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| "Put It Back" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, July 1, 1971 |
The family of past AAEC President Bill Sanders announced his passing today.
Editorial cartoonist during his life at the Japan Times (English edition), Greensboro Daily News, Kansas City Star, and Milwaukee Journal, he had time in his busy schedule to give this aspiring cartoonist valuable tips and insight when I was still scribbling on typing paper with ballpoint pen.
Rest In Power, sir!
I've used some of these Saturday posts to rehash my own cartoons from 30 years ago, which at this point in the calendar, has led up to Gulf War I. My problem this month is that I've already posted most of my February, 1991 cartoons for one reason or another. The cartoon below may very well be the only one previously unrehashed.
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| in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, February 12, 1991 |
So for a theme this week, here are some of my Wisconsin-themed cartoons from 2001 and 2011.
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| in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, February 23, 2001 |
This cartoon, drawn to accompany an editorial in the Business Journal, has a date written on it of February 16, but so does another Beej cartoon. I don't see a cartoon dated February 23, and I think this one is the one with the wrong date.
At any rate, Chuck Chvala (D-Madison) was the on-and-off Majority Leader in the Wisconsin State Senate from 1995 to 2002 — on at this point in time — and the Business Journal thought that a prescription drug bill in the state legislature was doomed and little more than a partisan ploy. Chvala ended up not looking so heroic when he was found guilty of violating campaign finance laws by having Democratic caucus staff do electioneering work on the state dime.
Quaint, aina?
Now Chvala podcasts political punditry with former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen (R-Waukesha), who had his own run-in with ethics laws.
Wisconsin Club for [Cancerous] Growth took the lead in TV and radio advertising. One of their ads highlighted the wage and benefit cuts that unions at various private firms had been forced to swallow during the 2008-2009 economic crash, thanks to management's contempt for their own communities. Mercury Marine, for example, could threaten to close down its Fond du Lac plant and open shop in Bumm Fork, Alabama, instead; but the same can't be done with schools and snowplows, prisons and parole officers. So the voice-over announcer complained that public employee unions were not sharing in privately employed workers' pain:
"All across Wisconsin, people are making sacrifices to save their jobs: frozen wages, pay cuts and paying more for health care. But state workers haven't had to sacrifice; they pay next to nothing for their pensions and a fraction of their health care. It's not fair. Call your state legislators and tell them to vote for Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill. It's time state employees paid their fair share, just like the rest of us."
It was cute that the folks at Wisconsin Club for [Cancerous] Growth included themselves in "the rest of us."
All in the name of fixing Republicans' "hole in the state budget."
Well, folks, as appreciation for your indulgence while I wallow down memory lane today, here's a February, 2021 cartoon featuring three members of Wisconsin's illustrious delegation to Washington, D.C.: Congressmen Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald, and Senator Ron "This Didn't Seem Like an Armed Insurrection to Me" Johnson.
Have you had enough of impeachment proceedings yet? If not, you're in luck! 100 years ago this month, there was a move in Congress to impeach Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Judge Landis was a crusty old fellow who had once told a convicted
defendant who protested that he wouldn't live long enough to serve his
five-year sentence, "You can try, can't you?" Two years after Teddy
Roosevelt appointed him Judge of the U.S. District Court for Northern
Illinois, he gained national prominence ruling against Standard Oil of
Indiana in an antitrust case, fining the company the equivalent of $800
million in today's money. (His ruling was overturned in higher courts;
it was not the only time that happened.) He also oversaw some
high-profile draft resistance cases during World War I.
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| "It Must Be Some Job" by Harry Westerman in Ohio State Journal, Columbus, OH, Feb., 1921 |
And then there was baseball.
Landis had been the judge asked to rule in a 1915 antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Baseball League against the American and National Leagues; the Federal League ultimately withdrew its case and soon went out of business. Baseball fan Landis let it be known their lawsuit would have been "if not destructive, at least injurious to the game of baseball."
In the shadow of the Black Sox Scandal, still making its way through the courts, the American and National Baseball Leagues turned to Judge Landis to be their commissioner in November, 1920, offering him a $42,500 salary (around $600,000 in 2021 dollars).
Charging that the leagues' hiring of Judge Landis was tantamount to bribery by "this illegal trust," Congressman Benjamin Welty (D-OH) urged Congress to impeach Landis and remove him from the bench:
"Judge Landis has a right to yield to the fleshpots of illegal combination, but he should not bring all our judiciary into ill-repute. If the country approves the dual role of Judge Landis, then the House will be called upon to preserve a new standard for our judiciary, because there are others who would be pleased to employ some judge 'for he is worth any price he might wish to ask."
In the Senate, Nathaniel Dial (D-SC) was also agitating for Landis to be tossed from the bench over the case of a bank clerk accused of embezzling $96,000 from the National City Bank of Ottawa, Illinois. Landis had let the clerk off with a light sentence, reasoning that the bank managers were themselves to blame, having paid the man a measly $90 per month. (According to Wikipedia, Landis issued this ruling in April, 1921, but I'm finding Dial citing the ruling as reason to impeach Landis in newspaper reports two months before that.)
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| "That Kill the Umpire Spirit" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Feb. 24, 1921 |
Landis dismissed both congressmen's allegations, telling a caller, "I'm not worried about this thing. Why, I'm no more interested in this than I am in the appointment of a new bellhop in that hotel across the street."
Welty, a Democrat, had lost his seat in the 1920 Republican landslide, so he would be out of office less than three weeks after moving for Landis's impeachment on February 15, 1921. By the time the 67th Congress adjourned in March, Rep. Welty's impeachment motion had made it no further than a House Judicial Subcommittee, which did refer it favorably to the full committee.
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| "The Defi" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. March 1, 1921 |
As far as I can tell, an impeachment trial was never held, although the American Bar Association would eventually vote to censure the judge. Landis resigned from the federal bench in February, 1922, and would remain Commissioner of Baseball for almost a quarter century. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame the year he retired; and his name was on the Most Valuable Player award until last year, when it was removed over his sorry record against integrating the all-White major leagues.
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I had considered returning to 1991 for today's blog post, but I found that I have already posted nearly every cartoon from that February in these Saturday retrospectives. I might have instead dug up any cartoons I've drawn about Rush Limbaugh, who shuffled off his fetid coil this week, but in the interest of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," I just don't feel like it. (Well, if you really must see them, there's a keyword link at the bottom of this post.)
I might have liked to come up with something a propos for African-American History Month, but I just haven't found any cartoons from February, 1921 that aren't cringeworthy. It's not as if there was nothing a cartoonist couldn't have drawn about. The Klan assured the Dallas Express that it wasn't prejudiced against Blacks; White newspapers made sure that if a Black man were accused of a crime, the first word in the headline was "Negro"; and I was starting to think that there winter was a slow season for lynching, until I checked out the Black newspapers.
But, as I said, I found no cartoons about any of that.
So I went back to get a number of cartoons I'd come across about Judge Landis, only to find that quite a few of the websites I rely upon don't seem to be working. This week's weather may be to blame for a couple of them; others I can't explain. Once those sites are up and running again, I may come back and add some more cartoons here.
Meanwhile, there's still another Saturday this month. Since when did February get to be so long?
I get annoyed by right-wing editorial cartoonists who do little more than illustrate a Republican Talking Point day after day, so I have to apologize for doing the same with a Democratic one.
My cartoon this week is taken almost verbatim from a comment I made on Facebook last week and subsequently saw made and memed by others. If I didn't find Lindsey Graham's duplicity particularly galling, I probably would have left this cartoon undrawn.
Senator Graham was a House trial manager in the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton over aforementioned blow job. On January 16, 1999, then-Representative Graham told Senators:
“When a president gets out of bounds, and doesn't do as he or she should do, constitutionally -- and I would argue that every president and every citizen has a constitutional duty not to cheat another citizen, especially the president -- and they get out of bounds, it is up to us to put them back in bounds or declare it illegal.
"And how do we do that? How do we regulate presidential misconduct when it's done in a presidential fashion? Through the laws and powers of impeachment. That is why we're here today. ...
What's a high crime? How 'bout if an important person hurt somebody of low means? It's not very scholarly, but I think it's the truth. I think that's what they meant by 'high crimes.' Doesn't even have to be a crime. Just when you start using your office and you're acting in a way that hurts people, you've committed a high crime. ...
You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role. Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
Democratic House trial managers played Graham's argument at last year's impeachment over that perfect phone call to the President of Ukraine. It didn't sway him from his slavish fealty to Donald Berzelius Trump then, and neither did his momentary revulsion against the events of January 6 this time around.
Dismissing last week's House trial managers' presentation out of hand as "offensive and absurd," Graham went on to blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi for somehow having a hand in the insurrection, and he even threatened to impeach Vice President Kamala Harris over last year's Black Lives Matter riots as soon as Republicans win back the House.
Now that would be offensive and absurd.
I'm continuing a train of thought from the past two Saturdays. From consideration of independence for the Philippines, I moved on to the major argument against it, U.S. fears of Japanese expansionism; which led to strains in U.S.-Japanese relations, including immigration restrictions imposed against the Japanese here.
But as noted last week, Americans were less upset about immigration from Asia than they were about immigration from Europe.
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| "To the Rescue" by Wm. Hanny in St. Joseph News-Press, Jan., 1921 |
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| "Holding Back the Tide" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, Jan., 1921 |
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| "I Was An-Hungered And Ye Gave Me Meat" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, Jan., 1921 |
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| "The Gate Question" by Milton Halladay in Providence Journal, Jan., 1921 |
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| "Three Is a Crowd" by Warren in Chicago Tribune, ca. Feb., 1921? |
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| "Damming the Flood at Its Source" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1921 |
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| "Just As Though We Couldn't Put It Up Again" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, February 2, 1921 |
And yet, the U.S. economy was in an expansionary phase. The Senate's "Men Wanted" sign was shared by much of industry in the country. But resentment built up steam in the labor force against newcomers who were perceived as driving down wages.
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| "We Used to Think It Belonged to Us" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1921 |
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| "Our Own Ku Klux Klan" by Alfred G. "Zere" Ablitzere in New York Evening Post, ca. Jan., 1921 |
As gobsmackable as this Zere cartoon is today, how likely is it that today's cartoons making light of Q Anon will seem equally tone-deaf a century from now?
But more to the point of today's post, blaming immigrants for depressing wages has to be included as one factor in the rise of the Klan in the 1920's. Persecution of Black Americans remained its principal focus, but hatred of immigrants — Jews and Catholics in particular — occupied its spare time.
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| "A Serious Matter" by Orville P. Williams for Star Co., ca. Feb. 10, 1921 |
I do wonder why some editor thought it necessary to add the ill-fitting word "promiscuous" to the "imported mdse. from Europe."
Well, another Superbowl has come and gone, and the highlights of the game were The Weeknd's dance squad wearing jock straps over their faces, and this guy.
But at least he livened up the game well beyond the point that anybody cared whether the hapless Kansas City Chiefs would ever make it into the end zone either.
As is usually the case with idiots like this, he was out there advertising some website that couldn't afford a TV commercial during the game. I hope, however, that they paid him more than the fine he's going to end up playing, plus whatever income loss he'll suffer when the hospital wherever he works suspends him without pay.
Last Saturday, I promised to come back to the issue of Japan and the U.S. beefing up their navies in the wake of World War I. Great Britain was in on the arms race as well, and plenty of war-weary civilians were less than happy about it.
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| "They're Off" by David Low in London Star, by January, 1921 |
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| Detail from "Cartoons of the Day" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, ca. Dec. 17, 1920 |
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| "Let's Take the Limit Off" by John Knott in Dallas News, Jan., 1921 |
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| "The Roots" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 27, 1921 |
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| "Have a Heart Sam" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, Jan./Feb., 1921 |
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| "Der Letzte Krieg Ist Vorbei," unsigned, in Nebelspalter, Zurich, ca. Feb. 1921 |
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| "Another Good Reason for Disarmament" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, Jan. 1921 |
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| "Sitting Tight" by Harold J. Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Jan., 1921 |
California's Alien Land Law went into effect in December, 1920, expressly prohibiting Chinese and Japanese resident aliens from either purchasing or leasing agricultural property. Legal discrimination against East Asians was nothing new, nor exclusive to California:
In Oregon's 1859 constitution, it stated that no "Chinaman" could own property in the state, and it protected specifically the rights of "white foreigners" the same property owning rights as enjoyed by native citizens. The territory of Washington passed legislation in 1886 in response to the spreading anti-Chinese unrest in the territory that prohibited aliens ineligible for citizenship from property rights. The Washington legislature added a statute to their constitution in 1889 written more broadly, declaring that one had to declare the intent to naturalize "in good faith" to be eligible for property ownership, which meant that the applicant had to be eligible for naturalization, and Asian immigrants were not eligible. When California re-wrote its constitution in 1879, it limited land ownership to aliens of the "white race or of African descent," the same language used to limit naturalization in 1870. The 1870 Naturalization Act had removed the "white" only restriction on citizenship that had been in force since 1790 and expanded naturalization rights to anyone of African descent. This meant that if an applicant was neither white, nor of African descent, they were not eligible for naturalization. The coded language targeting "aliens ineligible for citizenship" became a legal way that individual states could limit the rights of Asian immigrants without targeting a group racially in the language of the law.
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| "How Can Japan Doubt Our Friendship" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Jan. 20, 1921 |
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| "Why Get So Excited About the Little Fellow" by Parmalee in Nashville Tennessean, Jan., 1921 |
Anti-Japanese legislation stretched eastward as far as Minnesota and Florida, but you really can't let any part of the U.S. off the hook discrimination-wise. The 1920's were a period of intense anti-immigrant fervor all across the country, a topic to which I'll turn soon. And, it being African-American History Month, let's not forget that lynching, housing discrimination, and other institutional racism knew no state boundaries, and 1921 would see the nation's most horrific ever paroxysm of White terrorism against an entire Black neighborhood.
But today's post is about U.S.-Japan relations, so let's return to the topic at hand. |
| "Look at the Size of It" by Haydon Jones in New York Evening Post, Feb., 1921 |
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| "As Much Privacy as a Gold Fish" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. Jan. 8, 1921 |
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| "Hello, Japan" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, Jan., 1921 |
I'd like to take a moment here to make a heartfelt plea to everyone in media — news, social, and otherwise:
Stop calling them "conspiracy theories."
They are no more "theories" than are magic dragons, flat Earths, midichlorians, or the millions that a Nigerian prince promised to send you.
Theories, while not proven facts themselves, must be based on observable, agreed-upon facts. And when they are disproven, they must be rejected.
What we have from Q-Anon are conspiracy fantasies. Conspiracy myths. Conspiracy scams. Conspiracy bullshit.
The conspiracy creed of a conspiracy cult, if you will.
Whose followers will continue to believe in it even after it is found to be a practical joke played by a pair of NYU sophomores.
You remember Donald Trump's big Soviet-style military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, of course. It was in all the non-fake media...
