Q Toon: Come On Out Now

Having drawn three cartoons with LGBTQ+ Pride Month themes over the past four weeks, I decided to offer something for my client publications currently assembling their July issues.

Ed here represents all those dogs-in-the-manger who whine "Why isn't there a Straight Pride Month?" (or White History Month, or non-handicap parking spaces) and grouse about all the precious seconds they've lost waiting for "Para español, oprima dos" to be over.

The parades may be winding down, and any pride flags that have been flying over government buildings will soon be folded up for storage. But right-wing attacks on the LGBTQ+ community were going full bore well before June 1, and I have every expectation that they will continue unabated for months to come.

💻

Tech stuff: I decided to go with Epson after all. The rather pricey ET-8550 was the only independently recommended unit I could find that could scan a 9"x12" original (my bristol board will not flip around in a scanner feeder even if I were to trim it to the necessary 8"x12"), print in color, and hook up wirelessly. It takes up a bit more space than I would like, but not as much as a laser unit would.

Rather than those little ink cartridges that tended to gum our previous printer up, it uses those ink bottles you see Shaquille O'Neal hawking on TV, so that will take some getting used to. There are six colors to keep track of instead of four (a black for text, a black for photos, gray, magenta, cyan and yellow). Supposedly, the bottle ink lasts longer before drying up than the ink cartridges do; you just have to be more careful about spilling any.

I've already gotten a bit of magenta on one finger.

It looks fabulous. 

This Week's Sneak Peek

I'm having trouble with my scanner today. After spending hours trying to get past this error message every time I turned it on —

— including searching for scraps of misfed paper; turning it on while simultaneously pressing the Stop/Clear Settings button, the Setup button, the Copy button, the Scan button, and various combinations of the above; unplugging the scanner; uninstalling the printer/scanner from the computer, downloading and installing a new driver; blowing compressed air inside; removing and replacing all ink cartridges; dropping from a two-inch height —

I tried contacting on-line help services, both from Epson and independent of them. They suggested removing any scraps of misfed paper; unplugging the scanner; uninstalling from the computer and reinstalling; removing and replacing all ink cartridges.

Ctrl-Rinse, Repeat.

So I ended up running my cartoon out to the church where I'm the organist, and having the pastor scan it and email it to me. Having to work from a grayscale image rather than a Black/White one made a difference when colorizing it (lots of neither white nor black pixels along every line), and I'm worried that the results in print will not be up to my usual standards.

I had already begun shopping for a new printer/scanner. My better half occasionally has to print charts for work; there is so much data crammed onto every chart that its font size is about 4 picas. Any little gaps in printing can make whole lines illegible, and this Epson is very prone to gapping. Running the head cleaner functions accomplishes little other than emptying the toner cartridges one after another.

Sorry, Shaq, but I don't believe I'll be looking at another Epson.

Anyway, here's this week's sneak peek:

P.S.: The hits from Singapore keep on coming. I read that there have been legal advances in LGBTQ+ rights in the city-state lately, but I can't believe that accounts for thousands of theoretical visitors here every day.

Zhème Jiǔle, Hěn Gāoxìng Rènshí Nǐ

And just like that, all those thousands of Singaporeans suddenly lost interest in the blog.

The Great Nothern Migration, Updated

Three weeks ago, I led off a post with this John McCutcheon cartoon about Black Americans leaving Dixieland for more attractive job markets in the north.

"The South Will Soon Be Demanding Restriction of Migration of Its Labor," by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1923

I really should have hunted up some cartoons by southern editorial cartoonists to represent a different viewpoint. 

Well, better late than never: Memphis Commercial Appeal cartoonist James T. Alley answered McCutcheon with this cartoon cautioning any Black Tennesseeans that while the pay might be better up north, southern employers were more considerate of their workers than those cold, heartless Yankee businessmen.

"The Labor Agent Doesn't Picture This" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 24, 1923

Likewise, if you thought the hearts of those Yankee employers was frosty, wait till you got a load of their winters!

"I Wish I Wuz in de Land of Cotton" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 13, 1923

As hinted by the cut line below his May 13 cartoon, one shouldn't mistake Alley for a recalcitrant devotee of the Lost Cause. Still, I have difficulty imagining any of the emigres writing in to the Memphis Commercial Appeal to voice their regrets.

Alley did, however, have a point about the weather, particularly in 1923. That year, the winter lingered in the Northeast and Midwest unusually late, only to have an early summer hot on its heels.

"Hiptized" by Frank "Spang" Spangler in Montgomery Advertiser, May 4, 1923

Alabama cartoonist "Spang" Spangler chimed in that all y'all are gonna miss yer soul food, and who knows what gawdawful crap is in "The Great Mister Y Northern Hash," bless its heart, up yonder!

To be clear, we've got plenty of watermelon, cantaloupe, yam, and corn on the cob up here; the "Negro Exodus" brought collard greens and field peas along with it as well. Possums are all over the place, if not necessarily on the dinner menu. I will, however, confess to being ignorant of yallar laig.

I assume it tastes like chicken. 

"Northern Migration" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, by June 9, 1923

Last time around this topic, I skipped this cartoon because of Morris's crude racial caricatures drawn straight out of vaudeville. I get the reference he was making to migration, and I'm sure he had birds and butterflies in mind; but the resulting image reminds me too much of the flying monkeys in the 1939 "Wizard of Oz."

In 1923, Utah-born Morris had been living in New York long enough that he had to have seen what actual Black people look like. The Northern Migration had begun ramping up after World War I, but news coverage hints that it spiked dramatically in the spring of 1923.

Returning to the serious side of things, now: 

"Almost Burned Out" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. June 10, 1923

As per the cut line in Alley's May 13 cartoon, the job market was not the only reason Black southerners were leaving Dixie; but they would find the Klan expanding in the same direction.

Up North, the Klan attracted new members by agitating against Roman Catholics, foreign immigration, and alcohol. Yet there was plenty of anti-Black animus already there, as evidenced by the postwar race riots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington D.C., and elsewhere, as well as lynchings as far north as Duluth.

Elmer Bushnell was not a southern cartoonist (aside from working in Memphis at some point early in his career); he drew for the Ohio-based Central Press Association. I found this cartoon of his on the front page of Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer-Sun; and I have to wonder whether the caption, predicting that the Klan would soon sputter out, was his or the creation of a milquetoast editor wearing rose-colored glasses under his green eye shades.

To my eye, the caption ill matches the cartoon. Nor does it square with the historical record; the Klan was a force to be reckoned with nationwide throughout the 1920's.

"Going Back into Business for Himself" by Roy H. James in St. Louis Star, June 7, 1923

Certainly the inner politics of the Klan were still deemed noteworthy by other editorial cartoonists, as here commenting on a breakaway movement led by "Col." William Joseph Simmons. Inspired by Birth of a Nation, Simmons had founded the 20th-Century iteration of the Klan in 1915, but was ousted as Imperial Wizard in November, 1922. Simmons opposed a move championed by his successor, Hiram Wesley Evans, to admit women to the Klan, "in violation of a decree entered in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, and, further still, ... the original charter which defines that male members only shall be admitted to the Order."

Simmons's Knights of Kamelia, also known as Knights of the Flaming Sword, is estimated to have grown to 60,000 members nationwide. Estimates of Klan membership under Evans, meanwhile, vary widely from 2.6 million to 6 million members, the terrorist organization extending beyond Dixie, especially in Indiana and Michigan.

It Comes Already Furnished

 And look how open and spacious it is!

Q Toon: Hamtramck Flag Flap

When this blog last visited Hamtramck, Michigan, it was to rerun a tongue-in-cheek 1922 column by John T. Wallace and H.T. Plass in the Detroit Free Press, imagining that popular cartoon character Andy Gump (no relation to Forrest) had been elected mayor of the newly incorporated enclave. 

Surely Wallace and Plass would have found it equally fantastical that the citizens of Hamtramck would elect a Muslim mayor and an entirely Muslim city council, but that is exactly what they did in 2021.

Reversing policy of their previous administration, the Hamtramck council voted last Tuesday to ban displaying the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag on city property.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.
In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”

Mayor Amer Ghalib is promising to hold firm to the city's ban on flags representing religious, racial, ethnic, or sexual-oriented groups, and accuses LGBTQ+ people and allies of subjecting Hamtramck to  "extortion" for choosing to "stay neutral when it comes to flying flags of different groups." Under the new ordinance, only the U.S. flag, state of Michigan flag, city of Hamtramck flag, and P.O.W. flag are allowed.

Mayor Ghalib claims that the ordinance doesn't lessen the rights of LGBTQ+ Hamtramckians, they just don't deserve special consideration. You know, like those "special rights" we were told when we wanted equal rights to get married or serve in the military. Or the "All lives matter" slogan that means "Sure, Black Lives Matter, but don't bother me about your problems."

Now, I don't know what other flag requests might have been vexing Hamtramck City Hall, but it seems telling that the council chose to pass this ordinance right smack-dab in the middle of LGBTQ+ Pride Month ― and less than a week before Juneteenth. 

Has anyone checked whether the Hamtramck Police Department keeps a Thin Blue Line flag in the front office?

This Week's Sneak Peek

One of the peculiar challenges of niche market cartooning is drawing someone for the first, and possibly the only time. It's hard to know if even the subject's own mother would recognize the caricature.

So here's one of the preliminary drawings from my sketchbook to tide you over until Thursday.

Of Monkey and Moon Shines

Your humble scribe is still trying to wrap up our look back the cartoons of May, 1923.

"??????" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, May 24, 1923

That month, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential nominee and Secretary of State in the Wilson administration, was a candidate for Moderator of the 135th session of the Presbyterian Churches of the United States in Indianapolis, declaring his intention to have "the heretics of the church brought to task." There he made news fulminating against "the brute doctrine of evolution."

"There Are Worse Evils..." by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. May 29, 1923

Free Silver having become a moot issue by 1923, opposition to Darwin's theory of evolution had joined Prohibition as Bryan's main causes celebres. He had delivered a speech in 1921 entitled "The Menace of Darwinism."

"Not to Be Diverted" by Lute Pease in Newark News, ca. May 24, 1923

Bryan was defeated in balloting for the denomination's Moderator by Dr. Charles F. Wishart, President of Wooster College in Ohio. Bryan was offered the chairmanship of a church commission on Home Missions, but turned the position down. Delegates did, however, approve a Bryan plank requiring a pledge of total abstinence by all Presbyterian clergy and laity, as well as heads of colleges and schools of all faiths.

"Greatest Show on Earth" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 22, 1923

Daniel Fitzpatrick here depicts Bryan leading the Democratic donkey, followed by animal symbols for Prohibition and Darwinism. Other than a handful of editorial cartoonists, few people took Bryan seriously as a presidential contender any more; but he remained his party's foremost "Dry" advocate.

"The Damp Road or the Dry Road" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June 19, 1923

There was no unity in Democratic Party on the issue of Prohibition, however. (Dorman Smith here employs then-common usage of "Democracy" to refer to the Democratic Party.) May of 1923 saw repeal by the New York state legislature of the "Mullan-Gage Act," which had authorized state police enforcement of Prohibition. New York's Governor, Al Smith, opposed Prohibition, even serving liquor in the Governor's office, and was preparing for a presidential run in 1924.

By signing the "Repealer Act," Smith invited the calumny of Mr. Bryan, who warned Smith to "expect resistance from the defenders of the home, the school and the Church." Smith, in return, observed that when given the opportunity to send the three-time presidential nominee to the White House, “a wise and discriminating electorate usually takes care to see that Mr. Bryan stays at home.”

"It's Sure to Cause Talk" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1923

Support and opposition to Prohibition crossed party lines. On June 15, a coalition of Republicans, Socialists, and the lone Democrat in Wisconsin's Assembly followed New York in passing a bill, inspired by the New York law, which would have stopped enforcement of Prohibition in my home state.

The Wisconsin State Journal, conceding that its editorial board had its differences with Wisconsin's Senior Senator, cautioned the "Wet" politicians that the Assembly's action might become an unwelcome embarrassment to Robert LaFollette's presidential aspirations.

The measure was not taken up in the State Senate, however, where "Dry" forces were firmly in control. 

"The Liveliest Stump" by Dorman Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June 1, 1923

There will be more to come on both the Evolution and Prohibition stories to come. Stay tooned!

Toon: The Toilet Papers

Breaking News Bulletins have been gushing out of a firehose this past week, so I'm skipping the usual Sneak Peek this week to bring you a Special Breaking Cartoon.

Republicans in Congress, the presidential race, and the media responded immediately to the indictment of Donald CapsLock Trump over the classified documents he has been hoarding — and hiding — at Mar-a-Lago by leaping to his defense. 

Typical was this tweet from DeSantis: “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.”

But the most egregious offender this weekend was arguably the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, the bible of unfettered free-market capitalism, which has taken the notion that “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” to unprecedented heights. The Rupert Murdoch-owned paper that in 2001 argued that Bill Clinton should be indicted over the alleged Monica Lewinsky perjury, thus “upholding the principle that even Presidents and ex-Presidents are not above the law,” and which called in 2016 for criminal charges against candidate Hillary Clinton over her emails has had an abrupt change of heart.

“It was once unthinkable in America that the government’s awesome power of prosecution would be turned on a political opponent,” the WSJ wrote in an editorial this week. “That seal has now been broken. It didn’t need to be.” The piece turns on its head what was actually unthinkable before this week: that federal laws that are constantly charged against everyday citizens could be applied to an ex-president.

How dare the Justice Department issue charges against a Republican former president just for refusing to turn over Top Secret papers that belong to the government! It's a witch hunt! What about the papers Joe Biden returned when they turned up in his garage? What about Hunter Biden's laptop? What about Barack Obama's tan suit? What about Vince Foster? What about Naomi?

And of course, What about Hillary's emails?

Republicans in Congress, even those citing Hillary Clinton, have somehow forgotten that it was they who passed, and Trump who signed, a law turning mishandling of government documents from a misdemeanor to a felony. They did so after grilling Clinton in front of a congressional committee for eleven hours and coming up with nothing they could prosecute her for. (Want to talk about "weaponization of the federal government," Speaker McCarthy?)

So Prosecutor Jack Smith was compelled to present the grand jury's case to the general public before a trial jury could be empaneled. He released testimony that Trump had Mar-a-Lago employees spirit documents away from Mar-a-Lago when the feds were on their way to reclaim them; that Trump had shown off classified documents to guests; that pool water had been pumped into a room in which more documents were stored; that Trump had suggested that his lawyers perjure themselves.

And the photographs! Boxes of documents stored on the Mar-a-Lago ballroom stage. In a room with a high-volume copier. In a bathroom. In the shower. Highly classified, top secret documents mixed in willy-nilly with newspaper and magazine clippings.

Republicans are, however, damned right in complaining that the this is all so unprecedented.

In a conventional White House not consumed with efforts to overthrow an election, the White House Counsel’s Office and relevant personnel would have sorted through the president’s records weeks before Inauguration Day and ensured that any classified records were properly secured. Reporting indicates that Trump’s White House was focused on “other matters” until the final days of Trump’s presidency, and the resulting failure to separate out classified records may have been the result. 

Remembering the Revrunt Pat

I had another Graphical History post all set to publish today; but if those cartoons could wait 100 years, they can wait another week. For all the material he has provided me over the years, Pat Robertson deserves his cartoon obituary here.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., August, 1986

By the way, Mike Peterson noted approvingly that the angel in the cartoon I posted yesterday was Black. Now, whatever his other sins, I have no reason to believe that Robertson was racist. As the above cartoon may remind some of you, when he was publicly praying to God in 1986 whether he should run for president, his co-host Ben Kinchlow was Black.

By the same token (if you'll pardon the expression), my point in the above cartoon was not so much about the idea of Robertson running as Second Banana to a Black man, as it was that Robertson and Jackson were two men of the cloth who agreed on absolutely nothing other than the name of their Lord and Savior.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Feb. 4, 1988

Well, that and wanting to run for President. (With or without God's blessing.)

Jackson was able to hang on in the 1988 presidential race longer than Robertson, but I would suggest that both had a greater influence on their respective political party than most of the other politicians in my cartoon.

Besides, Jackson had his Rainbow Coalition to keep himself busy, and Robertson his 700 Club.

Q Syndicate, Sept. 2001

Then came 9/11, and a dastardly, unforgivable exchange between Robertson and fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell on Robertson's TV show two days later.

It was Falwell who blamed the deadly terrorist attack on "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians," but it was Robertson who answered, "I totally concur."

Q Syndicate, 2010

Robertson's flock kept sending in their fleece no matter how inflammatory the rest of us found his repeated attributing every disaster that befell anyone in the country to God being pissed at lesbians and gays. Thus Robertson's Club marked its 50th anniversary in 2010, and so did I.  

Q Syndicate, August 2011

As his own editor, Robertson perhaps realized that he was saying a lot of silly things on his show. Not all of them were as hurtful as the 9/11 diatribe:

"Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge."

Or perhaps the Washington Monument was over 150 years old. You decide. 

Q Syndicate, Sept., 2013

Others were less benign.

Prior to yesterday, my last Robertson cartoon was about him fulminating against gays' and lesbians' influence on American academia.

Q Syndicate, April 2017

“We have given the ground to a small minority,” he said. “You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population. That’s all. That’s statistically all. But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities. It’s just unbelievable what’s being done. A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference. The majority — it’s time it wakes up.”

Robertson may be gone, but we still have DeSantis, Abbott, Pence, and the rest of the lot who have declared war on intellectuals, science, philosophy, art, literature, history, and compassion.

Not to mention the lesbians and gays and, of course, the transgender menace.

Q Toon: Pat's Just In Time!

The passing of antigay televangelist Pat Robertson this week immediately occasioned a flurry of cartoons of him alternately at the Pearly Gates or inside the Gates of Hell.

In spite of my Christian faith, I'm not so sure I fully believe in an afterlife. Eternal life is a formidable concept to grasp. 

We sing in Amazing Grace that even after an eternity, "we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun"; still going to choir practice day after day after day umpteen decillion millennia after the sun has gone nova, Andromeda has crashed into our galaxy, the whole universe has dissolved, and the last subatomic particle has completely decayed, will be awfully depressing to the many Christians who don't care to join their church choir today.

Nevertheless, I do believe that if one believes in the Bible at all, one ought to take John 20:23 seriously; so I give you the Celestial Elevator.

You may decide for yourself which direction it is headed.

Ask Your Governor If It's Right For You

Much of the debate over Florida's new anti-transgender legislation involved their prohibition of transition treatment for youth. Now that those Republican bills have been signed into law, Floridians are discovering that they attack adults' health care, too: 

Lucas, 26, lost his access to treatment when the Orlando clinic that prescribed him hormone replacement therapy stopped providing gender-affirming care altogether. The couple also worries about staying in a state that this year enacted several other bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community. ...

The new law that bans gender-affirming care for minors also mandates that adult patients seeking trans health care sign an informed consent form. It also requires a physician to oversee any health care related to transitioning, and for people to see that doctor in person. Those rules have proven particularly onerous because many people received care from nurse practitioners and used telehealth. The law also made it a crime to violate the new requirements.

Another new law that allows doctors and pharmacists to refuse to treat transgender people further limits their options. ...

At least 19 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. But restrictions on adults haven't been part of the conversation in most places. Missouri’s attorney general tried to impose a rule in that state, but it was pulled back.

Florida is “the proving ground of what they can get away with,” Dunn said. [Lana Dunn, chief operating officer of SPEKTRUM Health Inc.]

The increased burden on transgender adults is not a bug of the new laws, but a feature. 

For the moment, a federal court has issued an injunction against the part of the law prohibiting the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors; but DeSantis's Florida is sure to appeal the case all the way to the Republican-stacked Supreme Court. Once Alito, Thomas, and the Trumply Trio have overruled Judge Robert Hinkle, carbon copies of the Florida law are sure to be rushed through other red state legislatures like the flu in a kindergarten.

This is only one front in the right-wingers' full-bore assault on the LGBTQ+ community, so I expect more and worse to come as they test "what they can get away with."

✍

P.S.: Any guesses as to which person around that breakfast table might be transgender?

This Week's Sneak Peek

Breakfast! It's the most important meal of the day.

But you wouldn't invite the boss over for it.

The Great Northern Migration

The 1920's were a high-water mark for conservative movements in the U.S.A., and that includes the Ku Klux Klan.

"The South Will Soon Be Demanding Restriction of Migration of Its Labor" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1923

The differential in wages was certainly a contributing factor, but Klan activity in the South, where it had thoroughly permeated local and state government and law enforcement, was a significant impetus compelling the Great Migration of Black Americans north. Time magazine reported (May 5, 1923) that 32,000 Blacks had left Georgia, 22,750 had quit South Carolina, and 20,000 fled Alabama, an exodus that "almost rivals the phenomenal movement of 1915-16, when the best authorities estimate that 250,000 went North."

Contrary to John McCutcheon's cartoon, southern governments do not appear to have been alarmed by the exodus. Race-based and church groups up north, on the other hand, often had their hands full dealing with the newcomers.

Hauling livestock and whatever else they could from their farms, Blacks arrived at Penn Station every weekend. The new arrivals faced many of the same attitudes repeated in the "immigration crisis" of today (yet were not bused back south to Florida or Texas). 

Crusader News Service quoted a New York City spokesperson for Travelers Aid Society on June 20, 1923:

"It is argued that we get the bad element, the undesirables. This is true only relatively. We get some good and we get some bad. The good we get need a chance and opportunity if they are to remain good. The bad must have a chance, an opportunity, some instructions, some help if they are to become good.

"Before we hasten to discourage the brother whose flight from the South is just a little later than our own, let us give him a chance, a man's chance. Strangers are suspicious of other strangers, and naturally so. It is our duty to offer the welcome, and they will accept it in the spirit given.

"We have little reason to point out their faults, their awkwardness, their crude customs, their revolvers, and their lack of decorum, until we are sure they have been taught by us in all the things known to our community life."

Crusader News Service didn't identify that spokesperson, but I think you can probably guess the color of his or her skin.

Migrants north arrived to find that the Klan was already here. The Klan became an issue in the mayoral contest in Minneapolis in the spring of 1923, after their local publication there, The Voice of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, published allegations against incumbent Mayor, George Leach.

"Going South" by Wilfred Canan in Minneapolis Daily Star May 19, 1923

The Voice had published an accusation by one Gladys Kennedy that Mayor Leach had visited her gambling house for "wild parties" and had carried on an affair with her. Leach fought back, taking five Klan members to court. They included Klan "Exalted Cyclops" Roy H. Miner, who was running against Leach for mayor, editor and publisher of Hennepin County Enterprise George Silk, and suspended deputy sheriff Thomas Sullivan.

In May, a Minneapolis jury found the five guilty of libel. Kennedy recanted her allegations, but she and Miner were sentenced to 90 days at a workhouse. Silk and Sullivan received 60-day sentences; and Shirley Reichert, a University of Minnesota student who as a notary public received the Kennedy affidavit, was fined $50.

"The Usurper" by William F. Canan in Minneapolis Daily Star, June 9, 1923

Miner withdrew from the mayoral race. In June, the Minneapolis Daily Star reported that the mayoral candidate replacing Miner, State Senator William A. Campbell, was under investigation for being a leader in the Minnesota Klan. Campbell had supposedly written a number of articles for the Voice alleging malfeasance by various city council members.

Leach would be reelected by a hefty margin.

"Tearing Off the Sheet" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, ca. May 29, 1923

In New York and New Jersey, the Klan staged mass protests against an amendment proposed by State Senator (later Mayor of New York City) Jimmy Walker to New York's Civil Rights Law compelling unmasking of KKK members. 

Signed into law by Governor Al Smith, the Walker Amendment didn't mention the Klan by name, instead requiring "every existing corporation and every existing unincorporated association having a membership of 20 or more person, which incorporation or association requires an oath as a prerequisite or precondition of membership, other than a labor union or a benevolent order mentioned in the Benevolent Orders Law... [to] file with the Secretary of State a sworn copy of its constitution, by-laws, rules, regulations, and oath of membership, together with a roster of its membership and list of its officers for the current year."

New York Daily News, May 28, 1923

The New York Daily News reported that 8,000 klansmen gathered at Eastport, Long Island; the newspaper's photographers were at a simultaneous rally in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Further demonstrations were reported in Syracuse, Buffalo, Schenectady, and Binghamton.

"Civilization, 1923" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31, 1923

A hooded speaker identified as the King Kleagle swore to the Pompton Lakes mob, "Al Smith by signing that bill barred himself forever from the presidency of the United States." 

Given that Smith was Roman Catholic by faith, the Klan was already predisposed against his presidential aspirations. By the time he was the Democratic nominee in 1928, the Klan's "whispering campaign" attacking him was well-established.

Klan opposition would have nothing to do with Mayor Walker's eventual downfall, however.

Constitutionality of the Walker Law would ultimately be upheld by the New York and United States Supreme Courts in a case brought by Buffalo Klansman George C. Bryant, who argued that it violated the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. 

In the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, Justice Willis Van Devanter wrote the Walker Law could legally single out the Klan, given that

"it was conducting a crusade against Catholics, Jews, and negroes, and stimulating hurtful religious and race prejudices; that it was striving for political power, and assuming a sort of guardianship over the administration of local, state, and national affairs, and that at times it was taking into its own hands the punishment of what some of its members conceived to be crimes.
"We think it plain that the action of the courts below in holding that there was a real and substantial basis for the distinction made between the two sets of associations or orders was right, and should not be disturbed."

Q Toon: Sense and Sensitivity

For the sin of displaying LGBTQ+ Pride merchandise, Target Stores have become the latest casualty in the Rabid Right's Kancel Kulture Kampaign.

Target announced earlier this week that the company was removing some LGBTQ-themed items from shelves and moving displays intended to honor Pride Month to the back of the store in response to a public backlash from the right. But what happened at Target goes far beyond just some people calling for a boycott.

As Target explained in a statement, some customers had knocked down Pride displays at stores while others outraged by Pride-themed merchandise angrily approached workers as well as posted threatening videos on social media. Target has been celebrating Pride Month for more than a decade, but as the company noted, “since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”

And to think that only thirteen years ago, Target was funding those antigay ingrates!

Right-wingers, including Republican office holders and presidential candidates, are openly working to make anything LGBTQ+ "toxic," and they won't stop with books and rainbow tees. Or who appears on a beer can. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been bogged down in a losing battle against the lawyers of Disney World, one of the largest and most prominent employers and tourist attractions in his home state, and why? Were they a menace to public health and safety? Were they sucking money out of the state treasury? No, it was because Disney Inc. dared to criticize his "Don't Say Gay" law. 

So the DeSantis and the Florida legislature went on the warpath against Disney with a single-minded fury, only to end up looking like Kendall Roy sitting at the end of the pier.

Disney, it turns out, has better lawyers than DeSantis and his entire legislature put together.

And a stiffer spine than the folks at Budweiser and Target.