My November Toons

Since we're all still here, why not celebrate with another Graphical History Tour through the Bergetoon Archives?

1996

I originally started posting these Graphical History Tours to mark the centennial of the outbreak of World War I.  After a while, I started rerunning some of my own oldies in addition to the century-old and half-century old ones by cartoonists older than I. Twelve years later, I'm starting to run into months where I've already posted everything I drew.

"Speaking (One Last Time) of Bridges" in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Nov. 7, 1996

Like this one.

President Bill Clinton campaigned for reelection in 1996 on a theme of "Building a Bridge to the 21st Century." He won the election, but without bringing along a Democratic majority in Congress. Republicans kept the majorities they had achieved two years earlier on a pledge to reject President Clinton's agenda and pursue their own.

Their own agenda included hunting for a reason — any reason — to launch impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. They found one, but they only succeeded in sullying the reputations of everybody involved.

Which I bring up for no particular reason.

1986

"You Promised You would Turn into a Senator" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Nov. 6, 1986

I thought I had posted this one before, too, but I didn't find the scan in my files. Perhaps I posted it in my old GeoCities site.

It's another post-election cartoon, and one that could probably have been repurposed to suit any of a myriad of elections in the past forty years. In this case, it was Wisconsin's senatorial contest between Democrat Ed Garvey and incumbent Republican Bob Kasten, who had engaged in a mud-flinging campaign that turned me off of both of them.

It is likely that I drew the cartoon before the outcome of the election was known for publication afterward. The polls favored Kasten, and he did, in fact, win the election for a second term.

Wisconsin would turn Kasten out of office six years later, rewarding Russ Feingold for a much more positive and upbeat campaign than we suffered through in 1986.

2016

for Q Syndicate, November, 2016

The nation had no such luck — or wisdom — thirty years later.

Donald Berzelius Trump trailed Hillary Clinton in all the polls, including the one in which actual voters cast actual ballots. Sadly for our nation and the world, none of that counted.

But I knew none of that when I drew this next cartoon, the Sunday before Election Day, for publication Thursday or later:

for Q Syndicate, November, 2016

It seemed like such a safe idea on Sunday! Hillary was going to settle down and audition cabinet members, and Trump would slink back off to Mar-a-Lago or his eponymous tower in Manhattan to drive more Trump Inc. business ventures into bankruptcy. Even if Republicans kept control of Congress and most of the states, at least all the mean and nasty campaign commercials were going to yield to all the Christmasy commercials impatiently waiting in the wings.

Only the red states Hillary was counting on stayed ruby red, and the swing states she had passed over swung the wrong way. And I sorely regretted drawing my cartoon, and hoped that none of my clients would run it.

The following week, I sent Q Syndicate my parody of a famous Bill Mauldin cartoon, even though there wasn't any LGBTQ+ context for it. It much more accurately conveyed my post-election mood.

And perhaps that of my client publications.

2006

for Q Syndicate, November, 2006

Here's another cartoon that I drew before Election Day for release later in the week (the clock on the wall is a clue to the date on which the cartoon was drawn). As with this week's cartoon, avoiding election issues seemed, ah, prudent.

Does this cartoon require any explanation? Was there an actual Sexual Abstinence Assistance Hotline in George W. Bush's Health & Human Services Department?

I've drawn a few cartoons over the years mocking Republicans and Christian Conservatives pushing abstinence as a superior alternative to safe sex. Health and Human Services has a current program promoting abstinence until marriage according to something called "Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership" ("Restoring the Dream for America's Youth").

1976

Last month's foray into cartoons I drew for my high school newspaper described a fellow student's account of a rather miserable trip to see her step-father, on duty at Subic Naval Base in the Philippines. Her account ended abruptly, and I thought it odd that there wasn't a follow-up article in the next issue.

in Park Beacon, Racine Wis., Nov. 5, 1976

It turns out that I missed this continuation/correction right next to another one of my filler cartoons in the November 5 issue at the bottom of page 7. There may have been students beside Brenda and myself who could still dig up the October 1 issue of the Beacon a month later, but I'm sure we could have all sat comfortably in a Volkswagen Beetle.

I have no idea what "avoidable error" resulted in somebody misplacing the ending of Brenda's story, although these misplaced paragraphs took up about the same amount of real estate on the page as that cartoon full of raindrops I had drawn to accompany her article.

Everybody on the newspaper staff had a hand in compositing each issue — pasting the headlines and columns of type onto the sheets to be sent to the printer (by which I mean the crew that printed and folded all the copies on 60-lb. ledger size paper). Considering that, I hope I wasn't the one responsible for losing Brenda's final six paragraphs. It's the sort of thing that I would have fixated on for years, so I tend to doubt that it was my fault.

I do remember what I got away with hiding in the raindrops.

As for my little cartoon in the clipping above, it has nothing to do with Brenda's story. Instead, it belonged with an article above it about the school's vocational guidance center.

Q Toon: Out Gays Are In This Year

I wanted to draw a cartoon for Q Syndicate this week about Chris Pappas, the newly elected Senator from New Hampshire. Openly gay, he opened his election night victory speech by thanking his husband, because of whom he considers himself the luckiest man in the world. I included Pappas in a cartoon back when he was first elected to Congress.

And there didn't seem to be much else on which to hang a cartoon. His Republican opponent didn't run virulently homophobic ads or accuse him of being vegan. There are no photos of him as a leather model or Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, although his Republican rival when he ran for Congress in 2018 tried to make a big deal over his having worn a rainbow t-shirt with the word "Resist" at an LGBTQ+ Pride parade.

He seems about as Civic-Minded Student Body President Guy Next Door as they come.

So this week's cartoon ended up saluting all the openly gay Democrats in or heading to Congress. (Plus Pete Buttigieg, just because. I had originally included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, too, but he got shoved out of the third panel by Congressmen-elect Wiener and Ford.) I'm overlooking some of the other colors on the Revised And Extended Rainbow Flag, so I promise to correct that next week.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I closed Saturday's Graphical History Tour with a cartoon I had found in Chicago Defender crediting El Paso Times. I misread the cartoonist's signature as "Keith Dimple," which made finding out who he was kind of difficult.

So did the fact that El Paso Times did not have an editorial cartoonist, nor run any political cartoons at all in 1926. Although someone appears to have cut out one of the editorial page columnists from every edition of El Paso Times in newspaper.com's archive for that year.

It turns out that there was a comic "Dolly Dimples" (later just "Dimples") by Grace Drayton that ran in Hearst newspapers off and on from 1908 to 1918; there was also a fairly popular "Baby Dimples" doll in the 1920's, so they kept showing up in Google searches. Adding "editorial" to the search terms didn't help, of course.

When I added "cartoonist" and "obituary" to the search terms, Google AI came up with an obituary for a 1920's editorial cartoonist named Keith Dimple whose whimsical style made him popular in Texas and elsewhere.

Mighty impressive for a man who never existed.

After I enlarged the cartoon I had enough to make out that the signature was "Keith Temple," it didn't take long to find that he came to the U.S. from Australia after World War I and drew for a few different New Orleans newspapers from 1923 to 1967.

I should add that I might have been unfair saying that he showed little to no interest in politics during the 1926 election. I only looked through his work in October and November of that year, and one has to take into account how politics was waged in New Orleans back then. The only important election was the Democratic primary; any Republican candidate might as well campaign on a platform of Prohibition, early curfew, English Only, and higher taxes.

1926 Election Returns Are In

"Something's Gone Wrong with Our Two-Party Eugenics" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Nov. 4, 1926

The people have spoken and the results are in regarding the 1926 Senate races we visited on last week's Graphical History Tour. 

As with our elections a full century later, the party in power of all branches of government took a bit of a beating.

"The Off Year" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4, 1926

Democrats took advantage of growing dissatisfaction with Prohibition, although that doesn't explain James Wadsworth's defeat for reelection in New York. 

Republican Senators knocked off their elephant in McCutcheon's cartoon include William Butler of Massachusetts, James Wadworth of New York, and one Senator we overlooked last week, John Herrold of Oklahoma. I hope you won't mind if we continue to overlook him again today.

"Thanks for the Buggy Ride" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Nov. 4, 1926

The one Republican candidate among those we visited last week to lose his election was the one candidate for whom President Coolidge — as well as Charles Evans Hughes and future President Herbert Hoover — actively campaigned. William Butler had been appointed Senator upon the death of Henry Cabot Lodge, and was running to complete the remaining two years of Lodge's term. He was defeated by Democrat David I. Walsh, who had already served in the U.S. Senate but had lost his reelection bid in 1924.

"Who's Who in Washington" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Nov. 6, 1926

The election cut the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate to the quick: 48 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and one Independent, Minnesota's Senior Senator Henrik Shipstead. Shipstead had been elected in 1922 as the candidate of the generally left-wing Farmer-Labor Party, a successor to the Non-Partisan League and Duluth Union Labor Party.

Shipstead had been a Republican before switching to the Farmer-Labor Party in 1922; he returned to the GOP by 1940, complaining of Communist influence in the Farmer-Labor Party.

"Adopt Me, or I'll Adopt You" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Nov. 10, 1926

The Farmer-Labor Party failed to take hold in other states, but was able to take advantage of the weakness of the Minnesota Democratic Party. As the stronger alternative to the Republican Party in that state, Farmer-Labor was a much more attractive mate for Minnesota Democrats than it was elsewhere in the country. 

William Morris was surely well acquainted with the Farmer-Labor Party, having drawn many cartoons for the Non-Partisan Leader and its later Minneapolis-based iteration, National Leader, both closely affiliated with the movement that became the Farmer-Labor Party.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party was formed by merger 1944; DFL remains the state party's monogram today — with the everlasting gratitude from Gopher State editorial cartoonists who appreciated having a label equally short as GOP.

"Is It Safe to Come In" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 6, 1926

With their Senate majority on a razor's edge, the dilemma for Republicans was whether to seat William Vare of Pennsylvania and Frank Smith of Illinois, both tainted with scandal over their campaigns' financing. Vare, a political boss from South Philadelphia, had also made deals with mobsters such as "Lucky" Luciano; Smith had earned the ire of President Coolidge over donations he had received from utilities with matters before him as Chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission.

"Little Boys with Dirty Hands Shall Be Sent Home" by Jean Knott in Dallas Morning News, ca. Nov. 14, 1926

Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot (whom Vare had beaten in the Republican primary) refused to certify Vare's election victory, claiming that thousands of illegal paper ballots had been cast for Vare. His Senate seat remained vacant until the Senate eventually voted to deny it to him in December, 1929.

As for Smith, when Senator William B. McKinley, the incumbent Smith had defeated, died in December of 1926, Illinois Governor Len Small appointed Smith to take the seat early. The Senate, however, voted not to seat him on the grounds of his having exceeded allowable campaign funding limits.

Now that the midterms were over and done with, political observers naturally turned to handicapping the next presidential campaigns.

"This Makes It Tough for the Fish" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 8, 1926

New York Governor Al Smith, with demonstrated presidential ambitions, had handily won a fourth term. Cartoonist Dorman H. Smith (none of these Smiths being related, by the way) took note also of the third terms won by Ohio Governor Vic Donahey and Massachusetts Governor Al Ritchie.

But outside of the punditocracy...

"Undisturbed" by Keith Temple in New Orleans Times-Picayune, Nov. 4, 1926

Chicago Defender erroneously identified this as a cartoon from El Paso Times — which did not print editorial cartoons in those days — but I eventually found that Keith Dimple was the editorial page cartoonist at the Times-Picayune. 

Oddly enough, Temple, like his "Average Citizen," appears not to have had much interest in politics. His cartoons in October centered largely on crime, traffic, and civic boosterism.

Got Any Plans Next Weekend?

If you were excited over Democrats' Big Beautiful Blue Tsunami, Pogo Possum might have some 66-year-old bad news for you.

"Pogo" by Walt Kelly for Hall Syndicate, Dec. 8, 1960

It seems that some scientific prognosticator at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Professor Heinz von Foerster, predicted that the world would come to an end a week from today. 

And that was six decades before anybody had ever heard of AI.

"Pogo" by Walt Kelly, Dec. 9, 1960

"Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death," von Foerster with co-writers Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot, whose field was electrical engineering, calculated in the November 4, 1960 edition of Science magazine. "They will be squeezed to death."

from Science, Nov. 4, 1960 (page 1291)

World population in December, 1960 was estimated to be just under 3,020,000,000; it's over 8,300,000,000 today. The rate of population growth in the present decade, however, has been half what it was in 1960, so there is a possibility that Professor von Foerster's and his colleagues' calculations might be slightly off.

"Pogo" by Walt Kelly, Dec. 10, 1960

A widely syndicated newspaper report of Professor von Foerster's Doomsday prediction offered our generation a ray of hope:

"By 2026, we will probably be visiting other planets and colonizing them. And by that time, people will be laughing about 'earth people' who at one time thought that their planet was the only one suitable for life — and inhabited. Why of all the billions of earths and planets, should we alone enjoy conditions suitable for life?"

The paper by von Foerster et al. also considered that possibility in its final paragraph.

"Among the suggestions that have been advanced for meeting this problem — legislation, heavy taxation of families that have more than two children, cancellation of tax deductions, and so on — space travel has been proposed recently as an alternative (R.C. Christopher & T. Griffith, Time, 75, No. 2, 22, 1960). It is only unfortunate that no reentry permit can be given these space-trotters."

Might as well finish off the rest of the Halloween candy, then. 

Colorado Catholic Parish v. Roy

The Supreme Court is hearing Colorado Catholic Parish v. Roy this term, in which the Denver Archdiocese is appealing a lower court ruling that upheld the state of Colorado's insistence that charter schools participating in its free Pre-K program agree not to discriminate in their admissions policies.

"The law really was about implementing a program that said we want every kid, no matter where you live, to be able to have access to universal preschool," says Steve Fenberg, who served as president of the Colorado state Senate when the Pre-K program was enacted, complete with a $6,300 benefit for each child enrolled in the program every year, money that comes from a tobacco tax.

To accomplish that, the state did something most other states have not. It created a broad plan, including religious schools, as long as the schools abide by a state law that bars discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Colorado state Rep. Emily Sirota, a prime sponsor of the universal Pre-K bill, emphasizes that the state wanted parents to have "a robust choice" about where their 4-year-olds would go to school.

Indeed, she notes that the Catholic Church initially endorsed the program, and Catholic Charities continues to participate, along with other religious groups, including at least 35 Christian schools, one Muslim and three Jewish schools.

But now, the Church wants to discriminate against children of same-sex or transgender parents, citing the church's belief that same-sex relationships and gender therapy are intrinsically disordered and sinful.

The Denver Archdiocese and two parishes challenged the law in court, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and its CEO, Mark Rienzi. He maintains that the Colorado law flatly discriminates against Catholic schools.

"They're only excluding religious schools that are organized around beliefs that Colorado doesn't like. And that's the constitutional problem," says Rienzi. "Not everybody has to be Catholic to show up, but they do have to agree to support Catholic teachings and not publicly contradict Catholic teachings. That's the way these schools are set up."

Therefore, the church wants an exemption from the state's anti-discrimination law, which makes it illegal to refuse entrance to school for 4-year-olds whose parents or potentially other family members are gay or trans.

The present Court, with its Catholic supermajority, has a strong inclination to favor religion over all other considerations, so it's hard to imagine Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett siding with the state of Colorado.

If the Supremes rule the way they are predisposed to, Colorado taxpayers will probably be forced to subsidize anti-LBTQ discrimination. That includes, of course, Colorado taxpayers who would be discriminated against.

Alternatively, the Colorado legislature would have to limit the Pre-K program to public schools only; this Court has already ruled, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020) that state-based scholarship programs that provide public funds to allow students to attend private schools cannot discriminate against religious schools.

One could reasonably expect that LGBTQ families might not wish to send their four-year-old children to schools where they would be taught that mommy and mama, or daddy and dada, or their transgender-neutral parents whatever they call them, are going to hell. I haven't come across any lawsuits having been brought against the Denver Archdiocese to force it to admit children of same-sex, transgender, divorced, excommunicated, or atheist parents; so I posit that their preschool could have gone on discriminating against whomever it wanted to as long as they didn't post it on the signboard at the entrance.

After all, the current Supreme Court also believes that discrimination is discrimination only if the party doing the discriminating publicly confesses that they discriminate. 

Which only affirmative action programs and DEI policies ever get caught doing.

Día de los Sneak Peeks

It looks like we've finally fixed the WiFi network at Chez Bergetoons.

It took almost a whole week of being able to connect only the desktop computer to either the internet or the printer, but never both at the same time, and none of our other household devices being able to connect to either one. My better half spent hours on the phone or texting our internet service provider and the company we bought our router from; it was the Filipino technician from the latter who was finally able to get our system up and working.

My iPod, the one device that hadn't been able to find our WiFi network since we had installed the present router last year, may even have located it now. While colorizing this week's cartoon this morning, I was listening to a playlist that is supposed to include "Conquistador" by Procol Harum, one of several tracks that are listed in gray and always skipped. 

This morning, "Conquistador" played.

I'll know for sure when the playlist gets to the third movement of Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto Andaluz, another track that the iPod always skips.

Well anyway, here's a sneak peek at this week's Can't Be About The Election editorial cartoon:

Just in time for the annual stewardship drive!