Q Toon: An Aaron Judgment

In an episode of a podcast called "Look Into It" hosted by conspiracy fabulist Eddie Bravo, NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, in cahoots with the Center for Disease Control and the federal government, was responsible for exacerbating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980's and repeated their strategy with COVID-19.

I don't care to link to the February 23 podcast itself, which is behind a paywall anyway; but this little germ from the three-hour episode escaped the lab last week and went viral on Xitter:

"The blueprint was created in the '80's: create a pandemic, you know, with a virus that's goin' wild. Right? Only — he was given — Fauci was given, like, over $350 million dollars to research this, come up with drug that was new or repurposed to handle the AIDS pandemic, and all they came up with was AZT. And if you do any smidge of research — and I know, I'm not an epidemiologist, I'm not a doctor, I'm not an immunologist, whatever the fuck — I can read, though, right? — right — I can look things up and I can learn just like any normal person, you know, I can do my own research, which is so vilified, you know, to even question authority — but that was the game plan back then: create an environment where only one thing works. Back then, AZT. Now, rembisivir, remdesivir, until we get a vaccine. Which, by the way, Anthony Fauci had stake in rembirvi vaccine."

Rodgers was repeating false claims by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that the CDC suppressed all sorts of supposed cures in order that favored yet fatal medical treatments would hold a monopoly on the HIV/AIDS/COVID market. These claims have been debunked by PolitiFact (and if you're into doing your own research, there are dozens of sources cited at the end of that post).

Dan Wilson, senior associate scientist at Janssen and host of the YouTube show “Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson,” said Kennedy’s retelling of the AZT history was “dead wrong.”

Kennedy and Rodgers were “repeating a form of HIV/AIDS denialism, where antiretroviral drugs are said to be ineffective against progression of the virus,” Wilson said. In reality, he said, AZT “was the first time that doctors could do something to help people who (were) wasting away and dying painful deaths.”

Now, I'm all in favor of doing one's own research. It's incumbent upon any responsible editorial cartoonist to check into the veracity of things before whipping off a cartoon about whatever one just heard from a talking head on TV or read in some piece of Xeet on Xitter.

But one must be aware that the internet is programmed to give you confirmation bias. If you google "aliens built pyramids," you will get hundreds of links to articles positing that aliens built the pyramids. (Well, of course they did. Having spent decades traveling light years to visit the only flat planet in the universe, what else were they to do?)

But returning to the topic at hand: As a devoted Green Bay Packers fan, I'm saddened to see Aaron Rodgers follow the Brett Favre playbook of going to the Jets only to becoming a huge embarrassment to everyone who ever rooted for him. The guy is, or at least has been, a bright, intelligent fellow; remember how he whipped Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary's and astronaut Mark Kelly's butts on Jeopardy! in spite of getting the Final Jeopardy clue about Harley Davidson wrong? You can't credit that to clicker reflexes alone!

That was nine years ago, however; and perhaps it's true that he has been knocked to the turf a couple times since then.

But over his years with the NFL, he has gotten pretty full of himself. In his last years with the Packers, he didn't deign to pre-season practice with the rest of the team, meaning that new receivers and running backs spent half a season getting used to his habits and rhythms. And it showed.

Please, Lord, let Jordan Love model himself after Bart Starr instead.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Caricature sketches from my scratch book last night.

To Your Health

It's that time of the month again! I've rummaged through my old cartoons from 40, 30, 20, and 10 years ago for today's Graphical History Tour.

UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., April 26, 1984

This 1984 cartoon starring Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, was probably the first one I drew of the AIDS crisis (not this one).

We still didn't know what was causing the terrible new disease that was apparently targeting otherwise healthy young gay men, Haitians, and patients who had received blood transfusions. Reagan had made no public comment about it, but sent out Heckler when there appeared to be some progress in identifying what would come to be known as the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

Reagan was more occupied deflecting criticism of administration foreign policy by blaming that meddlesome Congress for reverses in the Middle East and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Secy. Heckler would later say that she had difficulty getting AIDS addressed in cabinet meetings during her tenure (1983-1985) and never discussed it with the President.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., April 18, 1994

Next stop: 1994, and I hope that leading off with that AIDS cartoon today properly set up the next one.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 31, 1994

Cutting down the nation's smoking habit was a major emphasis of President Bill Clinton's Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, who served in that position over the objection of tobacco-state politicians from September of 1993 to the last day of 1994.

You young whippersnappers may be shocked to know that thirty years ago, the air in offices, bars and restaurants — even, in some locales, hospital waiting rooms — was often thick with tobacco smoke. (Or perhaps you may not. I hear that vaping is getting to be as common among Gen Z as cigarettes used to be among Gen Emphysema.)

I vividly recall meeting up for Saturday morning breakfasts with my now husband at a local diner where the "non-smoking area" consisted of the booths along the walls. The tables in the center of the room were the "smoking area," meaning that every non-smoking table was right next to a smoking table. 

Which was okay. If you liked your breakfast tasting like it was cooked on an old ashtray.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, April 30, 2004

I found one cartoon from April of 2004 that fits more or less into today's theme of health and wellness. Hospital systems in southeast Wisconsin were (and still are) eagerly expanding into new communities, and the editorial board of the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee has often had something to say about their efforts.

In this case, there was friction between Aurora Hospitals and those of ProHealth Care as the former sought to open a facility in the city of Oconomowoc (which I won't tell you how to pronounce because that's a word we use to spot folks who ain't from around these parts) just west of Milwaukee County. ProHealth fended off Aurora's advances, more or less; Aurora instead built their new medical center in the adjacent village of Summit.

Pronounced SUM-mit.

for Q Syndicate, April 3, 2014

Leaping ten years ahead and half a world away, yet coming topically full circle, this last cartoon laments the woeful persecution in African countries of their LGBTQ+ citizens. In this case, Uganda and Nigeria.

Uganda had just passed a law that not only criminalized being gay or lesbian oneself, but also failing to report other LGBTQ+ persons to the authorities. My original blog post for this cartoon quoted a report in The Week explaining the law's effect on controlling HIV/AIDS in Africa:

"Uganda was once an AIDS success story, but that is now changing. The portion of the population that identifies as gay is tiny, but there are many more men in Uganda — and across Africa — who have sex with other men but do not identify as gay or bisexual. These men, many of them married, are now less likely to be honest with health-care providers and less likely to get the education, free condoms, and HIV testing they need. They are also more likely to contract the virus and spread it to their female and male partners. In Senegal, after several HIV prevention workers were imprisoned in 2008, the number of men seeking sexual health services in that area dropped sharply."

Likewise in Nigeria, as reported by Mother Jones, whose sources included John Adeniyi of the International Center for Advocacy on Rights to Health, an HIV intervention organization based in Abuja:

"Eight organizations that provide HIV treatment and prevention services in northern Nigeria have cut back on HIV outreach, training, and education programs, according to Dorothy Aken'Ova, executive director of Nigeria's International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights (INCRESE). 'People thought, "You know what? I don't want to be in prison because I'm providing treatment for these gay homosexual people,"' Adeniyi says. He expects more organizations will drop their programs in the coming months."

Uganda last year enacted an even more draconian "Death to Gays" law, literally mandating the death penalty for "aggravated" homosexuality. The law was upheld by the Ugandan Supreme Court earlier this month.

Nigerian military authorities continue mass arrests of LGBTQ+ citizens — 70 in one day last October. 

Just the same, it might be unfair to single out Uganda and Nigeria for criticism. Homosexual relations are illegal in 30+ of Africa's 54 countries.

And in Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Barbados, Brunei, Comoros, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Jamaica, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Kiribati, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and, for all practical purposes, Russia and Belorus.

Q Toon: That I Canst Thee Tell

We don't have Starz TV in our home, so I haven't seen their current in-and-out-of-costume drama, "Mary and George," a series about Mary Villiers' scheming to secure her son George as King James I's royal boy toy.

For the benefit of American readers whose knowledge of British history is gleaned exclusively from television, I have to explain that the Queen Anne in my cartoon is not the one portrayed by Olivia Colman in "The Favourite," but James's wife, Anne of Denmark. She was still very much alive when James began his dalliance with the young George Villiers; in fact, it is thought that she promoted his rise as a way of getting rid of James's then favourite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset.

Maybe that's in the Starz TV version. I suppose it ought to be. 

Now, if you are following the Starz TV series, here's your warning of spoilers ahead.

One might suppose that by the time she was hooking her husband up with a new boyfriend, Anne's marital relationship had withered to the point that I imagine that she had her own "I Really Don't Care Do U" jacket. The royal couple had been living separately since the death of their youngest child, Sophia. (Four of their seven children died in infancy; the oldest, Henry, died of typhoid at the age of 18). 

Once Villiers entered the picture, James seems to have almost forgotten that Anne even existed. She was very sick for several years before her death in 1619, but he paid only three visits to her at Somerset House during her illness.

Villiers's ascendency lasted beyond James's reign and into that of the king's surviving son, Charles I. Rumor had it that his affair with the reigning monarch continued as well.

Villiers was a trusted adviser to Charles, but an incompetent one. As Lord Admiral and de facto Foreign Minister, Villiers launched a naval expedition to wrest Cádiz from Spain, but his ill-equipped, poorly manned ships led by a soldier who with no naval experience never got past Holland. He then offended English Protestants by giving support to Catholic France against the Protestant Huguenots in hopes of enlisting France's help against Spain. France instead made peace with Spain, and Villiers then turned English troops in defense of the Huguenots. He was forced into a humiliating and costly retreat.

While organizing a fleet to aid the Huguenots (a third attempt), Villiers was stabbed to death by a disgruntled army officer, John Felton, on August 23, 1638. King Charles was greatly grieved, but Parliament was greatly relieved and hailed Felton as a hero. Villiers's death, however, occasioned improvement in Charles's marital relations with his Queen, Henrietta Maria of France, and they started getting serious about conceiving some eventual heirs.

A decade later, defeated in the English Civil War, Charles was accused of treason against England by using his power to pursue his personal interest rather than the good of the country. Clinging to his father's credo of the Divine Right of Kings, he protested that no court had jurisdiction over him because "the King can do no wrong," and refused to defend himself at trial. He was convicted, sentenced, and beheaded in January of 1649, aged 48.

Present British monarchs are descendants of Charles's only surviving sibling, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia by her 1613 marriage to Frederick V.

✍

Okay, you folks who didn't want to have "Mary & George" spoiled can resume reading now.

Trying to put 17th-Century English grammar in the mouths of the palace gossipers in today's cartoon, I puzzled over how to conjugate a third-person present tense verb in that final panel. Wikipedia wasn't giving me clear answers — strong verb? weak verb?  I couldn't think of a sentence in Shakespeare's œuvre that would help, although there must be one.

The obvious source, of course, would be the King James Version of the Bible, so I looked up the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5.

In my Bible, third person singular verbs are conjugated the same way they are today: that is, using the most basic form of a regular verb. "They who hunger and thirst." "When men revile you." How about an irregular verb? Again and again, "Blessed are they."

Doesn't that seem wrong? In other European languages with which I'm familiar, third person plural verbs always have a suffix unique from the other conjugations. (Even in French, in which the entire suffix is silent.)

Anybody got a first printing KJV out there?

This Week's Sneak Peek

Some 15 of you got a sneak peek at Saturday's Graphical History Tour when I inadvertently published it Thursday night while shutting my computer down. 

It was a mistake I realized only as I was leaving the room. I couldn't turn right around and unpublish the unfinished post, because I had given the computer permission to install one of those Microsoft updates as it shut down; and I discovered that I couldn't unpublish the post on my phone.

It was late, and I was tired, so I decided to take care of things in the morning. By then, the post had garnered 15 views, which is a bit more than most of my posts get in the wee hours of their first night.

Apparently, women's 1920's fashion is still a hot topic.

✍

Trailblazing cartoonist and historian (sorry, herstorian) Trina Robinson passed away last Wednesday at the age of 85. I was privileged to hear her tell her story at the last two AAEC conventions. The Sunday Today show put together a nice "A Life Well Lived" segment eulogizing her. If you missed it, it's well worth a listen; although to be honest, it barely scratches the surface. There are more examples of her work at Daily Cartoonist.

Hairstyles of the Rich and Infamous

Every editorial cartoonist was expected to crank out cartoons about the solar eclipse and the passing of Orenthal James Simpson this week, most of which were slight variations on the same couple of themes. If you saw one, you'd seen the rest.

Other "Yahtzees," as we call them, often happen after truly major news stories that cannot be ignored.

And then there's...

"The Great National Question" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 9, 1924

For some reason, 100 Aprils ago, editorial cartoonists across the country took to their drawing boards to address the burning issue of women's bobbed haircuts.

"If They Had Worn Bobbed Hair" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1924

The bobbed hairstyle was that short women's haircut forever associated with 1920's flappers and starlets (e.g. Betty Boop, Josephine Baker, Mary Pickford). It was a marked departure from earlier generations, when the feminine ideal required lots and lots of luscious tresses piled on top of a woman's head or draped over her shoulders.

Why do you bob your hair, girls? It is an awful shame
To rob the head God gave you and bear the flapper's name.
You're taking off your cov'ring. It is an awful sin.
Don't never bob your hair, girls. Short hair belongs to men.
 —"Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls" by Blind Alfred Reed, 1927

"You're Just the Person I Want to See" by Ralph Barton in Judge, April 19, 1924

Creation of the bobbed hairstyle is generally credited to a popular actress, dancer, and social influencer of her day who went by the stage name Irene Castle. Hospitalized for appendicitis in 1914, she decided that to facilitate washing and combing her hair during her recuperation, she would simply have it cut short.

When she then went out for dinner with friends without covering her ’do, her picture wound up in all the papers. In a time when women's rights advocates were fighting for the right to vote, suffragette sympathizers applauded Castle's rebellion against tradition and impractical hairstyles for women.

"And So She Had Hers Bobbed" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1924

It wasn't only the length of the hair that was disturbing to the Bert Dears of the 1920's. The new bobbed style shockingly exposed women's ... ears. Uncovered ears were as associated with masculinity as was wearing pants. Even in these cartoons about minimist hairdos, only a couple of them expose the female ear.

Liberation of the female ear did open up new opportunities for the jewelry trade. Nor was the market for combs and hairbrushes at all diminished.

"Our Next Circus Attraction" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, April 9, 1924

In any event, in the ten years after Irene Castle's abdominal surgery, the bobbed hairstyle took U.S. womanhood by storm. It was convenient, requiring less muss and fuss, and easier to keep styled over the course of a day.

I'm sure that our cartoonists found it easier and quicker to draw as well.

"Fancy Trade First" by Albert T. Reid for Bell Syndicate, April 1, 1924

I did find one cartoon that tied the bobbed haircut theme — more or less — to bona fide news stories of the day. Albert Reid uses the bobbing craze to complain that Congress was spending too much time investigating all those scandals left over from the Harding administration, at the expense of popular legislation languishing in committee (in this case, President Coolidge's tax cut proposal).

A likely motivation for at least some of this flurry of bobbed-hair cartoons is the case of the Bobbed-Haired Bandit.

Excerpt from "I See by the Papers" by T.E. Powers for Star Company, ca. April 1, 1924

Celia and Ed Cooney, a young couple married the previous May, started robbing Brooklyn area grocers and drug stores in January of 1924. Newspapers eager to outsell their crosstown rivals seized on crime stories to make banner headlines in those days, and the Cooneys' string of audacious armed robberies immediately attracted the hungry attention of editors from New York to Los Angeles. The New York Telegram and Evening Mail dubbed Celia, 19, "The Bobbed Haired Bandit," and the moniker stuck.

Celia reveled in her notoriety, and as the string of robberies continued, the newspapers held Brooklyn Police Commissioner Richard Enright up for ridicule.

On January 14, Commissioner Enright announced the arrest of one Helen Quigley on suspicion of being the Bobbed Haired Bandit. Celia then left a message at a Brooklyn drugstore, boasting, "You dirty fish-peddling bums, leave this innocent girl alone and get the right ones, which is nobody else but us, and we are going to give Mr. Hogan, the manager of Roulston’s, another visit, as we got two checks we couldn’t cash, and also ask Bohack’s manager did I ruin his cash register. Also I will visit him again, as I broke a perfectly good automatic on it. We defy you fellows to catch us."

"Bobbed-Haired Bandits at Home" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. April 19, 1924

And their crime spree continued into February and March.

On April 1, the pair botched an attempted robbery of the National Biscuit Company's payroll office. Cashier Nathan Mazo made a grab for Celia, who fell over a chair. Ed shot and wounded Mazo, and the couple fled without the money. They hopped a steamer to Florida, where Celia gave birth to a daughter who died after two days.

On April 15, Commissioner Enright correctly announced the identity of the elusive pair, who were arrested by New York detectives in Jacksonville in the wee hours of April 21. Hundreds thronged to Penn Station to catch a glimpse of the two. 

New York Daily News front page April 23, 1924. Celia Cooney is identified by name, Ed merely as "her husband."

After their arrest, Brooklyn Daily Eagle columnist Nunnally Johnson rhapsodized:

"What Celia Cooney deserves is a ballad, a glorious painting, or a statue, preferably in Prospect Park. ...

"Celia Cooney in a few years will be a legendary figure, a part of Brooklyn folklore, a glamorous myth in a world of girls striving to reach the present height of feminine endeavor..."

Instead, the Cooneys pleaded guilty to their crimes and were sentenced to 20 years in prison, but were  released on parole after seven. Ed died in 1936; Celia remarried in 1943. Only after her death in 1992 did her sons Patrick and Edward Jr. learn of their parents' criminal past.

Q Toon: DEI ex Mockery

I told my editors I was looking for a cartoon topic this week that wouldn't be about the GOP.

But if you've been paying any attention to the news over the past couple of years, you know which party has decided that DEI — i.e., Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — is academia's latest threat to their homogenous worldview. Inspired by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas's Greg Abbott, it's Republicans who can't abide diversity, detest equity, and loathe inclusion.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox even called them "bordering on evil."

Last year, Republicans in Madison in my home state held up funding for the University of Wisconsin until the school knuckled under to their demands to stifle DEI: 

Shortly after the Universities of Wisconsin accepted a GOP offer to approve UW raises and building projects in exchange for new limits on campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos [R-Burlington] had a message. The move, he said, was just a first step in the GOP’s efforts to eliminate DEI. ...

“We finally have turned the corner and gotten real reforms enacted,” Vos said. “Republicans know this is just the first step in what will be our continuing efforts to eliminate these cancerous DEI practices on UW campuses.”

Instead, University regents had to promise to raise funds to establish a new campus leadership position to promote "conservative political thought."

Elsewhere, Republicans this year have proposed 50 bills in 20 states to limit or eliminate DEI programs at agencies that receive state funding. 

This is the second year Republican-led state governments have targeted DEI. This year’s bills, as well as executive orders and internal agency directives, again focus heavily on higher education. But the legislation also would limit DEI in K-12 schools, state government, contracting and pension investments. Some bills would bar financial institutions from discriminating against those who refuse to participate in DEI programs.

When Republicans in Congress opened a hearing titled "Divisive, Excessive, Ineffective: The Real Impact of DEI on College Campuses," Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) countered, "DEI offices exist to address student needs, to give strategic support to faculty [and] institutional leaders, to identify hurdles and assist faculty and staff in serving, educating and meeting the needs of increasingly diverse populations, many of whom are first-generation college students."

That hearing was chaired by Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), who called DEI "a cancer that resides in the hearts of American academic institutions."

Bonamici questioned why Republicans felt a hearing on DEI was more important than forums on pressing topics like campus hunger or students’ civil rights. She also criticized as offensive Owens’s decision to compare DEI to cancer—though Owens was quick to point out that he, in fact, had survived prostate cancer.

Robin Vos, as far as I know, does not have that excuse. He just adheres to the same talking points memo.

This Weak's Sneek Pique

Actually, in lieu of a sneak peek at this week's cartoon, here's my obligatory Total Eclipse cartoon for sharp-eyed readers.

Crime and Punishment

Today's Graphical History Tour takes us to April of 1924 to visit some of history's notorious villains.

"Down and Out Club" by T.E. Powers for Star Company ca. April 4, 1924

The Teapot Dome scandal continued to take its toll on holdovers from the Harding administration with the resignation of Attorney General Harry Daugherty. T.E. Powers depicts him walking past the "Little Green House on K Street" where many of the Teapot Dome deals were reportedly made; then meeting disgraced Interior Secretary Albert Fall, Gaston Means, and Dr. Frederick Cook.  Finally, Daugherty escapes to assume the role of elder statesman in Ohio Republican politics.

Coolidge replaced Daugherty with Harlan A. Stone, whose first action in office was to clear the place of Daugherty cronies. Coolidge would later appoint Stone to the Supreme Court; Franklin Roosevelt elevated him to Chief Justice in 1941.

(Means and Cook were only tangentially connected to the Teapot Dome case. Means, an agent of the Department of Justice, testified to the Senate in March that he had collected large bribes for Daugherty crony Jess Smith from a wide variety of persons interested in avoiding federal prosecution; Smith  committed suicide in May of 1923 — although as later with Vincent Foster, some raised doubts. Dr. Frederick Cook, a trustee of the Petroleum Producers Association, was convicted of illegally transferring some oil-producing properties in Texas to himself and his wife.)

"A Cabinet Officer Who Might Escape Congressional Criticism" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 2, 1924

Having no connection to any of the scandals then in the headlines, the actual Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, would serve out the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and well into that of Herbert Hoover. 

Side note: Attorney General Stone would launch an anti-trust investigation into Aluminum Company of America (now Alcoa), owned by the Mellon family, but it would be 14 years before any charges were filed.

"Who's Been Running It Night and Day" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 6, 1924

With Daugherty's resignation, the Coolidge administration was now free of any officers directly connected to the Teapot Dome scandal, the Veterans Bureau scandal, and other taint left over from the Harding administration.

by Charles Henry "Bill" Sykes in Life, April 10, 1924

Not that the scandals were about to stop generating headlines, of course. But the administration and Congress could at least claim to be doing what they could to expose and repair the damage.

"Still 'Demonstrating'" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger before April 12, 1924

Turning to other issues: Citizens of the mining town of Lilly, Pennsylvania repeatedly disrupted a Ku Klux Klan rally the week of April 6, spraying water from firehoses at the klansmen as they paraded through the town. The klansmen responded with gunfire, killing two and injuring several others.

Police in the town arrested 24 of the reportedly 500 klansmen as the group left Lilly by train, and confiscated some 50 firearms. The 24 were held without bail on murder charges. Four Lilly residents who were arrested for inciting a riot were released on their own recognizance. Trials were scheduled for May and June.

"The Penalty of Treason" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, April 2, 1924

Meanwhile, in Germany, verdicts came down in the trial of the Beer Hall Putsch leaders. General Erich Ludendorff, the figure most recognizable to American readers, was found not guilty.

These last cartoons are by German cartoonists; the first hangs on punning the city of Dusseldorf and the brash insult "Dusseltier," roughly, "dumbass."

"Großherzig" by Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 13, 1924

Among the nine putsch leaders found guilty were Nazi leaders Adolph Hitler and Rudolph Hess. They were to serve their terms in fortress confinement (festungschaft); there was talk of assigning deaf guards to watch over Hitler so that he couldn't talk them into freeing him.

"Der Erste April" by Thomas Theodor Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, April 1, 1924

Thomas Theodor Heine's front page cartoon in the Munich satire weekly Simplicissimus — the issue dated the very day of the verdict — saw Hitler as the stuff of April Fool's jokes.

Released from his festungschaft after only nine months, Hitler had just enough time to write Mein Kampf and to plot a more successful entry into Berlin.

"Treue um Treue" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 13, 1924

The other character in Oskar Garvens's cartoon is Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Generalstaatskommissar of Bavaria, who was giving a speech in the Bürgerbräukeller when Hitler's Nazis stormed the beerhall and began their attempted coup. Von Kahr shared Hitler's desire of overthrowing the national government in Berlin to set up a dictatorship, but one led by himself, Lt. General Otto von Lossow of the Reichswehr, and Bavarian police commander Hans von Seisser.

But the triumvirate of von Kahr, von Lossow, and Seisser acted to thwart Hitler's putsch, calling out the police to disperse the putschists before they could march on Berlin. For that, von Kahr lost the support of Bavarian right-wingers. Ten years later, he was arrested by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the "Night of Long Knives" and shot to death in detention.

Got a Feeling Kansas Is Not on Meta Any More

Screenshot from my phone

I was taken aback to find this notification on my Facebook feed this morning .

Last August, I had posted a link to a news story about a Kansas sheriff who raided the office of a local weekly newspaper, the Marion Record, and the home of its publisher, confiscating the newspaper's computers and resulting in the death of the publisher's elderly mother. The reporting by a progressive online news organization in Kansas was picked up by national media and others like me who were alarmed by this fundamental violation of freedom of the press.

Clicking the "See why" bar, I was told that my post presented a cybersecurity hazard to the metaverse.

Turns out I was by no means alone.

The Kansas Reflector article had been shared by several others in the journalism biz, and everyone who had shared that story on Facebook woke up to the same We Removed Your Content warning.

In fact, so had everyone who had shared any Kansas Reflector article on Facebook.

For the reason why, you'd have to go to the Kansas Reflector itself, because you can't read it on Facebook.

This morning, sometime between 8:20 and 8:50 a.m. Thursday, Facebook removed all posts linking to Kansas Reflector’s website.

This move not only affected Kansas Reflector’s Facebook page, where we link to nearly every story we publish, but the pages of everyone who has ever shared a story from us.

That’s the short version of the virtual earthquake that has shaken our readers. We’ve been flooded with instant messages and emails from readers asking what happened, how they can help and why the platform now falsely claims we’re a cybersecurity risk.

Allow us to assuage the biggest concerns first.

We were not hacked, and our website does not pose a cybersecurity threat. You and your devices are safe while reading our stories and sharing them. Facebook won’t let you do so at present, but other, non-Meta-owned platforms should be fine.

As to what happened, we’re still working on finding out. Many have wondered if one story or another was responsible, highlighting our coverage of the Marion newspaper raid or state government.

Coincidentally, the removals happened the same day we published a column from Dave Kendall that is critical of Facebook’s decision to reject certain types of advertising: “When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future.”

When we attempted to share the column on Facebook this morning — shortly after 8 a.m. — the link was summarily rejected. After a second attempt at posting, we instead simply linked to our website with advice to find the story there. Within the next half-hour, all posts linking to our site were gone. For reference, we have published more than 6,000 news stories, briefs and opinion columns since Kansas Reflector’s founding in 2020.

Now, it is true that the Marion newspaper raid is an ongoing story; the Marion County Record filed a court case against the mayor, police chief, and sheriff just this week. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Facebook isn't desperate to protect Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane and Boss Hogg. To my mind, there is no coincidence that the Dave Kendall article complaining about Facebook was published the very morning that the Zuckerverse came crashing down on the Reflector. 

Kendall had produced a documentary film about local efforts to combat climate change. He then decided to "boost" a Facebook post advertising screenings of his film.

Imagine my surprise when I attempted to “boost” a post on Meta’s Facebook to begin our online promotional efforts — and the company summarily rejected it.

Why? According to the automated response I received, the post “doesn’t comply with our Ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics policy.”

Apparently, Meta deems climate change too controversial for discussion on their platforms.

I had suspected such might be the case, because all the posts I made prior to the attempted boost seemed to drop off the radar with little response. As I took a closer look, I found others complaining about Facebook squelching posts related to climate change.

... [I]n the Meta-verse, where it seems virtually impossible to connect with a human being associated with the administration of the platform, rules are rules, and it appears they would prefer to suppress anything that might prove problematic for them.

 By mid afternoon, the Reflector had updated the story about Facebook shutting them down:

Facebook appears to have restored Kansas Reflector’s ability to share links to our website and our past posts, approximately seven hours after the problem was first reported. We have not received an explanation about why our stories were blocked.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone offered the following response on Twitter: “This was an error that had nothing to do with the Reflector’s recent criticism of Meta. It has since been reversed and we apologize to the Reflector and its readers for the mistake.”

As of Thursday evening, the column criticizing Meta still cannot be shared on Facebook. We are continuing to monitor the situation. If you experience any difficulties with the platform and Reflector articles, please let us know. If you want to support our work, please donate.

Q Toon: Republican Day of Risibility

March 31 was Easter Sunday in the Western Heterodox Christian Church, and also Transgender Visibility Day on the social issues calendar. The White House took note of both events, issuing declarations of well wishes.

"Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation. Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, the help America thrive. They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves."

Republicans in government and media were apoplectic. How dare this White House sully Resurrection of Our Lord Sunday by giving a nod to those heathens in conflict with their assigned gender! 

The campaign of Corrupt Former President Donald Trump fulminated that merely acknowledging transgender Americans was "appalling and insulting." Parson of the House Mike Johnson called it "outrageous and abhorrent" and a "betrayal of the central tenet of Easter."

I'm not quite clear on how the central tenet of Jesus not accepting death as the final word is that gender is forever fixed and immutable. Perhaps that's explained in one of those $59.99 Trump Bibles.

Meanwhile, Charles Moran, President of the GOPlgbtq- organization Log Cabin Republicans gave a pearl-clutching interview in Newsweek, in which he exclaimed that he was "awe-struck that nobody in the White House thought that it might be prudent to possibly move the trans proclamation up or back a day, so it didn't directly conflict with the most important holiday in the Christian faith."

Of course, if they had moved Transgender Visibility Day back a day, it would have been on the day of the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. No doubt Republicans would have had their knickers in a knot over proclaiming Transgender Visibility Day at the same time that the Biden-Harrises had invited scores of innocent little children onto the premises.

By the way (as Mike Peterson beat me to the punch in observing the other day), Eastern Orthodox Easter will be on cinco de mayo this year. Brace yourself for further right-wing high dudgeon if the White House acknowledges both of those.

Have yourself a shot of tequila every time you hear some Republican utter the phrase "central tenet of Easter."

Just remember: it was the Corrupt Trump Administration that was responsible for letting Easter fall on April Fools Day in 2018. You'll never see Joe Biden letting that happen on his watch.

St. Wegotfun Day's Sneak Peek

Gaar Williams in Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1924

And to all who celebrate, is that something on your tie?

Something Old, Something New

Today's Graphical History Tour returns to some of my own cartoons celebrating their decennaries this month, but I'm going to shake things up a bit this time and not take them in chronological order.

I'll start with this cartoon drawn for one of the more liberal of the student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.*

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 3, 1994

UWM has long had two vocal student groups advocating against each other for Palestine and Israel. The pro-Palestine group posted an inflamatory poster in the student union atrium in response to the Cave of the Patriarch's Massacre, in which American-Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Palestinians worshiping in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, killing 29 and wounding 125.

The Palestinian Human Rights Campaign's poster depicted a sequential cartoon of a Star of David morphing into a swastika. The Jewish student group complained to the chancellor of UWM, John Schroeder, that the poster was antisemitic and should be taken down.

It's an argument reflected in graphic discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large, and never moreso than today.

If I were to draw a cartoon like this today, I would add a rule that any reference to blood is also out of bounds. You can draw Vladimir Putin as a bloodthirsty monster in Ukraine, or George W. Bush spilling blood in Iraq, or Slobodan Milošević dripping blood in Bosnia. But the moment you try any of that with Bibi Netanyahu, you're trafficking in Blood Libel against all Jews everywhere.

Cartoons by Dwayne "Mr. Fish" Booth and Serge Chapleau

A number of cartoonists have stumbled into the Blood Libel trap since the Netanyahu government's scorched earth campaign to push Palestinians in Gaza into the sea — most recently Dwayne Booth, who draws under the nom de plume "Mr. Fish," and Serge Chapleau of La Presse in Montréal, Québec. Chapleau's cartoon of Netanyahu as "Nosferatu en route to Rafah" was yanked off-line by La Presse this month after howls of protest from the Usual Quarters. The Association of Canadian Cartoonists issued a statement in support of M. Chapleau; he stands behind his cartoon, and La Presse stands behind dumping it.

Mr. Fish's cartoon from last November was singled out as anti-semitic by the right-wing Washington Free Beacon and then criticized by the Interim President of the University of Pennsylvania, Larry Jameson. Mr. Fish has not been fired from teaching his course on cartooning at U-Penn, and no journal that posted "Who Invited That Lousy Anti-Semite" on line has 404ed it with apologies; so I haven't heard any push for the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists to leap to his defense.

for Q Syndicate, March 2004

Moving on: This was a cartoon I drew as a reserve for Q Syndicate, to be released at some later date when I might be on vacation, laid up, or for some other reason fail to get a cartoon in on time. For that reason, the cartoon did not deal with any actual news story; it's not about any particular cartoon syndicate rejecting the work of any particular lesbian cartoonist.

I bring it up today because within cartooning circles here in 2024, some of us are more concerned with the decision by the major newspaper publishing conglomerates to standardize their newspapers' comic pages, because of which decision just about every comic strip currently drawn by a woman has disappeared from print.

Lynn Johnston’s “For Better Or Worse" has survived the purge, but it has been in reruns since 2008. Two other sort-of exceptions are "Luann" by Greg Evans with his daughter Karen as co-author, and "Shoe" currently drawn by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly, widow of the strip's original creator.

As Georgia Dunn noted in her strip "Breaking Cat News," "There are more dead men than living women in the funny pages."

Well, it's Holy Week in the Western Christian calendar, so let us open now our hymnals to page ax².

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., March 22, 1984

Back in the 1980's, conservatives upset by the separation of church and school and encouraged by the presidency of Ronald Reagan, were eager to impose prayer on public school students. Not mandatory, of course, but voluntary. 

Fair enough, I suppose. Turnabout, however, is fair play.

Who could have foreseen that forty years later, some tawdry huckster would be hawking Bibles with the Constitution as Apocrypha?

I wonder how many Corinthians it has.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2014

Speaking of turnabout as fair play, it's been ten years since Mr. Fred Phelps shuffled off his fetid coil. Since he based his entire career on speaking ill of the dead — loudly, through a bullhorn, at funerals — it was only fitting to dyslogize him in like manner.

He is risible indeed.

_____________________

* The other main newspapers were the right-wing Times and the Black American Invictus.

Joe Lieberman, R.I.P.

Retired Senator and Al Gore's running mate Joe Lieberman (D/I-CT) has died.

Lieberman ran lukewarm and cold with mainstream Democrats and others on the liberal side of things, so here's the one cartoon I drew of him that best exemplifies that relationship:

for Q Syndicate, December, 2009

Q Toon: D.C. Rider

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson reached across the aisle to cobble together a stop-gap budget deal to keep the U.S. government running until September. The must-pass deal will probably pass the Senate in time to keep the government from shutting down when the last stop-gap budget deal expires at the end of March.

Johnson needed Democratic help passing the bill, because — let's be frank here — when it comes to running a government, today's Republicans are utterly incompetent.

What else could you expect? Today's Republicans are fundamentally opposed to government, so why would they be good at governing? Most of them hate the government and want to drown it in a bathtub of red ink. They are in Washington to get on TV and own libs and get shares on social media, not to pass budgets and accomplish stuff. 

They can't even accomplish stuff they claim they want when they have it handed to them all put together and tied up with ribbons and bows, like this year's border security bill.

What few Republicans who are actually interested in getting the government to do things are leaving town, and not waiting for the next election. The latest departure is Wisconsin's Mike Gallagher, who has represented the northeast corner of the state since 2017. He has had a 100% vote rating from the National Right to Life Committee and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom First Society, and Gun Owners of America.

His approval ratings drop to 92% from the National Rifle Association, 82% from the Club for Cancerous Growth, and 79% from the American Conservative Union; but still, he's no middle-of-the-road Republican-In-Name-Only wishy-washy Alexander Throttlebottom.

But like Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), Gallagher simply couldn't wait to get the hell out of Washington, and is leaving Congress before his term ends. Democrats, expecting next month to pick up the seat vacated when George Santos (R-Living Island) was expelled, would then be only two votes shy of the majority. In other words, if only one Republican were to break ranks and votes with all the Democrats, the result would be a tie, enough to defeat any amendment, bill, or impeachment.

The previous must-pass stop-gap budget deal only passed because Mike Johnson's predecessor begged for Democratic support, which is why Kevin McCarthy is no longer Speaker of the House. Now Johnson has decided he had no alternative but to follow McCarthy's lead. As if to prove the point that Republicans simply cannot govern, Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Through the Looking Glass) wants to call for a vote of no confidence in Johnson.

And start the tortuous process of electing a Speaker of the House all over again.

Barkeep! A Round for My Friends!

Eric Hovde is vying for Wisconsin Republicans' votes to run against Tammy Baldwin again this fall (he lost to former Governor Tommy Thompson in 2012). He's been out in California lately, so he has been advertising heavily on television this month to re-introduce himself to the voters.

I assume this commercial was not filmed at the "beloved neighborhood bar" he finally succeeded in shutting down after a 25-year effort.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This week's cartoon co-stars someone whom I haven't drawn in a while, and it's not this guy.

That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

Moving on: I've edited a cartoon and blog post from a couple weeks ago to correct an error on my part. An editor questioned my syndicate editors about the name I mistakenly gave Nex Benedict, the Oklahoma teenager who died shortly after other students beat them up in a school lavatory. Somewhere in the process of erasing and rewriting text, I had changed Nex to Dex.

When the question was passed along to me, it came with the suggestion that perhaps I was trying to depict the cluelessness of the politicians talking in the cartoon, or their awkwardness in using Nex's pronouns of choice. 

At first, I thought the editors were confused by the use of they/them pronouns referring to Nex where someone could think the pronouns referred back to "those students." Most of my erasing and rewriting of dialogue had been in effort to steer clear of they/them confusion.

After a few email exchanges, I realized where I had been in error, so I corrected the cartoon and sent replacement files to Q Syndicate in case any client papers are still interested in it now that an official cause of death has been declared.

I apologize to all concerned for my mistake.