Cheap Shots with a Ten-Foot Poll

In last Saturday's Graphical History Tour, I shared a few cartoons and illustrations I drew 40 years ago in April of 1982. I had almost included one from April of 1992, but I decided to give that month a post of its own today.

I'll start out with one that drew a couple of complaints.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., April 8, 1992

Religious fundamentalists were upset that the Racine Health Department had begun offering free condoms in response to the AIDS crisis. For years, health advocates had been urgently recommending that men who had sex with men must use condoms every time. Although some in the gay community reacted with the same attitude we've seen in the past two years toward face masks, the absence of any treatment for HIV/AIDS in 1992 made a lot of sense to the rest.

Antigay puritans, however, argued that condoms are less than 100% effective — and that was without guys wearing their condoms down around their nuts instead of up where they're of any use. As far as the Just Keep Saying No crowd were concerned, total abstinence was the only prophylactic that was 100% effective and therefore the only one worth considering.

Just like how abstaining from breathing is 100% effective against transmission of COVID-19.

A frequent denizen of the Journal Times's Letters to the Editor section (he had just had another letter, "Condoms Cause AIDS," in the paper two days earlier) recognized my caricature of the gentleman leading the opposition to the health department program.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., April 17, 1992

There was another letter, very much like Mr. Brook's, sent in by parents of a friend of a friend. 

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., April 13, 1992

When I was a kid, I had occasionally subbed for their son delivering the Sunday morning Milwaukee Journal, with which there always seemed to be one supply problem or another. The worst was when the delivery truck had left 75 extra copies of the classified ad sections instead of 75 copies of the news sections. This was in the days when cell phones were the thing of science fiction, so I had to schlep a third of a mile back to my house to call the circulation department, which never answered their phone at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday.

At any rate, I don't owe the Pfeiffers any favors.

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Nationally, the major story for the month (prior to the Rodney King riots 30 years ago yesterday) was the presidential primary election season grinding to a close.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., April 6, 1992

On the Democratic side, the contest had come down to two former governors: Jerry Brown of California and Bill Clinton of Arkansas. President George Bush had clinched the Republican nomination and polled ahead of either Democrat, even though fascist-wing Pat Buchanan was doggedly refusing to do the Republican thing and fall in line behind him.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., April 9, 1992

By the time the Wisconsin primary was over — well, I hesitate to say Bill Clinton was the "favorite" for the nomination, because there wasn't a great deal of enthusiasm around the former Arkansas governor. He had issues with marital infidelity (an issue that had dashed Gary Hart's presidential ambitions four years earlier) and collegiate marijuana use (still a disqualifying consideration for a sizeable chunk of the voting-age population). He had mighty lame excuses for both.

Furthermore, the central issue of his campaign, aside from personal ambition, was a mild repudiation of the Democratic Party liberal ideals. Its "third way" smörgåsbord of fiscal conservatism and social progressivism was meant to appeal to middle-of-the-road moderates — that ambiguous slice of the American electorate who famously don't really get enthusiastic about politics.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., April 27, 1992

Then, just as the news media began wondering what they were supposed to report on with the party conventions still a couple months away, along came billionaire H. Ross Perot, dropping loud hints that he might perhaps consider thinking about mulling whether to make himself available for a third-party run for the presidency.

Q Toon: Kind of a Drag

Some presumably disgruntled ex-staffer of Requblican Congresssbro Madison Cawthorn (Q-NC) leaked a couple of party photos of Cawthorn to Politico last week. The photos show Cawthorn wearing women's lingerie as some laughing ladies look on.

I can't blame a kid for wanting to explore his feminine side, even if he has gone on record (just last week, as it happens) tweeting that "There is only one God and two genders."

Not much is known about the context of the photos; it them, Cawthorn is in a wheelchair, so they must have been taken after the 2014 car accident that left him partly paralyzed. He has explained that the photos were taken on a cruise sometime before he ran for Congress in 2020, so I guess we have to chalk this up to "youthful indiscretion."

Cawthorn is only 26, so any youthful indiscretions of his are still pretty recent. He wasn't responsible for that car crash, but he is responsible for his lie that his friend who was driving the car left him to die in the fiery wreck, and for using that lie in a campaign ad. (In fact, the friend dragged him to safety.)

Or his lie that he was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Or his brief college career distinguished only for his track record of sexually predatory behavior toward numerous coeds.

Or attacking a reporter for "quit[ting] his academia job in Boston to work for non-white males, like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office." Cawthorn subsequently apologized that "the syntax of our language was unclear and unfairly implied I was criticizing Cory Booker" — but not for the unmistakably clear message that working for a non-white male was somehow a dastardly thing for the reporter to have done.

It's hard to keep up with Master Cawthorn's youthful indiscretions. Since I drew this cartoon, he got himself in trouble trying to board an airplane with a loaded gun in his carry-on bag — such an understandable oversight, given that the law about carrying loaded guns onto commercial planes is older than he is.

And just last week, he was a no-show at his court date for speeding and driving after his license had been revoked.

You might not have heard about any of those youthful indiscretions; but you probably had heard that only last month, Cawthorn boasted on a podcast that other Republican Congresslewdies had invited him to a "sexual get-together" — an invitation he apparently accepted...

"The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington ... being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 — [you] look at all these people, a lot of them that I've looked up to through my life, I've always paid attention to politics. ... Then all of a sudden you get invited — 'We're going to have a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come.' ... What did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they're asking you to come to an orgy. ... Some of the people leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it's like, this is wild."

...unless the bump of cocaine was at some other Republican get-together. 

Being a lying, racist, sexist frat boy, and a reckless illegal driver to boot, was one thing. Shooting his mouth off on the internets was a youthful indiscretion too far even for spineless Kevin McCarthy, who called Mad Caw in on the carpet for a good finger-wagging. 

Didn't the kid realize that Matt Gaetz and Don Jr. are in enough trouble as it is?

This Week's Sneak Peek

Why, yes, dear reader: there will indeed be another cartoon this week.

As soon as the characters finish getting dressed up.

Toon: Jumping Jerk Flash

What is it going to take for the GQP to finally jump the shark?

Every time the Republican Party does something so ridiculous, outrageous, or anti-small-d-democratic, it should be, by any reasonable interpretation of reality, completely washed up, finished, and dumped in the dustbin of history.

But, thanks to the intense tribalism of a base totally encased in a partisan propaganda bubble, it never happens.

Splitting up immigrant families at the border and penning up the children indefinitely in facilities unfit to be a dog pound, while claiming to be the party of Parental Rights and Family Values? No problemo!

Blocking President Obama's Supreme Court nominee for eleven months because a presidential election was coming up, and four years later rushing one of their own through within five weeks of a presidential election? No big deal!

Trying to destroy the Post Office, affordable health care, and public education? All in a day's work!

Saddling taxpayers of Florida with the maintenance costs of the Magic Kingdom out of pure spite, all the while pretending to be the party of fiscal responsibility? Let's go, Gaston!

Overthrowing the duly elected government of the United States? They're all in! (No matter what your lying ears heard them saying at the time.)

The antics of Perjury Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Madison Cawthorn, Louie Gohmert, Ted Gosar, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham? Cantcha take a joke?

I Was Told There Would Be No Arccosecants

Our Graphical History Tour today steps back 40 years (for the benefit of you who may be products of Ron DeSantis's Floridian educational system, that's 1982). 

"Brisben..." in Mathematics Magazine, Washington, D.C., Nov., 1982

This cartoon wasn't published until the fall, but the original is filed in with stuff I drew in April of 1982, so in light of Florida Republicans' war on math, it gets to lead off today's post. 

I don't recall how I came to draw a cartoon for the then quarterly magazine of the Mathematical Association of America (it now publishes monthly); perhaps it was through my father, a chemist, but I'm pretty sure that we didn't get Mathematics Magazine at our house. (They were nice enough to send me this issue, and I believe that they paid for the cartoon. If only I had been able to keep coming up with cartoons about math, but alas...)

"New Music" in UW-Parkside Ranger, various days, 1981-82

Balancing that April cartoon unpublished until November with one drawn well before the Feast Day of St. Misbehavin, here's one I drew to accompany the music review column, titled "New Music," in the student newspaper at University of Wisconsin at Parkside. The column, written by various members of the arts and entertainment staff, was intended to be eclectic, covering new and decidedly not-new music, so the references in my illustration ran the gamut from medieval to rock.

"Save the Library" in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 29, 1982

The Ranger, along with several other student organizations, planned a "Save the Library Day" to protest cuts to Wisconsin's university system in Governor Sherman Dreyfus's state budget. Raffles, a dunk tank, and other fund-raising activities hoped to counter proposed cuts in staffing and periodical subscriptions.

To publicize the event, I was asked to draw Gov. Dreyfus strangling a book. From the vertical format, the boldness of the lines and the minimal crosshatching — and my initials hidden in the governor's hair in lieu of my signature — I believe that this caricature was intended to go onto t-shirts, but I can't recall that for certain.

At the time, Lee Dreyfus was considered a moderate-to-conservative Republican; if he were still in politics, today's Republicans would no doubt denounce him as a RINO, a dreaded liberal, or even a socialist commie. 

Nota bene: while the Grand Old Party has lurched to the extreme right nowadays, rest assured, gentle reader, that the party still had bona fide fascists back then:

"PAB Brazenly Presents," in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 15, 1982

Case in point: G. Gordon Liddy, one of the chief "plumbers" from the Nixon administration, whom the Parkside Activity Board paid $4,500 to speak in the Student Union cafeteria on April 19, 1982. Touring the country to promote his book, Will, Liddy forbade recording of his three-hour appearance, in which the convicted felon called Judge John Sirica "born stupid," claimed that the Watergate break-in was legal because laws do not apply to a president or those acting on his behalf, and made light of his having planned to kill investigative journalist Jack Anderson and White House Counsel John Dean.

To the end, Liddy, who died a little over a year ago, was proud of his role in the Watergate burglary, and I'm sure he was happy to have lived long enough to see fascists return to the White House in 2017. How he must have regretted that he wasn't able to participate in the January 6 insurrection with the others of his ilk. 

Yet his theory of the Divine Right of Presidents was indispensable to Republicans' defense of Donald Berzelius Trump in the impeachment trials of 2020 and 2021.

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Well, I can't end this post on that note, so here's a bit of trivia for the locals:

UW-Parkside Ranger, April 8, 1982

The young fella elected Parkside Student Government President 40 years ago survived this recall attempt and went on to a career in politics. This past Monday, he handed over the reins as Kenosha County Executive after 14 years in the post.

Q Toon: A Shot of Preposterone

 

Remember when the Baby Boomers hit middle age, and suddenly newsmagazines were running cover stories about menopause (it's not just for women any more!) and 50 being the new 39?

Well, now it's Gen X's turn.

Having discovered erectile dysfunction, Fox Noise host Tucker Carlson has decided to devote a week of his program to his fears that American men are losing their testosterone. The montage of manly images in the ad promoting his series included this bizarre image:

It turns out that this wasn't some idiot plugging into a hilltop Tesla recharging station. Instead, it has something to do with some self-appointed expert whose Rx for iron-poor testosterone is to bathe one's testicles in red light. I assume he was inspired by the folks who claim to have found health benefits from exposing their anuses to ultra-violet light to explore arousing his sperm by exposing his testes to the other end of the visible spectrum.

Look, I'm sure the dude has published dozens of peer-reviewed studies. 

I mean, click-bait dick pics.

The peers interviewed by Newsweek, on the other hand, were not amused.

Urologist Petar Bajic, MD, at the Cleveland Clinic's Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute, in Ohio, ... told Newsweek that men considering red light therapy to enhance their testosterone levels would be wasting their money.

Dr. Bajic said: "The bottom line about red light therapy for low testosterone is that there is no evidence to support its use and no psychological basis for how it might even work because light wouldn't penetrate the skin to enter the testicles. ... "

Mr. Crotchy McSunbather, the guy prescribing submerging into ice baths, and whatever the deal is with the shirtless fellow milking cows without a bucket — they all fit into the melting together of New Age Holistic Anti-medicine and anti-vaxxer eagerness to try anything from horse dewormer to injecting bleach, as long as the doctor didn't order it.

Sometimes it feels as though that particular crowd are just testing us all to find out just what weirdness and ridiculousness they can foist on their followers before even those gullible disciples crack up laughing at the utter inanity of it all.

Kind of like fashion designers.

It's stylish, and, what the hell, it promotes fertility!

Anyway, getting back to Tucker's War on Flaccidity, it's hard (no pun intended) to believe that his fearmongering isn't meant to frighten his viewers into believing that transgender persons and gender dysphoria are brand new phenomena, a novel threat never seen before in the history of Manlinesskind.

But just as every generation is the very first to discover sex, every generation eventually, inexorably becomes the first to discover diminished sex drive.

There Will Be No Math

Gosh, it's difficult not to pick on Florida so much of the time, but apparently its Department of Education has banned 41% of proposed mathematics textbooks because, um, Critical Race Theory, or Don't Say Gay, or, I don't know, because it makes Florida Man feel bad?

Tax Week's Sneak Peek

 Scenes from an Easter sermon....

Night at the Rapallo

We were discussing the Genoa Convention last week: a meeting of European and Japanese leaders (plus those of various British commonwealths) in April of 1922 with the goal of reintegrating Germany and Russia into their number.

"Weltfrühling" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 30, 1922

Compared to the very successful recent naval conference in Washington D.C., things in Genoa were not going so well. France demanded continued heavy reparations from Germany which Germany protested it could not possibly afford. 

"None So Blind" by Winsor McCay for Star Company, by April 12, 1922

As for Soviet Russia, other European leaders were eager to resume commercial activity, and Russia, having finally vanquished the country's royalists, was eager to get Japan out of Siberia. But the allies' made normalization of relations conditional upon Russia paying back the tsarist national debt, compensating other nations for property confiscated by the Soviets, and abandoning its communist form of government.

"The Russian Reply to Allies' Demands" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., by April 26, 1922

While they felt that the debt issue could be negotiated, abandoning Marxism was unacceptable to the Russian delegation led by Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin. The allies believed, however, that they held the upper hand against both Russia and Germany.

"Deutschland und Russland" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, May 10, 1922

What the allies hadn't counted on was Germany and Russia signing a mutual agreement in nearby Rapallo, renouncing all territorial, financial, and legal claims against each other. The two countries resumed normal diplomatic and consular relations. Germany found a way to play East against West, and Russia found itself a friend beyond its borders.

"The Russo-German Cherubs" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, April 18, 1922

I usually find Clifford Berryman's cartoons somewhat pedestrian, if generally useful for following events at our nation's capital; but I love this parody of the Two Cherubs in Raphael's Sistine Madonna.

"The Same Old Game" by John Knott in Dallas Morning News, April 20, 1922

John Knott reflects the commonly held belief among Americans that European governments couldn't be trusted to deal fairly. That the U.S. intercepted on cables sent home and received by other countries' negotiators at the Washington D.C. Naval Conference proves that underhanded dealing was not limited to those wily Europeans.

"The Rival Attraction" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 19, 1922

And what Rapallo proved was that perhaps the British and French were just too clever for their own good.

"The Burning Question" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, April 19

A cartoonist's aside here: Gustavo Bronstrup's cartoons in the San Francisco Chronicle always had to accommodate the top of the paper's "The Morning's Morning" column, a collection of quick opinions and brief observances. I would be so annoyed if I had to allow for a print column to cover up the lower right corner of my cartoon day after every fricking day.

"Rockin' the Boat" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., by April 25, 1922

At any rate, the Genoa Conference, thanks to the Rapallo Pact, has gone down in history as a colossal diplomatic failure.

"Mon Dieu! The Cook's Gone Off with the Butler" by Art Young in The Nation, May, 1922

Time to Update That Ukrainian Stamp

 

Q Toon: Stiff as a Board

 

This week's cartoon could be about Walt Disney Corporation standing up (a bit tardily) to Florida state Republicans for passing "Don't Say Gay" into law, but having just drawn a cartoon about that law last week, I took a more generic approach this week.

Republican-dominated legislatures in one state after another after another have been attacking the LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender minors, with full fury this year.

The Alabama House of Representatives voted 66-28 for legislation to make it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones or perform surgery to aid in the gender transition of people under age 19. The bill now goes to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey for her signature as Alabama becomes the latest red state to promote legislation and policies aimed at trans youth.

and

The Arizona Legislature passed bills Thursday to prohibit gender reassignment surgery for minors and ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams, joining a growing list of Republican-controlled states attempting to restrict transgender rights as they gain more visibility in culture and society.

and

Texas Republicans’ growing focus on what they call “child gender modification” is the latest illustration of the state’s swing to the right after the 2020 election. And it reached an apex as both Abbott and Paxton were in the final days of primaries where they were getting pressured from their right over the issue.

and I haven't even gotten to the copycat "Don't Say Gay" legislation.

As I noted last week, Walt Disney Co. is only one of some 200 corporations protesting Florida's new law; major corporations across the country have done likewise in these other states.

But it has hardly deterred Republicans in any of them.

The GQP has such a lock on voters in gated communities, rural Mayberries, and the Foxosphere, that it hardly needs campaign cash from its American oligarchs any more. At least not on the national level. Thus it has turned its focus to local offices, especially school boards, brainwashing gullible Karens and Kevins that educators are teaching kindergartners post-graduate-level courses on sexuality, race, and Marxist dialectic.

(Well, they're right about the Marxist dialectic stuff. Only the schools call it "learning to share.") 

Perhaps it's time for responsible corporations, rather than pulling their advertising from right-wing media, to buy air time on Hannity and Tuckyo Rose. What these corporations say on Facebook and Twitter doesn't get past the algorithms and filters to get to the people who get all their opinions from Fox & Fiends.

Oh, who am I kidding?

What these corporations say on Facebook and Twitter about valuing LGBTQ+ employees and customers isn't half as important to them as larding up all levels of government with politicians who will gladly gut consumer safety laws, and ignore employee working conditions.

And most importantly, slash the corporation's tax burden. Those consumers and employees can pick up the cost.

Holy Week's Sneak Peek

Am I going to have to explain that just because she's a Black professional with glasses, the character on the left is not Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson?

Sitting Out Genoa

In celebration of the centennial of the Genoa Conference, a meeting to settle the Post-World-War-I order in Europe, today's Graphical History Tour highlights cartoons about the country that wasn't there...

"Der Stille Beobachter" by Hans-Maria Lindloff, Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 9, 1922

...The United States.

Cartoonists at Berlin's Kladderadatch seem to have been keenly interested in the decision by the Harding Administration to sit out the conference. A note atop the right corner of Lindloff's cartoon explains: "The United States only wants to play the role of 'silent observer' in Genoa."

"Sammy and His Pals" by Frederick Opper for Star Company, ca. April 14, 1922

The role of American finances in the U.S. decision differed greatly depending what side of the Atlantic one was on.

"He Sent His Regrets" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1922

The official stance of the Harding administration was that European affairs were a matter for Europeans to settle and none of our business. This much pleased the isolationists who had helped Harding get elected, but ignored our increasing reliance on international commerce and our stake in international stability.

"Watching the Procession Move On" by John Cassel in New York Evening Star, April 11, 1922

Isolationists at William Randolph Hearst's newspapers and Col. McCormick's Chicago Tribune were only too pleased for the United States to sit Genoa out; John Cassel at the New York Evening Star offered a more rueful view.

"The Periscope" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier Journal, April 11, 1922

Participants at Genoa included just about every country in Europe (including San Marino), Russia, Japan, and South Africa. Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, each still part of the United Kingdom to one degree or another, also sent their own representatives. The thorniest issues on the table involved reintegrating Germany and Russia into the European community. Both countries were expected to cough up reparations and repayment of loans in order to return to the graces of the other European countries.

"Das Reparationsdiner oder Der Vergessene Gast" by Hans-Maria Lindloff (?) in Kladderadatsch, Berlin,
April 2, 1922

Whoever drew this unsigned Kladderadatsch cartoon (the style most resembles that of Herr Lindloff in my opinion) completely misjudges President Harding's position regarding the Genoa Conference. He may have been drawing about U.S. interest in repayment of loans made during the war, but those loans were made to the Entente partners. 

"Felis Militaris" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 9, 1922

Werner Hahmann's cartoon, on the other hand, suggests that the U.S. was not completely swayed by its Entente allies' punitive attitudes, particularly those of France, toward Germany.

In the cartoon, Marianne's dress partly covers French General and Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch. Text on her dress contrasts "The Innocent France" with "The Angry Germany."

"Kulturaufgaben" by Werner Hahmann, Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 9, 1922

A note above another Hahmann cartoon explains that "Germany is to pay the occupation costs for the American in dyes." Perhaps this is another example of a cartoonist latching onto an obscure news item for inspiration; given the hyperinflation in Germany at the time, its creditors could hardly be blamed for wanting to be paid in something other than Reichsmarks.

It's not as though Prohibition-era America could accept payment in German lager.

European cartoons often depicted the U.S. and other New World countries using Native American caricatures (until, in the case of the U.S., cartoons of Uncle Sam became more common). In the same manner, European, Australian and American cartoonists represented Africa, Asia, and Oceana with the crudest depictions of indigenous peoples.

"Ceterum Censeo" by Hans-Maria Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 23, 1922

Their fellow Europeans refused to cut Germany any slack on reparations, and the mood in Washington was decidedly opposed to making loans to those quarrelsome Europeans, Germany no less than anywhere else. 

What happened next came as a complete surprise.

Q Toon: The Sunshine State

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his fellow Republicans have their "Don't Say Gay" bill to impose their version of political correctness on state educators, but they haven't succeeded in muzzling their critics. The Walt Disney Company has joined the ranks of some 200 companies from Mattel to Deutsche Bank USA standing up for academic freedom and LGBTQ+ kids.

DeSantis gets all upset when someone calls his law "Don't Say Gay." He complains that those words were not in the bill, so ipso facto, Don't Say Don't Say Gay. 

Heck, just because it authorizes any pearl-clutching Karens and Darrens with an encyclopedic knowledge of that one verse in Leviticus to sue for Big Money any teacher who dares mention Oscar Wilde, Lil Nas X, or meeting Skyler's two mommies at the parent-teacher conference, that doesn't mean that teachers are actually verboten to say gay!

Well, tough titties. The Affordable Care Act didn't have the word "Obamacare" anywhere in it, but it didn't stop Republicans from calling it that.

Republicans are usually the experts in giving their laws names that poll a damned sight better than their contents, and in getting those names to stick. Democrats, and liberal groups in general, tend to be aggravatingly lousy at that sort of thing ("Defund the Police," anyone?), so I strongly suspect that renaming the Precious Little Children's Ears Protection Act "Don't Say Gay" was accomplished by a bunch of liberals who sat down to brainstorm "What would we call this bill if it were ours?"

Part of Democrats' problem is that their leadership prefers when possible to come up with names that make some sort of acronym. So they come up with the Revitalizing Our Transportation Infrastructure National Initiative, but can't get anyone to call it the ROTINI Act because 1.) Bridges are boring until they fall down, and 2.) They don't have anything to do with pasta.

Saddling the Florida bill and the carbon copies sure to follow in the other Red States with the epithet "Don't Say Gay," therefore, was clearly not the work of Democratic Party leaders in Washington D.C. It fits, it works, and it bugs the hell out of the DeSantis crowd.

Now if we could only give all those Ban the Trans bills a moniker that would irritate their authors just as much...

This Week's Sneak Peek

More roughs from the sketchbook.

D.D. Degg at Daily Cartoonist has come through with background on the cartoonist "Callaghan" included in Saturday's Graphical History Tour. Callaghan was editorial and sports cartoonist for the short-lived Minnesota Daily Star (Aug. 19, 1920-June 30, 1924).

During its early months, the Star was able to build its circulation, but it was never able to show a profit. The paper had difficulty attracting advertisers who were willing to contend with its overtly political agenda. Even so, it continued to advocate for left-leaning causes and candidates.

The Star was proud enough of Mr./Ms. Callaghan to put his/her cartoons on the front page from time to time, but never, apparently, proud enough to print his/her name.

in Minneapolis Daily Star, June 24, 1922