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