With Apologies to Garry Trudeau

 

Q Toon: Rainbow Alert

The United States Department of State issued a warning earlier this month of the possibility of some sort of terror attack targeting LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations in June. They were not, however, terribly specific about it.

I don't visit their STEP page often enough to know whether the orange bar atop this notice means that they're still using the color-coded alert system created by the Dubya Bush administration. Orange was pretty serious, as I recall.

But then, it's also the color of road construction notices.

Today's cartoon is not to dismiss the State Department warning in any way. You may recall that the State Department issued a similar warning of a possible terrorist attack in Russia that was ignored by the Putin regime, only for Islamist terrorists to kill 140 people at a Moscow rock concert.

Rather, the threat of attack is something that LGBTQ+ people — the genderqueer particularly — live with every day. Not a month goes by without news of a transgender person or two being murdered somewhere in the U.S. So-called honor killings of LGBTQ persons by members of their own families happen around the world, even here in America. And it's only a matter of time until some gundamentalist crackpot picketing outside a Pride event somewhere in this country snaps.

The possibility has to be kept in mind when we have men of the actual cloth spewing stuff like this at city council meetings:

 David Lettau, pastor of Country Gospel Church, read a passage from Romans 1 about “uncleanness” and then related it to the Pride Festival.

“What they’re doing is teaching perversion to our children,” Lettau said. “We as a city are responsible for making sure that no decadent and perverse things go on.”

Lettau then made his threat explicit.

“It’s worthy of death, it says in the Bible,” Lettau said.

No one from the city council challenged his words.

Later, Pastor Jeff Combs of the First Community Church of God lamented that he was being lumped in with people who hate, especially as he has “nothing but love for people who live any lifestyle” and once “had a gay friend.” He then told the council they would be in violation of state law if they allowed juveniles to be allowed to attend Pride.

“We will pursue the matter further,” Combs threatened. “This is about protecting children.”

The pastor then, too, grounded his threat in the Bible, citing Luke 17:2, a passage that suggests drowning someone who adversely influences children.

“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck,” Combs said. “So watch yourselves. We are called to watch over our children.”

If I were Pastor Combs's gay friend, I'd be leery of accepting any invitation to join him at the beach.

The danger comes not just from the Christian Right, of course. The current Israel-Gaza War has heightened fears that some jihadi will be inspired to lash out against a soft target such as a Pride festival. June of 2016 saw the massacre at Orlando's Pulse nightclub by a gunman who variously pledged allegiance to Islamic State and to Hezbollah. We remember also the ultra-orthodox Jew who attacked Jerusalem Pride festival-goers in 2005 with a knife — and again ten years later.

So should we cancel Pride this year?

For centuries, queer people have faced jail, dungeons, torture, muggings, burning at the stake, stoning, death camps, having brick walls dumped on us, hangings, knifings, shootings, ostracization and ridicule.

Yet we're still here. Because love finds a way.

And that's why we celebrate Pride.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Mike Peterson over at the Daily Cartoonist linked to me twice over the weekend — many thanks, Mike! — the first to disagree somewhat with last week's cartoon of Harrison Butker's commencement address.

I think Mike's disagreement might have been that I lump all Catholics into one basket. I do realize that there are Francis Catholics and Benedict Catholics and never-accepted-Vatican-II Catholics and lapsed Catholics and recovering Catholics, but there wasn't much room for that distinction in the cartoon. There isn't much mystery as to which camp the Powers That Be at Benedictine College in ruby-red Kansas are in.

The various flavors of Catholicism were beside the point of the essay I wrote to accompany it; but point taken.

More amusing to me was some censorbot's decision at Bluesky that my retrospective a couple Saturdays ago which included versions of "The Kiss" by Klimt, Munch, and Rodin, was too risqué. Or perhaps it was as offended by its final panel of Michael Sam and his boyfriend smooching as the Karen in the cartoon trying to cover it up.

I can almost imagine some 14-year-old Bluesky user (yeah, right) clicking on the "Adult Content" warning thinking that there must be porn behind it.

Memorial Day 1924

In observation of Memorial Day Weekend, today's Graphical History Tour resurrects a handful of Memorial Day cartoons from 100 years ago.

"To-Day" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, May 30, 1924

Memorial Day, as I'm sure you know, was established to commemorate the soldiers killed in the U.S. Civil War. By 1924, that war was almost 60 years in the past, and few of that war's generation were still around.

"A Message from Arlington" by Jim Ring in Washington (DC) Times, May 30, 1924

So it is hardly surprising that cartoonists such as Jim Ring chose to honor the fallen of the nation's most recent armed conflict. 

"Through the Curtains of Time" by Dennis McCarthy in Fort Worth Record, May 30, 1924

Memorial Day now honors the dead from all wars, police actions, and those undeclared hostilities we get into nowadays, since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I'm not quite sure why Dennis McCarthy chose to overlook American soldiers who died in the final year of World War I; perhaps he was referencing the years in which the nation entered into conflict.

"Precious Memories" by Winsor McCay for Star Company, May 30, 1924

The tombstones in Winsor McCay's cartoon mark the years of the Declaration of Independence, the start of the Civil and Spanish-American Wars, and the end of World War I. The tombstone for the Mexican-American War must be hidden behind Miss Columbia.

This, by the way, was the only cartoon I came across featuring Miss Columbia. In earlier decades, she, rather than the more political, even comical Uncle Sam, was the go-to figure for cartoonists wishing to portray the nation's sorrow.

"Lest We Who Inherit Its Blessings Forget..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Tribune, May 30, 1924

But as the 20th Century progressed, Uncle Sam became the preferred figure to represent the United States on solemn occasions.

"A Real Tribute..." by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1924

John McCutcheon used Memorial Day to comment on current events: the House had just voted  adequate defense shipbuilding funds to achieve the "5-5-3 ratio" of U.S., Great Britain, and Japan's navies stipulated by post-war treaty. Coming as this did after passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act, relations between the two Pacific powers had soured greatly.

"From Bunker Hill to Metz" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, May 31, 1924

If a 1924 cartoon acknowledges that Black soldiers fought and died in America's wars, you know it was by a Black cartoonist drawing for a newspaper with a Black readership base. Wilbert Louie Holloway, 1899-1969, came to Pittsburgh from Indiana. His first cartoons appeared on the Courier's editorial page in October, 1923 and became a regular feature. With the May 31, 1924 issue, his name (as "W.T. Holloway") was added to the paper's masthead as Staff Artist. Launching a weekly comic strip, "Sunny Boy Sam" in 1928, Holloway remained on the Courier staff until his death.

"100 Per Cent Americans" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, May 30, 1924

Roy James's attempt to advocate for interracial brotherhood of comrades in arms, I think, falls a bit flat — at least by today's standards. Nice try, though.

"This Day We Dedicate to the Memory of Those Who Have Passed" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, May 30, 1924

Returning to our focus on Memorial Day, Harold Wahl allows the reader to project whatever race or nationality you like (but one belief system) onto his silhouetted figures.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Q Toon: Graduation Exorcises

Much has been said about Kansas City Chiefs place kicker Harrison Butker's commencement address to the graduating class of Benedictine College, a small Roman Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas. 

You may not have heard of Benedictine College before now, or, for that matter, of Harrison Butker. Not much attention gets paid to NFL kickers, who spend most of the game on the sidelines — even though, to the bafflement of the rest of the world, Americans name our sport after the body part that only the kicker uses for anything other than running around. I mean, do you remember Ryan Longwell? Jan Stennerud? Morten Andersen?

Can you tell which of their names I misspelled?

So in case you somehow missed it, Butker, who after all did kick the winning field goals in Superbowls LVII and LVIII, warned the graduates against "dangerous gender ideologies," a slap at transgender persons. He also condemned LGBTQ+ Pride Month, celebrated every June since the raid on the Stonewall Inn, "as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media [which] all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.”

For 20 minutes, Butker, a conservative Roman Catholic, went on and on railing against President Biden, ecumenical catholic leaders, and "the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion." But most of the attention to his address was on his advice to women.

“I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

If Butker had balanced the message by exhorting the men in his audience to be just as excited about marriage and children — particularly if, as he described Mrs. Harrison Butker's experience, their career aspirations fail them — there might have been less uproar over his advice to the women who had devoted four years and incurred a lifelong student loan debt for the piece of paper the dean was about to hand them.

Butker's address was an echo of last year's commencement speaker, Leonard Leo, who told the class of 2023 that “modern-day barbarians, secularists, and bigots” are “determined to threaten and delegitimize individuals and institutions who refuse to pledge fealty to the woke idols of our age.” 

Well, what else would you expect from a graduation speech at a small Roman Catholic college?

Almost unremarked was Butker's swipe at a congressional bill to withhold federal funding from colleges and universities that don't restrict antisemitic speech. He didn't object to it on libertarian free speech grounds, or as a stand against the drive to label as antisemitic any criticism of Netanyahu's wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians, but because "stating something as basic as the Biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.”

That's code for holding all Jewry responsible for Christ's crucifixion, a right-wing fundamentalist credo espoused by Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and every pogrom since the Middle Ages in direct defiance of Luke 23:34.

So now there are some advocating for the Chiefs to fire Butker, much as the San Francisco 49ers dropped Colin Kaepernick for speaking up and kneeling down for his political views. But the 49ers were wrong then, and the Chiefs would be wrong, too. 

The NFL has published their disagreement with Harrison Butker's address, but defended his right to speak his mind. Even the antisemitic bit.

That, my friends, is what free speech is all about.

You are free, nay, welcome to disagree with him. 

And doing so is not "silencing," "threatening," or "delegitimizing" him. Yes, some on the Left are guilty of "cancel culture." Just as some on the right are guilty of "cancel legislation."

But I'll bet on Draft Kings, FanDuel, or anywhere else that as long as Mr. Butker keeps kicking field goals, he'll get to exercise his Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech until Mrs. Butker tells him to knock it off.

Liza Doolittle Day's Sneak Peek

Having been in a high school production of "My Fair Lady," I try to celebrate Liza Doolittle Day every Twentieth of May. One buys flowers on the street, or goes to the horse races, or dances with a Transylvanian count, as the occasion presents itself.

Why, there's my dashing figure in the yearbook.

Meanwhile, I'm a bit late to the Harrison Butker-bashing party, and all the good ideas have been taken.

 Tune in this Thursday to see what I managed to dig up from everyone else's rejects.

Great Art and Some Shinola I Drew

Travel back in time with me for some of my own cartoons which celebrate their decennials this month.

for Q Syndicate, May 19, 2014

Ten years ago, University of Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam made sports headlines as the first openly gay NFL draft pick. In his senior year, he led the SEC in quarterback tackles and sacks; he forced a fumble that was run back for a touchdown in Missouri's 2014 Cotton Bowl victory over Oklahoma.

He came out as gay to his college teammates that senior year, and went public after graduating in December. 

Cameras were rolling when he was selected by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the 2014 draft and shared a celebratory kiss with his then boyfriend, Mizzou swimmer Vito Cammisano, and it was broadcast live on television. President Barack Obama was among those sending Sam congratulations, but the kiss also provoked backlash and pearl-clutching from homophobic football fans and non-fans who object to gays anywhere not being furtive about it.

Alas, Sam only ever got to play for the Rams in the pre-season. Cut from the roster at the end of August, he later spent some time on the Dallas Cowboys' practice squad, then joined the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. He missed several games with the Alouettes over mental health issues or simply being unhappy there — he quit after playing only one game, in fact — and is currently a defensive football coach in Poland for the Panthers Wrocław.

Continuing with the sports theme, I could have sworn that I've posted the next one on this here blog before, but I'm not finding it.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, May 15, 2004 

This cartoon from May, 2004 is the one and only cartoon of mine that ever won an award.

Well, second place, actually, from the Milwaukee Press Club. First place in the editorial cartoon category that year went to Stuart Carlson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It's not as if there were a crowded field of contenders in 2004, but I'll accept what praise I can get.

The editors at the Business Journal had entered my cartoon for consideration, and I only learned anything about it after the fact. I probably missed a swell dinner. And perhaps some networking opportunities.

The topic of the cartoon, and of the editorial that it was drawn to illustrate, was the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team running up against the Major League Baseball salary cap as they hired some big names for a rebuilding year (having been in rebuilding years since 1982). It has paid off; the Brewers have been in contention off and on since 2008.

The original Brewers mascot, of course, was an anthropomorphized beer barrel swinging a baseball bat. It was replaced in the late 1970's by that mb/catcher's mitt logo, which I still think is the best and cleverest logo the team ever had. Barrel Guy does have his successor in Bernie Brewer, a mustachioed fellow who rides a slide down from his chalet to celebrate home team home runs.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., May 5, 1994

Let us leave sports aside and turn to some other topics — as we must, since according to my files, I only drew one cartoon for the whole month of May in 1994.

I'm going to skip right past the "Dr. Death" Kevorkian verdict, and the next two panels, which weren't based on any particular news story, to the two guys "just doing investigative journalism."

A reporter for the UWM Times, the upstart, right-wing rival to the UWM Post, got caught voting multiple times in the student government election that spring. His defense was that he was actually doing an investigation for the paper about election fraud. Unable to find any real election fraud, he committed the fraud himself. 

It's a tactic that continues to this very day: right-wing conspiracy fabulists sound the alarm about waves of voter fraud, but the voter fraud that is uncovered is committed by their own side.

The student provocateurs staff at the Times are the very generation of Republicans who have grown up to concoct the imagined conspiracies that get in their way at election time: of busloads of Mexican aliens, transgender feminazis voting once as a man and a second time as a woman, and hordes of zombies rising from the grave. 

Speaking of the grave:

"Before We Lay the Dearly Departed to Rest" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Sept. 1, 1984

This cartoon posed something of a mystery. I dated it May, 1984, and the compositor's notation on the back indicates that it was published; but it was not in either the May 3 or May 10 editions of the UW-Parkside Ranger published at the end of that school year.

I couldn't have drawn it thinking that there was a May 17 edition. In addition to my weekly cartoon on the Ranger's editorial page, I was also drawing a continuity comic strip, a loose parody of The Maltese Falcon, which I hastened to wrap up for the May 10 issue. (The epilogue episode echoed the first strip of the series.)

"The Funny Paper Caper," episode 30, in UW-Parkside Ranger, May 10, 1984

Since I didn't write "UW-P Ranger" on the editorial cartoon, I probably drew it for my own practice or amusement.

Looking back, I assumed that I had drawn the cartoon after audio went public of President Ronald Reagan quipping during a mic check in preparation for a radio address, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

But that took place in August. Which explains why the cartoon was relevant when the Ranger's first edition of the next semester came out.

I guess I was just lucky that Soviet President Constantin Chernenko (seated in the foreground) wasn't dead quite yet.

Q Toon: 86ing Title 9 Day 1

On the campaign trail last week, Donald Berzilius Trump joined the cabal of Republican governors threatening to undo President Biden's new Title IX rules for education facilities that benefit from public funding. These rules cover matters such as responding to reports of sexual harassment and misconduct, accommodating pregnant students and protecting students from sex-based discrimination.

What has right-wingers' panties in a bunch is that the anti-discrimination rules protect students who are LGBTQ+ — particularly since many Republican-run states have recently passed pro-discrimination laws explicitly targeting transgender persons.

So far, officials in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina—most of them governors—have said in letters, statements, press conferences or executive orders that their states will not follow the new Title IX regulations. The rule applies to every school at the K-12 and postsecondary level that receives federal money. So far, most state officials have either focused on K-12 schools or made general statements that their state will not comply, while others have specifically mentioned colleges.

Texas and Louisiana are among the GOP-run states and school boards that have filed challenges to the Biden rules; their cases will go before radical right-wing judges appointed by Trump. That includes the virulently antigay activist Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (whom I featured here last September and here in November, 2022).

Given the hostility to LGBTQ+ persons of Trump and Dubya Bush appointees taking these cases, not to mention that of the doctrinaire theocrats on the current Supreme Court, transgender student rights could well be doomed whether Trump gets to issue his Reichstag Fire Decrees on Day One or not.

This Week's Sneak Peek

In writing the part in last Saturday's posting about disaffection of Blacks in Indiana with that state's Republican Party, I summarized the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution as guaranteeing civil right to all.

Then I had to stipulate that they only applied to men.

Within a generation, they didn't apply to Chinese men in this country.

And before the civil rights amendments turned 50, they didn't apply to Japanese men here, either. Or Hindoos, or Musselmen, or Filipinos...

Just wanted to note that I would have mentioned this before, except that it was beside the point then.

Anyway, as you were saying ... ?

Toon: My God, It's Full of Stars

We've stepped outside several times over the weekend in search of the aurora light show. I don't know whether it's light pollution from Foxconn, or from Milwaukee to our north, but we haven't caught the display everyone else on Earth seems to have.

Even with the clouds that came in Saturday night, some people in our area got some nice photographs, so we must simply have not waited outdoors long enough.

1920's Want Me (But I Can't Go Back There)

Let's catch up on the 1924 presidential race, shall we?

On the Republican side, President Calvin Coolidge had his party's nomination all sewn up. Republicans brushed aside a challenge by progressive Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA) in nearly every contest.

"Had You Noticed That Suspicious-Looking Couple in the Stagecoach" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, April 26, 1924

Meanwhile, Senator Robert LaFollette (R-WI) was seriously considering a third-party run for the presidency. A group calling itself the Progressive Party was interested in being that third party.

"That's Just Like How Theodore Acted..." by Wm. C. Morris for George Mathew Adams Service, ca. May 5, 1924

Teddy Roosevelt had gotten more popular and electoral votes than incumbent President William Howard Taft when the former President ran for a return to office on the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party ticket in 1912. The party renominated Roosevelt in 1916, but he refused to run, and most of its members returned to the Republican Party or defected to the Democrats.

The Progressive Party of 1924 was a completely reconstituted affair, created by an umbrella group of sixteen railroad workers' unions, the Conference for Progressive Political Action. The new party, pulling together some members of the Socialist Party of America and the Farmer-Labor Party, was thus well to the left of its 1912 iteration.

"A Change of Shirts Doesn't Change a Man's Heart" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 30, 1924

Some of Sen. LaFollette's views were well to the left, too. He believed in governmental regulation of private corporations, and opposed the tax cuts proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon. He was against the League of Nations, but urged self-government for Ireland and Egypt.

Germane to Alley's cartoon, LaFollette had supported Russia's Bolshevik revolution, although the lack of freedoms he saw there when he toured Europe in 1923 compelled him to reassess his support.

"Aw What's the Use" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1924

As for the Democrats, there was still no clear front-runner in May of 1924. Party rules required that the Democratic nominee receive two thirds of the votes at their convention.

"All for the Horse" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Tribune, May 22, 1924

William McAdoo led the delegate count, but it was only a plurality in a crowded field. Some state delegates were pledged to "favorite son" candidates or to no candidate at all. His opponents played up his tenuous connection to the Teapot Dome scandal because of his association with the oilman who was head of the California Democratic Party.

"I'm Just Beginning to Sense the Meaning of Destiny" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, May 7, 1924

Clifford Berryman's cartoon sums up the issues hampering some of the leading candidates. Opposition to the Ku Klux Klan probably cost Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama much of the southern support he was hoping for. A fractious battle for leadership of Tammany Hall was a distraction for New York Governor Al Smith, who, as hero to the Wets, was anathema to Prohibitionists. William McAdoo, conversely, courted the Drys and was rejected by the Wets.

Tom Marshall, Vice President under Woodrow Wilson, shot down speculation that he was interested in the top job; which Berryman took to be a good omen for the presidential candidacy of Marshall's fellow Hoosier, Sen. Samuel Ralston.

I'm sure you remember Sam Ralston, Man of Destiny. Of course you do.

Speaking of Indiana, the state held its primary elections just this week and 100 years ago.

Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, May 11, 1924

Indiana Secretary of State Ed Jackson won the May 7, 1924 Republican gubernatorial primary with the open support of the Ku Klux Klan. Election Day reporting in the Indianapolis News characterized the campaign as a predominantly Klan-vs.-anti-Klan affair. The Indianapolis Freeman, a Black newspaper. alleged that poll workers actively suppressed the Black vote, which was presumed to favor the anti-Klan candidate, Indianapolis Mayor Samuel Lewis Shank. 

In the first place it was demonstrated . . . that the Ku Klux Klan has captured boot and breeches, the Republican party in Indiana and have [sic] turned what  has been historically an organization of constitutional freedom into an agency for the promotion of religious and racial hate. Nobody now denies the Ku Klux Klan is the dominating power in Indiana Republican politics. In fact, the Republican party  exists in Indiana today only in name. Its place has been  usurped by the Klan purposes and leadership and issues. The fight in the future will  be purely a  contest  between the Klan  and  anti-Klan  force.

In the years after the Civil War, Black voters tended to be a reliably Republican voting bloc, the party having been founded as an explicitly anti-slavery organization. Republicans had passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, supposedly guaranteeing civil rights to all men. The "Solid South," on the other hand, was dominated by Democrats, whose passed Jim Crow laws, literacy tests for voting, and poll taxes to discriminate against Blacks appealed to the Klan.

But by 1924, it had been almost half a century since the Republican Party had given half a shit about those 1860's Constitutional Amendments, so they were as welcome in the Klan as any Democrat. Indiana would be the Klan's opportunity to prove that its influence was bipartisan.

"Seeing Things" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, May 21, 1924

The Klan celebrated Jackson's victory by doing a march through the black areas of Indianapolis that may have attracted as many as 100,000 onlookers. D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, declared at the march that "We must put over Jackson our very right to existence" and "The fiery cross is going to burn at every crossroads in Indiana, as long as there is a white man left in the state." Stephenson claimed to control 85% of the delegates at the state Republican convention, and the state Republican Party came to increasingly be viewed as little more than a Klan organization. (Wikipedia)

As a result, Blacks in Indiana left the Republican Party twelve years before  the realignment of the Black vote toward the Democratic Party in the rest of the country.

Jackson won the governorship in November. And when Senator Ralston died the following year (of course you still remember him), Jackson relied on Stephenson's advice in appointing Arthur Robinson to replace Ralston.

"Bedfellows' by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, May 23, 1924

"Jim" Watson in this Page cartoon was Indiana's other Senator, Republican James E. Watson. Senator Watson was on a Senate committee investigating ties to the Klan of Senator Earl Mayfield (D-TX, the subject of these stops on the Graphical History Tour a couple years ago); but that didn't stop him from endorsing Ed Jackson for Governor.

In 1926, Klan kleagle William M. Rogers would testify before Congress that in 1924, Senator Watson presented his Klan credentials during a conversation between the two. Senator Watson's denial of Rogers's allegation would have a There Are Very Fine People On Both Sides flabbiness to it:

"I have not denied that I am seeking the votes of the Ku Klux Klan, but have coupled it with the statement that I wanted the votes of all other orders, churches and creeds."

Rogers later recanted the testimony, and still later sued Watson, claiming that the senator had coerced him into recanting. In any event, the allegation doesn't seem to have hindered Watson's political career, and he was even elected Senate Majority Leader during the four years of the Hoover administration.

"The Indiana Delegates" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, late May, 1924

I find it interesting that I found cartoons about the highest Indiana elected officials' association with the Klan in May of 1924 drawn across the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky and way off in New York City, but the topic appears not to have interested Indianapolis News cartoonist Chas Kuhn.

There were six months left until Election Day, so perhaps Indiana's hometown cartoonist would find something to say about it eventually.

Stay Kuhned.

After Prayerful Consultation with His Wife

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) voted last week to lift its bans on clergy performing weddings for same-sex couples or being openly gay or lesbian.

The policy change comes after some 7,600 U.S. congregations left the UMC because, while their church officially held that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching" and prohibited same-sex weddings and homosexual clergy, church leaders had indefinitely delayed implementing a 2019 vote to defrock an married lesbian bishop, Karen Oliveto. Their departure from the UMC was facilitated by an agreement allowing congregations to take their church properties with them. (In the UMC and many other denominations, it is the national church that owns a member church's real estate, not the individual congregation itself.)

UMC General Conferences convene every four years. The 2019 conference was extraordinary, called specifically to address the Mountain Sky Conference's election of Bishop Oliveto. The regularly scheduled 2020 conference was cancelled just as the whole world was shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UMC's new policy does not, of course, require member clergy to perform same-sex weddings; the 447 to 233 vote indicates that their will continue to be some dissenters. The change will be more forcibly protested by Methodist clergy in Africa, many of whom apparently failed to attend this year's General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. They could stay within the UMC, but most likely will be afraid that gay cooties will keep them out of heaven if they do.

Will the United Methodist Church end up becoming the Divided Methodist Church?

And whose side will get to run the DMC?

This Week's Sneak Peek

Someone left a comment on one of my old posts, saying that editorial cartoonist Robert Carter was his great-grandfather, and including a little more family information. I was going to reply something to the effect of "Interesting!"

But even though I was already signed in to Blogger to approve his comment for publication, it wanted me to sign in again with a Google ID in order to reply. 

Does everybody who wants to make a comment here have to sign in with a Google ID first?

It doesn't seem to bother the bots who leave comments advertising quack HIV treatments or voodoo enhancements for your love life, most of whom seem to originate in Asia and Oceana. 

Well, anyway, did you know that Robert Carter was married to Countess Hildegard van Walterskirchen of Austria? I didn't. I do know that you can find out plenty more about Robert Carter at Allan Holtz's Stripper's Guide.

And I'm not ignoring you, Ted Carter. Google doesn't like my browser configurations.

Happy Cartoonists Day!

"Terry and the Pirates" by Milt Caniff

It's Inko de mayo!

When the Expletives Hit the Fan

"When the Egg Hit the Fan" by D. Edward Holland in Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1974

It's time for our Graphical History Tour to step back 50 years, just as the Watergate scandal was really, um, hitting the fan.

On April 30, 1974, Richard Nixon released transcripts of tape recorded White House conversations, responding to a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee earlier that month for 380 hours' worth of the tapes themselves. 

"Right After You Eat..." by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1974

Rodino in Locher's cartoon is Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Peter Rodino (D-NJ); I suppose you can interpret the other diner to represent either the rest of the committee's Democrats or the media. Either way, the transcripts were not what the committee had ordered, but they were hungrily accepted nevertheless.

Major newspapers across the country printed out the White House transcripts in full, either by adding a special section or by serializing them over several days. It seems unlikely that more than a select handful would have the wherewithal to repeat such a feat today.

"That's All There Is" by Bernard Seaman in AFL-CIO News, ca. May 17, 1974

Tricky Dicky's transcripts were extensive, but didn't satisfy anyone. (Now, wouldn't Seaman's cartoon have been better if the transcripts had been wilted flowers?)

"Would You Buy a Used Encyclopaedia from This Man" by Ranan Lurie, ca. May 6, 1974

"Would you buy a used car from this man?" had been a Democratic Party poster attacking Nixon during the 1960 presidential race, resurfacing in variations (a used economy, a used war) when he won the presidency in 1968. Lurie was not the only cartoonist to resurrect it in connection with the White House transcripts.

"If You Liked the TV Appearance..." by Dennis Renault in Sacramento Bee, May 2, 1974

We already knew of the suspicious 18.5-minute gap in one of the tapes, supposedly produced by Nixon's secretary Rosemary Woods simultaneously holding one foot down on the Play And Record button and reaching behind herself to answer a phone while transcribing them. To nobody's surprise, the released transcripts included a lot of little omissions on just about every page.

"Like Him, I'm Doing My Best" by Warren King in New York Daily News, May 1, 1974

In addition to innumerable comments on the tapes reported to be "inaudible" or "unintelligible," there were hundreds of instances of "expletives deleted." And a new phrase entered the popular lexicon.

"Fourscore and Seven..." by Don Wright in Miami News, May 2, 1974

President Nixon had cultivated an image of staid propriety — even, when he made an abortive move to doll White House security personnel up like a bunch of marching band drum majors, pomposity. When candidate Nixon showed up on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in just to say "Sock it to me?!" it was funny just because one was accustomed to hearing him speak more formally. We all assumed he wore a suit and tie every waking hour and only loosened the tie when it was time for bed. That he addressed his wife and daughters as "my fellow Americans."

"That's Nothing..." by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, ca. May 10, 1974

So learning that he routinely swore in private like a drunken sailor who'd just stubbed his toe was rather shocking. You'd have expected that sort of thing from LBJ. We were slightly embarrassed but not at all surprised later on to hear the recordings of him discussing inseams with his tailor.

"Now That You (Expletive Deleted) Have These (Inaudible) Transcripts..." by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, May 7, 1974

As for Abe Lincoln? You know, I'll bet he could tell a pretty good ribald joke if Mary wasn't around.

The Judiciary Committee continued its demand that the White House turn over the actual tapes, taking its cases to the Supreme Court. Everybody expected that as damning as the transcripts were, the tapes had to be worse. 

"Top Billing" by Charles Werner in Indianapolis Star, May 2, 1974

I wanted to be sure to include cartoons by some of Richard Nixon's most loyal defenders. That includes Ed Holland and Dick Locher at the top of today's post, and Charles Werner and Don Hesse.

"Friends List" by Don Hesse in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, ca. May 22, 1974

 It was becoming ever more difficult, however, to defend Nixon any more.  As edited as the transcripts were, they still provided ample evidence that the president was involved in efforts to cover up its connection to the Watergate break-in, and to obstruct congressional investigations into the affair. 

"Still Hungry, Big Fella" by Jeff MacNelly in Richmond News Leader, ca. May 9, 1974

Arch-conservative Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) was the first Republican Party leader to urge Nixon to resign; House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-OH) also told reporters that Nixon "ought to consider resigning as a possible option." Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA) called the behavior of Nixon and his aides revealed on the transcripts "deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral." 

"Sometimes I Must Admit to Some Misgivings" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca. May 14, 1974

Even Vice President Gerald Ford began to distance himself publicly from the administration he had joined just five months earlier.

"Easy, Dick..." by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1974

By the way, I've kept the caption to the Ed Holland cartoon at the top of this post exactly as it appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Whether the bowdlerization of a common vulgar phrase was done by the cartoonist or some milquetoast editor, he or they definitely blew an easy and obvious opportunity for cartoon use of "expletive deleted."