2023 in Headlines

Another year has come and just about gone, so here is my annual photo of major headlines during anno domini 2023:

By the way, Mike Peterson accepted the challenge of finding some worthwhile year's end cartoons from 1923. You can find Part One here.

Everything Auld Is New Again

I robbed Mike Peterson of 1923 Christmas cartoons last week, so I'll let him have the year-end ones — except for this one that has nothing to do with New Year's Eve, but presages a certain meme:

"'Twixt Love and Duty" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News Tribune, Dec. 31, 1923

Instead, it's time for your humble scribbler's annual review of my favorites of my own work from the rapidly fading year. And as long as we're mimicking memes...

✍

Former Senator from Wisconsin Herb Kohl passed away this week, so I have to acknowledge his career here before the year is up.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 20, 1988

I featured my home state Senator in only a few cartoons over the years, starting in 1988 during his first run for the seat of retiring Bill Proxmire. There were occasional rumors about the lifelong bachelor's sexuality, and I drew referencing that — once — for the LGBTQ press. 

But for the most part, he only appeared as one senator among others in my cartoons — sometimes with a basketball to make sure that Wisconsin readers would recognize the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. I might just as well have alluded to his grocery or department stores instead.

Curiously, I never had occasion to draw him for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee in the nine years that I drew editorial cartoons there. Even when the week's editorial was about the Milwaukee Bucks, the focus was on the stadium board or local government or the players' union. I drew more cartoons for the Beej about our other Senator, Russ Feingold.

That's because Senator Kohl wasn't one to crave the limelight as much as some other politicians. Yet he worked hard on behalf of the state, and put more skin in the game than most team owners do when it came to keeping the Bucks in his hometown. 

Kohl may be the last politician here to gain popularity across the political spectrum. After a modest but respectable victory over then State Senate Majority Leader Susan Engeleiter in 1988, he carried all but nine Wisconsin counties in 1994, and all but eight in 2000. In his last reelection campaign, in 2006, he won each and every county in the state.

For a billionaire, he had the common touch, and kept in touch with his constituents from day one and then some. This was the first year since 1988 that Mr. Kohl did not send my dad a Christmas card.*

Vayanuach b’shalom, Mr. Kohl.

___________

* I stand corrected: Dad did receive a holiday card from Senator Kohl this year.

Q Toon: Holy Matrimony, More or Bless

There must be an appropriate liturgy in the Roman Catholic missal for blessing a same-sex couple; perhaps all it takes is a few Search And Replace edits to the rite for blessing a house or a meal or a football team.

As encouraging as it is to see Pope Francis willing to make this modest accommodation for same-sex couples in the Catholic Church, I'll wait to see what his successor has to say about it before I get my hopes up that his church has entered the 21st Century.

Or that it is willing to hearken back to the medieval and earlier rites of affrèrement or adelphopoiesis, a plighting of troth between unrelated male adults to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse" (one bread, one wine, and one purse). No mention of un lit, but different-sex wedding rites seldom mention that, either. 

The priest in today's cartoon might check out the congregational records of the Monastery de San Salvador de Vilanova de Lourenzá for the 1061 church wedding of Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz. I wouldn't be surprised if their union had been sealed with a Holy Kiss.

You couldn't ask for a more traditional wedding.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Christmas break? I know not of this Christmas break. What is this Christmas break of which you speak?

By the way, Mike Peterson over at Daily Cartoonist linked to my Christmas 1923 post in today's Comic Strip of the Day of more recent Christmas comic strips, so here's a link back to him. Fun column today; go read it.

A propos his column, I can't speak for the Nib's reason for breaking up their multi-panel cartoons, but mine is partly to make my multi-panel cartoons more handheld-device-friendly... and primarily out of frustration at Facebook's habit of displaying everything but the top and bottom 5% of the cartoon when I link from there.

Bah, humbug, Facebook.

Merry Christmas to everybody else!

Since you've been so good this year, here's one more cartoon from Christmas, 1923.

"Christmas Greetings from All Our Little Boobs" by Rube Goldberg for McNaught Syndicate, Dec. 25, 1923

With apologies if you're reading this on a handheld device.

Christmas '23 Skidoo

This week's Graphical History Tour turns the clock back 100 years to find out what America's editorial cartoonists drew for their papers on Christmas Eve and Day, 1923:

"The Message of the Bells" by Oscar Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 25, 1923

"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" remains one of my favorite Christmas songs long after the others have been played ad nauseam since Hallowe'en. It is a setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Civil War poem "Christmas Bells," written as his son Charley lay in hospital, having been shot during a skirmish in the Mine Run Campaign on December 3, 1863.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
....
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

"When the World Sees Us at Our Best" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Dec. 25, 1923

I can't say whether Oscar Chopin had the Longfellow poem in mind when he drew his Christmas Day cartoon, but I'm sure that many of his readers were instantly reminded of it. It was much more widely familiar then than now.

The Great War was receding in Americans' memories by 1923, and John McCutcheon kept his front page Christmas Day cartoon cheerful and optimistic.

"Enlightening the World" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 24, 1923

As did just about all of his fellow editorial cartoonists. The American economy was booming, and nearly every cartoonist had drawn at least one cartoon in December (if not one per week) advising readers to get their shopping and mailing done early.

"Everybody Ready?" by Alfred W. Brewerton in Atlanta Journal, Dec. 24, 1923

Not everybody was consumed by crass commercialism.

"St. Louis Has Filled It" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post Dispatch, Dec. 25, 1923

Daniel Fitzpatrick was one of several cartoonists whose space on Christmas Day celebrated their newspaper's Christmas charity gift drives (the San Francisco Chronicle's Gustavo Bronstrup being another example). 

Written on the stocking is "Post-Dispatch Christmas Festival," an annual charity event since 1900. The newspaper's 1923 festival distributed "well-filled dinner baskets" to 3,000 "worthy families," as well as "pipes and tobacco for homeless men ... at municipal and benevolent lodging houses." There was entertainment for children, featuring mechanical waltzing dolls, ponies, and of course, Santa. Donors' names and contributions were all listed in the Sunday edition, although receipts by December 26 had fallen nearly $1,000 short of the budget.

"With Gifts Galore" by Douglas Rodger in San Francisco Bulletin, Dec. 24, 1923

Scottish-born Douglas Rodger was a recent immigrant to the U.S. Before coming to California in 1922, he had served in the British Army during World War I and the post-war occupation of Germany. His experience of the Great War, therefore, was considerably more immediate than that of the other cartoonists included in today's post. (Even that of McCutcheon, who did some wartime reporting from Europe.) Described as mischievous and good-natured, Rodger was haunted by wartime nightmares for decades afterward. He took his own life in 1962.

I don't want to end this holiday post on such a downer, so let's have some cute little kids or something like that.

"'Twas the Night Before Christmas" by William Ceperley in Davenport Democrat, Dec. 24, 1923

That's more like it, isn't it?

"Merry Christmas Every-Body" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register,  Dec. 25, 1923

Whew! All this merry-making is hard work.

"Please Let Me Sleep" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Dec. 25, 1923

Oh, but now I'm just slapping old cartoons up on the internet without providing insight or adding value to them in any way! Well...

"Gone for Day" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Dec. 25, 1923

See you next week.

Q Toons: Resolutions

I had been concerned that perhaps this news story, a kerfuffle picked up by a right-wing blog, might be too obscure. 

A gay staffer for U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate, his office told the Washington Blade in a statement on Saturday morning, which followed reports that he had filmed amateur pornography in the workplace.

“We will have no further comment on this personnel matter,” Cardin’s office said.

The Daily Caller, a right-wing site founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, uploaded video and still images on Friday that purported to show leaked cell phone video of the staffer engaged in gay sex in a Senate hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building, which is not in the U.S. Capitol building.

I needn't have worried. The story has already been lampooned by a few cartoonists who I suspect get plenty of topics from Daily Caller, but also by the late-night TV shows. After all, sex is always Breaking News!

Let this be a lesson to all you hunky dudes who turn to a little frisky business to supplement your day jobs.

The brand may be Only Fans, but nothing on the internet stays put in a lockbox in a private room of a secluded home behind a paywall for long. The internet is more like a Wuhan wet market: once something gets out, there's no getting it back.

I'm not making a judgment here. If you're okay with Tucker Carlson sharing your sexcapades to your boss, your priest, and your mother, fine, go ahead. More power to ya.

Clearly you've got the balls.

This Week's Sneak Peek

No Santas or Scrooges or reindeer or sleigh bells in the pipeline this week, folks. No, indeedy. It's time for some good old-fashioned post-holiday physical fitness!

The Ghosts of Cartoons Past

Welcome to another Graphical History Tour. Let's rummage through my December cartoons from 2013, 2003, 1993, and 1983, shall we?

for Q Syndicate, December, 2013

I brought up Megan Kelly in this here blog the other day, quoting her fairly lengthy question to Chris Christie at last week's less-than-presidential debate. She accused him of being out-of-step with Republican orthodoxy and her own prejudices against transgender youth.

Ten years ago, Kelly was over at Fox Noise, whence she opined that everybody knows that Santa Claus can't possibly be Black because he's as Aryan as she is. Of course, we know from the historical record that the OG St. Nicholas was no such thing.

He was a Klingon. Qapla'!

for Q Syndicate, December, 2003

Once upon a time, I had an editor who objected to my depicting Santa Claus as gay. He was worried that it would offend readers' religious sensibilities. He had sold Q Syndicate by the time I drew this cartoon at the end of 2003, so I don't know if he would have had the same qualms about outing Old Man Time.

The editors of the Washington Blade really liked this cartoon, however, adding color and featuring it on the front page of their year-in-review issue. How I wish I had downloaded that version of the cartoon! (I had printed a screen grab of the page back then, but that piece of paper is a bit worse for wear twenty years on.) The Blade's colorizing job was an improvement over the original —cross-hatching really is no way to draw rainbow colors. But the grayscale image now in their archives is dark and muddy.

2003 was an extraordinarily good year for the LGBTQ+ community. An openly gay cleric, Rev. V. Gene Robinson, was elected Bishop Coadjudicator of the Episcopal Church New Hampshire Diocese. The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was the most popular program on Bravo, spawning further gay-oriented "reality programming." (Chip and Reichen were a gay couple on CBS's Amazing Race; Bravo's Boy Meets Boy was a gay version of The Bachelor with the catch that some of the supposed suitors were closeted straight dudes.)

Sadly, 2004 would prove to be a year of backlash, with President George W. Bush campaigning for reelection by pledging to enshrine opposite-sex marriage exclusivity in the U.S. Constitution — and America rewarding him by making him the only Republican presidential candidate in this century to win the popular vote.

UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Dec. 9, 1993

Skipping back another decade, I have fewer cartoons to choose from, and this may be the only one in today's post that hasn't appeared in my blog before. The student newspapers for which I drew always suspended publication in early- to mid-December for finals and winter break. Local newsmakers are busy with holiday business (as are local cartoonists), so I don't believe I drew anything for the Racine Journal Times during any of the Decembers featured here today.

The baby and the muralist in this cartoon would be millennials in their thirties today; I guess the parents might be millennials, too. If so, their family is spared having a generation gap.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Jan. 19, 1984

I drew this cartoon of the 1984 Democratic presidential candidates in December of '83 for the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin at Parkside after the last issue of the semester had been published, so it was held over until January.

Having a plethora of official whatnots of the Olympic games was a new development in 1984. Having sponsors actually started way back in 1908 (Soup maker Oxo sponsored the London Olympics that year), and Coca-Cola has been an official sponsor ever since the 1928 Amsterdam games. But by 1984, it seemed that every other commercial on TV boasted of being the official adhesive tape, motor oil, or hemorrhoid ointment of the Olympics.

Since we're back to December of 1983, I have to close with the Christmas break episode of my crude take-off of "The Maltese Falcon" starring thinly disguised characters from the comic pages.

At this point in my story, a police detective who looked suspiciously like Dick Tracy was interrogating an out-of-work fellow you might have sworn was Mike Doonesbury — note: Garry Trudeau had put his strip on hiatus at the end of January — when a bunch of characters from one of my all-time favorite strips suddenly interrupted:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Dec. 15, 1983

I hope you'll check back before the holidays are over; but in case we miss each other, juHqu' qechmey!

Q Toon: A Christmas Scare-ol

Because of the lead time for my cartoons, syndicated to weekly, biweekly and monthly publications, this week's cartoon was my last chance to draw something with a Christmas theme. My focus was on the three Republican presidential candidates speaking out so harshly against transgender people in this month's Noise Nation hardly presidential debate.

Ron DeSantis: "I did a bill in Florida to stop the gender mutilation of minors, it’s child abuse and it’s wrong. [Nikki Haley] opposes that bill. She thinks it’s fine and the law shouldn’t get involved with it. If you’re not willing to stand up for the kids, if you’re not willing to stand up and say that it is wrong to mutilate these kids, then you’re not going to fight for the people back home.”

Vivek Ramaswamy: "[T]ransgenderism is a mental health disorder. We don’t let you smoke a cigarette by the age of 18. We don’t let you have an addictive drink of alcohol by the age of 21. I just challenged Ron DeSantis to go one step further and support what I think is clearly within the authority to do using federal funds just like Reagan did in ’84 for the Highway Act that said the minimum drinking age needs to be 21. We can do the same thing when it comes to banning genital mutilation or chemical castration. I know Ron’s been unclear about on the federal level. I’m crystal clear. That’s where I stand. That’s a mental health disorder."

Nikki Haley, after DeSantis accused her of being soft on transgender people who poop: "What I have always said is boys go into a boys’ bathroom, girls go into a girls bathroom. But hold on one second. I also say that biological boys shouldn’t be playing in girls’ sports and I will do everything I can to stop that because it’s the women’s issue of our time."

I had to include Chris Christie in the cartoon, since he participated in the debate; but, following the example of Mike Johnson's January 6 videos, I obscured Christie's face. He was the one person there who stood up for transgender persons and their families in opposition to the other three candidates and one of the debate moderators.

Megyn Kelly: "Governor Christie, you do not favor a ban on trans medical treatments for minors, saying it’s a parental rights issue. The surgeries done on minors involve cutting off body parts at a time when these kids cannot even legally smoke a cigarette. Kids who go from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones are at a much greater likelihood of winding up sterile. How is it that you think a parent should be able to okay these surgeries, never mind the sterilization of a child and aren’t you way too out of step on this issue to be the Republican nominee?"

Chris Christie: "No, I’m not because Republicans believe in less government, not more, in less involvement with government, not more in government involvement in people’s lives. You know what, Megan? I trust parents and we are out there saying that we should empower parents in education, we should empower parents to make more decisions about where their kids go to school. I agree. We should empower parents to be teaching the values that they believe in in their homes without the government telling them what those values should be. Yet we want to take other parental rights away. I’m sorry. As a father of four, I believe there is no one who loves my children more than me. There’s no one who loves my children more than my wife. There’s no one who cares more about their success and health in life than we do."

Over the years, I have disagreed with Christie on a wide range of issues, but bravo to him on this one. It's all rather academic, however; he has no chance of becoming President of the United States.

Well, neither do any of the other three. Unless they suck up to that guy looming over them in the cartoon so much that they're his Vice President when a lifetime embodying the Seven Deadly Sins finally catches up with him.

This Week's Sneak Peek

The best college professor I had back in my salad days was a tough grader.

The course was on medieval European history, and the first paper he assigned was to critique a particular scholarly book on the topic. What we students did not know ahead of time was that the professor thought the book was poorly researched, drew incorrect conclusions, and was a complete hack job.

None of us who simply regurgitated the content of the book got an A on that paper. A wishy-washy synopsis that might have gotten an A in high school was lucky to get a C+ in this course.

Throughout the semester, he assigned contemporaneous accounts of medieval European history and demanded that we reach conclusions that were not explicitly contained in them, which involved determining facts that their authors assumed as common knowledge or sense. Only the essays which spotted the hidden clues and reached the same conclusions as our professor — or, as never happened, convinced him he was mistaken — deserved the top grade.

There has been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking of the wishy-washy responses three university presidents gave in response to the gotcha questioning of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) last week. Everybody who was not being grilled in front of her congressional committee knows that when asked whether advocating genocide of Jews was against university policy, the correct answer was "yes, of course."

I would go further.

The university presidents ought to have asked Stefanik to point out examples of students or faculty calling for genocide of Jews. If the congresswoman had seen people demanding genocide that the academics had not, it is absolutely necessary that she let these presidents know who they are.

The news media I have seen may have decided not to lend their airwaves, newsprint, and pixels to proponents of genocide, but I'm sure that Ms. Stefanik has seen on right-wing media exactly what genocidal speech there was. 

"Death to Jews" is genocidal speech.

"Freedom for Palestine" is not.

Defending the October 7 terrorist attack is genocidal speech.

Pointing out that recent policies in Israel, the U.S., and the Arab World ignoring Palestinians' situation made Palestinian violence inevitable is not.

If "From the river to the sea" is genocidal speech, then so is "Eretz Yisrael."

Context indeed matters. So does subtext. And, of course, text.

Even if they don't fit in a protest chant or on a picket sign.

Hey, hey, ho, ho.

Drawings on the Foreign Desk

It ain't easy to maintain an isolationist foreign policy, even in 1923; so today's Graphical History Tour takes us on a whirlwind tour of the rest of the world that December.

"Blowing Off Again" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Dec. 14, 1923

The triumvirat of Generals Álvaro Obregón Salido and Plutarco Elías Calles and Governor of Sonora Felipe Adolfo de la Huerta Marcor had overthrown the government of Venustiano Carranza in 1920. De la Huerta was interim president of Mexico for a few months after the revolution until Obregón won election to a four-year term. 

Following the assassination of Pancho Villa in July of 1923, the Harding administration was convinced that Mexico's long revolutionary wars were finally over and done with. The process of normalizing relations with the U.S.'s southern neighbor was finalized by Calvin Coolidge.

But de la Huerta, serving as Secretary of the Treasury in Obregón's cabinet, apparently thought he was in line to succeed Obregón as president in 1924. And when Obregón endorsed Calles instead, de la Huerta accused Obregón of corruption and launched an armed revolt against the government.

"Taking His Sword in Hand" by Dennis McCarthy in Fort Worth Record, Dec. 18, 1923

De la Huerta had the support of conservatives in the Mexican army and Catholic Church. The latter had protested the strong separation of church and state in the new Mexican constitution, land reforms that took property away from the Catholic Church, and the expulsion of Pope Pius XI's Apostolic Nuncio for conducting an illegal open-air mass. The Church feared that Calles would prove to be even more anti-clerical than Obregón.

"Nothing to Be Much Alarmed About" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Dec. 20, 1923

Obregón had backing of farmers and laborers who had benefited from land reforms under his administration, as well as significant support from the United States. Wahl's assessment of the situation here may have been overly optimistic, but not by much. Aided by creation of a Mexican Air Force, Obregón was able to defeat de la Huerta, who fled into exile abroad, the following March.

"Speaking of Politics" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News Tribune, Dec. 10, 1923

Meanwhile, the Tory government of Stanley Baldwin called for general elections in Great Britain in December. One result noted by Sam Armstrong was the election of eight women to Parliament, a first since women were (mostly) granted the right to vote and to stand for election in 1918.

"A Tax on His Renowned Diplomacy" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Dec. 6, 1923

Burdened by high unemployment, the Conservative Party lost their majority in Parliament. The Tories held onto 258 seats, while Labour won 191 and the Liberals garnered 158. None of the parties having a majority, each faced having to form a coalition with rivals with whom they had strong disagreement.

Eventually, the Liberals teamed up with Labour under Ramsey MacDonald. Liberal leader Henry Asquith gambled that Labour's policies would be its own undoing, to the Liberals' benefit; but as it turned out, the office Prime Minister would go back and forth between MacDonald and Baldwin for the next 14 years.

"All Froth" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 10, 1923

The German government of Chancellor Gustav Stressemann fell in December. Faced with hyperinflation, civil unrest, and unrelenting pressure from France to pay ever more exorbitant war reparations, President Friedrich Ebert turned to the centrist Catholic Party to form a new government. Reports that the murder of Baron Scarpi in a Munich performance of Tosca would be the cue for a second attempt at a Nazi putsch forced the canceling of a performance of the Puccini opera.

"When It Comes to Pullin' Off a Putsch, You've Got to Have Good, Old-Fashioned Lager" by Frank Godwin in Colliers, Dec. 29, 1923

The soldiers from French territories in Africa who were part of France's occupation of the Ruhr were a frequent topic of German cartoons. To German cartoonists, the Africans' presence was a supreme insult. Cartoons in the major satirical weeklies repeated scurrilous rumors of African soldiers molesting German women — rumors that were, like those which sparked lynchings in the U.S., undoubtedly blown way out of proportion, if not entirely fabricated. (The cartoons are more racist than I care to resurrect in a blog with my name on it.)

Here is an extremely rare appearance of a French West African soldier in an American editorial cartoon.

"How the World Moves" by Edward S. "Tige" Reynolds in Tacoma Daily Ledger, Dec. 14, 1923

Reynolds's cartoon allows us to leave distressing reports of wars and rumors of wars with the upbeat message that Christmas was coming. And, yes, we Americans could afford to be preoccupied with holiday shopping.

Q Toon: Trois the Night Before Christmas

Last week's cartoon made a reference to "Moms for Liberty," one of those right-wing, anti-LGBTQ+ groups ardently devoted to restricting the liberties of other people.

Now it seems that "Moms for Liberty" co-founder Bridget Ziegler and her husband Christian allegedly had a long-term three-way relationship with another woman, which I'm sure wasn't L, G, B, T, Q, or + in any way, shape or form.

This may be a very obscure news story — aside from the fact that her husband is the chair of the Florida Republican Party — but it's crude, salacious, and utterly without redeeming social value, making it perfect fodder for a cartoon.

To make this cartoon even more obscure, your humble scribbler riffed on a tweet you probably never saw from Mrs. Ziegler. Back in April, Bridget posted a picture of herself wearing a transphobic t-shirt that read "Real Women - Aren't Men -". So here it is.

The national hate group she co-founded is devoted to disrespecting transgender persons, censoring books, banning drag shows, and grooming kids to be spiteful little bullies and scolds like herself. And occasionally endorsing Hitler quotations in their newsletter. It's all in the name of Christian morality, of course.

To nobody's surprise, the current sordid episode sullying the Zieglers' reputation came to light when the Other Woman came forward accusing Christian of showing up without Bridget one day when they were supposed to have one of their ménages à trois and sexually assaulting her.

As for that quoting Hitler business (it was an Indiana chapter who cited “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future,” in its newsletter), Christian now gets to exercise the advice he gave the group:

“Never apologize. Ever,” Christian Ziegler told members of the group during a training session covered by NBC News at Moms For Liberty’s national conference in June. “This is my view. Other people have different views on this. I think apologizing makes you weak.”

So now, facing calls to resign as chair of the Florida GOP,

Zeigler denied the allegations of sexual assault but admitted to police that he had had sex with the woman on the date in question. In a statement released to his fellow Florida Republicans over the weekend, Ziegler wrote that “we have a country to save and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up.”

Pull up a chair, folks, and pass the popcorn.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Here's a little something to tide you over until Thursday.

Over the course of the past week, I assisted my better half in converting our home into a Christmas wonderland. We're up to five trees in the house now (only one of them full size this year) with at least 200 ornaments and eight or nine strings of lights strewn meticulously among them. 

We also have eight nutcrackers standing at attention in front of the fireplace. They don't include the LGBTQ Pride nutcracker that I drew about last week, though. I did hear from a Facebook acquaintance that they had found one in a Target store in Palm Springs, California; so I guess I stand corrected as to how openly they're sold.

But if you find one on the shelves in a South Beach, Florida Target, do keep quiet about it. They're bound to be against state law there.

We also don't have any Green Bay Packer nutcracker. I've seen them, but I couldn't tell you whether they were officially licensed merchandise or something that showed up at one of the many craft fairs that pop up this time of year. I do know that craft stores sell unpainted nutcrackers that you can paint however you like.

My better half ordered what he thought was an Italian-looking nutcracker on line but wasn't; apparently the black paint looked greener on the screen. It arrived in a box that was ever so slightly too short for it; the top was held down with tape that pulled off some of the paint from the top of the fellow's hat. The company sent a better-packaged replacement but didn't want the damaged nutcracker returned, so my husband sanded the hat down to look more like an Italian alpine hat, and is in the process of repainting the outfit red, white, and green.

I'm kind of surprised that I don't see more nationalities represented in nutcrackerdom. Oh, you can find ones with darker skin tone, and we do have a leprechaun nutcracker. (He's not in the Christmas display; he's in storage until March.)

I suppose if I had the time, I could make myself a Norwegian nutcracker of some sort. Maybe carrying lefse or lutefisk, and sporting a braided beard.

But unless we get that Green Bay Packer nutcracker, it simply will not do to have a Viking nutcracker in this house.

Tempest in a Teapot

I'm leaving it to others to offer their cartoon eulogies of Rosalynn Carter, Henry Kissinger, and Sandra Day O'Connor (or dyslogies as the case may be), because you've probably been wondering when I'm going to get around to posting some cartoons about the Teapot Dome scandal.

"Getting Hot" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 3, 1923

As luck would have it, a few editorial cartoonists decided to remind Congressional investigators of Teapot Dome just as December of 1923 got underway. 

It's a common misconception that the scandal only broke after President Harding's death; but a congressional investigation into former Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall's sweetheart deals leasing oil fields on Navy-owned land to Sinclair Oil Company subsidiary Mammoth Oil had been suspended when the 67th Congress adjourned in March.

Fall was in charge of Harding administration policy favoring private enterprise development of natural resources. Fall's Department of the Interior, in addition to taking control of naval oil reserves away from the Department of the Navy, also took control of the Alaskan territory from the Department of Agriculture. The Teapot Dome leases might well have gone unnoticed had not a Mammoth rival complained about the favored treatment Fall afforded his good friend Harry Sinclair.

"Suggestion for 1924" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha World-Herald, Dec. 5, 1923

Fall resigned from office on March 4, 1923, the date when the 68th Congress would traditionally have convened. As it happened, however, the 68th Congress would remain out of session until December.

The reason for such a long interval between Congresses had nothing to do with Teapot Dome; rather, Old Guard Republicans were resisting demands from their Progressive wing for a greater role in House leadership. President Harding had agreed that Congress could well be kept out of session until year's end.

If Harding was interested in delaying further investigations into Teapot Dome, it was only one of many considerations he had. Harding generally opposed the Progressives on any number of issues.

"The Sphinx Slayer" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Dec. 8, 1923

Now that December had arrived, Calvin Coolidge, succeeding Harding as President in August, wanted to address a joint session of Congress; and that could only happen with the House in session.

The demise of "the Legend of Silent Cal" depicted in Gale's cartoon would turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Coolidge's speech was nevertheless big news, coinciding as it did with the announcement that he would run for a full term as President in 1924.

"His Platform" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Dec. 7, 1923

Since few Americans knew much about Coolidge, aside perhaps from his breaking of a police officers' strike in Boston as Governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge's maiden presidential speech was an opportunity for him to announce his positions on a wide range of issues. Catching the attention and approval of many editorial cartoonists was his call for an immediate tax cut.

"Getting the Cooledge" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Dec. 6, 1923

Tom Foley's cartoon is one of very few that were critical of Coolidge's speech. The proposal to send a bonus to veterans of the Great War started out with plenty of support from the nation's editorial cartoonists; but many cartoonists jumped off the bandwagon once cutting everybody's income taxes was presented as an alternative.

"Organizing Congress" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Dec. 4, 1923

Your humble scribbler went into greater detail last January about House Republicans' difficulty electing a Speaker in 1923. To catch up for now, let's just say that the Old Guard had to make some concessions to the party's Progressives (personified by Senator Robert LaFollette, R-WI, in John McCutcheon's cartoon) in order to get a handle on things.

"The Candy Kid" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Dec. 7, 1923

Progressivism, as it was known in the 1920's, crossed party lines. So did many issues of the day: there were isolationists, for example, on both sides of the aisle and among the most prominent Progressives. As for the Democratic Party, it was split between southern conservatives and northern liberals, Wilsonians and Bryanists, Wall Street and Big Labor, Drys and Wets.

"All Is Quiet..." by Edward S. "Tige" Reynolds in Portland Oregonian,  Dec. 6, 1923

Even if 1920's progressivism wouldn't have had much in common with the progressive movement of today, and even less with the Freedom Caucus in today's House, the one thing it does share with the latter is that it was an unruly stepchild of the Republican Party.