Memorial Week's Sneak Peek

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Cartoonists and the Photoengravers Strike

Last Saturday's entry here was long on words and short on cartoons, so I'm going to try to strike a better balance today.

One of the cartoonists I had hoped would have drawn a good cartoon about the Tulsa Pogrom was the New York Evening World's John Cassel. He had drawn a couple war-time cartoons praising African-American soldiers, so I went looking through the World's June, 1921 archives to find what he had to say about Tulsa.

I found instead that he was preoccupied with the strike against newspapers in New York and elsewhere by the International Photoengravers' Union.

"Look Before You Strike" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 1, 1921

I can't say for sure that this cartoon specifically addressed the photoengravers union, because theirs was not the only strike underway at the time, by a long shot. Employers, backed by the Harding administration and a Republican Congress, were pressing their workers to give back gains won under the more sympathetic Wilson administration during the Great War.

In any event, the newspaper photoengravers paid no heed to Cassel's cartoon, and the strike was on.

"Typographical Hooch" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 2, 1921

So instead of his usual grease pencil cartoon, Cassel greeted Evening World readers the next day with this display of graphic typography.

"The President Waltzes..." by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

He followed up a day later by adding some clip art.

"Can You Imagine This Cartoon?" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 1921

The strike affected some 17 New York newspapers, but the only other Big Apple cartoonist I found who tried John Cassel's approach to dealing with it was this one cartoon by Nelson Harding across the East River at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Harding missed a few days on the editorial page that week, but his little one-column cartoons continued to appear daily on the front page.

"Can You Beat It" by Maurice Ketten in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

The gag cartoons seem to have been unaffected by the strike, as evidenced by Cassel's fellow cartoonist at the Evening World, Maurice Ketten. Elsewhere, the New York Evening Post hadn't run any editorial cartoons since Haydon Jones's departure in April, but Alfred "Zere" Ablitzere's light-hearted cartoons continued daily on another page. Nor was there any interruption in John "Ding" Darling sending his editorial cartoons in from Iowa to the New York Tribune.

Likewise, the Evening World's sports cartoonists kept showing up in print during the strike.

"The Sportoscope" by Ken Kling in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

Was it a matter of pen and ink over grease pencil? A question of willingness to cross a picket line?

I don't think so. The strike also resulted in newspapers being unable to run the comic strips, which were such a popular selling point in those days. At the Evening World, the editors strove to keep their comic strip fans engaged by making a readership contest out of it.

Blank version of "Joe's Car" by Vic Forsythe, in New York Evening World, June 2, 1921

Blank version of "Little Mary Mixup" by R.L. Brinkerhoff, in New York Evening World, June 3, 1921

Blank version of "The Big Little Family" by Bud Counihan in New York Evening World, June 4, 1921

The strike also interrupted the work of Sidney Joseph Greene, who had come to Pulitzer's Evening World from the Evening Telegram a year or so earlier. Instead of drawing editorial cartoons, Greene was drawing a filler feature on the comics page. No comics page, no Greene.

Meanwhile, John Cassel kept plugging away at his typographic cartoons on the Evening World editorial page.

"Two-Handed Diplomacy" by John Cassel in New York Evening Post, June 4, 1921

Cassel managed to create a reasonable caricature of U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain George Brinton McClellan Harvey (certainly better than his attempt at President Harding the day before).

Well, I'll let you be the judge.

"A Rose from Last Year's Garden" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 6, 1921

By the next week, the strike was settled, union and management returned to the bargaining table, and Cassel was back to his customary style of cartooning.

It would be naughty of me to close this Saturday post and leave you in suspense over the outcome of the Evening World's comic contest. The original strips and their prize-winning imitators ran on the comics pages June 13, 14 and 15.

"Joe's Car" by Vic Forsythe, and H. Turner

"Little Mary Mixup" by R.L. Brinkerhoff, and William Delaney

"The Big Little Family" by Bud Counihan, and Leslie Bradsaw

Q Toon: Out of the Closet, Into Reprise

Pride festivals and parades are back in 2021, after last year's forced hiatus in many communities. With them has come the insistence by various organizations of People of Color that law enforcement be banned, either as security or participants.

New York's Pride organizing committee, Heritage of Pride, has told that city's Gay Officers Action League that they are not welcome to participate in this year's events, or to come within a city block of the event perimeter.

NYC Pride seeks to create safer spaces for the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities at a time when violence against marginalized groups, specifically BIPOC and trans communities, has continued to escalate. The sense of safety that law enforcement is meant to provide can instead be threatening, and at times dangerous, to those in our community who are most often targeted with excessive force and/or without reason. NYC Pride is unwilling to contribute in any way to creating an atmosphere of fear or harm for members of the community. The steps being taken by the organization challenge law enforcement to acknowledge their harm and to correct course moving forward, in hopes of making an impactful change.

Effective immediately, NYC Pride will ban corrections and law enforcement exhibitors at NYC Pride events until 2025. At that time their participation will be reviewed by the Community Relations and Diversity, Accessibility, and Inclusion committees, as well as the Executive Board. In the meantime, NYC Pride will transition to providing increased community-based security and first responders, while simultaneously taking steps to reduce NYPD presence at events.

Heritage of Pride members soon reversed that decision, only to have the reversal re-reversed by HoP's executive board.

Jonathan Capehart in Washington Post quotes Richie Jackson, activist and author of Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Son, who agrees with Capehart that HoP made a bad call:

“For one thing I hate seeing us use a tactic so often used against us. Our community has no litmus test for entry and we shouldn’t start now. All are welcome — proud, shameful, closeted — all,” Jackson told me via text message. “But now we are also taking away something from LGBTQ kids. They won’t be able to see the cops marching, to see that occupation as a place for them. We’re robbing them of possibility.”

(Capehart is a Person of Color; Jackson is not.)

New York Times also called it “a poke in the eye at law enforcement more than a meaningful action to address police violence or foster a dialogue about law enforcement reform.”

It's difficult to know whom to side with in this debate. As Capehart acknowledges, "The decision came in response to understandable, long-brewing anger at the NYPD among many LGBTQ people — including growing outrage over the heavy police presence at the pride parade and concern about people of color bearing the brunt of police action. Last June in Lower Manhattan, for instance, officers pepper-sprayed participants in the Queer Liberation March for Black lives and against police brutality."

Yet it also puts spokespersons for the LGBTQ+ community in the position of having to advocate for tolerance and inclusion from society at large while imposing a policy of intolerance and exclusion within our own. Although some, such as J. Brian Lowder at Slate, pooh-pooh cops' complaints, saying that they "can still participate as an individual, just without [their] uniform." That comes off sounding uncomfortably like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to me. 

This issue is not unique to New York by any means, nor is it new. Twin Cities Pride banned police uniforms three years ago, as did Washington D.C. Capital Pride Alliance. Pride committees in some larger Canadian cities banned uniformed police in 2017.

I know people on both sides of the cop/PoC divide, and I think police departments ought to be commended when they reach out both to the LGBTQ+ community and to People of Color communities.

Side note: a neighbor was recently appointed as her police department's official LGBTQ+ liaison. Comments in the department's Facebook announcement were riddled with such snark as this: "Spending taxpayer dollars on a pointless exercise in virtue signaling to the wokesters is embarrassing." The role adds a title to her workload, but no more "taxpayer dollars" than she had been earning in her role as a police lieutenant the week beforehand. But it just goes to show that there are plenty of Persons of No Color Or Sexual Persuasion who object to law enforcement outreach of any kind.

That same police department is actively engaging with the PoC community in weekly meetings right where I work, with the active involvement of the current Acting Police Chief. They do a lot of personal self-defense training, but they also sit down to address specific incidents and concerns. (Faithful readers will recall that I work in a neighborhood directly affected by rioting last summer.)

As a Person of No Color myself, I probably don't get to decide when specific police departments have done enough to satisfy PoCs. Nor can I expect that change will take place quickly, without resistance, or uniformly around the country.

So let's just hope that relations have improved by 2025.

Holy Herd Immunity, Batman!

 

I Would Not Feel So All Alone

 

Folks have been posting caricatures of Mr. Zimmerman on Facebook all day in celebration of his 80th, so here's a sketch I made sometime around 1980.

This Week's Sneak Peek

In other news, the Center for Disease Control has lifted the mask mandate for cartoon characters who are fully vaccinated. This will make it much easier for readers to figure out which character is talking when the caption is set below the drawing.

Tulsa Time

We are coming up on the centennial of the race riot and massacre that wiped out the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Black Dispactch, Oklahoma City, OK, June 10, 1921

According to contemporary reports, a 19-year-old Black man named Dick Rowland accidentally stepped on the foot of a White woman, Sarah Page, in the Tulsa department store elevator where she worked. She slapped him across the face, and he grabbed her arm. Later reports suggested that Rowland tripped as he entered the elevator and grabbed Page by the arm to stop from falling. Either way, she screamed for the police, who arrested Rowland and charged him with assault and battery.

The next afternoon's Tulsa Tribune reported the story under the headline "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator," casting Rowland in the worst possible light:

"A negro delivery boy who gave his name to police as "Diamond Dick" but who has been identified as Dick Rowland, was arrested on South Greenwood avenue this morning by officers Carmichael and Pack, attempting to assault the 17-year-old white elevator girl in the Drexel Building early yesterday. ...

"The girl said she noticed the negro a few minutes before the attempted assault looking up and down the hallway on the third floor of the Drexel Building as if to see if there was anyone in sight but thought nothing of it at the time.

"A few minutes later he entered the elevator she claimed, and attacked her, scratching her hands and face and tearing her clothes. Her screams brought a clerk from Renberg's store to her assistance, and the negro fled. He was captured and identified this morning by both the girl and the clerk, police say.

"Rowland denied that he tried to harm the girl, but he admitted he put his hand on her arm in the elevator when she was alone.

"Tenants of the Drexel Building said the girl is an orphan who works as an elevator operator to pay her way through business college."

That account (and an inflammatory Tribune editorial, all copies of which disappeared as soon as an official investigation was launched) is credited with inflaming passions in Tulsa; within days, Victor F. Barnett, managing editor of the Tribune, stated that his paper had since learned that the original story, that the girl's face was scratched and her clothing torn, was untrue.

Responding to rumors that Rowland would be lynched and reports that a White mob had massed at the jail, 75 Black men, some armed, arrived at the jail to protect him. Sheriff Willard McCullough assured them that Rowland was safe, so they began to leave.  But then some White man grabbed at a Black man's gun, a shot was fired, and all hell broke loose.

"Tulsa Unmasked" by Henry Brown, orig. pub. unknown, by June 18, 1921

Whites destroyed 35 square blocks of what was until then a thriving African-American community, even attacking it from privately leased airplanes.  For a complete account and contemporary photographs of the violence, I'll refer you to the official report published in 2001 by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Race Riot of 1921.

I have been searching for several months to find editorial cartoons to illustrate today's post; to my great disappointment, I have only found two*. The first is from a presumably Black artist in New York, who may or may not have drawn under a pseudonym; I found it on the front page of the Chicago Whip, an African-American weekly.

"Keeping Right Up with the Procession" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, June 6, 1921

The only other cartoon I've managed to find is this unfortunate example by "Ding" Darling of positing false equivalence between Whites' and Blacks' culpability for the violence. That the black figure looks so much like a gorilla only compounds the offensiveness of the cartoon.

But it's the only cartoon by a White cartoonist I could find anywhere. 

It is not as if the Tulsa riots were not front page news nationwide.

Speaking to the graduating class of Lincoln University Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania on June 6, President Harding lamented the violence, but promised to do nothing about it. "Much is said about the problem of the races. There is nothing that the government can do which is akin to educational work in value. One of the great difficulties of popular government is that citizenship expects government to do what it ought to do for itself. No government can wave a magic wand. The colored race, to come into its own, must do the great work itself. The government can only offer the opportunity."

Opining that White and Black citizens live together peacefully, the Chicago Tribune blamed "corrupt politics": "Corrupt politics is directly responsible for race riots. Let us face that fact and not lose ourselves in secondary considerations. Race riots are not problems of race; they are problems of government. There will be no race riots where politics has not corrupted government" (June 6). The editorial failed to explain how the Trib's charges of corruption were relevant to Tulsa, and probably didn't inspire any daredevil to try integrating any White Chicago neighborhoods to test the "living together peacefully" claim.

The New York Age (June 13) noted an editorial in Birmingham News laying blame for the riot "on the Negroes themselves. This editorial article relates how 'a band of belligerent Negroes' moved down on the jail with the purpose of liberating one of their number charged with an atrocious crime, and gives this as the cause of the uprising of the whites to safeguard the processes of law. It then comments on the actions of the Negroes in the following language: 'It is this attitude, the jungle instinct of the African, which arouses the keen resentment of the whites.'"

The Vicksburg Herald of Mississippi reported (June 8): "It was believed by authorities that the trouble was largely caused by negroes who have been preaching the gospel of so-called 'equality.' Some of these characters are described as fanatics. The white population tonight appeared sympathetic toward the negro refugees and the authorities were guarding against another outbreak of the negroes."

Then there was Independent and Harper's Weekly (June 18), which likened the Tulsa riot to Turkey's Armenian genocide: "World public opinion does not draw the distinctions we would like. Exactly as we hold Turks as a whole responsible, as Americans are held responsible, as a whole, when negro massacre succeeds negro massacre, as for two years past. ... No possible question exists that in the streets of Northern cities as well as Southern, a negro, 'a citizen of the United States' by birth and by every constitutional right, has again lacked 'the equal protection of the laws,' pledged by the Fourteenth amendment." Sharply disagreeing with President Harding, the editorial predicted, "If the States continue to fail in their duty the American people will place the task in Federal hands."

Tulsa Daily World, third extra edition that day, June 1, 1921

So where were the nation's editorial cartoonists in all this?

"The Disgrace" by Haydon Jones in New York Evening Post, March 30, 1921

There were some I had hoped would have spoken up, such as Haydon Jones. In March, Jones drew this cartoon in reaction to a murder case in Georgia involving a white landlord, John S. Williams, who had eleven Blacks working as peons on his farmland killed. (Yes, Georgia had "peonage," and so did Oklahoma for that matter.) I looked to find what Jones might have drawn in response to the Tulsa riot, only to discover that he apparently stopped drawing for the New York Evening Post in mid-April.

A photoengravers strike in New York (I'll come back to that on another Saturday) may have stopped a couple other cartoonists who might have addressed the massacre. Meanwhile, with Cartoons Magazine running only gently humorous cartoons, and periodicals such as Outlook and Independent preferring photographs to convey the horror rather than cartoonists' work, there are several cartoonists who I think are likely to have drawn about the event whose work I just haven't managed to access.

Furthermore, there quickly followed more unrest in Europe, the catastrophic Pueblo Flood in Colorado, a violent strike of miners in West Virginia, lurid crime stories, and all manner of shenanigans in state and local politics. White cartoonists' attentions and those of their publications moved on and moved away.

Chicago Whip, June 11, 1921

The Monitor, Omaha, June 16, 1921

African-American newspapers around the country, not surprisingly, followed developments closely. Very few of them, however, kept cartoonists on as regular features at this point in history. (Side note: The Tulsa Star, a vibrant Black-owned newspaper, was deliberately targeted and its building burned to the ground in the riot; no copies of the paper after January 29, 1921 exist.)

Evening News, San Jose California, June 2, 1921 

Perhaps even more shockingly than the predictable tendency of newspapers, especially in the American South, to blame African-Americans for the violence inflicted upon them, there were other supposedly professional journalists who simply did not take the matter seriously. At all. This dismissive newspaper headline was not published in Dixie, but in sunny California. Playing up local stories is not the issue;  I understand that some words change connotation over time; and I wasn't expecting 21st Century language sensitivity — but what the heck, Evening News? "Tulsa Negroes" wouldn't fit on that line?

"Life's Darkest Moment" by Harold T. Webster in New York Herald, Sept. 27, 1921

Getting back to cartoons: one comes across the occasional cartoon making light of America's race relations problem. Cartoons perpetuating the stereotype of African-Americans as lazy, unintelligent, or worse abounded. Even the normally gentle and benign work of H.T. Webster includes this specimen that, while avoiding insulting caricature, has not aged well.

I think you can, however, compare it to any of today's cartoons (including my own) of Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the QAnon Shaman, and other conspiracy fabulists. Who can predict what will be seen in retrospect 100 years hence as making light of the reprehensible?

_______

* P.S.: Fellow cartoon blogger Mike Peterson has dug up a third. As I wrote above, I am sure that there were more to be found. I'll post them as they turn up.

The Q Toon Meets the Road

Several weeks ago, someone left a request in the comments here to "Do one on Biden." Since I hadn't drawn any cartoons about President Biden since his inauguration, here's one.

It also addresses my need to draw once in a while about LGBTQ+ political figures such as our Secretary of Transportation. If Pete Buttigieg — or Mark Pocan, Mondaire Jones, Sharice Davids, or Tammy Baldwin— aren't making headlines, I guess I have to make something up. I just don't know if I can keep coming up with Dad Jokes to keep this premise going.

I may have to ask my Dad.

Denne Ukens Sniktitt

All will be explained in good time.

Meanwhile, God Syttendemai, everyone. Skål!

 

Noises Off

Last Saturday's centennial retrospective reported on the month-by-month demise of Cartoons Magazine as it was taken over by light fiction magazine Wayside Tales. Today we take a look at the sort of editorial cartoons that your great-grandparents would no longer find in Cartoons Magazine.

"Der Seiltänzer" by "L" in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 1, 1921

And not just because of the salty language. Nor because of the German language; even during the Great War, Cartoons Magazine occasionally printed German cartoons. (I wonder how they would have translated "Eiffelturmspiße.")

"Warren Gamaliel Harding" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 1, 1921

Perhaps because Germany had no delusions that "normalcy" was returning, German satirical publications continued to thrive while American ones withered away. Just the same, German-American cartoonist Arthur Johnson had high hopes for the new U.S. administration as President Harding made good on his campaign promise to keep out of the League of Nations. Johnson depicts the League as a monstrous hybrid of the British lion and French rooster in this cover illustration for Kladderadatsch.

"Der Amerikanische Rettungsring" by Erich Wilke in Kladderadatsch, May 8, 1921

Only a week later, Johnson's fellow cartoonist at Kladderadatsch, Erich Wilke, presented a considerably less heroic depiction of the new president, throwing Deutscher Michel a worthless life preserver. That's a much more recognizable Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes in the back of the lifeboat.

"Off with the Old..." by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. May 24, 1921

It hadn't taken long for U.S. cartoonists to begin showing some sympathy for Germany's post-war plight. Notwithstanding the high anxiety about German-American saboteurs during the war, Americans tended not to harbor the same degree of animosity toward the German people as did the British and French. American vitriol was focused more on Kaiser Wilhelm and family than on their subjects.

"If France Insists on Having Beefsteak..." by Elmer Bushnell for NEA, ca. May 6, 1921

French demands on occupying the Ruhr valley threatened to rekindle the war, and found little support from this side of the Atlantic. For now, however, Germany was unwilling to call France's bluff.

"The Shock-Proof Public" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1921

Instead, Germany fought to suppress an uprising of ethnic Poles in Silesia, a mineral-rich and ethnically mixed region that had been part of Germany before the war. A League of Nations-sponsored plebiscite to determine which country the region should belong to narrowly favored Germany, so Poles took up arms in May as the League members dithered. 

"If He Could Only Catch His Tail..." by Elmer Bushnell for NEA, ca. May 23, 1921

Italian, French, and British forces would be drawn into the Silesian conflict, even as rebellion against Britain heated up again in Ireland. As violence in Ireland escalated that May, the IRA killed 15 policemen and burned Custom House, headquarters of the Local Government Board for Ireland.

"The Apt Pupil" by Harold "Hal" Coffman for Int'l Feature Service, ca. May 20, 1921

Hearst cartoonists in particular railed against allowing Britannia and Japan to rule the waves.

"Speaking of Disarmament" by Bill Satterfield for NEA, ca. June 2, 1921

The figure pushing "disarmament polish" on President Harding is Senator William Borah (R-ID), a progressive who proved a thorn in the side of presidents of both political parties.

"Alla Camera Nuova" by Gabriele "Rata Longa" Galantara in l'Asino, Rome, May 22, 1921

As long as we're looking abroad, I don't want to lose sight of political events in Italy between the wars. This month 100 years ago saw Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti call for parliamentary elections. Concerned over gains in popular support for Italian socialists, Giolitti brought fascists and nationalists into his governing coalition. He thought that this would instill a degree of reason and responsibility into the far right. 

Apparently that never quite works.

"The Supply and the Demand" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. May 17, 1921

Mainstream U.S. cartoonists eschewed socialism, and seized every opportunity to predict the downfall of Lenin's Bolshevik government in Russia. But every now and then (primarily in the Hearst fold), someone would notice that the U.S. market might do well to sign the Soviets on as paying customers.

"I Can't Hear You" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, ca. May 30, 1921

By and large, however, Carey Orr had an accurate sense of how Americans felt about foreign affairs in 1921.

________________

Nachtrag:  I ran across the word Eiffelturmspiße in a book on aerodynamics after posting this. The translation there was "Eiffel Tower spike," which makes a whole lot more sense than what every goddamned on-line translation site gave me.

Q Toon: Keeping Up with the MAGAshians

 

At the moment, one of the leading candidates to replace Governor Gavin Newsom in California's recall election is former Olympian, Wheaties cover athlete, and surreality TV personality is Caitlyn Jenner. In a crowded field, that may simply be a matter of name recognition, but California has a history of electing  celebrity candidates; viz., Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, and Clint Eastwood.

You will note that all five celebrity candidates in that paragraph are Republicans. Non-GOP celebrities running for office elsewhere tend to get dismissed as lightweights in general elections (except in Minnesota).

In a series of interviews, Jenner's grasp of the issues has proven less than impressive: she didn't vote in the last election because she wasn't interested in any of the propositions on the ballot, and she is upset that homeless people have driven away the owner of the airplane hangar across from hers. So why is she running?

Although a lifelong Republican and a Trump supporter, the 71-year-old performer possesses a flimsy résumé; she’s not a natural candidate any more than she is a crooner. The smart money in California says she doesn’t have a chance to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who enjoys the support of 56 percent of the California electorate. (Though the examples of Donald Trump, Al Franken, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sonny Bono suggest you can’t be too sure.) 

She told Dana Bash that she would make up for her inexperience in government by surrounding herself with "really good people," which sounds an awful lot like a certain twice-impeached former president's promises in 2016. But the Politico article speculates that her run is "a reality show by other means," or perhaps intended to set up a congressional run.

Interviewers have had a hard time pinning Jenner ("I don't like labels") down on the issues — even on the one issue with which she is most identified. Accepting the Arthur Ashe Award at the 2015 ESPY's, she voiced her support for young trans athletes, telling the audience, "I also want to acknowledge all the young trans athletes who are out there — given the chance to play sports as who they really are."

 

But now that Requblican legislatures around the country are passing bans on transgender athletic participation, Jenner has done a complete 180, telling TMZ, "This is a question of fairness. That's why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls sports in school. It just isn't fair. And we have to protect girl sports in our schools."

 

When Sean Hannity attempted to bring up the subject during their airplane hangar interview, Jenner kept diverting the conversation away toward Joy Behar or Jenner's mother having misgendered her. As Hannity pressed her on the issue, Jenner complained, "To be honest with you, I don't know why they keep asking that. What do you think, Sean? I don't know. Why do they keep asking me that question?" and decided to come out strongly against wildfires instead.

✍

Drawing Caitlyn Jenner is going to present a challenge to cartoonists insofar as, well, let's just say it's pretty obvious that she's had some work done over the years, and it has made drawing her in a way that avoids charges of being anti-trans damned near impossible.

I completely understand that Ms. Jenner wishes to appear the way she sees herself, and she may not see herself as a 71-year-old woman. There's nothing exclusively transgender about that, or even exclusively Californian. Plastic surgeons are able to sell the fantasy that nips, tucks and collagen injections will make someone look like Angelina Jolie circa 2003 because nobody sees themselves as Dame Judy Dench except Dame Judy Dench's stunt doubles.

Some other cartoonists are choosing not to dignify Ms. Jenner's campaign by expending ink and pixels on her. That's their choice and their right, and solves the problem of how far to take her caricature.

But LGBTQ+ news is my bailiwick. Until she sinks to asterisk levels in the polls, I may be stuck with her.