen all the churches.

December, 2020

2020 dragged on. Every time we thought there was an end in sight, COVID cases spiked again. 

October, 2020

After a few months, the television networks decided against giving Donald Trump free air time to tout quack cures and predict COVID's miraculous disappearance, and Trump gave up taking a daily position behind the podium where he might be asked uncomfortable questions. Dr. Fauci became the public face of the government's response to the pandemic, delivering a frank, honest, and un-sugar-coated medical advice.

July, 2020

But by summer, the trolls and conspiracy mongers of the internet, egged on by Fox Noise and the rest of right-wing media, were hard at work promoting their own hare-brained fantasies about where the virus came from. Conservatism being opposed to anything associated with promoting the common good, they complained loudly that masks and social distancing infringed on individual rights.

September, 2020

They came up with the idea of publishing "face mask exemption cards," although the things carried no legal, scientific, medical, or practical authority. One was supposed to present the card at any office or business that had a policy mandating the wearing of masks, as if the business had some obligation to honor the card.

July, 2020

Until vaccines were finally developed roughly a year after the virus was first identified, the rest of us had to manufacture our own defenses.

Q Toon: Berlin

There was another topic I had planned to draw about this week, but the truck and knife attack that killed one and injured 29 at Berlin's annual LGBTQ Pride event over the weekend changed all that.

It was the terrorist act of an 21-year-old wannabe ISIS jihadi, whom German police later sent in search of those 72 virgins. Too bad he had to leave his body behind. Sorry not sorry.

His choice to murder innocent LGBTQ+ people celebrating and having fun cannot be happenstance. Nothing represents what Islamic fundamentalists hate about what they see as Western decadence more than LGBTQ+ pride and joy — it's even worse than string bikinis, the Reconquista, and cartoons of The Prophet.

The attack is sure to inflame Islamophobic passions in Germany, where the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) was already polling distressingly well beforehand. The AfD are fascists — not a term I toss around lightly — who oppose both immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, and are surely taking advantage of this tragedy for their own ends.

Caught in the middle are LGBTQ+ Muslims in Germany such as Ali Darwich, an influencer on Instagram who was at the Christopher Street festival himself, ready to go to some afterparty when friends began calling to find out whether he was okay. He later told the Associated Press:

“Born a Muslim, living as a gay man, working as a police officer,” Darwich said, as he tried holding back the tears, “this terror attack touches so many aspects of who I am. ...

“I asked myself as a gay if we will have to live with more fear now even though we are already experiencing bullying and hatred. I asked myself as a Muslim if our community will be exposed to even more racism now.”

Here at home, there are some antigay Americans — and some LGBTQ right-wingers as well — who try to excuse Republican actions against our community by pointing to Islamic fundamentalists decreeing the death penalty for LGBTQ people. That argument overlooks countries, especially in Africa, passing draconian antigay penalties up to and including capital punishment, egged on by Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.

For the time being, the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime will be happy to cite the Christopher Street Festival attack as further justification for its ethnic cleansing program, even when it dumps refugees who fled persecution for being LGBTQ+ back to the countries that condemn them.

Persecuting white gays and lesbians here in the Homeland will have to wait until Republicans have finished eradicating the transgender menace.

This Week's Sneak Peek

A visitor here commented that he at first mistook the testosterone-overloaded soldier in last Thursday's cartoon for the "cop" in The Village People. 

For the record, I draw that cop character like the guy on the right:

The soldier in the foreground of Thursday's cartoon might have been part Cop Guy and part Biker Guy, but I get how not everyone in outside the gay porn clientele might not be familiar with Tom of Finland and the like. Even Tom of Finland didn't draw guys whose shirts conformed to their abs and nipples.

And by the way, thanks to Mike "Comic Strip of the Day" Peterson for highlighting Thursday's cartoon at The Daily Cartoonist on Friday!

My, My, July

We've got more stuff from the Bergetoons vault in today's Graphical History Tour. 

You'll have to pardon me for indulging in rehashing my own cartoons three Saturdays in a row; in my defense, we had two prominent Senators knocking on death's door this month, and I didn't find much inspiration in cartoons published 100 Julys ago. "Oliphant's Presidents" has already been done (although I suppose I could have tried putting an "Oliphant's Vice Presidents" thing together).  

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., July 1986

The cartoons I drew for the NorthCountry Journal directly reflected the editorials in each monthly issue. This one had to do with 44 Wisconsin conservation clubs joining with the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America, a pro-hunting lobbying group, to "defeat the anti-hunting movement before it defeats us," according to WLFA chair Jim Glass. 

The NorthCountry Journal reported that the WLFA was funded by grants from Woodstream Corporation (makers of Victor traps), the fur industry, the Mellon Foundation, and national sportsmen organizations.

The WLFA had chosen Wisconsin as the pilot program for its "Protect What's Right" campaign because "if it doesn't fly in Wisconsin, it's not going to fly at all," said Glass, a Rockwell International executive from Columbus, Ohio. Wisconsin has a very strong and long-standing hunting tradition; I don't recall it ever being a hotbed of anti-hunting legislation. 

In fact, the legislation I do recall includes a 2003 constitutional amendment guaranteeing right to hunt and fish.

1996

"Our Problem" in Journal Times, Racine Wis., July 7, 1996

This cartoon expands on an neighbors' successful fight to block a proposed halfway house for offenders who had served their prison sentence (see the unpublished local cartoon posted back in May), as well as Racine taxpayers' objection to a .1% sales tax in Milwaukee and adjacent counties to help pay for the Brewers' new baseball stadium. The stadium tax had prompted a recall of a Republican member of the State Senate from Racine, which would result in flipping the State Senate to a Democratic majority.

The upscale North Bay neighborhood was up in arms against having a home for developmentally challenged adults nearby, successfully blocking that proposal, too. Complaints against property taxes funding the public schools coming from retirees whose children had graduated has been a never ending constant as far back as I can remember.

A letter to the editor responding to my cartoon argued a distinction between schools and the halfway homes on the one hand and the baseball stadium on the other. "Homes for the mentally retarded, prisons, and schools are all public problems," Annette Richie wrote. "Baseball is a private enterprise and should not be subsidized by citizens' tax dollars."

It's an argument with merit, but without a successful track record.

By the way, every little bit of that cartoon, including the diagonal line shading, I drew by hand. So don't give me that "AI Is Art, Too" crap.

2006

July, 2006

So now we turn from the local stuff to the gay stuff.

You wouldn't know it these days, but July used to be a lull in the news cycle. I can't recall whether I drew this cartoon in response to any specific gay celebrity getting caught with his pants down, or if I came up with it when there wasn't anything current in the news to draw about.

This was before Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) got arrested for lewd conduct in a rest room at the Twin Cities International Airport, after which late night comedians were guaranteed a laugh by citing the airport or inserting the words "wide stance" in a punch line. Years earlier, George Michael's public loo escapades had been fodder for fallback punch lines.

2016

July, 2016

I drew this cartoon a little too late for most LGBTQ Pride events. A number of Pride parades in the U.S. and Canada had been disrupted by protesters from within our community who objected to other the inclusion of certain other LGBTQ subgroups.

Toronto Pride had assigned the lead spot in their parade to the local Black Lives Matter group, which returned the favor by blocking the parade, setting off multi-colored smoke bombs, and refusing to move until a list of demands was met, including the removal of police from the parade ‒ both as participants and as protection.

The subgroups mentioned in later panels have not, so far as I know, gone quite so far as to disrupt Pride parades in progress. The objections raised by Palestinian, Jewish, animal rights activist, anti-corporate, and anti-religious LGBTQ groups, however, have been real. 

The overt hostility and persecution by Republicans running state and federal government has probably tempered any such controversies this year — except for either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

Not that everything went smoothly this year. Police aggressively attacked people in Philadelphia's Gayborhood during that city's Pride festival. https://epgn.com/2026/06/09/community-responds-to-gayborhood-police-presence-pride/

Dallas Pride Board officials have been accused of embezzling funds and financial mismanagement

sponsors withdrawing support https://blog.presspassq.gay/2026/07/pride-celebrations-marred-by-controversies-cuts-in-funding.html

An Army of TestosterOne

Secretary of Butchness Pete Hegseth announced last week that military recruits — men, and any women that he hasn't yet driven out of the service — will now be tested for testosterone levels. Anyone found wanting in the T-level department will be offered the option of undergoing hormone therapy (the sort of thing the Trumpsters claim is so very, very dangerous for transgender persons).

Soldiers can, we are told, refuse the testosterone treatment. The choice is theirs, although future promotions and positive performance reviews may not be. 

Basing a cartoon on a popular internet meme is dicey. There is a good chance that somebody will have already beat the cartoonist to the idea. And probably has beat me to publication.

I considered basing the beefcake in the foreground after movie soldiers who dispense with wearing shirts early on, like Rambo or John Matrix; or the old GI Joe dolls. But since my print clientele is the LGBTQ press, patterning him after the hyperhomosexualized military hunks in Tom of Finland's cartoons seemed the more obvious choice. 

I'm not saying that Mr. Hegseth is part of that closeted gay Republican mafia that Hunter Biden was talking about this week.

Well, I'm not saying he isn't, either.

This Week's Sneak Peek

My tribute to the great editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant, who passed away a week ago, was posted here last year, so I didn't come up with another one for my latest Graphical History Tour. 

Several of my colleagues who actually got to meet him have put out wonderful remembrances of him. I have no such story to tell; one of my greatest regrets in life is and will forever be that I missed the convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in Salt Lake City at which he was a featured presenter. (I had been hired for a wedding that weekend, and it turned out that all the couple wanted me for was to start and stop a fucking CD.)

Since today is the 57th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon, here's a Pat Oliphant cartoon from the 1960's I came across in a 1972 civics textbook, America's Political System: People/Government/Policies by Woll and Binstock.

The book is peppered with several editorial cartoons in every chapter, brightening up a book that otherwise would be 790 pages of dry, gray text. What a pity that so few newspaper publishers see the value of illustrated commentary any more. 

(Okay, so cutting out the cartoons would probably have reduced the textbook by ten to fifteen pages...)

Of Graham Bondage

Since last week's Graphical History Tour memorialized a sitting U.S. Senator who claims not to be dead, this week's episode rustles up my cartoons about one of his Republican colleagues whose passing is less, ah, speculative.

April, 2010

Lindsey Graham himself barely appeared in what I believe was my first cartoon about him, sixteen years ago. An anti-immigrant Tea Partisan then from South Carolina, William Gheen, alleged that Senator Lindsey Graham was being blackmailed over his widely rumored homosexual orientation to support Democrats' version of Immigration Reform.

"Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality. Come out of that closet, Lindsey. Come out of that Log Cabin closet," Gheen told a Tea Party Klatch. "Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as our U.S. Senator, I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure your being gay isn't it."

Whether in response to Gheen or not, Graham announced that he opposed the immigration bills proposed by the Democratic majority in Congress. As for Gheen, he has since migrated across the border to North Carolina, where he is President of an anti-immigration political action committee.

December, 2012

I drew this cartoon in response to Graham advocating against achieving marriage equality by congressional legislation or litigation in the courts.

Graham knew full well how unlikely getting a pro-marriage equality amendment to the U.S. Constitution approved by Congress and ratified by 34 state legislatures would be. For years, Republicans pushed an amendment to do exactly the opposite, not to mention other amendments for all sorts of their pet peeves, without getting anywhere. 

October, 2014

Did you know that Lindsey Graham ran for the Republicans' 2016 presidential nomination? Even people who were paying close attention at the time may not remember it.

Graham was running for a third term in the Senate in 2014, and told Politico that in the (inevitable) event that he won reelection, he was considering looking into a 2016 presidential run. He made his official campaign announcement on June 1, 2015, but failed to qualify for a Republican presidential debate cattle call on CNN two months later.

The highlight of his presidential campaign was calling Donald Trump "a jackass" in successive interviews on CNN and CBS. Trump responded by telling Fox & Fiends viewers Graham's personal cell phone number.

By Christmas, Graham had suspended his campaign; he then endorsed Florida Governor Jeb Bush in January. Republican voters didn't listen.

October, 2018

Neither did the Electoral College.

As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham played a prominent role in the confirmation of Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointees. Allegations that the second of them, Brett Kavanaugh, was a beer-swilling bro in college suggested the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" character Brick to me; casting Graham as Maggie followed as a matter of course.

That's Senators Maizie Hirono and Jeff Flake as Mae and Gooper (well, I needed somebody in those roles) and Trump as Big Daddy Pollitt.

March, 2021

Insinuating Lindsey Graham's Kinsey rating couldn't be the point of every cartoon I put him in. Sometimes, he was just a recognizable Senator to populate a cartoon about the Senate Republican Caucus. But as the supposedly closeted gay one, he afforded me the opportunity to draw a cartoon about a non-LGBTQ+ topic for the LGBTQ+ publications that run my cartoons. 

(Openly bi Senator Kyrsten Sinema also figured in this one. A two-fer!)

February, 2021

In the post for this week's cartoon, I included Lindsey Graham's "Count me out" comment on the evening after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, disassociating himself from Donald Trump. I also included Trump's more recent story of Graham then calling him up to apologize.

You certainly can't take Trump's word for anything, but Graham counting himself out on January 6 did not extend to his voting to convict Trump when the Senate voted on his impeachment trial on February 13.

Graham just couldn't stay mad at his latest infatuation.

September, 2022

Republicans who bothered at all to explain their votes against conviction claimed that since Trump was out of office, his attempt to overthrow the government should be a matter for the courts rather than the impeachment process.

As the prosecution of Trump for offenses starting with January 6, tax fraud, and sexual assault crept ever so slowly forward during Joe Biden's presidency, Lindsey Graham and quite a few other Republicans complained that pursuing justice in the courts was a bad idea, too.

In the fall of 2022, Citizen Trump was refusing to return classified papers included among dozens of bankers boxes of files he had spirited off to Mar-a-Lago, directing underlings to hide them away when the FBI showed up to seize them. Graham warned that if Trump were ever brought to trial for those actions, his hordes of MAGA minions would reprise January 6.

To his dying day, Graham was mute about any possibility of Antifa, DEI, or Woke Inc., getting violent over what now passes for the Justice Department's overtly political, Trumped up prosecutions of anyone who has ever crossed Donald Trump.