Independent (of Whom?)

Remember a couple months back when I asked whether anyone remembered a publication called the Madison Independent somewhere around 1982?

Nobody has stepped up with information about it, but we did receive two issues of this in the mail this summer:

The "About Us" insert that came with one of them claims that the Wisconsin Independent is staffed by experienced journalists, and there's a QR code if you care to send in recipes or to unsubscribe. In spite of a bare-bones crossword and articles about such things as blackbirds and the Packers, the rest does read like campaign literature.

There's no masthead, nor any boilerplate identifying it as campaign literature; just a return address for the American Independent at a P.O. box in Washington D.C.

Also, no cartoons, so, meh. 

There is a definite liberal tilt to the articles about politics. Not the sort of liberal bias conservatives complain about when the mainstream media don't act as docile cheerleaders parroting right-wing talking points. This stuff is a left-wing counterbalance to Fox News and talk radio. Or that complimentary issue of Epoch Times my dad got in his mail this week.

I figured the proof of the pudding would be if the Wisconsin Independent stopped coming to our house as soon as this year's election is over.

But we haven't received a September issue, so I guess we'll never know.

Q Toon: And They Brought Books!

Let me just say at the outset that I realize how much I was risking drawing a cartoon on Sunday that might be considered in bad taste by Thursday. Unimaginable disaster threatens the state of Florida.

I mean, isn't having to be forever associated with Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump punishment enough?

The corrupt former president is reportedly miffed that Governor DeSantis stole his idea to kidnap fifty Venezuelan refugees in Texas and fly them to Martha's Vineyard — after the summer season is over, no less — luring them with false promises of jobs, housing, and getting to meet the Kennedys. 

Oh, sorry, I'm confusing Ron's stunt with the White Citizens Councils' reverse freedom rides of 1962. DeSantis did not actually promise the Venezuelan refugees that they would meet the Kennedys.

The townies of Martha's Vineyard, and perhaps a few well-to-do stragglers who hadn't yet left for the season, pitched in to welcome their Venezuelan guests, providing food and shelter until enlisting help from the military base at nearby Cape Cod. Right-wing media crowed, See? Them damn Yankees don't like Mexicans any more than we do! Not one Kennedy even showed up!

Well, we Yankees hear that you've got a teacher shortage down there in Dixie Land. We can send you plenty of teachers who far exceed the negligible standards your governor has set for educators these days. 

Competent? Why, they're absolutely fabulous!

This Week's Sneak Peek

I've been compiling playlists on my iPod for a long drive I've got in a couple weeks, and one piece I was looking for, to add to a playlist of classical concerti, was a flute concerto by 20th Century Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian. I have a recording of the third movement on an old cassette tape somewhere; it's a lively virtuoso piece with a lot of flair.

I couldn't find that recording in Apple Tunes, but I knew that it was actually an arrangement of a violin concerto. I found that on a double CD along with a bunch of other Khachaturian orchestral music, mostly unfamiliar to me other than a couple movements of the Masquerade Suite.

Too bad that liner notes didn't come with download of the double CD. I listened to one of the unfamiliar pieces, his Piano Concerto in D-flat, over the weekend, and what struck me was that in the middle of one movement, a Theremin completely steals the limelight.

For anyone who doesn't know what a Theremin is, it's an electronic instrument created by Leon Theremin in 1928. The eerie sound is created by waving one's hands through an electronically excited field between a pair of antennae. You're likely to have heard it in old movies or TV shows about ghosts or space aliens or hypnosis.

The Theremin is an extremely difficult instrument to play well; you might compare it to playing Trombone Champ. So what is it doing in a piano concerto?

To begin with, the concerto is probably the least Soviet musical form there is. One performer gets to be the star of the piece, showing off his or her superior performing ability with the rest of the orchestra in a somewhat subservient role. And yet Khachaturian, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and others got away with writing them anyway.

But not without a whole lot of supervision from the regional commissar. And along comes Soviet inventor Leon Theremin with his new-fangled instrument, so the word from Stalin comes down to showcase Soviet Russian ingenuity. Comrade Composer, you have a choice: stick a Theremin part in your piano concerto, or it's off to re-education camp for you. 

And be happy Stalin is not insisting you include it in a piece for marching band.

Sep-Two-Ber

Good heavens! It's almost October and I haven't hauled out a bunch of my old September cartoons yet! 

in UW-Parkside Ranger, September 9, 1982

Ronald Reagan's legacy rests upon his promises to cut taxes, but he raised them, too. In fact, if one measures tax changes as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, his 1982 tax hike was the largest in modern U.S. history — no matter what Republican attack ads have tried to tell you about Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, or will tell you about Joe Biden.

The 1980s tax increases are less well-known, in part because they didn't involve increases in individual income tax rates. The biggest, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, increased revenue mainly by tightening up rules on depreciation, leasing, contract accounting and investment tax credits. The Social Security Amendments of 1983 sped up planned increases in payroll tax rates, among other things. The Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 changed rules on interest exclusions, income averaging and such. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 closed a few loopholes and extended a telephone excise tax. And the Tax Reform Act of 1986, while it lowered the top individual income tax rate to 28 percent from 50 percent, contained enough offsetting changes that, for the first two years after enactment, it raised tax revenue. 

And he still ended up leaving what was, in 1989, by far the biggest federal deficit in history.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, September 28, 1992

Reagan came to office promising to tackle the much tamer deficit left by Jimmy Carter; billionaire H. Ross Perot made the same promises in 1992 about George H.W. Bush's deficit. And, also like Reagan, he was maddeningly evasive about how he was going to accomplish it.

in The Biz (Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee), October, 2002

But enough about fiscal policy. Here's a full-color cartoon I drew for The Biz, a flashy little quarterly insert published in The Business Journal for a few years in the 'aughts. The Biz was printed on a brighter, magazine-quality grade of paper than the standard newsprint of its parent journal. 

My regular editorial cartoons for them illustrated the staff editorial and were black-and-white TIFF files. The Biz was intended to attract and engage younger readers, so the editors wanted color. They would call on me when they had an article that didn't lend itself to color photography.

I didn't have software with CMYK color capability when I was drawing cartoons for The Biz; the RGB .jpeg files I sent them came out a bit more drab in print. Black, the color missing from RGB formatting, came out just fine; but you can notice that the bright magenta in the young employee's shirt became a mild lavender in print, and his neon green mohawk is a tamer shade.

The colors you see here on your screen do not necessarily appear the same in print. Screen colors are produced by light; print colors are produced by ink. Since I started putting out color cartoons in CMYK format in 2012, I've only ever had one opportunity to see how my color cartoons look in print.

for Q Syndicate, September, 2012

This was not that cartoon.

My opportunity would come three years later, when was in Columbus, Ohio, for the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. But like this cartoon, the cartoon I found in Outlook involved persons of color, and it was a relief to see how nicely their skin color appeared in print.

Drawing for LGBTQ+ media, I try from time to time to depict more beefcake than I might if I were still drawing for the Business Journal. (I've suspected that my setting one Business Journal cartoon about exclusively male boardrooms in a sauna is what got that cartoon spiked.) Sure, I could have set this cartoon on the sidelines or in the management guy's office rather than the locker room. Brendan Ayanbadejo rocks a bow tie and three piece suit every bit as well as he does a towel.

But while I'm sure the editors and publishers subscribing to my cartoons are Very Serious Journalists, I also know that this may have gotten some of their readers to pause on the editorial page just a little bit before flipping on to the feature interview of Hollywood's Hunk of the Month.

✍

I'll be in Columbus again next month for another AAEC convention — only the second one of these that I will have attended. Sadly, Outlook ceased publication in 2017, so that 2015 cartoon will remain the only one letting me know whether I cut it as a colorist.

Disturbing

Somebody's using an old Sith Lord mind trick...

Q Toon: Dial R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In the race to prevent our right-wing Supreme Court from unilaterally breaking up same-sex marriages from coast to coast, the U.S. Senate has taken a pit stop.

The House overwhelmingly passed the "Respect for Marriage Act" in July. The Senate version of the bill is cosponsored by Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Kyrsten Sinema (D-CA), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and Rob Portman (R-OH). 

In today's 50-50 Senate, even the most innocuous bill has to have ten Republicans to support it or it will die by wordless filibuster. So far, Tom Tillis (R-NC) has also signed on to the bill, but its sponsors have been disappointed that Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) remains non-committal.

Wisconsin's other Senator, Republican Ron Johnson, is running for a third term this year. He said at first that he "saw no reason to oppose the bill," but later dismissed the bill as needless and divisive.

“I’m not happy with the Baldwins of the world who are just opening that wound and opening up that debate, okay?” Johnson said.

Meanwhile, his TV ads reopen the wounds of the 2020 Kenosha riot and the 2021 Waukesha Christmas Parade assault. All the more reason for Wisconsin voters to replace him with Mandela Barnes.

Anyway, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has decided to put the Respect for Marriage Act on hold until after the November election, in hopes that there are seven Republicans who would vote to let the bill come to the floor if they could do so six years before the next time they have to run for reelection.

See anyone like that on this list of Republicans running this year?

• Blunt, Roy (R-MO)
• Boozman, John (R-AR)
• Burr, Richard (R-NC)
• Crapo, Mike (R-ID)
• Grassley, Chuck (R-IA)
• Hoeven, John (R-ND)
• Johnson, Ron (R-WI)
• Kennedy, John (R-LA)
• Lankford, James (R-OK)
• Lee, Mike (R-UT)
• Moran, Jerry (R-KS)
• Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)
• Paul, Rand (R-KY)
• Portman, Rob (R-OH)
• Rubio, Marco (R-FL)
• Scott, Tim (R-SC)
• Shelby, Richard C. (R-AL)
• Thune, John (R-SD)
• Toomey, Patrick J. (R-PA)
• Young, Todd (R-IN)

Color me less than optimistic.

Supposedly, Johnson and Mike Lee were working on language that would exempt Christians from respecting marriage, if you can imagine language that didn't render the entire bill meaningless. "The terms and provisions of this Act shall not be interpreted to apply to persons, corporations or officials who believe that it doesn't apply to them."

Whatever. Even without such an exemption, Clarence Thomas and the gang are bound to find some reason that it doesn't apply to anybody, either. Probably citing Leviticus v. Gomorrah.

Forward Into the Past!

 

But what's really interesting about Columbus, GA, is that its newspaper was entirely staffed by psychics who could see into the future.

QEII at 3

I get the pulp version of Time magazine delivered at home. It's been a biweekly magazine ever since COVID-19 broke out across the U.S., although they call everything a "double issue."

They often feature thumbnail pictures of the alternate covers of the magazine on one of the early pages, and occasionally covers of that fortnight's cover story subject from the past. The latter was the case with the current issue reporting Queen Elizabeth's death. I don't recall having seen a couple of the more recent covers, which must have been of Time's European edition.

Outside of the large-font decades from the '70's to the '00's, it's impossible to read the text on those tiny cover images, and I wondered how little Princess Lilybet rated a cover story when she was three years old and the niece of George V's heir apparent, Edward, Prince of Wales.

I mean, there has been plenty of press coverage of Harry and Megan's newborns, but I don't expect to see them on the cover of Time — even the European edition — while they're still toddlers. If one of them grows up to be a TV star, maybe, or Governor of California, sure.

They'd have a better chance if they go into television. Time only puts governors on the cover if they've just been nominated for Vice President.

As it happens, in 1967, Time published a series of books of snippets of articles from various years in the magazine's history, and I have the book about 1929. Sure enough, it includes a paragraph from this April 29, 1929 cover story. I don't know how the actual article began, but the excerpt launches by positing the prospect, however remote, of Elizabeth acceding to the throne.

If Death should come soon and suddenly to three men — George V, Edward of Wales, the Duke of York — England would have another Virgin Queen Elizabeth.

She did indeed eventually become Queen, of course; but Edward was still alive, and she was married with two children by then, so nix the Virgin Queen thing.

The 1929 article cites some palace gossip that forecasted that P'incess Lilybet becoming Queen someday wasn't such a far-fetched idea. George V had had been gravely ill that winter (but would survive another seven years). Prince Edward, then 34, was still a bachelor, as you may recall, and a story had circulated that he once vowed to renounce his rights to the throne upon his father's death. The palace gossip reported in Time was that he was already teasing Lilybet's mother, the Duchess of York, by calling her "Queen Elizabeth."

By the way, the folks at Time will happily sell you their Elizabeth Windsor magazine covers as framed  pictures, in case you happen to need something impressive on the bookshelf in the background of your next television interview.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Normally, I credit illustrations that aren't mine in this blog, but so as not to interrupt the flow of the last sentence in Saturday's post, I didn't explain that last picture.

The picture, titled "Congressional Pugilists," is a woodcut of a February 15, 1798 fight on the floor of Congress between Congressmen Matthew Lyon (DR-VT) and Roger Griswold (Fed.-CT).

On February 15, 1798, Roger Griswold, a US House Representative from Connecticut, attacked Matthew Lyon on the floor of the House of Representatives. Griswold, a Federalist, walked up to Lyon’s desk hitting him about the head and shoulders with his hickory walking stick. Lyon, a Republican from Vermont, responded by grabbing a pair of fireplace tongs and beating Griswold back. A brawl ensued and the men threw fists before Congressional members pulled apart the two.

Griswold’s attack was not a surprise. It followed weeks of bitter turmoil on the floor of Congress over an earlier confrontation between the two men. On January 30, Lyon, a staunch anti-federalist, accused the Connecticut representatives of ignoring the interests of their constituents for their own profit. Griswold took this as a personal insult on his character and retaliated by questioning Lyon’s war record during the Revolution, calling him a coward (Lyon had been temporarily dishonorably discharged from the Continental Army). Lyon’s response was to spit tobacco juice in Griswold’s eye. The Federalists moved to expel Lyon from the House for “gross indecency” spending two weeks debating the issue. When the votes came back along party lines on February 14, the Federalists hadn’t received the necessary two-thirds majority. The following day Griswold defended his honor with his stick. While the brawl resulted from personal attacks of character, the underlying cause of the conflict was Griswold’s support of President John Adams’ military preparations in the event of hostilities with France.

Keep the Cons in Constitution Day!

Depending on personal preference, Americans are celebrating Constitution Day or Citizenship Day today. It's the 235th anniversary of the ratification of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787, replacing the deeply flawed Articles of Confederation with a document that has endured for more than two centuries. In spite of allowing disgruntled misanthropes to be in charge of well-regulating their own personal militiae.

The day is often marked with swearing-in ceremonies for new citizens, hence the coincidence of Citizenship Day. Since I've lived in this country all my life, and I'm not swearing in any new citizens, I'm celebrating instead by resurrecting some of the cartoons drawn for an edition of Washington Post Magazine marking the bicentennial of the Constitution in 1987.

by Jeff MacNelly for Washington Post, June 28, 1987

Some of the country's leading editorial cartoonists were privileged to draw full-page, full-color cartoons to illustrate articles by the likes of Garry Wills, Roger Wilkins, Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, Frank Easterbrook and Charlie Haas.

The late Jeff MacNelly fancied the members of the Supreme Court sailing the 200-year-old S.S. Constitution through outer space with gavels for oars. (It works better as an image than in text.) I don't spot Sandra Day O'Connor or Thurgood Marshall — the sole woman and the only non-White man on the Court to that point — in his cartoon, so I'm just going to assume that MacNelly was trying to represent the overwhelming White male majority of the Court through history. 

by Pat Oliphant in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

Pat Oliphant produced this illustration of the imbalance of power that had developed between the Executive and Legislative branches since the dawn of the nuclear age. 

Nearly half of the cartoonists represented in the Post Magazine's package put then-President Ronald Reagan in their cartoons...

by Don Wright in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

...and not at all favorably.

by Doug Marlette in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

by Mike Peters in Washington Post Magazine,  June 28, 1987

That there were no cartoons featuring Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, or any other member of Congress only goes to support the point Pat Oliphant was trying to illustrate. Congress had made some attempts to reassert its prerogatives in the wake of the Nixon Watergate scandal; but with eight years in office, the Reagan administration was rather successful in reasserting the primacy of the presidency.

by Tony Auth in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 9187

That so much of what goes on behind the scenes answers to the President rather than the legislature has had a lot to do in fostering growth over the 20th Century of the imperial Executive Branch. Tony Auth's cartoon suggests that it almost doesn't matter who —if anyone— sits behind the Oval Office desk.

(It also reminds me of the classic Saturday Night Live sketch in which Reagan, portrayed by Phil Hartman, is genial if doddering when the cameras are on, but a cunning mastermind behind closed doors.)

Leaving the presidency aside, two articles in the Post's package centered on groups excluded from the document ratified in Congress Assembled in 1787:

by Jules Feiffer in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

Roger Wilkins's essay, which Feiffer's cartoon accompanies, notes that the people pictured in paintings of the first constitutional convention "are white and male. And, no matter how powerful the celebratory culture is — and it is immensely powerful — a black American cannot help testing those images and the purported constitutional promises against the dailiness of his own life."

The words of Jemmy Madison in Feiffer's cartoon ring hollow against Wilkins's remembrance of growing up in the 1930's, '40's, and '50's.

When the Brown decision was announced on May 17, 1954, I was in my freshman year at the University of Michigan Law School. I was 22 years old. It would be three years before I would go to work in the Black slums of Cleveland and 11 before President Johnson would sent me to work among the smoldering embers of Watts. It would be eight years before the schools of Norfolk, Va., would be integrated, so my future wife — a junior high school student in 1954 — graduated from a still-segregated high school, thoroughly disillusioned. Martin Luther King was an unknown 25-year-old. He had just under 14 more years to live. It would be just over 14 years before King's Poor People's Campaign would descend on the Mall in Washington and begin the fundamental probe to find out just how big the promise of the Constitution really was and to whom it was extended.

To accompany the essay by Rose Bird, then recently having been defeated for reelection to the California Supreme Court, the Post Magazine turned to Nicole Hollander.

by Nicole Hollander in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

Not to disparage Feiffer or Hollander in the least, I do wonder whether the Post approached any Black or female editorial cartoonists for this project. Feiffer's bona fides on the issue of racial justice are without question and go back before I was born, but I suspect that an editor from the present day would have solicited Ted Shearer, Robert Pious, Brumsic Brandon Jr., or Chester Commodore.

Female editorial cartoonists of the time included Etta Hulme, Kate Salley Palmer and Signe Wilkinson. Hollander's work was not typically found on the editorial page, but her syndicated comic strip "Sylvia" (1981-2012) evolved out of her "Feminist Funnies" comic strip, and prior to that, her work as graphic designer for a feminist publication, The Spokeswoman. "Sylvia" could be every bit as topical as Feiffer's work. Hollander just didn't give presidents speaking parts in her strip.

✍

That's all for now. So whether you observe Constitution Day, or whether Citizenship Day is your family tradition, or even if you're stretching Mexican Independence Day throughout the weekend...

...please celebrate responsibly.

Q Toon: Texodus

Texas authorities are spewing hostility in all directions this year.

Where to start?

In a ruling issued September 7th, District Judge Reed O’Connor voided a mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which requires employers cover certain preventive healthcare products and services if these violate their religious beliefs. ...

In this instance, O’Connor is striking down an ACA requirement that insurers cover pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which prevents transmission of the HIV virus, as well as contraception, the HPV vaccine (which prevents cervical cancer), and screenings and behavioral counseling for illicit drug use as well as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). According to O’Connor’s opinion, “compulsory coverage for [these] services violates [employers’] religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior and [illegal] drug use.”

O'Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, would no doubt approve of an employer with a religious belief in Zero Population Growth denying maternal, paternal, and family leave to its employees — to say nothing of suddenly converting to a religion that doesn't believe in modern medicine at all. Flipping off teh gays is just icing on the cake.

Moving along to panel two: 

On the morning of Aug. 30, a 13-year-old transgender boy was pulled out of class by his school’s administrators, his mother says. While his classmates continued their studies, he sat in a conference room at a Texas middle school where a Department of Family and Protective Services investigator began asking personal questions, court records state.

The reason: The state agency was probing his family following a February directive from Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to investigate the use of gender-affirming care in minors as child abuse, according to court documents.

The nearly hour-long interview touched on a range of personal topics — from the teen’s medical history to his gender dysphoria diagnosis to his suicide attempt years back, court records state. The interrogation left the boy — identified under the pseudonym Steve Koe — shaking and distressed, according to a signed declaration from his mother, named as Carol Koe.

And of course, Gov. Greg Abbott is forcibly busing immigrants to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, as if immigrants had not already been coming there:

Five more busloads of migrants who crossed the border from Mexico into Texas reached New York City on Wednesday as Gov. Greg Abbott escalated his feud with the city’s mayor with a victory lap op-ed in the New York Post.

The latest group of buses is the biggest to reach the East Coast city in one day since Abbott began the policy in early August, according to Fox News.

According to New York officials, Abbott even hired security guards to keep passengers from getting off his buses before they reached the Big Apple (although some did so anyway).

Whatever. All things being equal, there's a good chance that Coyote Abbott was doing some of those immigrants a huge favor. A free ride out of Howdy Arabia doesn't sound like such a terrible thing.

This Week's Sneak Pique

This week's cartoon is larded with a ton of text. I really would have liked to have come up with an idea that didn't have an hour's worth of damned lettering, but at least I can promise you that I didn't have to draw any corgis.

Back to School, 1922 Style

I had intended to publish this Graphical History Tour last week, but then Mikhail Gorbachev up and died, so I had to post cartoons about him instead. So here, with apologies to the British royal family for not coming up with a collection of QEII toons, is my 1922 Back to School tribute.

"Freckles and His Friends" by Merrill Blosser for NEA, Sept. 5, 1922

Freckles must have been utterly oblivious to the passage of time that summer if he somehow was completely unaware of the start of the school year. I could see him forgetting about it if he were just entering kindergarten, but he's obviously a year or two into schoolboydom if he views going to school as "Just Like Going to Jail."

From the look of things, he's getting the school year off on the wrong foot. The school bell is ringing, and he's at least a quarter mile away. Pop's was not a generation whose cars lined up for blocks dropping off and picking up their younguns at school.

"Life's Little Tragedies" by Alfred "Zere" Ablitzer in New York Evening Post, Sept. 9, 1922

Yeah, kid, go ahead and blame it on the dog.

"'Cap' Stubs" by Edwina Dumm for George Matthew Adams Service, Sept. 5, 1922

Mutts have feelings, too, you know.

"Aw―Gee Whiz" by Gaar Williams in Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1922

With the end of summer, the rest of these schoolboys, unlike Freckles McGoosey, were well aware of their impending doom. The lad in Gaar Williams's cartoon may try to hide, but he won't be able to hold his breath underwater long enough to do much but make his own self late for the bell.

"The Hardest Part" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Association, ca. August 30, 1922

As you have probably noticed, these cartoons are all about boys. Girls went to school, too, but they apparently didn't grow up to draw cartoons about it. 

"'Cap' Stubs" by Edwina Dumm for George Matthew Adams Service, Aug. 28, 1922

Even in Edwina Dunn's strip, the girls are peripheral characters — like Violet and Patty, or Susie Derkins, or Katie Franklin. (As we discussed last March, Cap, too, would also be relegated to the margins as Tippie the Dog took over the strip.)

"Another Strike Possibility" by Terry Gilkison for Autocaster, ca. August 18, 1922

Reluctant schoolboys are already a cliché in 1922, so let's turn to a cartoon that made an extra effort to be timely. Terry Gilkison references here the months-long and contentious strikes by coal miners and railway workers in his back-to-school cartoon.

By the time my generation was matriculating, teacher strikes were no longer the stuff of a kid's fanciful imagination. For a while, teachers in my school district were going on strike just about every other year. A strike during my senior year lasted nearly two months; when it was over, the district had to add several Saturdays and the entire month of June to the school year in order to meet the state-mandated minimum number of school days. (We seniors got to graduate on schedule so that those of us going to college could meet their deadlines for sending in our graduation records. Everyone else had to go to school for three more weeks.)

"The Days of Real Sport" by Clare Briggs in New York Tribune, August 17, 1922

School has not been the only option for older kids, then or now, as illustrated by this Clare Briggs cartoon. For some people, an early entry into the workforce is the right answer. Ma and Pa do not believe that Malcolm here is one of those people, and are old enough to remember a time when many kids Malcolm's age had been in the workforce for years.

(Malcolm, for that matter, is old enough to remember those days, too; even if he didn't personally know anyone in that situation.)

"The Road to Success" by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, September 12, 1922

John Knott's Mr. J.H. Wisdom would give Malcolm the same advice as his parents.

And not just to boys like Freckles, Cap, and Malcolm:

"School Authorities Report..." by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Sept. 25, 1922

Now, I'm putting together something for next Saturday already, so nobody important gets to die next week, okay?

Fare Thee Well, Elizabeth II

I won't have a remembrance post this Saturday about Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away Thursday at the age of 96. She is the only British monarch most of us from Boomers forward can remember, sitting on the throne for seven decades, longer than any other monarch except Louis XIV.

Not having drawn her in many cartoons myself — three, maybe four at the most — I will leave any Queen Elizabeth cartoon compilations to others. 

But here's one of mine from 2013.

Q Toon: Dear Leader's Cheerleader

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) predicted — or perhaps threatened— that if Donald Joffrey Trump is ever brought to trial for absconding with a couple dozen boxes of tippy-top secret White House documents and stashing them at his Florida hotel, hordes of his MAGA minions will riot. Again.

During his time in office, Trump found the presidency to be an effective shield against being held legally accountable in any court of law. Once he was kicked out of office, not content to let old crimes and lawsuits catch up with him, he immediately started purloining papers and flouting the very law he signed in February, 2018. 

Trump's conceit that he is permanently immune from prosecution is simply the way he has conducted business since, well, prep school. Now Requblicans argue that he has precedent on his side: no president or former president has had to serve jail time. True: Nixon got that pardon, and Harding died before the corruption of his administration burst forth.

If the prospect of Trump sitting in a jail cell is too much for the Constitution to bear, perhaps — if the case ever makes it past his legal maneuvers (and the judges he got to appoint) to trial in the first place — some other punishment can fit the crime.

Trump thinks he's entitled to swipe the nation's secrets? Okay, let's publicize his.

What did he really promise Putin at Helsinki? 

Or is that still a matter of national security?

Those tax returns he promised to release someday after he got elected, then.

We at least deserve to know Mr. Stable Genius's school records.
 

This Week's Sneak Peek

 Hope you're having a glorious Labor Day, everyone.

Are you ready for some football analogies?

Remembering Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union, died this week, age 91; so for today's Saturday History Tour, here are some of my cartoons of one of the most transformative leaders of the latter half of the 20th Century.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Nov. 14, 1989

With his election by the Politburo in March of 1985, Gorbachev became the USSR's fourth leader in as many years. Leonid Brezhnev's ill health had been kept secret for years before his death in 1982; his successor, Yuri Andropov, was felled by kidney failure after 15 months in office, aged 69. Konstantin Chernenko, a heavy smoker, was at death's door almost from the start of his 13-month administration, and died of emphysema and complications at the age of 73.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, March 21, 1985

Gorbachev came to power eager to make his mark. He signaled his willingness to negotiate arms limitations with the United States, a topic whose progress had ground to a halt after Ronald Reagan scrapped the talks begun under Brezhnev with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 10, 1986

The West added two Russian words to our vocabulary under Mikhail Gorbachev: perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). The former was actually a policy begun under Brezhnev in 1979, but to which Gorbachev announced a renewed and firm commitment. His reforms decentralized governance and economic controls while lifting some of the secrecy enjoyed by Kremlin bureaucrats.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Sept. 7, 1989

What Gorbachev hadn't factored in was the desire of the citizens of Soviet client states and some non-Russian S.S.R.'s to break away from Moscow entirely. It's not as if independence movements were unknown; Poland's Solidarność movement had been a headache for the government in Warsaw since 1980, and memories lingered of Moscow's brutal suppression of revolts in Czechoslovakia (1968),  Hungary (1956), and East Germany (1953).

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Nov. 9, 1989

When the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe completely collapsed in November and December of 1989, there were too many dominoes falling at once for Gorbachev to seriously consider sending the Russian military into every countries quitting the Warsaw Pact.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Nov. 16, 1989

Rough seas for Gorbachev's Mediterranean summit meeting with U.S. President George H.W. Bush were the perfect metaphor for the Soviet leader's predicament.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Dec. 5, 1989

(This was months before Bush would throw up into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, by the way.)

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Feb. 20, 1990

I still like this take-off on a scene from Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, even though you could plug just about any politician going through a rough patch into this scenario. Similarly with this next cartoon. 

May, 1990. Unpublished?

Reunification of Germany certainly horrified the elder members of the politburo; Gorbachev was also old enough to remember World War II. This, as much as any other single factor, led to the hardliners' attempted coup in the summer of 1991.

August, 1991. Unpublished?

The coup met sturdy resistance from their own citizens. Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin emerged as the hero of the moment, representing liberalization beyond what Gorbachev had ever intended.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Sept. 9, 1991

The end of the Soviet Union happened over Christmas break at the UW-M Post, and I don't have any cartoons about Gorbachev after that.

The memorial cartoons I've seen this week have all credited Gorbachev with bringing his country out of the oppression of the communist regime. Many have contrasted him favorably with Vladimir Putin, who has imposed a new oppressive regime of деконструкция and закрытость, and clearly believes that Gorbachev's administration was a disaster. 

I have not yet seen how any Russian cartoonists have responded to Gorbachev's passing. Are memorial cartoons even a thing there? If so, was Mikhail Gorbachev someone you can praise under Putin's regime without buying a one-way ticket out a sixth-story hospital window?