A Stroll Down Malarkey Lane

Today's Graphical History Tour was supposed to be about some century-old stuff, but it can wait. It waited this long, after all, so what's a couple more weeks?

In light of Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential contest, here's a look back at some of the cartoons I've drawn (and not drawn) of his political career.

He came to speak at my college while I was a freshman at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. I didn't happen to sit in on the first-term Senator's lecture, or, as the Manitou Messenger's editorial page cartoonist, to draw a cartoon about it. Since Biden's appearance came after the last Messenger before first-semester finals was published, it wasn't reported in the next issue, which didn't come out until February.

I didn't see him then, but I did get to see him in person in 2020, after the Kenosha rioting, when he came to the church where I work to hold an invitation-only conversation with local church and community leaders. While I did not get to meet him up close, I did deal with his campaign staff and gave his Secret Service detail a thorough tour of the building.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., September 24, 1987

The first cartoon of mine featuring Joe Biden came after his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination foundered on revelations that he had plagiarized the life story of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock as his own in campaign speeches. Biden was justifiably raked over the coals for this rather stupid move.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Oct. 1, 1987

The gaffe, since it was the one thing most people knew about him, dogged his career well after the 1988 campaign was over and done with. He next came into the national spotlight as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. I thought I might have included him in one of my cartoons about that, but it seems I didn't.

for Q Syndicate, October 2008

Other than including him as one of many congresspersons in a cartoon about a Ronald Reagan State of the Union speech, the next time I saw fit to draw Biden was after his vice presidential candidates debate with Sarah Palin in 2008.

By then, I was drawing primarily for LGBTQ+ publications, so my focus was on the candidates' response to a question about marriage equality. Moderator Gwen Ifill asked Biden (at minute 35 here), "Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?"

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted — same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair.
It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

Palin, in her rebuttal, reframed the question as an opportunity to voice her and John McCain's opposition to same-sex marriage, although "I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue." The "some of my best friends are..." weasel.

Ifill then asked Biden for his ticket's stance on same-sex marriage, to which Biden demurred, "Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that."

for Q Syndicate, December, 2010

Vice Presidents, and candidates for that office, are expected to echo the position of the guy (or gal) at the top of the ticket. Candidate Obama was officially opposed to same-sex marriage, in spite of having told LGBTQ organizations in Illinois that he was open to marriage equality when he had run for the Senate in 2006.

So many of us wondered whether Biden was floating a trial balloon or exercising his reputation for verbal gaffetude when, as Vice President in 2010, Joe Biden publicly averred that popular opinion in the United States was "evolving" toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

At that time, marriage equality was the law in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia. 41 other states had legislation or constitutional amendments forbidding same-sex couples from marrying.

for Q Syndicate, May, 2012

In 2012, President Obama's position "evolved"; he stated that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marital rights. The Democratic Party included an endorsement of marriage equality in the party platform for the first time. The Republican platform, of course, was officially opposed to it, calling instead for an opposite-sex marriage exclusivity amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oct. 2012

There were no bombshell announcements in Biden's 2012 debate appearance with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. Republicans groused afterward about the 59-year-old Biden supposedly smirking while the 42-year-old Ryan was speaking.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

Biden sat out the 2016 election, campaign season coming as it did just after the death of his son Beau. But he entered the ring again in 2020, the oldest presidential nominee in history up to that point. I suppose that historians will decide that in the midst of an epidemic the likes of which only centenarians had ever seen, and after four years of a chaotic, mercurial presidency, the United States was ready for a steady, experienced leader who promised stability and reason.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

The Democratic Party Convention, thanks to COVID-19, proved a disappointment to host city Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The city had tried to convince Republicans in Madison to allow bars to stay open past the legal 2:00 a.m. closing time, only to have the candidates and most delegates attending by Zoom rather than in person.

Republicans thought they could show up the Democrats this year by having their 2024 convention in the Brew City. Madison Republicans this time around happily extended Milwaukee bar time to 4:00 a.m. for the week. But with the security zones around the convention center practically forbidden to local residents, and the Republican Party largely made up of people who regard urban areas with fear and loathing, many of the restaurants and bars ended up with their extra staff scheduled to work the wee hours of convention mornings finding nothing to do but polish tables and sweep floors.

October, 2020

Over the years, my caricature of Joe Biden has been as elastic as his hairline. The one thing that came to the fore more and more was his 300-watt smile. How his choppers have remained so day-glo white is beyond me. Does he never drink coffee? Tea? I've heard that some Catholic priests refuse to offer him communion wine.

Maybe it's the ice cream.

I may have drawn fewer cartoons about Biden as President than I drew about any other president during any given four years. That's largely because I draw for the LGBTQ press, and Biden has a great record on LGBTQ issues, in stark contrast to the leaders in the Republican Party.

The Dad Jokes thing didn't pan out as a running gag, whereas the Republicans' full-bore, sustained persecution of transgender persons has called for a lot of ink and colored pixels over the past four years.

But who knows? I have to come up with a couple cartoons for Q Syndicate to release during weeks when I'm away for the drawing board. If you see any more Dad Jokes here over the next six months, you'll know why.

Q Toon: We Could All Use One

You may have heard the news already, but just in case you've just awakened from a coma: President Joe Biden, sequestered by COVID and beleaguered by his party's call to quit running for reelection after his cringe-worthy debate performance on June 27, withdrew from the race and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, instead.

As unprecedented as his decision was, it was a long time coming. And probably inevitable.

Many who voted for him in 2020 expected him to be a one-term president, cleaning up the mess made by the tumultuous Trump administration. But then he declared his intention to run for reelection, to "finish the job."

Governance, however, is not a job that is there to be finished.

Unless you're planning to implement Project 2025 and finish the Trump job of dismantling democracy once and for all.

Biden's performance in his June debate with Trump obliterated the confidence of every supporter who had been encouraged by his State of the Union speech. It demonstrated why the people around him had scheduled so few press conferences for our octogenarian president during the past four years.

Incidentally, I have heard that people who heard that debate as live-translated into Spanish thought that Biden had won the messaging contest. The Spanish language translators had to make sense of what the candidates said, whether what they actually said made sense or not. Trump's lies, however, translated easily and transparently.

I was pianist last weekend at a wedding where they had two ASL signers up in front for deaf family members and guests. Got me wondering how deaf viewers of the debate thought it went. ASL interpreters don't just use their hands; they also use facial expression — which can be quite exaggerated — to convey more than just the literal spoken word.

Anyway, Democrats now have a lot of enthusiasm and hope invested in Kamala Harris, and will need to keep that intensity up for the next three months. 

Harris has a reputation for having a rough relationship with staff. It supposedly doomed her 2020 campaign aborning, and if there's anything like that during this one, we will hear about it. The media love to report on the nuts and bolts of campaigning, because the campaign staffers are the people the press on the campaign trail talk to all the time. And disgruntled staffers tend to be eager to vent.

So Harris came to Milwaukee this week for a previously scheduled campaign event, and the staff had to find a larger venue to accommodate the increased interest. The Harris for President organization raked in a record amount in donations in the first days of her candidacy. And I dug out the Kamala Harris button I'd picked up at a union picnic in 2019.

Meanwhile, let's see whether Harris can appeal to those doggedly undecided voters out there. 

Like the woman in the focus group on CBS Morning News yesterday who thought that the the first name of the incumbent Vice President of the United States is Camilla.

Yeah, let's not pop the victory champagne just yet, folks.

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Drawing this cartoon put me in mind of a cartoon that was showing up in my social media feed while back. (I'd credit the cartoonist, but now that I want to cite it, I can't find the cartoon.) A guy has brought his car into the shop, and the auto mechanic has the car's hood up. He turns to the vehicle owner and says, "Here's your problem. The cartoonist doesn't know how to draw an engine."

This Week's Sneak Peek

To say I had some issues with this week's cartoon risks understatement.

I was working on ideas for a cartoon about one topic when news broke that meant those ideas would have to wait.

I came up with something about the breaking news that I felt had relevance to the LGBTQ+ readership, drew it, let the ink dry, scanned it, and started making the Photoshop edits.

I had finished the grayscale version and sent it off to my editors, then started work on the color version. I was nearly finished when the power went out. 

The weather was nice — perfect Chamber of Commerce weather, in fact — so I hadn't been making saves along the way. The power failure, we're told, was due to a vehicle-vs.-power pole collision a couple miles away.

Weenergies restored power to my area a bit more than an hour later, and I had to start coloring the cartoon all over again. After dealing with an upset computer, of course. And all the digital clocks around the house.

But all's well that ends well, and everything's colored and sent off to Ann Arbor.

As for the Blogger issue that came up last week, I'm making this post on the same computer as last week, using the incognito mode of the Chrome browser. I couldn't upload files that way last week, but it's working today. Instead of the Sign In Again window, Blogger/Google put up a Please Allow Cookies Or Else window. 

Once I've posted this, I'll try using the regular browser and see how that works.

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Update: It doesn't.

Zurück zum Zeichenbrett

When our Graphical History Tour last visited July, 1924, the Democratic National Convention had just struggled for two weeks to settle on its presidential nominee, rejecting its leading suitor, William McAdoo, in favor of John W. Davis.

"Americanische Wahlqualen" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 27, 1924

The debacle made the front page of Berlin's satirical weekly Kladderadatsch, where cartoonist Arthur Johnson was happy to enjoy the schadenfreude of the misfortunes of politicians of any other country.

"Die Schnüffel-Kommission" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 13, 1924

Especially since the alternative was to cartoon about the humiliation of his own country. (Johnson's father was American; but Arthur was German-born and grew up there raised by his German mother.) 

The title of this cartoon derives from a word that can mean either "snoop" or "sniff"; I've chosen the former, since Marianne, John Bull, Uncle Sam, and the Italian (King Vittorio Emanuele III, probably), representing the Reparations Commission, are using a magnifying glass rather than their olfactory senses to examine Michel's gesäß.

"Morgens.. in der Berliner Kunstuastellung" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, July 13, 1924

Johnson, renowned for his monstrously distorted caricatures of Germany's foes, was certainly capable of more flattering depictions of the human form, as shown in "Die Schnüffel-Kommission." I may not know much about modern art, but I know what Johnson liked.

"Der Dolchstoss von Hinten" by Oskar Theuer in Ulk, Berlin, July 18, 1924

Only months after the failed Beerhall Putsch, the Never Hitlerer cartoonists warned that the danger had not truly passed. Oskar Theuer's cartoon on the front page of Ulk depicted industrialists and royalists behind the bushes on the left and Nazis on the right, both waiting to ambush the young lad labeled Peace. Little Boy Peace's backpacks are labeled "reconstruction" and "reconciliation."

Theuer ironically took the blame-laying phrase used by those right-wingers, turning it back against them as the title of the cartoon.

"Der Fall Willstätter" by Theodor Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, July 28, 1924

Publishing his magazine in the heart of Nazi country, Theodore Heine's play on words recalls the horrors of World War I's chemical warfare for his cartoon. Yellow Cross gas, or Gelbkreuzgas, was Germany's variant of mustard gas with an antifreeze agent for use in winter; Hakenkreuz is another word for "swastika."

Richard Willstätter was a Nobel Prize winning German chemist who determined the composition of chlorophyll in plants. Asked in 1915 to help develop poison weapons for the German government, he refused to work on anything beyond protective measures. He received the Iron Cross for his work on gas mask filtering systems.

In protest of increasing anti-Semitism, Willstätter, a Jew, announced his retirement as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in 1924, and subsequently refused all offers of employment. He eventually fled Munich for Switzerland in 1938, where he died four years later, ten days shy of his 70th birthday.

"Faschismus" by Arnold Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 6, 1924

Looking beyond Germany's borders again, Arnold Lindloff has Italy's Benito Mussolini quoting The Sorcerer's Apprentice, although Il Duce (at right) appears to enjoy the work of the monsters he has set loose. 

Only the industrialist seems perturbed; wouldn't it have made more sense to have him the one who summoned the two spirits? Indeed, the fellow with a dagger appears to be a German brownshirt; and whereas Mussolini has a club, the industrialist is armed only with a baton. 

A magic wand, even.

"Die Ältesten und die Jüngsten von U.S.A." by Karl Arnold in Simplicissimus, Munich, July 7, 1924

Here's another cartoon in which the wrong person seems to be speaking. Karl Arnold's comment on the U.S.'s Japanese Exclusion Act is one of many cartoons through history that have proposed that Native Americans erred in ever allowing Europeans to settle the new continent.

It appears that the tribal elder in the foreground should be the one talking, but the caption makes more sense said by the Japanese gentleman. I wonder why the speaker wasn't identified as McAdoo and Mussolini were in the above cartoons, or if an editor changed the caption.

I don't always get German humor, largely because I don't speak the language. Relying on an on-line translation of "Die Yankees machen sich jetzt mausig" gave me "The Yankees are making a mess of things now." But from what I've been able to tell, the word "mausig" doesn't translate neatly into English. It combines senses of being unruly, obstinate, and deliberately combative. (One translator also gave me "mousy.")

"Ihr" can mean "you," "her," or "their." Only one of those pronouns makes any grammatical sense in the caption, so I stuck with "you."

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Well, that's our review for today of German cartoons from July of 1924. Hope you enjoyed the grammar lesson and the Jugenstil. Come back next week, and I promise to go back to having stuff in English.

Q Toon: Our Tone

There were a handful of celebrity deaths over the weekend, and I tried to come up with a cartoon about Richard Simmons's passing. But everything that came to mind was either trite or in poor taste — as most memorial cartoons are — and given that the assassination attempt against Donald Trump was dominating news coverage to the exclusion of almost everything else, I couldn't bring myself to ink Simmons doing calisthenics at the Pearly Gates.

Or whatever I might have had Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Shannon Daugherty, James Sikking, Shelley Duvall, or Jacoby Jones doing.

Because a bullied young white man with a gun climbed onto a roof and took shots at Mr. Trump, there have been calls to "tone down the rhetoric," especially regarding criticism of the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

Republicans do not like Democrats calling their presidential nominee an American Hitler and a reprehensible, cynical asshole (whoops, those were from J.D. Vance) just because he wants to create a police state to round up all the Latinos, weaponize the Department of Justice and FBI, set up boncentration bamps, and persecute all his political enemies, and he never met a right-wing dictator he didn't like. I get it. Imagine being called a Communist for wanting affordable health care, or a Nazi for supporting women’s rights, or demonspawn for urging people not to gather in crowds during a global pandemic of a novel virus that was killing millions.

Toning down the rhetoric is not something we political cartoonists are particularly good at, but you will notice that I didn't draw Mr. Trump with a pig's snout, and I have (so far) refrained from giving him a middle name from dystopian fiction.

For my cartoon, I selected five examples of Republicans loose talk about guns and killing. The first (a paraphrase) dates back to 2016; the fifth (a direct quote) was earlier this month. I could have included many more — especially Republicans' virulent rash of gun fetish Christmas cards. 

(I didn't leave myself room to identify the fourth politician, and it occurs to me that readers may not know whether she is Lauren Boebert, Sarah Palin, or Kristi Noem. Is there any one of them that you think could not have said she was bringing a gun to settle political differences?)

Trump's responses to, not just hypothetical or rhetorical, but actual violence against Democrats is unforgettable:

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

We're also told that he found the violent attempt to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021, thoroughly entertaining. Most of the rest of us did not.

So forgive me if I'm not ready to sing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow with his MAGA mobsters.

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By the way, it was Rep. Lauren Boebert.

This Week's Sneak Peek

On a hunch, I took this week's cartoon to work on a USB drive and tried uploading it to Blogger from there. It worked.

This is a screenshot of my attempt to upload the sneak peek file from home, where I tried both drag-and-drop and browsing-and-clicking; I tried both the Chrome and Edge web browsers, and regular and incognito windows.

I suppose this means I have to spend money on replacing my Windows 10 computer with whatever the newest, most intrusive operating system is these days. Which will be rendered obsolete in a matter of months.

A similar problem keeps arising at work as various websites we rely upon for the church's website, congregational management software, electronic fund transfers, and the like become unworkable on the web browsers on their ancient Mac OS 10.12.6. (So far, they still work in incognito mode; my guess is that cookies from before the Web 3.999 updates interfere with whatever newfangled macarons come with the new shit.)

Well, anyway, here's the sneak peek. The weekly sneak peek will probably have to wait until Tuesdays for a while.

I May Have to Leave This Blog

Google has made some change to uploading images to this blog that make it impossible to do so.

Here's what happens: I click on the upload image icon. A pop-up window appears telling me that I have to sign in to Google to access the content. (I have already signed in to Google to work on the blog, but okay. Let's be safe and secure here.)

When I click on the sign-in button, instead of asking me for my ID and password, a new upload window opens. There is an icon of a cloud, and a choice to Browse or Drag-and-Drop.

Whichever of those two choices I make, a blue progress bar tells me it's uploading. But when it's done, where is my file? Lost in the clouds, apparently. It certainly hasn't appeared in my blog post. It hasn't shown up in the Blogger folders.

I'm not happy, Google. Not at all.