This Week's Sneak Peek

They made me get my flying monkeys again...

Tempest in a Teapot Dome

The Harding Teapot Dome scandal broke wide open in January, 1924, so it's time for our Graphical History Tour to break out the toons.

No caption, by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 28, 1924

If I had a dime for every cartoon I've seen of a teapot boiling over — or, since the scandal was over oilfields, becoming a gusher — I'd have a couple of bucks. 

Daniel Fitzpatrick's cartoon stands out for incorporating the Capitol dome into the idea.

"Mister Fall Seems to Have Been the Only One Who could 'See' Anything" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jan. 27, 1924

In the opening months of the Harding administration, Interior Secretary Albert Fall — one of the Harding administration's "Ohio Gang" — had convinced  Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby that the Interior Department was better suited than the Department of the Navy to manage the naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hills, California. President Warren Harding authorized the transfer, and Fall then leased the oilfields to buddies of his in exchange for over $400,000 in personal loans.

The Senate investigation led by Sen. Thomas Walsh (D-MT) centered on the oil leasing deal under Fall,  who had since resigned, but also faulted Denby and Attorney General Harry Daugherty (another member of the Ohio Gang) for failure to pay attention.

"I'd Do It Again" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, Jan. 31, 1924

Denby testified that he saw nothing wrong with having Interior manage the naval oil reserves. He would not last three more months at his post. Coolidge would ask for Daugherty's resignation as well.

"Rushing with First Aid to the Injured" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Jan. 29, 1924

Even though the Teapot Dome scandal was a sensation in January, blared across front pages in banner headlines, most of the Republican-oriented cartoonists I've found ignored it. "Ding" Darling was a prominent exception, perhaps explained by his strong differences with Albert Fall over issues of environmental protection.

Here "Ding" complains that the scandal would only benefit the field of Democratic presidential candidates, singling out front-runner William McAdoo, dark horse Sen. Sam Ralston (D-IN), and also-ran Sen. Oscar Underwood (D-AL).

"It's an Ill Wind" by Douglas Rodgers in San Francisco Bulletin, Jan. 31, 1924

Douglas Rodgers adds progressive Republican Senator William Borah of Idaho and Democratic elder statesman William Jennings Bryan to the list of those relishing the Republican scandal. He could well have added Bob LaFollette and several other progressives.

"Beyond Control" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jan. 31, 1924

Congress voted overwhelmingly to cancel the oil leases made by Fall, and President Coolidge appointed a special prosecutor to handle the case. Democrat-leaning cartoonists eagerly tied the entire Republican Party to the scandal.

"Can't Get Away from It" by Harold Talburt for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Jan. 31, 1924

"The Tea(Pot Dome) Party" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Jan. 29, 1924

But not so fast, O Party of Andrew Jackson!

"What Dirty Boys..." by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News Tribune, Feb. 7, 1924

Democrat McAdoo's presidential aspirations would be hobbled by his association with one of the oilmen implicated in the scandal. Edward Doheny, a major donor to the Democratic Party and chair of its Resolutions Committee in 1920, was accused of offering Albert Fall a $100,000 bribe in exchange for his company managing some of the Elk Hills oil reserves. 

"Phew" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News Tribune, Jan. 25, 1924

Doheny would be acquitted of the charge; his son Ned would murder an accused accomplice and commit suicide before going to trial for delivering the bribe; Fall would be found guilty of accepting it.

"It Backfired" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1924

That would be years down the road. McAdoo had nothing to do with approval of the oil leases, but his being a fellow Democrat in California was kind of like having one's picture taken with Jeffrey Epstein. Guilt by association was good enough to get Republican cartoonists to argue "they all do it."

"Laocoon" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Feb. 5, 1924

A Seat at the Table

Yesterday's Comic Strip of the Day included a cartoon of mine that I had posted to my Facebook and Xitter pages after this week's New Hampshire primary:

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

I'm honored and flattered, and accept the mild criticism leveled at it. The thing, however, is that it's a 36-year-old cartoon.

The first-in-the-nation status of Iowa's presidential caucus and New Hampshire's presidential primary are cherished among media types and natives of those two states, but have long been resented elsewhere. The states are predominantly rural and overwhelmingly white, and rather unrepresentative of the nation at large. The candidates have months to meet and mingle with the hoi polloi there, who talk jokingly of deciding against a particular candidate because they got to meet him or her only once.

In years when the race is still competitive after New Hampshire, the candidates dash through the ensuing states — blink and they're gone. This year, of course, the media have declared the race over and are impatiently tapping their toes for Trump and Biden to give their nomination acceptance speeches, the other 48 states rendered irrelevant to having any say in who will be on the November ballot (take that, Colorado and Maine!).

I was a college student in Minnesota in 1980 when that state tried to move its presidential caucuses to the same date as New Hampshire's primary. The Democratic Party punished Minnesota for that effrontery, warning that the delegates Minnesota caucus-goers selected that night would not be seated at the national convention — since it had been the 1976 New Hampshire that vaulted Jimmy Carter from obscurity to front-runner status, the incumbent president owed the Granite State that much consideration.

If one were to pick some state to replace Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the line, which one is more representative of the nation at large?

How about Illinois?

It's got urban. It's got rural. It's got Chicago and Cairo. It's got Blacks, Latinos, Italians, Poles, Irish, Swedes, Serbs, and Lithuanians. It's got corn and coastline. It's got baseball, football, basketball and hockey. It's got hundreds of undocumented immigrants stuck at O'Hare. It's got weekend hunters and career criminals, both of whom cherish their stockpile of guns and screw the rest of Illinoisans who get in their way. It's got Boystown and Cardinal Cupich.

Let's see Iowa or New Hampshire top that!

Q Toon: In the Heart of Africa (Updated)

Last Saturday, I wrapped up my rehashing of old cartoons with a few paragraphs about a cartoon I had not drawn.

Then I decided to draw it anyway.

On December 29, the President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye, was asked about respecting LGBTQ+ rights in order not to offend the sensibilities of western nations offering his country humanitarian aid. President Ndayishimiye spewed some shockingly vicious antigay hatred:

"For me, I think that if we find these people in Burundi they should be taken to stadiums and be stoned, and doing so would not be a crime," he said.

What can I say other than what I wrote about Mr. Ndayishimiye on Saturday? I can add the dry factoids that Ndayishimiye was elected to a seven-year term as President of Burundi in 2020; and, for the moment at least, the state punishment in Burundi for homosexuality is up to two years in jail.

The more you know.

So I'll just add this: At the risk of being accused of cultural imperialism, I think that imposing an intentionally cruel and torturous death penalty on people whose only supposed crime is that they love someone of the same sex is unforgivably reprehensible, no matter what continent you live on, what color your skin is, and what house of worship you visit.

________________________________

Update: The Ambassador Burundais to Brussels tweeted a January 2 press release at me in response to this week's cartoon today. It's in French, a language I took in high school and college (but when I left grammar behind and enrolled in L'histoire des Pensées Françaises, I found myself hopelessly at C-).

If I understand it correctly, Ambassador Thérence Ntahiraja pointed out that Burundi does not, in fact, stone homosexuals (see my stipulation to that fact above). Amb. Ntahiraja further claims that President Ndayishimiye was merely using a figure of speech ("figure de style et d'images linguistiques") referencing biblical admonitions against acts which are against the law in Burundi ("pour montrer le gravité de ces practiques qui sont contraires aux lois et valeurs culturelles du Burundi").

I searched in vain for any translation of President Ndayishimiye's remarks that included the phrase "the Bible says" somewhere after “I think” in the quotation above.

I stand by my cartoon.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I went there anyway.

Januaries '4eign and Domestic

It's time to ease back on the wayback machine just a little bit, so here are a few cartoons I drew in Januaries of years ending in -4. (Which was coincidentally the high temperature here the other day.)

1984 was a presidential election year, of course; and like today, the United States was bedeviled by hostilities in the Middle East.

The U.S.S. John F. Kennedy had been on patrol off the coast of Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 soldiers had died. In response to some hostile fire, the JFK launched a bombing raid on December 4. The plane of Navy Lts. Mark Lange and Robert Goodman was shot down by a Syrian ground missile. Lange did not survive; Goodman was taken captive in Damascus.

Unwilling to accede to the conditions set by Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad that the U.S. withdraw forces from Lebanon, the Reagan Administration's efforts to win Goodman's freedom were getting nowhere. Then a delegation led by by Rev. Jesse Jackson went to Damascus, and Jackson, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, succeeded where Reagan had failed.

Jackson nevertheless came in seventh place in the Iowa caucuses. Go figure. Must have been because there are no naval bases in Iowa.

I drew the above cartoon for the January 12, 1984 edition of the University of Wisconsin - Parkside student newspaper; but they still had an unused cartoon from December and ran that one instead.

Moving on to 1994, and the aftermath of more U.S. soldiers killed in a far-off civil war:

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 24, 1994

President Clinton's first Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, resigned at the end of 1993, tacitly taking the fall for the Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia. Clinton's nomination of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman as Aspin's replacement was greeted initially with bipartisan praise — save for New York Times columnist William Safire, who alleged that Inman was biased against Israel. 

Inman withdrew his name from consideration at a stormy press conference, where he blasted Safire and complained that Republican Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott were out to get him. Both Senate leaders expressed surprise and shock at Inman's accusation, and the White House was taken totally off guard.

Clinton's subsequent nomination of William Perry to the post went off smoothly. There was later speculation that Inman was actually trying to head off being connected to a scandal at International Signal and Control, where he served on the board of directors.

for Q Syndicate, January, 2004

I don't have a cartoon from January of 2004 that fits with the general topic of today's post; so instead, I'll include this homage to P.T. Bridgeport, a recurring character in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" whose dialogue always appeared in late-1800's advertising fonts. 

Lettering dialogue is usually my least favorite part of drawing a cartoon. This was an exception.

for Q Syndicate, January, 2014

Returning to foreign issues, I chose this cartoon from ten years ago because it gives me an opportunity to address a cartoon I haven't drawn this month.

On December 29, the President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye, was asked about respecting LGBTQ+ rights.

"For me, I think that if we find these people in Burundi they should be taken to stadiums and be stoned, and doing so would not be a crime," he said.

If any U.S. politician had spewed such hate-filled bile in the no-news week between Christmas and New Year's, I would have been all over that story in that week's cartoon. But doing so about a politician none of my readers had ever heard of from a country that many could not find on a map (present company excepted, of course) with a history of Western colonialism and yada yada is fraught with danger.

Would it be possible to condemn Mr. Ndayishimiye without risking accusations of racism and cultural imperialism?

We could debate whether homosexuality existed in Africa before Christian and Islamic missionaries preached anti-LGBTQ+ persecution there. Western colonizers did everything they could to erase local culture and history wherever they went; yet it beggars belief to imagine that homosexuality existed only in Europe and in scattered Native American nations before Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Francis Drake set sail.

Mr. Ndayishimiye, as it happens, is Roman Catholic, but with some glaringly apparent differences with the current Pope.

My 2014 cartoon attempted to argue that institutionalized homophobia rather than homosexuality is the Western export to Africa (at least as far as Christianity is concerned). Not that I have never leveled criticism at African politicians —viz. here and e.g. here — but I don't have much of a readership in Burundi, Uganda, or Kenya.

Or anywhere else on the continent.

Lo, mbaya sana. I'm better off sticking to cartooning politicians my readers can vote for or against.

One reference to The African Queen in that regard is probably my total allotment, anyway. At least until I manage to draw a better Katherine Hepburn.

Q Toon: Just Say No-hio

In that week between Christmas and New Year's when nobody pays attention to such things, Ohio's Republican legislature sent their Republican Governor a bill outlawing gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The bill also bans transgender athletes from participating in school sports.

Governor Mike DeWine vetoed the bill, but kudos from the LGBTQ+ community were short-lived. DeWine issued instead an executive order instructing the Ohio departments of Health and of Mental Health to implement a 120-day ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors and to require that an endocrinologist and psychiatrist must prepare a "detransition plan" before patients of any age can receive gender-affirming care.

As I’m sure the state of Ohio requires for all other forms of corrective surgery.

On January 10, the Ohio House overrode DeWine's veto anyway, and the state's Senate is likely to do the same when it convenes on January 24.

Well, you know what those Republicans always say. They're from the government, and they're here to help.

This Week's Sneak Peek

We'll get to that guy in due time; but first, today is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.

On this holiday, I usually post a sketch I drew of King back in 1992. I drew it from a photograph that appeared in Look magazine that I particularly liked. (Look, until it folded in 1971, was a glossy, coffee-table rival magazine to Life but with Saturday Evening Post style cartoons. And now that I've explained that, I realize that as far as anyone under the age of 60 is concerned I might as well have typed that in cuneiform.)

Anyway, ten years ago, a schoolteacher saw my drawing on line and asked to use it on t-shirts he planned to give as awards to students participating in (if I remember correctly) an essay contest. 

I'm not generally in the business of giving my work away for free, but this was for kids. And requested very politely by a teacher who was, I'll bet, springing for the printing cost of the t-shirts himself. So I asked only that he send me one of the shirts.

Ten years on, I still cling to a glimmer of hope that someday I'll see one of his students, on TV or on line, wearing their essay prize t-shirt. Even though this is printed on the back. Maybe it's more reasonable to think that I'd hear from some former KIPP student or their parent who remembers having the tee.

Meanwhile, here is the quotation the teacher added to my sketch:

"All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in in single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly...

"I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. That is the way the world is made. I didn't make it that way, but this is the interrelated structure of reality." — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [Why We Can't Wait]

Dry January Humor

It has been a while since we have discussed Prohibition in our Graphical History Tour. By 1924, cartoonists had by and large given up trying to find new jokes about Dad's stash of hooch in the coal cellar. Prohibition, it turned out, was a serious matter.

I've spared you the flurry of December cartoons warning against the dangers of wood-alcohol-based moonshine. It had also become obvious that Americans' thirst for booze was a boon to organized crime.

"Foot-sore" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jan. 10, 1924

Philadelphia's brand new Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick came into office determined to quash gangsterism and bootlegging. He named Marine Corps Brigadier Gen. Smedley Butler his Director of Public Safety and called on him to spare no effort to root out crime and corruption in the city.

"Frisking Him" by John L. De Mar in Philadelphia Record, ca. Jan. 16, 1924

Butler had no authority to fire police officers for being on the take, but he immediately transferred entire squads from precinct to precinct in order to disrupt connections between corrupt policemen and their criminal buddies. In the first week in office, Butler launched raids on some 900+ speakeasies — not just the corner tavern, but also the Ritz Carlton — padlocking or destroying several. 

"Wonder Why I Couldn't Do the Same Thing" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Jan. 12, 1924

Chas Kuhn, for one, applauded Philadelphia's crackdown on bootlegging, prostitution, gambling, and official corruption, holding it up as a model for "most every city in the country."

"Wouldn't a Dustless Mop Be Better..." by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 10, 1924

Others, however, viewed with alarm Kendrick and Butler's draconian measures such as stopping random drivers at military-style checkpoints at various locations in the city.

"Look Out for Dirt" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, Jan. 11, 1924

Skeptics couldn't argue that Butler's tactics were not effective, so Harding and James suggested instead that harsh measures in Philadelphia would simply drive the problem to other municipalities.

Kind of like Governor Abbott's approach to handling immigration.

"The War in Williamson County" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 10, 1924

Some of those other municipalities, such as those in Williamson County down in the southern tip of Illinois, had been trying the get tough approach to Volstead Act enforcement a month before Mayor Kendrick in Philly. Hundreds of raids against roadhouses and private homes were conducted in Marion and surrounding towns without any legal warrants — not by the local sheriff, but by federal agents and fellow citizens.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the raids, led by A.J. Armitage and S. Glenn Young, were conducted by federal agents "assisted by hundreds of deputized citizens, many of whom admit membership in the Ku Klux Klan." 

"Klan Law and Order in Illinois" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 11, 1924

The Tribune further reported that "A counterorganization to the klan known as the Knights of the Flaming Circle sprung up six months ago [in June, 1923] after klan organizers appeared in Williamson County."

Williamson County had been  the scene of the Herrin mine massacre in June of 1922; the local klan formed to push for prosecution of labor activists charged in those deaths.  Glenn Young was himself a klansman. Charged with assault for hitting a Marion restaurant owner over the head with a revolver during an argument about his raids, he was acquitted after showing up in court backed by "a large assemblage of friends, who carried two machine guns 'for protection.'" He had also been acquitted of murder even before that, resulting in what turned out to be a temporary dismissal as an enforcement agent of the Treasury Department.

Fearing further violence, Sheriff George Galligan called in the National Guard.

Galligan also attempted to persuade saloon keepers to close voluntarily until danger of trouble abated, but these efforts failed miserably, as did his attempt to disarm Herrin citizens by having gun permits revoked. The sheriff finally agreed to meet privately with any citizen who thought he had evidence of illegal activity and rapidly made eighteen raids of his own, hoping to convince the public that he was sincere in trying to enforce the law. Satisfied that he had regained control of law and order, Galligan agreed to removal of the militia after eight days, and most of the troops left Herrin on January 15 and 16.

The sheriff would be proven wrong.

But that should probably be a story for another day.

In the meantime, if you are participating in Dry January, I hope yours is going better than Sheriff Galligan's was.

Q Toon: Technically, Awards

Theatrical Awards Season is upon us: that joyous time of year when all of Hollywood, Broadway, Bollywood, and Baftaway gather to celebrate the wonder that is themselves, emceed by a comedian whom everyone agrees afterward was the worst possible choice.

The award shows are televised, and they always run too long in spite of the orchestra director's best efforts to drown out the thank-you list of the winner of Best Animated Documentary in a Foreign Language. So the folks whose names are scrolling up the screen as the audience exits the theater (or while the TV network crunches the sped-up scroll down to a corner of the screen to make room for Limu Emu, Doug, and that Jardiance lady) have a separate, non-televised award ceremony of their own at the local Marriott.

All the buzz in 2023 was about Barbie, and Oppenheimer, and Succession, and Maestro, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

Well, almost all the buzz.

Anyone following LGBTQ media, either professional or social, heard and saw plenty about Red, White, and Royal Blue; Fellow Travelers; and Saltburn — certain hot and heavy scenes in particular.

It used to be that movies targeting a gay and queer audience had to keep the action strictly G-rated in order to hold onto an R rating. These days, we've moved way beyond a glimpse of stocking.

It also used to be that being cast as a gay character was ruin for an actor's career, especially if he wanted to be taken seriously in future leading man roles. But now, even straight actors, eager to demonstrate range (or at least wokeness), are happy to get in on the action. We have intimacy coordinators — the professionals whose job it is to keep filming respectful and the actors comfortable — to thank for that.

So if there isn't an award for our heroes in intimacy coordination, don't you think there ought to be?

This Week's Sneak Peek

The envelope, please...

I was flipping back and forth between football and the Golden Globes while drawing last night — mostly listening to the former, but checking to see what people were wearing at the latter.

I was also hoping for seeing a TV camera or two caught in a shot, but didn't catch any. I'm hoping that the one I drew isn't too 1950's.

Setting the Stage for 1924

Our Graphical History Tour now arrives at the presidential election year of 1924.

"Let Me Carry Your Grip" by William Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, Jan. 1, 1924

I wasn't going to use this cartoon since Mike Peterson had; but the scan he used had a blank spot where William McAdoo's mouth and chin are, leading one of his readers to mistake McAdoo (just above 3:00 in Morris's cartoon) for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some might have considered Roosevelt, the Vice Presidential candidate on the Democrats' 1920 ticket, presidential timber in 1924, but this was a mere three years after he was tainted by the Newport Sex Scandal from his tenure as Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy. A Senate investigation into the affair at the naval base concluded that Roosevelt was "morally responsible" for a pattern there of homosexual activity, entrapment, and intimidation, and thus unfit for public office.

Roosevelt, moreover, had been paralyzed from the waist down since the summer of 1921. Although he continued active behind the scenes in Democratic and New York politics, he withdrew from public life until making the nomination speech for Al Smith at the 1924 Democratic Convention.

McAdoo, on the other hand, was the early leading candidate for the Democratic nomination. McAdoo had the backing of rural interests, prohibitionists, the Ku Klux Klan, and his father-in-law, Woodrow Wilson. His rivals included anti-prohibitionist Al Smith, and Alabama Senator Oscar Underwood, who was prohibitionist like McAdoo but publicly opposed to the Klan.

William Jennings Bryan, just past 12:00 in Morris's cartoon, was a favorite of cartoonists to enter the race, but even he recognized that he was better off cheering and jeering from the gallery.

The eventual nominee, James Cox, is the fellow wearing glasses just below McAdoo in Morris's cartoon.

"Hiram Isn't Waiting..." by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 5, 1924

Contrary to the left half of Morris's cartoon, Calvin Coolidge's decision to run for election on his own effectively cleared the field of Republican hopefuls, save for Senator Hiram Johnson of California (just below 9:00 in Morris's cartoon). Johnson, representing the party's Progressives and isolationists, was by all accounts a long-shot candidate.

"He Would Hitch His Wagon to a Star" by Elmer Bushnell for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Jan. 10, 1924

Elmer Bushnell's cartoon about Johnson encountering difficulty with the Republican Party in Bushnell's home state could easily have been syndicated with the word "Ohio" left out. I include it here because it is the one cartoon I've run across that spells out in those bundles the issues Johnson ran on: Mexico, foreign policy, the veterans' bonus, income tax reduction, farm policy, and staying out of the World Court and League of Nations.

"It's Just Possible..." by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Jan. 10, 1924

I found only one cartoonist willing to take Johnson's candidacy seriously, even among cartoonists in his home state.

"The Flivver That Flivvered" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Dec. 29, 1923

Meanwhile, Henry Ford, after a year of toying with the idea of running for the presidential nomination of one party or another, decided in December that Coolidge was a shoo-in to win in November.

"Trying to Pull Some Leap Year Stuff" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News-Tribune, Jan. 2, 1924

Sam Armstrong continues his theme from last Saturday's post of marital blisslessness with a harridan bride bearing a striking resemblance to Wisconsin's Republican Senator Bob LaFollette (who might be at 11:00 in Morris's cartoon above). Recognizing as Ford did Coolidge's inevitable nomination on the Republican ticket, LaFollette's presidential ambitions lay as a third-party candidate.

"Just the Usual Presidential Year Log Rolling" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Jan. 4, 1924

After nearly ten months with the House of Representatives shut down, Congress was finally back in session. Gale's cartoon complains that their work was impeded by investigations of: Prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League, the Ku Klux Klan (more on that next week), the Bureau of Efficiency, the Shipping Board, the Internal Revenue Service, Alien Property Custodian, recognition of Russia, and Governor General Leonard Wood's administration of the U.S. territory in the Philippines. He unfairly includes "investigations" of tax reduction and veterans' bonuses, the very sort of issues Congress was necessarily responsible for.

"Smoked Out" by Harold Talburt for Scripps-Howard News Service, Jan. 16, 1924

Curiously absent from Gage's cartoon is the Senate investigation headed by Thomas J. Walsh (D-MT) into the Teapot Dome Scandal. Walsh publicly called for former Interior Secretary Albert Fall to testify in front of Walsh's Public Lands & Surveys Committee, which Fall had so far resisted.

"Something Must Have Crawled Under There and Died" by Harold Talburt for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Jan. 5, 1924

Since Gale brought up the Wood administration in the Philippines, here's another Talburt cartoon on that topic. To summarize the issues again from last November, Wood had repeatedly vetoed actions of the Filipino legislature, and his unwelcome meddling in the local police department had provoked his cabinet to resign en masse.

"Isn't That Pretty Strong Medicine..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Jan. 4, 1924

Having recognized the Mexican government of Álvaro Obregón Salido only months earlier, the Coolidge administration announced at the end of December that the U.S. would sell arms to Obregón in support of his fight against rebels led by Felipe Adolfo de la Huerta Marcor. While I have found a few cartoons supportive of selling weaponry to the Mexican government, most found the business of arms sales unseemly — including this friend of the Republican administration, "Ding" Darling.

That is Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes behind the pharmacist's counter, and in this next cartoon.

"Hardly Fair to Russia" by Orville P. Williams for Star Co., Jan. 9, 1924

O.P. Williams's cartoon on Coolidge administration's conditions for recognizing Russia's Communist government is definitely an outlier. Aside from those drawing for Socialist journals, every other cartoonist I've seen in this period was either skeptical of or against extending recognition to the Bolsheviks.

In any event, Russia failed to satisfy Hughes's conditions, and the U.S. would not extend recognition to the Soviet government in Moscow until 1933.

Many Happy Returns

The reliable standby for American editorial cartoonists during the twelve days of Christmas is the Returns window at the old brick-and-mortor department store. Our politicians are home on vacation, the news desk is cranking out Best Of Last Year lists, and readers couldn't care less about elections in the Republic of Watsituia.

So I hope that I have at the very least come up with something more original than trying to return presidential candidates.

Or fruitcake.

New Year's Sneak Peek

I had to make a correction in my post remembering Senator Herb Kohl after talking with Dad yesterday: Dad did indeed receive a holiday card from Kohl this year.

I can't say whether Kohl had any personal reason for keeping my Dad on his Christmas Card List, or whether he just needed to spend down his campaign funds. But I can say that I've received a few Christmas cards from politicians over the years, but only while they were still in office, autosigned, and generally when they were up for reelection.