Thanksgiving Leftovers

This week's installment of Stuffingback Saturday takes another rummage through the ancient vaults in search of the answer to the question: "What Thanksgiving gags did editorial cartoonists draw before we all drew about political fights dividing the family at the dinner table?"

"Cousin Ed's Folks from Town" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, November 1916

I usually try to keep these cartoons as close to their centennial as possible, but my source for these first three, Cartoons Magazine, tended to run holiday-themed cartoons (for any holiday) from earlier years. The December, 1919 edition, for example, included the above Burt Thomas cartoon, which is clearly dated 1916. That's quite understandable, with Thanksgiving coming after the December edition's deadline; who would still be interested in Thanksgiving cartoons when the January edition came out?

In 1919, their dilemma was that a lot of cartoons drawn for Thanksgiving 1918 expressed thanks that the boys would be coming home soon from the War that had ended two weeks earlier. Thus, it's hard for me to tell what year the other cartoons in that issue were from.

"The Good Old Days" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, Nov. 1919?

Here's a cartoon by Ted Brown from the December, 1920 edition; there's a chance that Cartoons Magazine might have saved it from 1919 when complaints about the cost of living were in vogue. (So this is the thanks the First Americans get for inviting the pilgrim colonists to the First Thanksgiving!)

"Breaking into the Big League" by Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Republic, Nov. 1918 or earlier

I don't know what things were like in the Chapin household, but I hope the young lady in this cartoon soon figured out that there are many reasons why it's a bad idea to keep a birdcage over the stove.

"Ain't It a Grand and Glorious Feelin'" by Clare Briggs in New York Tribune, Nov. 27, 1919

In the Briggs household, the kids had to wait until the adults were done eating before they were permitted to come to the table. And if this were not at least a fairly common practice, don't you think Briggs's readers would have shamed him en masse after this cartoon was nationally syndicated?

No, I suppose that if your apartment wasn't large enough to accommodate a separate children's table, you had to make do by teaching the children The Virtue Of Patience. We know now that the grown-ups in 1919 who feasted while their children's stomachs growled in the next room would, just as those kids became adults, bequeath them the Great Depression.

But would those kids snark "OK, Homer" at them? I think not.

"What Are You Thankful For" by William Hanny in St. Joseph News-Press, Nov. 27, 1919

Editorial cartoonists looking to tie the holiday in with serious issues could, like William Hanny, bemoan the strikes by workers demanding a greater share of corporate profits now that the War was over. Few cartoonists displayed sympathy for striking coal miners, steel workers and trainmen, since most homes were heated by coal, and the private automobile was only just beginning to rival train travel.

What the deal is with "The Common Pee-ple," I have no idea. Perhaps Hanny's original idea involved likening the strikes to a urinary tract infection.

"The Long and Short of It" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 25, 1919

As I mentioned before, the high cost of living was a frequent theme of 1919 editorial cartoons. Nelson Harding offers plenty of drumstick for the holiday — emphasis on the stick.

"The Vacant Chairs" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 27, 1919 

John McCutcheon's Uncle Sam celebrated the holiday with Extravagance, Unrest and the High Cost of Living, but at least half of the invited guests were AWOL. Why Uncle Sam invited any of them in the first place is anyone's guess.

Well, I suppose it was only charitable of him to invite Hunger and Hard Times to dinner.

But since I can't leave you with the impression that Thanksgiving in 1919 was all grousing and peevishness, let us close with a cartoonist who, like Clare Briggs above, perceived his era through quaintly rose-colored spectacles:

"The Thrill that Comes Once in a Lifetime" by Harold T. Webster in New York Tribune, November 27, 1919

After all, the era would have wanted to be remembered that way.

Q Toon: Chick-Fil-Addict

The Religious Reich have their panties in a wad because Chick-Fil-A Inc. has decided that alienating potential LGBTQ customers isn't as promising a business model as they thought it was.

The chain announced Monday that it will discontinue its donations to several Christian organizations that oppose same-sex marriage, including the Salvation Army, the Paul Anderson Youth Home, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
“We made multi-year commitments to both organizations, and we fulfilled those obligations in 2018,” a representative for Chick-fil-A said in a statement, adding that the chain will now focus its charitable donations on “education, homelessness, and hunger.”

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins harrumphed:

It was never about the chicken. For millions of Americans, there was a much deeper significance behind every decision to pull in the parking lot and walk through those doors. It wasn’t about the menu. It wasn’t even about the service.
It was that every time someone ate there, they were making a cultural statement. ...
Now, some of you might argue that walking away from the Salvation Army or Fellowship of Christian Athletes isn’t an endorsement of an LGBT agenda. But it is exactly that. And here’s why. Chick-fil-A didn’t just switch their giving practices, they broadcasted it.
One of the saddest parts of this is that Chick-fil-A didn’t just compromise their witness. They dragged thousands of godly men and women into the pit with them — owners, employees, and franchisees who never signed up for this.

When LGBTQ activists were urging a boycott of Chick-Fil-A, the Religious Reich urged their flock to "EAT MOR CHIKIN" with every meal. Now it's the RRs and their government minions who want to stage a boycott. I haven't caught wind of any LGBTQ advocates calling for our community to start gorging ourselves on chicken sandwiches, however.

But if the turkey on Ellen DeGeneres's Thanksgiving table looks rather small, you can guess why.

Conan Isn't Himself Lately

In case you missed it, Trump had Conan (the dog who chased al-Baghdadi into a cave, not the late-night TV host) over to the White House to praise the dog's bravery under fire. This is what Trump had to say about the heroic Belgian Malinois (stamps available at your local post office, and I'm not kidding):

"I was told about the breed and I was told about Conan himself. Conan is a tough cookie. And nobody is going to mess with Conan." 

But wait. The Army then revealed that Conan isn't a himself. She's a herself.

Maybe.

“Just in: #Conan, the hero dog from the al-Baghdadi raid, is in fact a GIRL, a U.S. defense official tells ABC News,” reporter Elizabeth McLaughlin tweeted.
Minutes later, the Pentagon weighed in, writing in a statement to The Washington Post that “per U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), Conan is a male dog.” ...
Perhaps experiencing whiplash over the conflicting reports that Conan was male female male, some news outlets removed all references to the dog’s sex or simply referred to Conan as “it.”

Word in the kennel is that Conan (the dog, not the guy who took over "The Apprentice") prefers "they, them, their."

Thanksgiving Week's Sneak Peek

Way back during the 2016 campaign, Buzzfeed commissioned Mark Davis to create the "Tiny Hand" font based on a photograph of Donald Berzelius Trump's handwritten notes for his second debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I downloaded the free font at the time, thinking that even though Trump was unlikely to be elected president (hah!), it might still be handy for use in cartoons. I spend an awful lot of time on lettering, especially in multi-panel cartoons, and someday having a shortcut will be worth it. I used it for the syndication notice for a while, and for the caption of maybe one or two cartoons.

There has been renewed interest in the font after photographers snapped photos of Trump's "I Want Nothing" notes last week. The most interesting observation that I've read is that Trump probably needs glasses but is too vain to wear them. He's not going to any optometrist that can't be bribed to state unequivocally that he has the healthiest eyeballs ever elected to the presidency.

There is no Tiny Hands font in this week's cartoon, but this week's sneak peek offers an example of what it might look like if there were. Or you can jump back to my parody of Trump's notes, which caught more attention than last week's syndicated cartoon has.

Hung Out to Dry

Soberback Saturday left off last week with the observation that the Senate's failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles meant that the U.S. remained at war, and wartime prohibition of the production and sale of alcoholic beverages would, ipso facto, remain in effect.

"The Crow and the Pitcher" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 30, 1919

Of course, had the Senate ratified of the treaty, it would not have repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, which expressly prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, or the importation thereof into" the U.S.

The Volstead Act, named for House Judiciary Chair Andrew Volstead (R-MN), codified the Eighteenth Amendment into law, by defining "intoxicating liquors," establishing the penalties for breaking the law, and extending enforcement power to the states.

Efforts to undo the Act were bipartisan: President Wilson vetoed the Act on grounds that its sections regarding the enforcement of wartime measures were moot. Republican Elihu Root argued before the Supreme Court that the Eighteenth Amendment itself was an unconstitutional seizure of property (specifically in his case, of beer brewed prior to Prohibition) without compensation. And in Ohio, a 1918 amendment to the state constitution required that a statewide referendum approve any ratification of amendments to the federal constitution; Ohio's legislature ratified the Eighteenth Amendment in January, 1919, but the referendum in November, 1919, went down to the wire.

"Giddap" by Sid Chapin in St. Louis Republic, Oct./Nov., 1919

But support for Prohibition was also bipartisan. It took less than three hours for the House to override Wilson's veto of the Act on October 27, and 27 Democratic Senators helped the Senate follow suit the next day.

"The Argufyingest Corpse We Ever Saw" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, ca. Dec., 1919

The Supreme Court would take a bit more time to rule against Mr. Root's client. "To limit the power of Congress so that it may require discontinuance only after a reasonable time from the passage of the act would seriously restrict it in the exercise of the war powers," Justice Brandeis wrote for the majority.

"Darn It, I'm Beginning to Believe It's So" by Charles "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, ca. Jan. 6, 1920

The Court would also rule Ohio's referendum requirement unconstitutional, Justice William Day writing that in the U.S. Constitution, ratification of constitutional amendments is explicitly "limited to two methods, by action of the legislatures of three-fourths of the States, or conventions in a like number of States."

"Better Days" by Hal Coffman in Los Angeles Examiner, Nov. 24, 1919

There were still cartoonists such as Hal Coffman preaching the benefits of Prohibition, but some undesired side effects of the Eighteenth Amendment were already making themselves felt. A thriving bootlegging underground had sprung up to satisfy the thirst of anyone who didn't have a stash in his cellar or needed his bathtub for anything other than the making of gin.

"Which of You Own This Dog" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Nov. 23, 1919

As John D. Rockefeller would put it in 1932,

When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.

"The Anti-Camouflage Specialists at Work" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 7, 1919

Nevertheless, flushed with his movement's success in subjugating the saloon industry on this side of the pond, American prohibition activist William Eugene "Pussyfoot" Johnson sought to bring Prohibition to Great Britain. Johnson had earned his nickname back before the turn of the century by going undercover into Oklahoma bars to gather information against their owners.

"The Statue of Liberty" by Percy H. "Poy" Fearon in London Evening News, Nov., 1919

His British visit did not go well.

At a speaking engagement at London's Essex Hall on November 13, 1919, he was seized by a mob of medical students who paraded him through the streets of London on a stretcher. Someone in the crowd hit him with a projectile, putting out his right eye. He was eventually rescued by police, but doctors were unable to save his eye.

"You Can Lead a Horse to Water..." by ___ in Morning Advertiser, London, Nov., 1919

I haven't been able to track down this cartoonist, whose caricature of Pussyfoot Johnson is closer to the real person than that of "Poy" Fearon, who made no attempt to capture his likeness. I'm guessing that it might have been published before the November 13 incident; but then, Johnson is drawn from the left side.

The Morning Advertiser, incidentally, is a biweekly trade publication founded in 1794 to promote the interests of British pub owners and managers, and is still publishing.

EnviroStewardship: Leaving the Leaves

Dad's Environmental Stewardship column for the month somehow went missing from my inbox, so I had to go pick up a hard copy yesterday. We've had a thaw since he wrote this last weekend, so I can just add that he has raked up the leaves that were plowed onto his front yard. But the grass in back is still covered up.

🍂

Back in November of last year, I suggested that procrastination in the clean-up of the yard and garden beds might be a very good thing for birds, bees, and beneficial insects. I have no way of knowing whether anybody chose to follow that suggestion, but this year, Mother Nature seems to have decided for us.

At the time I am writing this essay, it is well below freezing. The yard and garden beds are covered with several inches of snow and leaves with dead portions of plants still uncut still sticking up through the snow. Even those leaves raked into the gutter for city pick-up and composting have been plowed back onto the lawn in a couple of feet of ice and snow.

The sudden cold snap that started in October may have been hard on some birds and other creatures, but many already are benefiting from the mulch of leaves and snow. The bees and other beneficial insects have burrowed into the ground under it all and are set to hibernate. Birds are enjoying the seeds left on the dried up plants.

We might have a very late Indian Summer in which one can once again decide to rake the lawn, chop up the leaves into a better mulching, clean up the gardens... or not. Whatever one decides, one should take into consideration the other creatures with which we share this earth.

Man — and Woman — were given dominion or governance over this earth, so we should be sure that what we do for ourselves does not unnecessarily put too high a cost on the other creatures. I prefer to say we were given stewardship of the earth. All the earth is the Lord's, as the psalmist says, but He apparently needs or wants stewards to help Him run it.

To quote the ELCA Social Statement on Caring for Creation once again, "The principle of participation means they [all living things] are entitled to be heard and have their interests considered when decisions are made." Even small decisions about our yards and gardens.

—John Berge

Q Toon: Bent Out of Shape

I could have left "when he walks" out of this cartoon, and I rather wish I had.

👞

Observers this week have puzzled over the president's peculiar posture, standing with his upper body center of gravity way in front of that of the lower half.

It may have something to do with the lift shoes he wears to artificially augment his height. It also has the side effect of causing him to lean forward in a disturbing manner toward people he meets.

Such forward-leaning posture has the secondary body language effect of encroaching into others’ personal space (intimate space) during greetings and other interactions. In addition to him being physically closer, we also feel emotionally uncomfortable whenever we think something/someone may fall over onto us.

I suspect that falling over onto people would ruin the Dominant Male vibe Mr. Trump is going for. One of these days, he's liable to tumble onto the Prime Minister of Nambia after one too many UK Sudafeds.

Page Three of Trump's Notes

Weekly Sneakily Peeking

Dad, whose monthly Environmental Stewardship column should be showing up in my inbox any day, asked yesterday about my habit in this blog of giving Donald Trump the middle name "Berzelius." He was puzzled that I would make reference to some Eighteenth Century Swedish chemist.

Well, chemistry is Dad's field. I'd never heard of the guy.

But since it's been a good long while since I've explained where I got the name, I might as well do it again.

Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip is a character in Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, a fascist who gets elected President of the United States on a populist platform in 1936. He's part Hitler, part Huey Long, and is eventually overthrown by even more horrible members of his administration who end up declaring an unjustifiable war on Mexico.

A lot of people have not read It Can't Happen Here, so I sometimes give Trump the middle name "Joffrey" instead, after the spoiled rotten boy king in George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series. Joffrey is a vain, egotistical, cruel, cowardly bully; his name shares the same initial as Trump's middle name; and he's a more contemporary cultural reference than Sinclair Lewis's villain. But, as hard as this may be to believe, there are people who won't get Game of Thrones references, either.

I'm married to one.

✍

Meanwhile, I'm still in the process of replacing all this blog's embedded links to the old editorialcartoonists.com site, just because dead links are annoying. I came across one post that had now dead links to several North Carolina cartoonists' caricatures of then-Governor Pat McGrory on the AAEC site; it could be a real challenge re-linking them all.

Treaty Defeaty

Centuryback Saturday returns by popular demand! Okay, just one person said anything, but who am I to disappoint a reader, even a wee bit?

"Out of the Uniform..." by J. N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, November 25, 1919

As it happens, we're just about at the centennial of the the U.S. Senate adjourning a special session on November 19, 1919, without ratifying the Versailles Peace Treaty to end World War I.

"Shamed" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 21, 1919

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) offered a counter-proposal to join the League of Nations "with reservations." Chief among his reservations was that under Article X of the League Covenant, the U.S. surrendered to the League the power whether or not to declare war.

The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.

"The Convalescents" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 19, 1919

Bill Sykes may have been the only cartoonist to hold out some hope that ratification of the treaty might still be achieved. He is one of very few cartoonists to address President Wilson's health head-on. (A month and a half after his stroke, it was obvious to any observer that Wilson was seriously ill in spite of the administration's lack of complete public transparency. On November 24, a prank phone caller even convinced Vice President Thomas Marshall at a public speaking appearance in Atlanta that Wilson had died.)

"Compromises" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, November 20, 1919

Yet although Lodge was able to patch together a bipartisan coalition in favor of his counter-proposal, Wilson sent Senate Democrats a letter charging that Lodge's resolution "does not provide for ratification but rather for nullification of the treaty. I sincerely hope that the friends and supporters of the treaty will vote against the Lodge resolution." Enough Democrats backing Wilson's opposition, plus isolationist Republicans and Democrats opposed to membership in the League at all, denied Lodge's plan the required two-thirds majority of Senators.

John McCutcheon's cartoon above ignores the fact that Republicans refused even to allow debate on any treaty but Lodge's substitute for the one worked out at Versailles. Lodge, for his part, was more than happy to see Wilson suffer a political defeat, and to have the treaty remain an issue into the 1920 presidential campaign.

"It's Hard to Keep a Mud Turtle..." by Homer Stinson in Dayton Daily News, November, 1919

The Senate was scheduled to return in regular session on December 1, but would again fail to take any action to ratify the treaty, with or without reservations, by the time it adjourned in March. Ironically, as far as Mr. Lodge's concern that the League might commit U.S. to declare war against its will, the Senate's failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles meant that the U.S. remained at war against the Central Powers.

"Aw-w, Look What You Went an' Done" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 21, 1919

Even if the guns weren't firing, the continuing state of war still had some pesky practical consequences ...

"The Slip 'Twixt the Cup and the Lip" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, November 22, 1919

But that will have to remain a topic for another Saturday.

Case In Point

Quod erat demonstratum.

QToon: Balls and Strikes

"Judges are like umpires.... I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability, and I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat." —John Roberts, at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, September 12, 2005

Brian Brown, the president of the antigay National Organization for Marriage and World Congress of Families, recently tweeted a photo of himself and and leaders of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith posing with Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito.

Since the Supremes have taken up three LGBTQ+ rights cases this year, a liberal advocacy group, Take Back the Court, is demanding that Kavanaugh and Alito recuse themselves from them.

The Supreme Court has become deeply politicized in recent years, thanks to a series of rulings like Shelby County v. Holder, Citizens United, and Rucho v. Common Cause that have undermined basic tenets of our democracy for partisan advantage. The successful and unprecedented efforts by political branches to manipulate the size of the court for partisan purposes and your behavior, Justice Kavanaugh, during your confirmation hearings, have only deepened concerns about the politicization of the court. Your decision to meet privately with an activist who has filed amicus briefs with the court in three pending cases seems to confirm the worst fears of his critics.

The public letter from Take Back the Court director Aaron Belkin concludes:

The credibility and impartiality of the current Supreme Court is in tatters. Posing for photographs with the president of an advocacy organization that has filed briefs in matters pending before the court makes a mockery of Chief Justice Roberts’ assertion that a judge’s role is to impartially call balls and strikes. If you refuse to recuse yourselves, this incident will further illustrate the urgent need for structural reform of the Supreme Court in order to restore a Court that understands its role is to protect individual rights and our democracy.

Brown's NOM has filed amicus briefs in the cases before the Court, urging the Justices to rule that employers have every right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ employees, applicants, and customers. Given how nominees to the Court these days bend themselves into human pretzels trying to avoid answering any question that might someday be relevant to a matter before the Court, it is at least curious that Kavanaugh and Alito would choose to grant such an ex parte photo op.

Recusals of Supreme Court Justices are not so uncommon as you might think. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from dozens of cases — 28 in her first year on the Court — because as Solicitor General, she had been counsel in some of the litigation of those cases. Sandra Day O’Connor removed herself from cases regarding telecommunications firms because of stocks she owned. Clarence Thomas recused himself from United States v. Virginia because his son was enrolled at The Virginia Military Institute.

Whether and how Thomas's wife's work as a conservative activist impacts his supposed judicial impartiality is a whole other issue; in his three decades on the Court, he hasn't recused himself from any LGBTQ+ cases to my knowledge.

After all, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and for that matter Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts were put on the Court to be conservative judicial activists. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has been determined to load state and federal courts with their loyal soldiers since Nixon was president, such as Lawrence VanDyke, whom I drew about last week.

If they recused themselves from every liberal v. conservative case, they wouldn't be doing the job they were trained, groomed, and hired to do.

Citizen Greedo

"The Rodian," coming soon to Disney+!

When Star Wars first came out in 1977, the first scene of Harrison Ford as Han Solo showed him shooting bounty hunter Greedo in cold blood. When Episodes IV through VI were packaged together XX years later, the scene had been edited to have Greedo shoot first and miss.

Now Disney has re-re-released the film on its Disney+ app with a curious new edit: after firing his shot, Greedo yells, "MACLUNKEY!" There are plenty of theories buzzing around the internet like so many drunken Toydarians, from the word being:

• Rodian for "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," or 
• Midichlorian for "Oh, shit, I missed!" or 
• the name of a Schaumburg high school linebacker.

Personally — spoiler alert — I think it was his sled.

This Week's Sneak Pitch

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) has been talking about overhauling its website for several years, and finally did so at the beginning of this month.

The issue became more pressing earlier this year as the old site creaked and groaned beneath the weight of the thousands of cartoons AAEC members had uploaded to it over the years. Lately, members and visitors would be greeted by a screen blank except for the words "Service Unavailable," especially in the morning when many of us were trying to upload files.

The new site still some bugs to be worked out; my cartoon last week never showed up on the home page, possibly because the default setting for uploads was for unknown reasons set to "private" at some point. The black elements of my cartoons are translating on the new site to raw umber, so I suppose I'll have to switch to uploading RGB (screen-friendly red-green-blue) files instead of CMYK (print-friendly cyan-magenta-yellow-black) ones.

The list of members lists us alphabetically by first name instead of last name, which I find disappointing, and not just because I get pushed back from the front of the alphabet to the middle. Like most cartoonists, I don't sign cartoons with my first name, so there's no reason for most readers to look for me under "P."

One consequence of the AAEC website change, unfortunate for this here website particularly, is that all the links to cartoons at the old site are dead. For years, I used the embedded link from this site to cartoons on the AAEC site instead of just inserting cartoons directly. You would see a box that looked something like this:

...which took you to my cartoon on the AAEC site. (Don't bother clicking there to view; the image is not a link.)

I stopped using those AAEC links early last year because the host of this here website kept complaining that EditorialCartoonists.com "contains HTTP resources which may cause mixed content affecting security and user experience if blog is viewed over HTTPS." Unfortunately, that leaves about nine years worth of my posts that show this sort of thing:

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate✒Aug 25, 2016 EditorialCartoonists.com

...and no cartoon. (Again, don't click there to view. Blogger is still upset about the now non-existent website's HTTP resources, and I wouldn't want to spoil your user experience.)

So anyway, I'm in the process of replacing all those old, defunct links with cartoon images. While most visitors here visit only the most current posts, there are a few old posts that still get page views from time to time.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I'm working on the problems, and they should all be fixed soon.

Faces in the Crowd

The cartoon I posted on Sunday employed caricatures of a number of House Republicans, when I could more easily have drawn a single GOP elephant at a microphone. So why didn't I do that and knock off an hour earlier?

June, 1996 for the UWM Post.

Pardon me if I step back a few years in order to answer that. In 1996, I drew a crowd of (hopefully) recognizable Republicans, grinning smugly, because that made more sense than drawing a single elephant, and was more effective than a bunch of smugly grinning elephants. Behind Bob Dole in this cartoon, mocking GOP claims of having a "big tent" on the abortion issue in spite of the hardline plank in the party platform, stand, from left to right: Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

(Since the UWM Post didn't put out any editions that summer, the above cartoon was never published, but I ended up drawing another one a lot like it for them in September.)

in UW-M Post, March 5, 1991

My cartoon of sheepish Democrats at the peak of George H.W. Bush's popularity would have been less pointed if I had drawn a donkey or donkeys among the sheep. (From left to right: Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt, Tom Foley, Al Gore, Mario Cuomo, Lloyd Bentsen, and George Mitchell.)

in UWM Post, September 28, 1989

Which is not to say that every editorial cartoon has to include caricatures of actual politicians. I liked the idea for my cartoon about multiple ethics investigations going on in the nation's capital in 1989, but there weren't enough politicians actually leading one investigation while being the target of another for me to have drawn a bunch of real people.

This idea is not far removed from Thomas Nast's "Who Stole the People's Money? Do Tell. 'Twas Him" cartoon showing easily recognizable members of the Tammany Ring standing in a circle, each pointing fingers at the man to his right. It's a great cartoon that had great impact when it was published and has stood the test of time, even though the real Richard Connolly was not accusing Peter Sweeney, who was not accusing Boss Tweed, who was not accusing James Ingersoll, etc.

for Q Syndicate, June 21, 2004

Here again, I could have drawn specific Republican senators pulling a prank in 2004, but I think this particular cartoon works better this way artistically.

Still, I believe it is useful for cartoonists to hold actual politicians accountable for their stands on issues. Thomas Nast's cartoons would have had little impact if he had tamely drawn generic "City Hall" characters — or comical Tammany Tigers — every week. Likewise, it's all well and good to draw a cartoon highlighting Lindsey Graham's or Matt Gaetz's craptasm du jour; but if one doesn't hold their feet to the fire, the effect is likely to be ephemeral.


We can't all be Thomas Nast, but we can still try.

Q Toon: Righteousness, But Heard A Cry

Donald Berzilius Trump likes to castigate the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives as "do-nothing"; but even with investigations and impeachment stuff, the House has in fact sent a lot of popular legislation to the Senate.

There the legislation languishes. The Senate, it seems, is too busy packing the courts with Trump-appointed right-wing ideologues whom the American Bar Association finds "not qualified."

The latest such appointee is Lawrence VanDyke, a former Solicitor General in Montana and Nevada, and Assistant Solicitor General in Texas. In those posts he has challenged against federal gun control laws, wrote a brief in support of anti-abortion legislation in Arizona, and fought federal environmental regulations. Trump has nominated VanDyke to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, just one level below the Supreme Court.

Colleagues interviewed by the ABA described VanDyke as "arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice" of law. The ABA found that "There was a theme that the nominee lacks humility, has an 'entitlement temperament,' does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful."

At VanDyke's Senate confirmation hearing October 30, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) asked him about the concern that, in the ABA's words, "Mr. VanDyke would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community."

After fifteen seconds of silence, during which he must have been picturing dead puppies, remembering being picked last for team sports, and playing Randy VanWarmer songs in his head, VanDyke tearfully sobbed, “No, I did not say that. I do not believe that. It is a fundamental belief of mine that all people are created in the image of God. They should all be treated with dignity and respect.”

VanDyke, 46, has been accused of attacking LGBTQ rights as far back as 2004, when in an op-ed for The Harvard Law Record he said that there was “ample reason for concern that same-sex marriage will hurt families, and consequentially children and society.” In 2010, he argued that college student groups had a First Amendment right to exclude LGBTQ students from membership. Two years later, while serving as Montana solicitor general, VanDyke argued against same-sex marriage in two cases, and in a third argued that photographers should be entitled to deny their services at wedding ceremonies of same-sex couples.

VanDyke has also represented and worked as a legal intern for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is described by the Human Rights Campaign as the “largest anti-LGBTQ legal group in the U.S.” and has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, views VanDyke’s connection to a group that has defended proposed laws to require sterilization of transgender people and criminalize same-sex relationships as evidence of “his acceptance of its radical agenda.”

As McConnell boasted at Trump's campaign rally in Kentucky on Monday, Republicans are “changing the federal courts forever” by rubber-stamping Trump's right-wing judges — 150 of them so far — to lifetime seats. “And Mr. President, we’re going to keep on doing it. My motto is: Leave no vacancy behind.”

This week, Senate Republicans are working to confirm several more right-wing judges, including White House lawyer Steven Menashi to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and Halil Suleyman Ozerden to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

And the only threat to these nominations is that some Republicans worry that someone might sneak through who isn't quite doctrinaire enough.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Get out your hankies, ladies and gents. It's time for the most heart-wrenching performance of 2019.

Toon: GOPsplaining

Republicans in the House have spent a lot of time and energy protesting against the process of the impeachment proceedings against Donald Berzilius Trump.

And none, much to Trump's consternation, protesting his innocence.

In Trump's eyes, he has done nothing wrong. This is just the way he has always been able to do business: surrounded by yes-men who will carry out his least little wish, and he'll fire the first one who asks whether something might be illegal, unethical, or unfair.

Republicans, many of whom come from the business world, understand this kind of thinking. Why worry about the law when you can just buy enough legislators to get yourself a loophole? Why not cut corners on your new jet airplane or bribe doctors to push your highly addictive pain-killer when you've got to get those profits up over last year, year after year; and your pockets are deep enough for your fleet of lawyers to wait out anybody who might sue.

That is, if those lawyers haven't already come up with 70,000-word Terms Of Service agreements requiring consumers to hold you harmless no matter what negligence or malfeasance you figure you have every right to get away with.

Never mind those pesky pension plans! Retirees are not profitable, so screw 'em. Just like any contractor who has finished work on a Trump project. Or any city that has hosted a Trump rally. Or the Kurds.

As long as the guy at the top appears to be making a profit, everybody ought to be happy. And doesn't the economy appear to be doing just fine?