This Week's Sneak Peek

Saturday's post wasn't quite what I meant it to be.

I always take time to proofread and tweak these history posts, usually hours or days after I'm nearly finished, and often on a different device. There is a strange quirk which may be a feature of Apple computers, or the Foxfire browser, or maybe it's how Blogger interacts with either one: there are routine commands which don't do what I've come to expect them to.

The deadliest is Ctrl-Z.

Proofreading the Saturday post on Friday afternoon, I found a line break and a paragraph break that I didn't want together, so I hit backspace. It got rid of the wrong break, so I hit Ctrl-Z to "undo."

In the Apple-Foxfire-Blogger interface, however, Ctrl-Z is "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"

Everything disappeared. Text, cartoons, line breaks and paragraph breaks alike.

And before I could exit the editor, Blogger autosaved the blank page.

There was nothing to do but recreate the post from scratch. Ctrl-Z in Apple-Foxfire-Blogger doesn't put deleted content into a buffer, so you can't Ctrl-V; the content won't reappear with "redo" (hell, "redo" probably re-exterminates it for all I know).

It reminds me of my first job that involved computer data entry. This was way back before Windows; we were using Atari computers and keyboards, which had an "Abort" key right next to the "Enter" key. "Abort" did exactly what this Apple-Foxfire-Blogger Ctrl-Z does, and no undo, redo, paste or anything else would recover your work.

I don't miss that "Abort" key at all. Ever.

Please take note, whatever Dalek is responsible for Ctrl-Z.

We Just Want to Pump You Up

When we left off last week's review of American cartoons from January, 1923 about France and Belgium sending troops into Germany to take control of the mining and lumber industries in the Ruhr valley, I promised some German cartoons this week. Given that the German mark had become practically worthless (we'll get to that later), whereas the country's industry had emerged from World War I essentially unscathed, the French government decided to confiscate whatever Germany had of value.

And not just coal and wood.

"Frankreich Fordert 60000 Tonnen Stickstoff" by Karl Arnold in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 24, 1923

As you might expect, German cartoonists were none too pleased with their French overlords.

Karl Arnold's cartoon refers to reports of declining birth rates in France. The same, however, was the case in Germany, as well as Great Britain, Belgium, and Italy. A brief baby boom immediately after the armistice was declared was followed by a decline in each of these countries almost every year through the end of World War II.

"Die Friedens-Sabotage" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Jan. 7, 1923

German cartoonists followed their government's lead in blaming France for derailing the peace process. Germany also hoped for relief assistance from the United States. French diplomacy probably didn't play as large a part in holding up American relief as did Republican isolationism.

"Clemenceaus Rückfehr aus Amerika" by Hans-Maria Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Jan. 7, 1923

But this was at a time when French elder statesman Georges Clemenceau returned from a lecture tour in the U.S. A main focus of his speeches was his argument against American isolationism (but also a plea for leniency in expecting France to repay U.S. war loans any time soon). His tour did little to alter U.S. policy.

"Der 'Grosse Vater' in Washington" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Jan. 7, 1923

 

Coming off years of scathing cartoons of Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Johnson, half-American himself, held some hope that Warren Harding would hold to a more neutral European policy than his predecessor. His cartoon here continues a centuries-long motif of European cartoonists depicting the U.S. with Native American imagery. In this case, the transoceanic calumet is apt; keeping such a long pipe lit is no mean feat.

The smoke from the pipe spells out "Anleihe," which Google translates as "Bond."

"Die Grosse Täuschung" by Eduard Thony in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 10 1923

I'm fairly certain that the bushy-eyebrowed character on the right is President Harding, although I can't identify the skinny woman with the broad hat.

"Das Almächtige Gold" by Olav Gulbransson in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 10, 1923

International reparations conferences, including one organized by investment banker J.P. Morgan the previous June, failed to come up with any useful program for making Germany able to pay what the Entente powers demanded. Meanwhile, the German Reichsbank was desperately buying foreign currency, sinking the value of the mark and driving inflation to dizzying heights. 

"Die Falle" by Erich Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 10, 1923

Between June and December of 1922, the cost of living in Germany skyrocketed 1,700%; it would only get worse in 1923. Any fall in the dollar against the mark at this point was momentary. As John McCutcheon pointed out last week, however, the exchange rate had become so overwhelmingly weighted to the dollar that any fluctuation had a huge effect on German currency.

My German is not very good; I've translated the poem accompanying Schilling's cartoon as literally as possible, rather than attempting to imitate the verse. I have undoubtedly mangled a metaphor or two.

"Hoffen und Harren" by Karl Arnold in Simplicissimus, Munich, Jan. 17, 1923

So that will have to suffice for now. Until next time, let us wait patiently with Adam und Eva (he having recovered nicely from his recent paidakiectomy).

Q Toon: Apology Intercepted

Anyone who lives with a cat, or has visited someone who does, will know where I'm coming from.

It seems that ex-NFL coach, current NBC Sports commentator Tony Dungy tweeted and deleted a wisecrack repeating the popular right-wing fiction that there is are school districts somewhere in the U.S. that have installed litter boxes in school restrooms for the benefit of students who identify as cats.

It's a dog whistle slur against transgender and queer youth, so activists pounced on Dungy as if he were a laser pointer dot on the floor.

Dungy's apology must have gotten deleted along with his original tweet, but he had a screengrab of it to post in a later tweet explaining that the people continuing attacks against him must not have seen it.

This past week I posted a tweet that I subsequently deleted. I issued an apology but not everyone saw it. So I am reposting my apology here. As a Christian I want to be a force for love to everyone. A force for healing and reconciliation-not for animosity. pic.twitter.com/esew5wjUyD

We can debate whether or not this is another example of transpeople who can't take a joke; given the rise in murders and legislative assaults against transgender people in the past several years, one can understand how that community might have a diminished sense of humor.

✍

Sitting down to prepare for this week's cartoons, I whipped off a hasty caricature of Mr. Dungy in my sketchbook that I was rather pleased with.

The meme cat took a few more tries.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 
I answered a phone call from an irate elderly woman at the church where I work last week.

She was upset over having looked the church up in the Kenosha phone book, and instead of calling the church where she had attended however many years or decades ago, she got some child care institution somewhere. How was the church supposed to get new members if people couldn't find it in the phone book, she demanded to know.

I probably shouldn't have remarked that I hadn't seen a phone book in years.

The woman just got more upset on behalf of all the people everywhere who must rely on phone books because they don't have computers, and shouldn't I make sure that the information in the phone book is correct every year, and what kind of church did I come from, and so on and so forth, and maybe she should just call a Catholic church.

Which, after she finally got around to telling me why she wanted to call a church in the first place, she hung up and, presumably, did.

Backing up a little bit: I was on a council of representatives from the then sixteen ELCA Lutheran churches in town back in the early '90's, and we had tried to get those congregations to go in on a single Yellow Pages ad listing all of them. We had tried to convince the Yellow Pages not to have a separate listing of "Churches - Lutheran" apart from "Churches - Lutheran ELCA,"* "Churches - Lutheran Missouri Synod," and "Churches - Lutheran Wisconsin Synod." They also have just plain old "Churches." Our complaints fell on deaf ears; why would they want to sell one listing when they could sell two or three?

In those days, the Yellow Pages — and its rivals that came and went — were delivered free to every household, apartment, and office. If you had more than one phone on your land line, you'd get more than one phone book whether you wanted them or not. The Racine phone book, with both white page (alphabetical) and yellow page (by type of business) listings in it, was about an inch thick, 8.5"x11" newsprint paper, mostly tiny type.

Several years ago as residential land lines became more rare, the Yellow Pages went to publishing one book covering both Racine and Kenosha Counties, on smaller paper and fewer pages. If you want one, you have to order one; you don't get one just for having a phone. Many churches, with increasingly tight budgets, do not purchase ads in the Yellow Pages any more; why would they want to buy ads in a book that has been displaced by internet search engines on the phone in your pocket?

So yesterday, my better half and I were visiting my Dad, and I asked him if he had a phone book. He did, although it was four years old.

I looked up the church where I work, and the phone number was correct, in the white pages, and also in the yellow pages under both "Churches - Lutheran" and "Churches - Lutheran AELC." (A note to whomever is in charge at the Yellow Pages: the AELC joined with the ALC and LCA to form ELCA in 1987. It hasn't existed for over 35 years.)

The name of the church where I work is quite common among Protestant churches. That 2019 phone book listed like-named Lutheran churches in Kenosha, Racine, Twin Lakes, and Burlington, as well as some Baptist and non-denominational congregations. 

I noticed that the listing immediately above that of the church where I work was for a day care operated by one of those other churches. I figure that my elderly caller had dialed their number by mistake.

I hope she had better luck calling a random Catholic church. And that she didn't dial St. Mary's Catholic Benevolence Society Insurance of Waupun instead.

______________

* ELCA = Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Eclater de Ruhr

Our Saturday Graphical History Tour returns to the thrilling days of January, 1923. 

Chief among issues interesting the political cartoonists of the day was the French government's insistence upon extracting punitive reparations from Germany for the cost of World War I. The German government complained that it couldn't possibly afford to pay the Entente powers reparations at that level, to which France responded that if Germany didn't make an overdue installment payment of 50 billion marks by a January 15 deadline, the French army would attack.

"Die (Death) Wacht Am Rhein" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Jan. 3, 1923

Elmer Bushnell drew some two dozen cartoons about Franco-German tensions in the month of January alone. Most of them, in common with those of most other American cartoonists, are sympathetic to Germany's predicament and critical of France, in spite of the U.S. having fought alongside the French against Germany during the war.

"A Poor Way to Get Milk" by Rollin Kirby in  New York World, ca. Jan. 16, 1923

France and Belgium did indeed send troops into the Ruhr valley on January 11 to seize control of mining and timber industries. They met with no resistance from the essentially disarmed German army, although it was an entirely different matter with the German citizenry. Passive resistance and civil disobedience included strikes by coal miners and sabotage of trains and factories; French occupation would not be bloodless.

"No Doubt France Will Succeed" by Wilfred (aka William F.) Canan in Minneapolis Star, Jan. 23, 1923

I've come across a few cartoons in January of 1923 rehashing shopworn accusations that Germany was derelict in meeting its reparation obligations, but the vast majority blamed France for the escalation of hostilities. The last thing anyone in the U.S. wanted to see, whether isolationist or internationalist, was a return to war in Europe.

excerpt from "The Changing World" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 21, 1923

The British government wasn't eager to scrap the armistice of 1918, either. John McCutcheon notes the traditional rivalry between England and France, and also points out how worthless the Deutschmark had become. (I have edited out two panels devoted to Chicago politics.)

"Somebody Else Has Grown Tired of It" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Jan. 6, 1923

"Ding" Darling, no fan of isolationism, nevertheless concedes its appeal. He could only guess at its effectiveness between the wars then, and amid Brexit now.

"However, the Size of the Dose May Be Reduced" by William K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star Telegram, Jan. 3, 1923

Here I'd like to point out that the fellow with the waxed mustache had long been the standard American character to represent France, rather than the Marianne more common in European cartoons. (And the duck is a feature in all of W.K. Patrick's editorial cartoons.)

Returning to Elmer Bushnell's cartoon above, it's notable that he decided not to employ the stereotypical bear to represent Russia. Of course, a French rooster wouldn't be very threatening to the German mouse, relatively speaking. But I suppose Bushnell could have drawn two bears, hearkening back to France's Bourbon kings, whose anthem was better known to American children of Bushnell's era as "The Bear Went Over the Mountain."

"He Should Have Had One Long Ago" by W.K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 12, 1923

I'll give W.K. Patrick one more shot today by virtue of the uncanny coincidence that President Harding would not survive the summer.

"Congress Has Tied My Hands" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 8, 1923

Critics of Harding's administration regarded his policy of leaving European affairs in the hands of Europeans weak and feckless. Republicans in Congress (and several Democrats) were indeed opposed to any further American involvement Over There; the GOP's legislative majority had been drastically cut in the 1922 election, although the lame duck 67th Congress was still officially in session throughout January and February.

"Au Revoir" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, Jan. 12, 1923

The day before France's invasion, the Harding administration announced that U.S. military personnel would immediately return home from the Rhineland, a move of which hardly anyone on this side of the Atlantic disapproved...

"Our Rhine Soldiers Are Grieved..." by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Jan. 12, 1923

...although, for various reasons, some of our servicemen might have been less than thrilled to leave.

Next week: The German cartoonists weigh in. And whom they are pissed off at may surprise you.

Q Toon: Xed Out

On her first day on the job as Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order banning the word "Latinx" from government documents.

The order, which she says was issued "to respect the Latino community," says that "ethnically insensitive and pejorative language," and the term Latinx specifically, "has no place" in government documents or employee titles. 

Latinx, by definition, is a gender-neutral alternative to Latina or Latino. 

"One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English," the order says.

RLY?

K

WTVR

As one of the former Press Secretaries for Donald Joffrey Trump, SHS presumably knows a thing or two about language, and I can't dispute that "Latinx" grates the ears of some Latinos and Latinas — much the same as they/them preferred pronouns do to some Anglx stick-in-the-muds.

Nouns have gender in Spanish, as do the adjectives modifying them, and there isn't a neuter option as there was in the language from which Spanish sprang.

I can imagine some pedant in the dawn of the Dark Ages grousing about the pueri hodie dropping all the neuter declensions from their lingo like a bunch of damn Ostrogoths. But such are the dynamics of language, especially when cultures meet and mingle.

Far be it from me to tell Hispanophones how their language should be run. Personally, I'd let the genderqueer niñxs keep "Latinx" and get rid of that ll thing. But that's just yx. 

Sinceramente tuyx,

Su amigx Pablx

This Week's Sneak Peek

Here ya go, folks.

Tune in later this week to find out who's personx non gratx this time.
 

Hard January Threes

Yesterday, your humble scribe discussed a logo I had been working on that ended up copying the abominable snowman from "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." So I'll kick off today's Graphical History Tour down four decades of Januaries with a logo for University of Wisconsin at Parkside's Winter Carnival:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Jan. 20, 1983 et. seq.

"Snow Wars" was the theme I was given to work with; I don't remember whether having the Parkside mascot bean Old Man Winter with a snowball was the committee's idea or mine, but I suspect it was theirs.

Parkside's Winter Carnival was in its fourth year; I don't see on the university website that they still have it these days; whether it fell victim to COVID or withered away earlier I can't tell you. The week starting with a parade with floats, featuring winter games and activities, and wrapping up with a dance was intended to foster a sense of community in what was then solely a commuter campus. UW-P has long since added dormitories for resident students. 

The major winter activity more recently has been a winter arts and crafts fair (interrupted, like everything else, by COVID). My better half and I used to go to the fair, but it got too insanely crowded.

"Agent of Change" in UW-Milwaukee Post, Jan. 25, 1993

Today's post won't have any real unifying theme, and this will be the only intrusion of politics today.

I drew this cartoon in the first week of the Bill Clinton Administration, thinking that I would need some gimmick to fuel cartoons about a centrist Democrat in the White House. Clinton's presidential campaign had used "agent of change" as one of its principal themes, so I expected to be able to use the Agent of Change costume again and again.

As things turned out, I only came back to it once or twice.

"Beall and Kendall" in The Biz (Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee), Winter, 2003

I did like one of those later Agent of Change cartoons so much that I went back and colorized it — perhaps around the time that I was sending color cartoons to the Business Journal for their The Biz supplement. The Biz published quarterly, and was intended to appeal to younger readers, with shorter, snazzier articles printed in full color on higher-quality paper than the rest of the weekly paper.

My Biz cartoons accompanied an advice column that typically focused on workplace etiquette. I colorized them myself, very quickly giving up the cross-hatching that I had relied on for years.

"Don't Be So Hard on the Lad" for Q Syndicate, January, 2013

Vestiges of that cross-hatching surface again in the lower right-hand corner of this January, 2013 cartoon. I had determined at the outset to use minimal coloring in the background as a way of keeping focus on the three aging queens in the foreground. But I just couldn't leave that corner empty.

For those of you too young to remember, Manti Te'o was a first-year linebacker picked in the second round by the then-San Diego Chargers. While a football star at Notre Dame, Te'o fell victim to a catfishing hoax perpetrated by a man (since transgender woman) who has been described as a family acquaintance. Sports media fell for the hoax, too, as Te'o's supposed girlfriend, whom he only met on line and on the phone, came down with leukemia and was injured in a car crash, and ultimately died on September 11, 2012, just at the start of Te'o's professional career.

She never existed, of course, and there has been suspicion that Te'o wasn't a completely innocent victim. Be that as it may, nowadays, the "girlfriend" would have to keep up Facebook and Twitter accounts, but also Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, TikTok, WeChat, CounterSocial, Mastodon, Causes, LiveJournal, and, uh, is Nextdoor still a thing?

I do get a lot of friend requests on Facebook from fictitious women and the occasional deceased person, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if Manti Te'o's girlfriend shows up among them someday.

God Calling Yeti

At the church where I work weekdays, I have been asked to come up with a logo to publicize an upcoming "Freezin' for a Reason" fund raiser.

The pastor there has done this a couple times before: camping outdoors on the church lawn to raise money for the food pantry / free breakfast program that operates at the church (and also toward eventual repair of the church's moonscape of a parking lot). He has been joined by a couple members of the city council and county board, and they have raised a respectable sum in the past.

This year, the church council wants to include some "family-friendly" activities, so the suggestion to me was to come up with something more "family-friendly" than last year's sketch of a homeless person in winter. Their idea this year was to use a picture of a yeti, maybe holding a bag to go along with a "fill the bag with food" slogan.

I could google a drawing, they told me, or else a photo of a real one.

You may laugh, but if you google "yeti," Google will come up with plenty of photos of real ones.

Available in taupe, white, blue, green, and black.

My second search yielded several iterations of that one photo of a supposed sasquatch lumbering through the edge of the woods somewhere. They included pictures showing the exact same creature, but whiter and with a snowier background.

I tried basing a drawing on that image, but wasn't pleased with any of the versions that I came up with. One of the main problems was having the creature carrying a sack. It didn't seem to work in either hand. Or paw, whatever.

So, since this was supposed to be "family-friendly" anyway, I reached instead for the most family-friendly yeti I know of: the abominable snowman in the 1964 animated TV rendition of "Rudolph, the Red-Nose Reindeer."

Terribly derivative, I know. Had to keep it recognizable.

På tjugondag Knut körs julen ut!

Q Toon: Anything You Can Do

The Arizona state legislature is working to send their governor a series of bills to put an NC-17 rating on any performance involving cross-dressing.

Introduced by Republican Senator Anthony Kern, SB 1030 specifically calls for regulation and business licenses for drag shows and a limitation of their hours, not allowing shows between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Monday-Saturday and prohibiting shows on Sundays from 1 a.m. to 12 p.m. A violation would be a misdemeanor. That would impact Sunday morning drag brunches. “There are very popular drag brunches all over the Valley,” said [drag performer Richard] Stevens. “Some of them get anywhere from 100-300 people who just want to come out. They want to laugh.”

While Anthony Kern did not respond to Arizona’s Family for comment on his bill, Republican Senator John Kavanagh introduced one of the other bills [SB 1026] focused on not using state money to fund drag shows targeting kids. We asked him why he believes bills about drag shows are important right now. “I would suspect that this session suddenly there’s an interest in regulating drag shows because culturally there’s been a sudden preponderance or abundance of drag shows that are directed at children,” said Kavanagh.

And Senate Bill 1028, which would not allow anyone to "engage in an adult cabaret performance in either of the following locations: on pubic property or in a location where an adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a minor," would effectively criminalize "Drag Time Story Hour." 

Whether there have ever been any "Drag Time Story Hours" in Arizona, Idaho, or in any other state where Republicans are putting forth these bills, is beside the point. These new blue laws do not concern lewd or lascivious behavior. Their issue is choice of clothing. 

I toyed with several permutations of the idea behind this week's cartoon before picking up a pen. Should the drag performer channel Ethel Merman or Betty Hutton? Should there be a teacher or librarian somewhere? At one point, I was thinking of having a story read not by a female impersonator, but by some cis-het dude all dressed up in Mortal Combat Drag and a MAGA cap.

And how would be the best way to make pitching guns to schoolchildren sound ridiculous? I mean, isn't the idea preposterous on its face?

Apparently not. Friend of the blog John Kovalic came across this actual, I'm-not-making-this-up children's book, which, I have looked up myself and can vouch that its author is not kidding, trying to be ironic, or hoping to trick kids into learning arithmetic:

I refuse to link to any of the websites that sell this ammosexual groomer's primer of mass destruction, but it's a real book; and children are, if you'll pardon the expression, its target audience.

But really — how is a cartoonist supposed to outdo the lunatic fanaticism of such as Brian Lenney, M.A.?

This Week's Sneak Peek

One of the pencil roughs from my sketchbook for this week's toon:

 

Foreshadowing the Outcome

As soon as State Farm showed this ad during Sunday night's game, we shoulda known the season was over.

The Speaker in a Squeaker

News coverage of poor old Kevin McCarthy's present travails trying to convince his own caucus to elect him Speaker of the House has often mentioned that the last time such an election took more than one ballot was a century ago. So naturally, I started rummaging through newspapers from 1923 in search of editorial cartoons about their experience.

It turns out that their experience was somewhat different from Mr. McCarthy's. The election of Frederick Gillett (R-MA) as Speaker in 1923 took three days and nine ballots; but for one thing, Gillett was already Speaker of the House, and had been since 1919.

"The Only Cloud on the Horizon" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 3, 1923

But, as with the 2022 election, the 1922 election proved disappointing for Republicans. Going into the election with a congressional supermajority, the GOP lost a whopping 75 House seats. Republicans still had a majority, albeit a much narrower one; and a faction of the party — this time, the Progressives — wanted to see changes in party leadership. When the 68th Congress finally began its sessions in December — yes, December!—there were enough Progressives among Republicans to hold the Speaker's chair hostage.

"Wake Up" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Sunday Star, December 2, 1923

Why didn't the 68th Congress's convene until December? Back then, congressional terms began in March, not January. Furthermore, Gillett and the Old Guard, realizing their weakened position, delayed convening the 68th Congress until the fall, by which time President Harding had died and been succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. 

By December, Coolidge wanted to deliver an address on government funding to a joint session of Congress, and he couldn't do that until the House was in session. Gillett couldn't put the election of a Speaker off any longer.

"The Balance of Power" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, December 4, 1923

Progressives coalesced behind a Republican from Racine, Wisconsin, Henry Cooper. On the first ballot, Gillett received 197 votes, Cooper 17, Illinois Republican Martin Madden five, Tennessee Democrat Finis Garrett 195, and "present" four (Cooper, Garrett and Gillett themselves, plus Socialist Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin). Cooper's votes included those of 15 Republicans, plus two Farmer-Labor Congressmen from Minnesota, Ole Kvale and Knud Wefald.

"Trouble at the Club" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 5, 1923

No candidate having achieved the necessary 208 votes, the House proceeded to a second ballot. This time, Gillett held at 197 votes in spite of changing from voting "present" to voting for himself. Cooper's support also held steady at 17 votes, while Garrett picked up a vote. The House adjourned to try again the next day.

"Help, Somebody" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Dec., 1923

Democrat- and Progressive-leaning cartoonists such as Fitzgerald and Sykes took gleefully to their drawing boards.

"Bloc-ed" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1923

Republican-leaning cartoonists such as Bronstrup castigated the progressive "insurgents," also called "radicals," for thwarting the GOP agenda. In case you're trying to read his cartoon on a handheld device, the ties these insurgents are piling onto the train tracks are labeled "party treason," "party faithlessness," "political bloc," "party treachery," "political perfidy," and "deadlock."

"Anyhow Thy Can't Blame Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, December 3, 1923

This cartoon by Clifford Berryman stars a powerful former Speaker of the House, Joe Cannon (R-IL), who had retired from the House at the end of the 67th Congress.

"Quit Your Skidding" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 6, 1923

As a side note, other than Berryman's cartoon of Joe Cannon, none of these cartoons appear to me to feature caricatures of the principals involved. Gillett had thinning hair and sported a goatee; Cooper was wearing a white beard by this time.

"The Fruits of Victory" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, December 6, 1923

Finally, Cooper and the Progressive insurgents accepted promises of a seat on the House Rules Committee and a pledge of opportunity later to freely propose changes to House rules. Speaking on the House floor over another Congressman's objections, Cooper thanked the seventeen who voted for him in each of the previous eight ballots:

"[I]n view of the maledictions — I almost might have said curses — heaped upon the heads of the men who, without asking my consent, proposed me for Speaker — I have never asked anybody to cast a vote for me for the position — I thought I had a right, if not in justice to myself, then in justice to the men who have stood by me so loyally in the midst of this hurricane of slander and abuse, to say a word in extenuation of their offense..."

"Tying His Own Hands" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, December 5, 1923

Although two representatives stubbornly continued to vote for Illinois's Martin Madden (who had consistently voted for Gillett), Cooper and most of the other Progressives joined the rest of the Republican Party, and Gillett won the Speakership on the ninth ballot with 215 votes.

"The Elephant Tamer" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Dec. 1923

Q Toon: Disclaim to Fame

There being already far too many editorial cartoons depicting Congressnewbie-elect* George Santos (R-LI) with a Pinocchio schozzola, my take on the guy here is a reference to the printed disclaimers in television ads where they tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't take the advertiser at their word. The print is deliberately too tiny for you to read (they had to make it smaller as large-screen TVs became more affordable), and, just in case you're sitting up close to the screen, it's gone before you have a chance to read past half of the first line anyway.

I've deemed Mr. Santos worthy of a cartoon for the LGBTQ+ press on the basis of his being gay — what is known in LGBTQ+ circles as a homocon.

The "con" in that contraction is short for "conservative," not "congressman," "con artist" or "convict," but I concede that one could easily be considerably confused.

After his upset win in November, the New York Times revealed that a hell of a lot of what Santos said about himself has been lies. He claimed that his grandparents were survived the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium; they emigrated to Brazil well before the Nazis came to power. Santos has had to backtrack statements that he's Jewish; he now says that he meant to say he is "Jew-ish." Sources say that he is actually Cathol-ic.

He claimed to have earned a bachelors degree in economics and finance from Baruch College in 2010; the school has no record of it. 

He claimed to have founded an animal rescue charity that he ran from 2013 to 2018; it was never registered with the IRS. He claimed to have worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, which has come as a surprise to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Further playing into his purported real estate expertise, Santos claimed, as a landlord, he was hurt by Covid-19 related eviction protections given to renters. He went so far as saying he had not received nearly one year’s worth of rent on 13 properties. Yet, Santos did not list any properties on required financial disclosure forms, only one was mentioned—an apartment in Brazil. What makes this lie particularly spicy is the fact that The Times found that Santos actually faced multiple evictions as a renter, even being fined about $12,000 in a civil judgment.

He claimed to have earned $750,000 plus reaping $1 million to $5 million in dividends as the sole owner of a family firm, a situation that is murky at best. Whatever the firm did and who its clients were, nobody knows.

(I'm not prepared to include the discrepancy between Santos's tweets that his mother was a victim of the 9/11 attacks and that she died of cancer in December of 2016. Plenty of New Yorkers blame their subsequent cancers on the debris of the World Trade Center collapse, and I'm not a medical examiner.)

The fact that the fictitiocity of Mr. Santos's curriculum vitae hasn't come out until after his election may be one sorry result of the gutting of newsroom staffs everywhere. It isn't as if Santos were a complete unknown in 2022; he ran unsuccessfully for the same congressional seat in 2020.

His claims this time around had, moreover, been questioned in the North Shore Leader of Long Island back in September:

...when few others were covering Santos, about his “inexplicable rise” in reported net worth, from essentially nothing in 2020 to as much as $11 million two years later.

The North Shore Leader leans heavily Republican; its publisher is a three-time former candidate for that same congressional seat.

The Leader reluctantly endorsed Santos’s Democratic opponent the next month. “This newspaper would like to endorse a Republican,” it wrote, but Santos “is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot,” adding, “He boasts like an insecure child — but he’s most likely just a fabulist — a fake.

Now, mendacity is almost a prerequisite for a political career. Joe Biden's 1988 presidential run foundered when he was caught cribbing a British politician's life story as his own. Bill Clinton lied about having sexual relations with an intern.

And of course, neither of them hold a candle to the Prince of Lies who befouled the Oval Office from 2017 to 2021, disgorging some 30,000+ whoppers as President.

Perhaps instead of televised debates between candidates, what this country really needs is requiring every candidate to appear on television, with the fact-checkers from Snopes, Poynter, Politifact, and (not or) FactCheck.org, to defend their prevarications.

With one of those big red X's across the screen and a loud buzzer blaring every time the candidate gives a wrong answer.

______________

* Mr. Santos cannot be sworn into office until after somebody has been elected Speaker of the House. As of this writing, there is no sign of there being a compromise candidate who is acceptable to both the oligarch and fascist wings of the Republican Party.

First Sneak Peek of 2023

Weighing in... better late than never: