This Week's Sneak Peek

Hi there, folks!

I will have a regularly scheduled editorial cartoon this week, and it will have something to do with election season, but I'm afraid it won't be about tomorrow's vice presidential candidates' debate. I wish they would schedule these things on Sundays so that I can have a timely cartoon about them, but this year's debates have all been in the middle of the week.

I'll be away at the combined convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists in Montréal later this week, so I may not have time before I pack up and leave to draw, scan, and colorize a cartoon about whatever transpires between Messrs. Vance and Walz tomorrow night.

Which would disappoint me if I can't. Vice presidential debates historically make little to no difference in the outcome of an election, but tend to have some of the most memorable moments.

Lloyd Bentsen crushing Dan Quayle: "I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." 

Adm. James Stockdale: "Who am I? Why am I here?"

John Edwards: "I think the Vice President and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And and you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy. ...."
Gwen Ifill (after Edwards finished criticizing Republicans' proposed Definition of Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution): "Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds."
Dick Cheney: "Let me simply thank the Senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much."
Ifill: "That's it?"
Cheney: "That's it."

Sarah Palin: "In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it."

And who can forget the fly on Mike Pence's hair?

Keep Kartooning with Koolidge

Having caught up with the LaFollette and Davis campaigns last week, today our Graphical History Tour checks in with President Calvin Coolidge and his whirlwind campaign for a full four years in the White House.

by Charles "Bill" Sykes in Life magazine, Oct. 2 1924

Charles Sykes here scoffs at President Calvin Coolidge's campaign message of "common sense" government. Coolidge whistles past the political issues burying ground, haunted by tariff troubles, scandals left over from the Harding presidency, the Ku Klux Klan, and "our foreign policy."

"The Wide Open Spaces" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 29, 1924

Of the four, the Klan was certainly not a dead issue. The secretive society wielded influence not just in the solidly Democratic south, but had also made significant inroads in the Republican Party, winning gubernatorial and senate primaries in Indiana and Maine. But Democratic and Progressive leaning cartoonists lambasted Coolidge for not speaking out against the Klan.

by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Oct. 13, 1924

Coolidge supposedly believed that his best option was to ignore the Klan and thus deprive it of the publicity a presidential statement would afford. His running mate, Charles Dawes, did speak out against the Klan, and forcibly so; as did John Davis and Robert LaFollette, the presidential nominees of the Democratic and Progressive Parties, respectively. When Coolidge finally did condemn the Klan by name, it was fully a year after this election was over.

"Silence Gives Consent" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Sept. 2, 1924

"Keep Kool with Koolidge" by Harold Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 13, 1924

In could be what we cartoonist call a "Yahtzee," J.P. Alley and Harold Talburt both depict a klansman proudly misspelling the Republicans' election slogan. Or perhaps Talburt brazenly swiped the idea from Alley, who drew it first.

"Still Klampaigning" by Harold Talburt for NEA, ca. Sept. 15, 1924

In fact, Talburt liked the idea so much that he made a week-long series out of it, adding a new character to the parade each day.

"Klampaigning—Knumber V" by Harold Talburt for NEA, ca. Sept. 17, 1924

By the end of the series, the parade behind the Klansman included former Ambassador to Great Britain George Harvey, Charles Dawes, New Hampshire Congressman Foster W. Stearns, campaign manager William Butler, and Coolidge himself bringing up the rear.

"The Actions of 'Silent Cal'" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, Sept. 10, 1924

Okay, I was being sarcastic at the top of this post. "Silent Cal" waged no whirlwind campaign. He wasn't raising the roofs of auditoriums and airport tarmacs packed with cheering fans. To his mind, the way to be elected president was to get down to the work of being President.

"The Crew That Brought This Dirigible In" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 17, 1924

Kuhn's cartoon here references the arrival at Lakehurst Naval Station of U.S. Navy dirigible USS Los Angeles, 81 hours after departing from its German construction site at Friedrichshafen, Germany. For those of you reading on tiny devices, the crew in Kuhn's cartoon are Stability, Prosperity, Common Sense Government, Economy, and Efficiency.

Oh, by the way, I have still not found any mention of the Klan from Mr. Kuhn.

"Ho, Hum" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Sept. 20, 1924

Coolidge was satisfied to let his running mate take care of all the campaign speechifying, flesh-pressing, and, I presume, baby-kissing. If Dawes had any complaints about it, he confided them only to J.P. Alley.

Since I've brought up Mr. Dawes again, I'll mention that Iowa Senator Smith W. Brookhart touched off some fireworks by calling for Coolidge to dump him from the Republican ticket. Please excuse the mailing label here:

"What a Noisy World" by James Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 2, 1924

Brookhart, one of those pesky Progressive Republicans, opined that Coolidge should replace Dawes, a diplomat and former Director of the Budget lauded for his proposal to resolve Europe's war reparations dispute, with someone from the "Farm Bloc."

Not that the Iowa Senator had any particular farm bloc politician in mind, of course.

Q Toon: Stefon Gets Political

Republiqans' gerrymandering since 2010 has emboldened their most radical elements to believe that they can successfully run their most extremist, oddball, weird candidates for statewide office as easily as they can in their hermetically sealed congressional and state legislative districts.

That they certainly can in states that are bent that way, and there are several from Alabama to Wyoming. It works elsewhere for offices voters pay little attention to, such as Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor — especially where Democrats have left way-downballot, county level races woefully uncontested. But when it comes to the marquee races for Senator and Governor, the electorate actually sits up and pays attention. (Flooded with campaign commercials on every electronic device, how could we not?)

Republiqans thought they had a sure winner for one of Georgia's Senate seats two years ago in football star Herschel Walker, only to be stunned when a solid majority of voters discovered what a loony, intellectual lightweight he was. 

They seem destined for another shock if North Carolina voters fail to overlook gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's antebellum ideas on women's suffrage and slavery. CNN has added to the mix, exposing posts by the self-described "Black Nazi" on a pornography website over a decade ago.

Walker was an unknown quantity as a candidate in Georgia beyond being a celebrity, so maybe one can cut Republiqan voters there some slack. But GOP voters in North Carolina have no excuse for not knowing what kind of person their Lieutenant Governor is. He has not been some Alexander P. Throttlebottom waiting quietly out of sight and out of mind. 

Robinson's inflammatory rhetoric caught more attention than your typical Lieutenant Governor ever gets. Heck, this is the fourth cartoon I've drawn about him, and I don't even live in North Carolina.

And I haven’t even mentioned that he is a Holocaust denier yet . 

Of course, time is short; but Tar Heel Republiqans could try stealing the national Democrats' playbook, and pressure their deeply flawed candidate to drop out so that they can replace him with someone else who is so much more appealing by comparison.

It's 2024. Anything can happen.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Looking through American, British, and Canadian editorial cartoons of the Nineteenth Century and up to cartoons from the Nixon era, one frequently runs across references from Shakespeare and Keats. Old German cartoons often quoted Schiller and Goethe. French cartoonists used to allude to Voltaire and Hugo.

Today's readership expects something with a somewhat lower brow.
 

1924 Challengers

Our Graphical History Tour returns again to the presidential contest of 1924, where we find Harold Talburt all fired up about Progressive nominee Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin.

"One Good Way to Save the Rug" by Harold Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 5, 1924

I could be wrong here, but my gut feeling is that a board with a nail in it is not the best tool for beating a rug, and one of them new-fangled vacuum cleaners would be more efficient and less damaging to boot. 

Before Kirby, Hoover, and Electrolux rendered them obsolete, there was a weapon called a carpet beater, consisting of metal loops flowering off the end of a wooden handle. Years later, one Henry E. Rutzebeck of Sunland, California reminisced about the old-fangled device to the Los Angeles Times:

“I remember beating the rug until my arms and shoulders were limp and my spirit demoralized,” he writes. “My mother would come out, give the object of my frustration one well-placed whack and, in a cloud of smoking dust, instruct: ‘Beat more!’ ”

He adds: “Today’s mass-produced rugs would never survive the ritual beatings such as we were trained to administer in the early ’20s.”

"Asking Too Much of the Girl" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, Sept. 13, 1924

Beating of the carpets was presumably well overdue in this Collier's magazine cartoon by "Ding" Darling. I presume it is Congress with so much "unfinished business," beset by "blocs" and an overflowing "waste" can. 

For better or worse, the 68th Congress had not been as completely unproductive as Darling portrays: it passed an onerous, racist immigration bill, but also acknowledged Native Americans as U.S. citizens. It also passed bills adjusting veterans' compensation and addressing water pollution. It was a modest output to be sure, but a model of efficiency and productivity compared to the Republican 118th Congress of today. Besides, the 68th Congress still had a lengthy lame duck session between Election Day and March 4, 1925 to hunker down and really get to work.

LaFollette's invitation to "The November Bride" to "live here with the folks until we can figure out something" will merit some further thought.

"We'd Like to Know" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 25, 1924

William Hanny takes issue with a specific proposal of LaFollette's for congressional review of Supreme Court decisions. Given the conservative bent of the Court for most of its history, its resistance to most if not all Progressive legislation would have been extremely likely.

"Farmers Take Your Choice" probably by T.E. Powers for Star Co., ca. Sept. 26, 1924

I don't see a signature on this cartoon, but it looks to me like the work of T.E. Powers. A typical cartoon of his would have three loosely related panels like this one, so I wouldn't be surprised if the editors of the Oklahoma Leader selected the one panel they liked, or would fit on the page, and it didn't happen to be the panel with Powers's signature in it.

LaFollette stands proudly with his running mate, Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who had led a special Senate committee investigating the Harding Administration's Teapot Dome scandal. (That's also Wheeler playing guitar in William Hanny's cartoon.) The Democratic presidential nominee John Davis, starting off on his campaign tour of western states, is joined by vice presidential nominee Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska and Bryan's elder brother William Jennings Bryan.

"The Sailing Power of the Tail" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Sept. 25, 1924

The elder Bryan, his party's standard bearer in 1896, 1900, and 1908, remained a Democratic power broker and a favorite of cartoonists. Adding the younger Bryan to the ticket was intended to neutralize the Prairie Populist's strong opposition to Davis.

"Carrying All Before It" by Robert Satterfield for Autocaster, ca. Sept. 19, 1924

It has been very difficult to find any cartoons confident in the Democratic ticket's chances in November, so Bob Satterfield lands here pretty much by default.

He seizes on new criminal charges against Harding administration officials connected to the Teapot Dome scandal as the basis for his optimism, but Coolidge had effectively disassociated himself from his predecessor's "Ohio Gang."

"Moral" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Sept. 23, 1924

What concerned some Coolidge supporters such as Doc Kuhn was that the three-way race would end up with no candidate winning a majority in the electoral college, leaving the election up to Congress. And perhaps this was the possibility Darling was getting at in his Collier's cartoon.

Republicans held a majority in both the House (which, according to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, would elect the President) and Senate (which would elect the Vice President); but that includes several members aligned with the Progressive movement — not to mention Senators LaFollette and Wheeler themselves.

The precedent set 100 years earlier, when no candidate won an electoral college majority in the four-way race of 1824, suggests that there would have been plenty of wheeling and dealing in what is called a "contingent election." That earlier congress had managed to elect a president in one day.

On the other hand, in 1924, this was the Congress that had taken nine ballots to elect a Speaker of the House.

Again, a hasty decision compared to today's GOP QauQus.

Q Toon: Graveside Manners

Shortly after I pitched this idea to my editors and sat down at my drawing board Sunday, I saw the news that yet another attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump by some deranged idiot equipped with weapons of mass casualty had been thwarted. I seriously considered hunting for some other topic for this week's cartoon; perhaps if some comment by Pete Buttigieg on Meet the Press had tickled my fancy, I would have found one.

Since I didn't, here's this one.

Trump's repeated insistence that somewhere in this glorious country, parents are sending their children off to school only to have the little tykes come home having been subjected to spontaneous gender reassignment surgery in the principal's office apparently falls under JD BH Vance's theory that it's okay "to create stories so that the American media actually [pay] attention."

The ReQublican Qandidates are remarkably less concerned with the very real instances of children going to school only to come home with mortal coil reassignment surgery performed by another one of those deranged idiots equipped with weapons of mass casualty. There have been two attempted assassinations of presidential candidates this year; as of September 6, there have been 46 mass shootings at schools in the United States in 2024.

And zero gender reassignment surgeries at any school anywhere in the country.

Right-wingers have been quick to accept Dear Leader's fairy tales, however, and to discount reality. They dismiss grieving parents as "crisis actors," so it's hardly surprising that some on the other side immediately spread wild conjecture on line that the Mar-a-Lagoon golf course wannabe sniper is also some sort of crisis actor, hired to distract the electorate from Trump's ridiculous debate performance, or Project 2025, or reports that inflation is down and employment is up.

And the Fox Noise Machine just as quickly answered that the guy was inspired by Democratic campaign warnings that Trump is a racist, a fascist, and danger to the Republic, just because Trump says racist, fascist things and promises to be a dictator on Day One.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan's admonishment that "You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts" is so passé these days. Pick and choose whatever facts you fancy, tune out the rest, and believe whatever you want. The gunman is a Republican! He's a Democrat! He's a Ramaswamian! He's a Bernie Bro! He's a floor wax! He's a dessert topping! He's Schrödinger's assassin!

How long, O Lord, how long have we been coming here?

This Week's Sneak Peek

Well, well, if it ain't Mr. Hillbilly Allergy makin' his day-boo in my 'toon this here week. Land o' Goshen, what dya figger he's got on his mind there?

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.

✍

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.”

✍

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.