This Week's Sneak Peek, Sort Of

Well, this isn't a clipping from this week's cartoon as much as it's an update of Saturday's Graphical History Tour.

from Miami  Daily News editorial page, April 1, 1926

Searching for the number 764268, friend of the blog D.D. Degg hunted up the probable Rollin Kirby cartoon in Saturday's posting of cartoons in the Daily Worker. Newspapers.com yielded only one other appearance of that cartoon in any available newspaper, the Miami Daily News and Metropolis edition of April 1, 1926.

I had not using the number hanging around the neck of the man in the cartoon as a search term, but now I have, coming up with the same result. (New York Evening World archives after 1923 are not currently available on line anywhere I have been able to find, unfortunately.)

The Miami Daily News printed the cartoon with the same curious headline as did the Daily Worker, and, like the Daily Worker, also without the cartoonist's signature. So I'm still left with the question of who was boycotting what over the congressional bill to require foreign-born workers to register with the government every year.

The boycott in the mainstream news at the time was a Chinese boycott of English goods over Great Britain's possession of Hong Kong, which was serious enough that the British government wanted the U.S. and Japan to intervene. This cartoon clearly has nothing to do with that.

Anyway, thank you to D.D. for digging up this cartoon, and for filling me in on the given name of Daily Worker cartoonist Marvin Pierce "Hay" Bales. Much appreciated!

The World According to the Daily Worker

Today's Graphical History Tours journeys 100 Aprils into the past, with an eye to some of the leftmost cartoonists in print in the U.S.

Daily Worker was published in Chicago from 1924 to 1958, giving voice to the communists and leftist socialists of the American labor movement. Editorial cartoons and illustrations appeared throughout the newspaper, particularly in the Saturday feature section edited in 1926 by Robert Minor.

Xenophobia is nothing new in U.S. history. Congress was considering a series of bills requiring that all foreign-born workers annually register their fingerprints with the government, report to authorities any time they moved or traveled from one locality to another, and carry a certificate of identification to be shown on demand.

"Thumbs Down" by Maurice Becker in Daily Worker, Apr. 10, 1926

Looking down from the sidelines in Maurice Becker's cartoon are: Fake Labor Leader, Militarist, the Courts, Calvin Coolidge, Andrew Mellon, the KKK, Election Crook, Kept Press, and Rotarian. "Fake Labor Leader" may have been a Daily Worker reference to the American Federation of Labor, which it frequently criticized for not being radical enough; but the AFL was publicly opposed to the alien registry legislation.

Labor unions such as the Machinist Locals 84 and 337 protested that "the majority of workers in the basic industries of this country are of foreign birth, and the proposed bills are clearly aimed at the working class as a whole. ... The intent of the proposed bills is clearly to intimidate the foreign-born workers; to prevent them from joining unions; to prevent them from participating in strikes, and to compel them to accept a status of subjection, forced to do scab labor during times of conflict with employers."

Unions for the Pullmans, painters, decorators, seamstresses, steamfitters, and more from Boston to San Francisco organized "Councils for Protection of the Foreign-Born" to advocate against the proposed legislation.

"The Boycott" by Rollin Kirby (?) in New York Evening World, ca. Apr. 14, 1926

The Daily Worker didn't credit the cartoonist, whom I presume was Rollin Kirby. It also seems to me that the caption doesn't fit the cartoon. I couldn't find anything in the Daily Worker reporting boycotts related to the alien registry bills; I also haven't found this cartoon printed elsewhere. [Update: see D.D. Degg's comment below.]

I did find that the U.S. had deported 55,110 resident aliens between September, 1925 and April, 1926.

"Reviving a Dead One" by William Gropper in Daily World, Apr. 9, 1926

The Democrat-sponsored alien registry bills did not make it to President Coolidge's desk, or to the drawing boards of certain mainstream cartoonists I expected would have opinions about them. Many mainstream cartoonists were more interested in proposals to create exceptions to Prohibition — one of many distractions, according to the communist press, "to get the workers' mind off the real issues."

"So That's What's in the Prohibition Barrel" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, April 25, 1926

Would you have preferred your distraction from the real issues neat or on the rocks?

"Sidetracked" by Fred B. Watson in Baltimore Afro-American, Mar. 20, 1926

The Daily Worker included this Fred Watson cartoon in its April 22 edition with an unnecessarily longer title. The cartoon answers my question of two months ago whether Watson opposed U.S. participation in the World Court, and the Worker's cut line explains that the communist leadership at the newspaper viewed the World Court as a tool of J.P. Morgan and Wall Street bankers.

The Black vote, where it could make its way into the polling place, had been reliably Republican since the end of the Civil War. Although the Anti-Lynching Bill was authored and promoted by a Republican, the repeated inaction on the bill when Republicans held all the reins of power was a sign that the party took Black loyalty for granted.

"America Protects Germany from Sin" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, Apr. 28, 1926

I had serious qualms about including this cartoon because of objections to the Daily Worker editor's decision to mess with it. For some reason, the editor saw fit to remove whatever dialogue Gropper had President Coolidge saying (and possibly also text or symbolism that might have been on the paper in Mr. Businessman's hand), substituting instead the editor's own text as a cut line.

Unless an editor is providing translation of a foreign-language cartoon, that's simply not cool. 

But I did want to include a caricature of Calvin Coolidge besides that barely recognizable one by Maurice Becker above. 

And speaking of Gropper caricatures:

"Mussolini Thumbs the Stub of His Nose" by William Gropper in Daily World, Apr. 24, 1926

On April 7, Violet Gibson, the 50-year-old daughter of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, attempted to assassinate Benito Mussolini. Her bullet nicked il Duce's nose; her gun jammed as she tried a second shot.

Police stopped the crowd from killing her then and there. She probably would have been executed like Mussolini's other three failed assassins but for the British government interceding on her behalf. Gibson was allegedly mentally unstable (she had attempted suicide in Rome the previous year), so Italy deported her to England, where she spent the rest of her days in a mental asylum.

But speaking of womenfolk and guns...

"The Lady Might Get Hurt" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, April 1, 1926

The Daily Worker was highly skeptical of international agreements, such as the Locarno Pact, that did not originate in Moscow.

Have we another example of the Daily Worker editor editing a cartoon? Why would Gropper attach a label to the gun if not to identify what it is supposed to represent? Could this cartoon have been drawn about a completely different topic?

"No Team Work" by Maurice Becker in Daily Worker, Apr. 3, 1926

No such question about Maurice Becker's cartoon here. It does reminds me a lot of the Arthur Racey cartoon that led last week's Graphical History Tour. It is possible, I suppose, that Becker could have seen the March issue of Macleans; I think, however, that this was simply a case of two cartoonists reaching for a common image to illustrate a similar situation.

What does puzzle me is why Becker thought it necessary to label which country in the rowboat was which. I mean, shouldn't a reader just assume that the characters are a bunch of different national leaders? How does knowing who's who matter?

"The Spirit of Locarno" by Viktor "Deni" Denisov in Pravda, ca. Apr. 13, 1926

Soviet cartoonist Deni uses caricature to indicate the nationality of some of the League members in this cartoon: the gentleman sprawled on the floor at left resembles Germany's Hans Luther, and the mustachioed fellow at top right looks like French Prime Minister Aristide Briand. Below Briand are a probable Briton and a likely Japanese, but it hardly matters to whom each butt belongs.

"Glorious Garbage" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily World, Apr. 24, 1926

I explain these cartoons because they're 100 years old and make references that have grown obscure over time. The editors of Daily Worker explained this cartoon because they didn't trust readers to catch the subtle clues left by the cartoonist that the skull labeled "The League" is dead and that "Geneva Garbage Co." is a trash can.

At least they left the rather clever "Loco Peace Pact" nickname to stand on its own.

"With Rubber a Dollar a Pound" by Maurice Becker in Daily Worker, Apr. 17, 1926

Every once in a while, U.S. presidents would look into the possibility of granting demands for independence by the Philippines, a U.S. possession taken as spoils of the Spanish-American War at the close of the 19th Century. The Coolidge administration had recently appointed Col. Carmi A. Thompson, commander in chief of the United Spanish War Veterans, to conduct just such an investigation.

Members of Congress raised their objection to Philippine independence on a number of grounds, one being the high price of rubber from the British East India Company. U.S. firms were working to establish rubber plantations in the Philippines to rival the British monopoly.

Philippine independence would come only after World War II. 

"The Imperialist Policy in China," uncredited, in Daily Worker, Apr. 17, 1926

China's future was up in the air after the death of Premier Sun Yat Sen in March, 1925. Various warlords sought to establish their own local fiefdoms. Against the warlords, the Chinese Communist Party and  Nationalist government cooperated in the First United Front, with Soviet backing, until the Canton Coup on March 20, 1926.

The communist captain of the S.S. Zhongshan, with a Soviet naval adviser on board, moved to support a leftist uprising in Guangzhou. Chiang Kai-Shek, then the commander of the National Revolutionary Army, declared martial law in Guangzhou and arrested communists in China's armed services and their Soviet advisers.

"The Helper of Imperialist Thieves" by O.R. "Zim" Zimmerman in Daily Worker, Apr. 10, 1926

The Daily Worker promoted a rather different narrative to the purge of communists from China's National Revolutionary Army; Christian missionaries were hardly a factor in the Canton Coup.

Only from an atheist communist would you expect a Jesus Christ drawn as a Jewish stereotype 100 years ago. (Robert Minor drew the Christ with an even longer hooked nose than in this Zimmerman toon — see page 48 here.) It would be a welcome departure from the auburn-haired northern European Jesus found elsewhere but for the undercurrent of antisemitism tapped into by these cartoons.

"My Gawd, How the Money Rolls In" by William Gropper in Daily Worker, Apr. 5, 1926

And thus with yet one more William Gropper cartoon, we must leave 1926 behind for another week or two, returning to the present day secure in the knowledge that we have come so far since those bad old days.

Q Toon: Bryon's Been Busted

Mercurial U.S. President Donald Commodus Trump has put his genocidal threats against Iran on hold for the next twelve days, so we cartoonists can all go back to all the other distractions from the Epstein files that have been piling up in our in-boxes.

By now, even the Trump l'oeilists in their Fox Noisemax echo chamber have heard about Cosplay Kristi Noem's husband, Bryon, getting caught in some cosplay of his own.

I confess that I was unaware of this "bimbofication" fetish scene among heterosexual males, who stuff inflated party balloons under a crop top and swipe their wives' hot pants to chat on line. It must be more popular than I would have expected, given that this is apparently what Republicans and J.K. Rowling think transgender women are all about.

So, while the temptation to make fun of this guy is way too irresistible (I drew the cartoon and you've read this far: QED), there is something to be said against kink-shaming a guy who is not himself a public figure, merely married to a Cabinet official who had a bed installed in her Air Force jet to share with her erstwhile underling Corey Levandowski where Bryon got to read about it all over the internets.

As Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse put it, “When I looked at those photographs, the first word that came to mind ... was 'lonely.' These were seemingly lonely, isolated photographs of a middle-aged man who had not sought a public life — and who now would not be allowed much of a private one. I almost see something vulnerable in those photographs, now exposed to the internet and all of our group chats.”

Sex therapists (and kink pridesters) counsel that kink shaming is wrong. 

Kink shaming is a problem because it prevents people from being able to live an authentic life.

It’s especially problematic that having niche sexual interests could land you on the front of a newspaper, losing your job or unable to retain custody of your children – all of which is totally legal as it ‘brings a company in to disrepute’.  

Or, as two upstanding citizens of the Noems' hometown put it,

“Y’all should be sympathetic, he’s a father,” a surly staff member at a Watertown strip club told The [New York] Post when the topic veered toward the scandal. A bartender at the jiggle-joint chimed in, “We don’t think of them as politicians, we think of them as parents.”

Of course, not everyone agrees, because America has a well-established Puritan culture. An argument can certainly be made, moreover, against the objectification of women and girls, out of which which Mr. Noem's kink very definitely grows.

But in case the next time you hear from Bryon Noem is when he organizes Bimbofied Story Hour at the Hamlin Elementary School Library, please keep one thing in mind. 

Y'all should be sympathetic. He's a father.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Tune in later this week for a completely serious cartoon about a totally serious topic for sober, reasoned discussion.

Meanwhile, here's something not to tell your Republican uncle who gets all worked up about imaginary aliens voting in U.S. elections: while searching through Canadian newspaper articles about the West Middlesex special election, I came across UFO vote totals. 

The first references I found assumed that the paper's readership knew what the UFO was; I had to do a little searching to come up with the answer.

The United Farmers of Ontario Party (founded 1914, dissolved 1944) actually won enough seats in the Ontario Legislative Assembly to form a coalition government with the Independent Labour Party from 1919 to 1923. According to Wikipedia, "The UFO platform called for the abolition of political patronage, better educational opportunities in rural areas, cheap electric power, conservation of forests, proportional representation and "direct legislation". The UFO also favoured prohibition [passing it into Ontario law in 1919; prohibition was repealed in 1927] and budgetary restraint."

Its last member in the Ontario Legislative Assembly joined the Liberal Party in 1940, well after the UFO had become a spent political force.

As West Middlesex Goes

Today's Graphical History Tour checks in on the Canadian political situation a century ago.

"So Long As All Hands Keep Their Party Oars Going..." by Arthur G. Racey in Maclean's, Toronto, March 1, 1926

You will, of course, recall that the parliamentary election of November, 1925, left no party with a majority. The incumbent Liberal Party and its partner Progressive Party both lost seats to the Conservative Party. 

Of the 245 seats in Parliament, Arthur Meighen's Conservatives won 115; William Mackenzie King's Liberals hung onto 100 (King losing his own riding but then getting elected to a vacated seat elsewhere), and Robert Forke's Progressives held 22. The number of seats needed to achieve a majority, however, was 123, just out of reach of the three major parties.

"Pretty Polly" by A.M. Barstad in Toronto Globe, March 29, 1926

King and Meighen both courted Forke's Progressives; Meighen needed to persuade only eight of them, whereas King needed all of them plus any of the eight minor party members. But on one of the Conservatives' major issues of the day, higher tariffs against U.S. goods, the agrarian Progressives stood with the Liberals. Most of the splinter parties were to the left of the larger three parties, further handicapping Meighen's chances.

"After Monday's Vote" by D.H. Russell in Daily Province, Vancouver BC, March 30, 1926

Premier King's appointment of John C. Elliot to be Minister of Labour required Mr. Elliot to run in a by-election for his parliamentary seat representing West Middlesex, Ontario. The riding was a reliable Liberal stronghold, where Elliot had been in elective office since 1908.

"Slipped Again" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, March 30, 1926

Perhaps the Conservative Party hoped to confuse voters by selecting Thomas E. Elliot as their champion to challenge John C. Elliot. If so, it didn't work; the Liberal Elliot outpolled the Conservative Elliot in every district.

"On the Way to Political Red Lake" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, April 3, 1926

To explain the reference in Sam Hunter's cartoon, Red Lake in northern Ontario was anticipating a rush of gold prospectors as the ice broke. From later headlines, I take it that prospectors ended up being as disappointed as Hunter predicted Mr. Meighen would be. 

"Taking Willy for an Airing" by Arthur G. Racey in Macleans, Toronto, April 1, 1926

Blaming a lethargic voting public for Canada's political predicament, Conservative cartoonist Arthur Racey portrayed the Progressives' Forke at the wheel of Government, with a diminutive Premier King in his lap. "Willy, you sit still and stop trying steer," Forke says, "or I'll throw you out!"

Q Toon: A Little Song, A Little Dance

Phoning in to the Fox Noise panel program "The Five" last Thursday, Donald Commodius Trump made the bizarre claim at the heart of my editorial cartoon today.

“Now I think I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, OK? And I think it probably helped me. But I did great. No Republican’s ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City.”

The "gay national anthem" Trump referred to is the Village People's "Y.M.C.A.," one of the staples of his 2024 presidential campaign appearances (including the one where Trump appeared on stage and called for a 34-minute impromptu concert, after the crowd had already been standing for hours listening to music while waiting for him to arrive).

For dropping their cease-and-desist order to stop playing their music at Trump rallies, the Village People were rewarded by landing the gig to perform "Y.M.C.A." at Trump's "Make America Great Again Rally" and the Turning Point USA Inaugural Ball on January 19, 2025. 

I hope they were paid enough to be worth it, because I would argue that "Y.M.C.A." can no longer be considered the gay national anthem. Not only is it now a staple along with "Mambo #5" and "Electric Slide" of different-sex wedding receptions, the Village People front man and co-author of the song Victor Willis has disavowed its gayness:

“There’s been a lot of talk, especially of late, that Y.M.C.A. is somehow a gay anthem. As I’ve said numerous times in the past, that is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life. 

“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout and since one of the writers was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people. To that I say once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not."

Don't count on being able to convince Secretary of Excursions Pete Kegsbreath to enlist "In the Navy" as a recruitment tool, however.

There are plenty of other nominees for Gay National Anthem, any of which is unsullied by association with the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime. There's "Born This Way," "I Am What I Am," "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," or "Supermodel (You Better Work)" — just for starters.

Dozens of new ones come out every summer, and I haven't even gotten around to the Lesbian National Anthems, Bisexual National Anthems, Transgender National Anthems, Queer National Anthems, and all the Plus National Anthems.

If you saw Monday's sneak peek, you will have noticed that I completely changed the last dialogue balloon. Originally, I had Trump "weaving" to the topic of his pens, the subject of a five-minute monologue during a recent televised cabinet meeting.

After I had nearly finished inking the cartoon, it occurred to me that it would be better to have him show off his ability to identify the five Village People. Just in case you thought he knew their actual names.

Inking on top of white-out doesn't work very well, so I wrote the substitute dialogue on a sheet of bristol board that I have used for drawing backgrounds for repetition in multi-panel cartoons. What I failed to consider was that the sheet of bristol board was from a bundle susceptible to bleeding. Instead of staying where I draw it, ink spreads out along the fibers of the paper. 

Not far, but not neat.

That's fine for backgrounds, which aren't meant to be in focus anyway. Lettering has to be neater, though, so I ended up spending a considerable amount of time cleaning up that lettering in PhotoShop.

So if someday you notice that I've switched over to using Comic Sans, cut me some slack. I'm not planning to do it, but lettering is probably the least favorite part of any cartoonist's job.

Holy Week's Sneak Peek

Well, to be perfectly honest, you won't find this in this week's cartoon.

Here's something else you won't find in this week's cartoon: The Roman Emperor Commodus (reigned AD 180 – 192) was an incompetent ruler, devoting most of his rule to self-glorification. 

He had himself minted onto imperial currency, which wasn't unusual. He festooned Rome with countless statues of himself as Hercules, which was only slightly out of the ordinary. Then he renamed the city "Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana." He further renamed the months of the year, the Roman legions, the fleet, the senate, the imperial palace after himself, and even decreed that each and every citizen of Rome must change their name to Commodianus. 

Within a year, he was assassinated, and the names were all changed back.