Try to Remember

Some content in today's Graphical History Tour may be unsuitable for younger and more sensitive viewers. Reader discretion is advised.

University of Wisconsin-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Sept. 27, 1984

I had originally intended to start today's GHT with a different cartoon; but the passing this week of James Earl Jones behooved me to rerun this one instead. Jones played many roles in which he got to act with his face, but for most people of a certain generation, he will always be remembered as the voice of Darth Vader.

(Another generation will always remember him as the voice of Mufasa. And news junkies who never watch movies will always remember him as the voice of "This — is CNN.")

By the way, for those of you in the Mufasa generation, the lady winning tic-tac-toe in my cartoon was Anne Gorsuch Burford, who served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during Ronald Reagan's first term as President. In that post, she slashed the EPA's budget by 22%, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and put industry insiders in charge of regulating their own businesses. She resigned in 1983 over allegations of illegally withholding EPA Superfund disbursements to benefit a Republican running for office in California.

Her son now sits on the Supreme Court.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Sept. 26, 1994

Jumping ahead ten Septembers, this cartoon addresses the damage to our cities promoted by people whose flight to the suburbs was facilitated by the advent of freeways in the 1950's and '60's. Having fled to those suburbs, they keep wanting more freeways bulldozed through the cities, the easier to drive back and forth. Or through.

By 1994, the drain from cities like Milwaukee was exacerbated by businesses moving their headquarters out to those suburbs, attracted by "Tax Incremental Financing" subsidies and encouraged by Republicans like Governor Tommy Thompson (holding the clipboard in my cartoon). There they could build bright shiny buildings and expansive parking lots far from the low-income workers who couldn't afford to live near or travel to them.

That's an issue that has been playing out practically in my back yard lately. The city of Racine and the village of Mount Pleasant cooperated in attracting first Foxconn's Potemkin factory and now a Microsoft data center to several square miles of mostly farmland in the village. As part of the deal between the two municipalities, Racine extended large-capacity fresh water and sewage lines to the plants, either one of which uses or will require millions of gallons of water every day. 

Foxconn turned out to have vastly overpromised how many jobs it would provide for the community. Microsoft anticipates hiring even fewer employees: about 300, a great many of whom will be involved in security, lawn care, janitorial work, and HVAC. 

So what is Racine getting out of the deal? The plants are over eight miles from the city, and over three miles from the nearest bus stops: at the Amtrak station and the Department of Motor Vehicles. (Two more things inconveniently located for the urban poor and lower middle class.)

Sept., 2004

Anyone who remembers the George W. Bush administration is probably okay with that former president taking a pass on joining the other former presidents who have endorsed the election of Kamala Harris.

Somewhere along the line, I taped a Q Syndicate credit to the original of this cartoon, but I doubt that I drew it for them. It has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ issues, after all, and I almost always draw a frame around their cartoons. I probably put the credit line on there in case I wanted to send it to Best Cartoons of the Year or submit it for an award consideration. 

The cartoon wasn't in color, either. But I figured that as long as I was going to scan it again for this blog post, wottheheckanwhynot.

Speaking of the moon: I promised unsuitable content; and since that's why some of you are still reading, here it comes.

for Q Syndicate, September, 2014

I definitely drew this cartoon for syndication. I don't recall how many client papers I had at that time, but I took the gamble that only a few of them would shy away from printing a cartoon with this much lunar display.

Decades before Michael Sam's very brief career as the first out gay player in the NFL, female sports reporters had won the right to cover the postgame in the teams' locker rooms. Perhaps the first was New York Times reporter Robin Herman, after Major League Baseball's 1975 All-Star game.

Of course, some of the players responded exactly as you would expect pro athletes to. As Herman interviewed player Denis Potvin, another player yanked Potvin’s towel off, leaving him completely exposed.
 Still, Herman said later “My post-locker room quotations showed patience and good cheer. I was 23-years old and fairly new to my job, and not yet beaten down by the abuse and slamming of doors that would follow this one-time opening.” Herman went on to say that wasn’t the end of the story. Owners and coaches in other cities continued to block locker room access to women, sometimes physically, sometimes using police. But once the barrier was broken, things started to change for women in sports.

Ashley Fox wrote for ESPN expressing her gratitude to her forebears who fought for access to those hot, stinky, and cramped locker rooms so that they could get the same stories that her male colleagues had covered for generations.

She shared one early experience:

One of my first days in [the Philadelphia Eagles locker room], a rookie offensive lineman walked in with a few teammates, saw me and said: "Bet you like seeing all of these swinging dicks in here, don't you?"

The guys laughed. I didn't. I had a choice: Say something, or say nothing.

The lockers to the right nearest me belonged to the defensive backs, including Brian Dawkins, Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor, all established players. The lockers to the left nearest me belonged to the quarterbacks, including Donovan McNabb and A.J. Feeley.

In a raised voice, I said to the lineman: "If I wanted to see swinging dicks, I'd still be covering the Sixers."

Boom.

I wasn't trying to be crude. I was trying to stand my ground. The comment prompted laughter that was louder and no longer directed at me. Players were laughing at the lineman. Vincent stood up, walked over and told the rookie that he got what he deserved, that I was welcome in the locker room and that I was to be treated with respect and dignity. And that, mercifully, was that.

Which is not to say that every athlete is hunky-dory with reporters of the opposite sex in their locker rooms, but it's part of the game now. If you're man enough to take the field, you have to be man enough not to shriek when Michele Tafoya asks you what happened out there.

There is reason to expect that players can have the same professional attitude when asked to share a locker room with an LGBTQ+ colleague. Michael Sam faced some resistance, sure; but I haven't heard a disparaging word from any of Carl Nassib's former teammates.

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But what about women's sports? The WNBA would lose many of its star players if the straight ones could not abide sharing locker rooms with LGBTQ+ athletes; but as of April, 2023, the league does not allow reporters of any gender into their locker rooms.

So when the WNBA announced a change in the media policies on Monday, that locker rooms would be closed, and that players would be made available outside by request in addition to postgame press conferences, I had a visceral, emotional reaction. That a women’s league would deny access to a place that had been for so long a way to segregate women reporters, to single them out, to hold them back, feels incongruous. It also feels inevitable...

But closing the door to the locker room closes the door on things that can’t be replaced by a hallway interview. It closes the door on relationship-building, the ability to capture the color of pregame preparations or a postgame celebration. The ability to experience their collective joy or disappointment or frustration. The ability to experience their experience and then share it. —Michele Smith

Toon: Pet Peeve au Poivre

Allow me to chime in to the tintinnabulation of the Trump-Harris Debate Cartoons.

If there is a God, future historians will look back upon Corrupt Former President Donald Trump's clinging — doggedly — to the false allegation that Haitian immigrants have been killing and eating the household pets of Springfield, Ohio, as the moment that Trumpism died.

It's a lie told by Trump's running mate, J.D. Bowman Hamel Vance, picked up from some racist Ohioan's social media spewage, repeated from the rumors told about Vietnamese refugees in the 1970's, hearkening back to the old wives' tales slandering Chinese immigrants in the 1800's.

Given that history, it's probably overly optimistic to hope that the cost of keeping such a racist trope alive will be an ignominious end to Trumpism — which, after all, thrives on that sort of bilious excreta.

The Springfield angle to the story apparently grew out of the nativist uproar after an unlicensed driver from Springfield's Haitian immigrant community collided his minivan into a school bus last year, causing the death of an 11-year-old white boy. White Springfielders demanded that their city council stop any more Haitian refugees from coming to their town, and spread horror tales demonizing the Haitians already there.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

To their credit, the bereaved parents of that 11-year-old boy have spoken out against politicians and rabble-rousers exploiting their tragedy to stoke fear and hatred. The Father, Nathan Clark, went so far as to tell a city hall forum that he would rather his son had been killed by a 60-year-old white man, because "if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone."

“This needs to stop now. [Politicians] can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members,” Clark said. “However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time — to hear their apologies.”

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By the way, those Haitian immigrants are not in Springfield illegally, and Trump did not actually call them "illegals" in that part of the debate. But he has devoted much of his political career to making "illegal" into an noun, synonymous with "immigrant."

As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Trump's 34 felony convictions make him an "illegal." And, as I told a Trump loyalist a while back, "You may be comfortable voting for an illegal. I'm not."

Q Toon: Throwing Shade

VisitFlorida.com quietly deleted the LGBTQ+ page from its tourism website last month. Visit Florida®, a public-private organization that receives some state funding, has made no comment about axing the LGBTQ+ Travel section, but it's apparently all in keeping with the state's Don't Say Gay mandate.

The state's vociferously antigay governor claims no credit for Visit Florida's cowardly move, but is pleased nevertheless:

When asked about the change on the Visit Florida website, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said he was made aware of it after the fact, but celebrated its push away from identity politics. He noted, “We’re not going to be segregating people by these different characteristics… that’s just now how we’re operating.” 

DeSantis' explanation doesn't bode well for Black and Hispanic travelers, Travel pages for whom have yet to be scrubbed from VisitFlorida.com. But don't expect an announcement ahead of time when that happens.

Outside of Florida, more LGBTQ-friendly politicians have taken the opportunity to welcome tourists to their states. Colorado Governor Jared Polis, the U.S.A.'s first openly gay elected governor, posted to Facebook:

Hello gay tourists! Since Florida doesn’t want you, come on over to explore what Colorado has to offer!

In Colorado, we really don’t care about who you date we just appreciate you supporting our economy and spending money in our great stores and restaurants. And you’ll have a gay old time!”

EnjoyIllinois wooed the LGBTQ+ buck with:

Lack of love in the Sunshine State?

Come to Illinois

Plan your LGBTQIA adventure. Take notes, Florida.”

Anthony Anthony, a Chief Marketing Officer for Connecticut's Office of Tourism so nice they named him twice, echoed Colorado and Illinois in a press release:

"We want to send a strong message to everyone, particularly to those in Florida — and across the country — who may feel their needs and identities are being sidelined, to know that in Connecticut you will always find acceptance.

"Here, diversity is celebrated, and we remain committed to ensuring everyone who visits or lives here feels valued, respected, and free to be yourself."

It is, however, unlikely that Florida withdrawing the welcome mat from LGBTQ+ visitors will dissuade many queer folk from heading to the Sunshine State. I've never been to Key West, but I understand that there is nothing quite like it in Minnesota. Besides, a boycott would only harm the very LGBTQ+ business owners who have staked their fortunes to attracting fellow travelers with disposable income.

The very business owners who might just want to reconsider their support for the public-private management of Visit Florida®.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 You thought I was going to give this guy a pass?

On a totally unrelated matter:

I heard from a teacher in Georgia after last week's mass shooting at Apalachee High School that her school had received a bomb threat. Students and staff were told to evacuate the building.

Then the school administrators told teachers to go back in and search for anything that might be a bomb.

Think about that for a moment.

Clearly the school administrators didn't.

Think of your children's school teachers, and think back on any of your own. How many of them had any training in explosives detection? How many of them would be able to find a bomb hidden who knows where in a school building without setting it off?

Well, that's Miss Othmar all over.

When Jack Met Dick

As you may have heard, there's a presidential debate coming up next week between Vice President Kamala Harris and convicted felon Donald Joffrey Trump; so today's Graphical History Tour travels back to September 26, 1960 and the granddaddy of all presidential debates.

"We Have Temporarily Lost Our Picture" by Joseph Parrish in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 27, 1960

The televised debate between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon was precedent-setting. Never before had rival presidential nominees of the two major parties shared a stage face-to-face, answering the same questions and each other.

"News Item" by Vaughn Shoemaker in Chicago Daily News, Sept. 27, 1960

What about the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, I hear you asking. Or maybe it's just the voices in my head. Either way, yes, a series of debates pitted Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas against each other in their race for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1858, but were not repeated when the two vied for the presidency two years later. 

According to contemporary newspaper accounts, 12,000 attended their first debate at Ottawa, 16,000 to 18,000 in Galesburg, 15,000 in Freeport, 12,000 in Quincy, and 5,000 to 10,000 at the last debate in Alton. Given that hyperbole was not unknown in reporting of the time, Vaughn Shoemaker's head count is probably just as valid as any of the others.

"You Were Simply Wonderful" by Gib Crockett in Washington Star, Sept. 28, 1960

Neither Kennedy nor Nixon delivered any memorable zingers, stumbled into major gaffes, or weaved around aimlessly between child care, tariffs, Marco Rubio and the U.S. being a failing nation at their debate. The Louisville Courier-Journal judged that Nixon "had the more flexible and resonant voice of the two," and that Kennedy "often spoke too rapidly" but "seemed less self-conscious than Nixon." A voter interviewed by the Chicago Tribune said that "Nixon made out a bit stronger case, but I got a better impression of Kennedy than I'd had before this show."

"T-V for Victory" by Jesse Taylor Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. Sept. 30, 1960

On the other hand, the New York Daily News complained that the debate was "a weak and wishy washy piece of history. Both candidates, we thought, overdid the Alphonse-Gaston politeness." The Sacramento Bee agreed, calling it "more of a polite parlor tete a tete than a debate" and griping, "Kennedy and Nixon stipulated there would be no personalities in the debate. The result was like tossing away half the case for Kennedy." 

"The Winner" by Roy Justus in Minneapolis Star, Sept. 28, 1960

What stuck in the collective memory had more to do with appearances than who made the stronger case for himself. I've heard that television viewers thought that Kennedy "won" the debate, whereas radio listeners tended to find Nixon the winner (which may reflect the age of the respective audiences, too).

Nixon's five-o'clock shadow was only one factor for those who judged by appearances; after all, Herblock had been drawing Nixon with darkened chin and jowls for years. Both candidates declined CBS's offer of make-up; Kennedy's slight suntan photographed well anyway, but Nixon was recovering from a bout of flu that rendered him pale and sweaty. Perhaps more significantly in the Age of Television, whereas Kennedy spoke directly to the camera, Nixon faced the off-camera debate moderators when answering their questions.

"Tongue Smoke" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, Sept. 28, 1960

Television being a fairly young medium at the time, several editorial cartoonists drew less inspiration from what the candidates said than where they said it. Frank Miller's cartoon references the number one most popular TV series on the tube in 1960.

"I'm Not Satisfied" by Richard Q. Yardley in Baltimore Sun, Sept. 27, 1960

Still, there were a few cartoonists who dove into the specifics of the debate. Nixon, of course, promised that his policies would continue the post-war economic growth the nation had experienced during (most of) the Eisenhower administration. Kennedy promised that he could do better.

I guess Nikita Khruschev and Mao Zedong are peeking from behind the wall in Yardley's cartoon as an acknowledgement that although this first debate centered on domestic issues, foreign policy would be the focus of a future debate between the candidates.

"The Debate—American Style and Russian" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 29, 1960

Carey Orr couldn't wait, taking the occasion to remind his readers that the U.S.S.R. had brutally suppressed an anti-Soviet rebellion in Hungary four summers earlier.

Bill Mauldin in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 28, 1960

Bill Mauldin highlighted promises by both candidates to replace Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson. Benson's opposition to price supports and government agriculture subsidies won him few friends among farmers, who you might expect would be a key constituency of the Department of Agriculture. As a cleric on the Mormon Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, moreover, his appointment had been opposed by the American Council of Churches, which viewed his church as a anti-Christian cult. (Some of them had the same opinion of Kennedy's Roman Catholic faith.)

Benson had served as Secretary of Agriculture for all eight years of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, however, so it was extremely unlikely that he would continue in the post beyond January, 1961 in any event.

"Critic" by Bill Sanders in Greensboro (NC) Daily News, Sept. 28, 1960

And that takes care of the Cartoons About Substance. Bill Sanders returns us to the historical significance of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates appearing together on the telly.

"Don't All Come at Once" by Franklin Morse in Los Angeles Mirror, Sept. 27, 1960

I was surprised to find that some cartoonists didn't bother to draw about the Kennedy-Nixon debate at all that week. There was, however, plenty of other material for a cartoonist to work with.

The United Nations General Assembly was held that week, witnessing Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khruschev pounding his shoe on the podium and calling for the firing of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. Third World leaders denounced Western colonialism; the harangue by Fidel Castro, barely into his second year as Prime Minister of Cuba, lasted four-hours.

Meanwhile, the space exploration program of the U.S. was struggling to catch up to that of the U.S.S.R. No manned space flights had taken place yet — just dogged, monkeyed, moused, rabbited, and fruit flied ones. Russia was first to send satellites into Earth orbit and probes to the moon; the U.S. had experienced mixed success with both efforts.

"What Are You Fellows Arguing About" by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 27, 1960

And, of course, there was baseball for anyone bored by national, global, and extraterrestrial affairs.

"What Do You Suppose Happened After the Debate Went Off the Air" by Frank Interlandi for Register and Tribune Syndicate, Sept. 27, 1960

Nixon and Kennedy met for three more debates before the election, on October 7, 13, and 21.

After that, there would be a 16-year hiatus, including two more Nixon election campaigns, before candidates for president would meet for another debate.

Q Toon: MAGA Max and Leo the Lib Revisited

I didn't have enough space in a four-panel cartoon for Leo to wrap up his screed by saying that Trump is a 34-time convicted felon utterly without any redeeming social qualities, whose whim-based responses to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Oh, and that he led the first attempt to overthrow the United States government since the British burned the White House in 212 years ago.

Max and Leo debuted in my cartoon about a politically mismatched duo undergoing couples counseling earlier this summer. Today's cartoon officially makes them recurring characters, so something's got to be keeping them together.

The sex must be great. Or at least the cooking.

The way we have all separated ourselves into our mutually exclusive political echo chambers, finding a real couple like Max and Leo might be next to impossible. Liberals and conservatives keep to separate news channels, late night comedians, social media, houses of worship, and fried chicken outlets. They even have their very own mutually exclusive dating sites now, both gay and straight.

Opposites attract only in romantic comedies. And The Lockhorns.

And don't argue with me about James Carville and Mary Matalin, or George and Kellyanne Conway.

Those aren't real people.

They’re cartoons.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This panel may look familiar if you've been following my humble blog for at least the summer. Maybe not if you were among the sudden spike of visitors looking at last week's Harley-Davidson cartoon.

Since the publications currently running my cartoons publish either bi-weekly or monthly, it's not easy for me to maintain running characters. Most of my past characters have gone by the wayside: Democratic Congressman Luke Warmish got tossed out of office in the Gingrich Wave of 1994; his Republican counterpart Charles Snollygoster IV probably got primaried by a Tea Bagger in the 2010's. Podcasters Buzz and Killer didn't last, only partly because I didn't like how much Buzz resembled a gay gym rat version of Zippy the Pinhead. (Besides, there was less and less for him to be cheerful about during the Corrupt Donald Berzelius Trump administration.)

I've been thinking that Million Moms Cat Lady ought to make a reappearance. She ought to be a fan of Hillbilly Vanilli Vance, though, and I haven't decided what she makes of him now.