Q Toon: Cancel Culture

The odd couple of Liberal Leo and MAGA Max make their third appearance this week, telling a vote canvasser that they had both cast their ballots early. (I had to script their dialogue so that it would work in case the deadline for early voting had passed in the locales where they might be published. Originally, I had the canvasser herself promoting early voting.)

My better half and I have already voted, which has done nothing to stop the instant messages, phone calls, and hysterically desperate emails hounding us to vote, volunteer, and THIS IS THE FIFTEENTH TIME WE'VE WRITTEN YOU TO SEND US MONEY!

(No it isn't. I delete 100+ such requests every freaking day.)

In the final panel of this week's cartoon, Leo and Max reference the decision imposed by the owners of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times to spike editorials by their respective editorial boards endorsing Kamala Harris for President. Thus granting tacit equivalence to the candidacies of center-leftist Harris and fascist, racist, extremist grifter Donald Berzelius Trump, the decisions by Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong have resulted in a deluge of subscriber cancelations in protest.

Soon-Shiong’s daughter claims that her father’s diktat comes in protest of the Biden administration’s supplying weaponry to Israel in spite of its on-going wholesale slaughter of Palestinians. Fair enough.

But the chances of a Harris administration reining in Mr. Netanyahu, while slim, are much greater than a second Trump administration doing so. The first Trump administration’s only action regarding the Palestinian problem was sending his son-in-law to sit down with Netanyahu and draw up the Palestinians’ terms of surrender.

For his part, Bezos had the Post publish his excuse for killing its endorsement editorial. As I understand it, he's just returning the Post a simpler, more innocent time before color television when it didn't make such endorsements. And pay no attention to the corporate interests behind the curtain.

He did not explain why this sudden policy change came a mere eleven days before Election Day — as opposed to eleven months ago — or even eleven weeks ago when the Post editorial board was writing editorials essentially calling upon President Biden to drop out of the race for the good of the nation.

(I apologize to those of you among the 200,000 who canceled their Washington Post subscriptions this week for those three links to articles you cannot read. I still value its news department's reporting too much to cancel mine, not to mention the wit and wisdom of such as Ann Telnaes, Eugene Robinson, Alexandra Petri, and Dana Milbank. They can't all have their own substacks, can they?)

Anyway, to nobody's surprise, Trump is now telling his devoted minions, “The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and all these papers, they’re not endorsing anybody. You know what they’re really saying — because they only endorse Democrats — they’re saying this Democrat’s no good. They’re no good. And they think I’m doing a great job. They just don’t want to say it.”

So, Bezos, ya wanna try writing another op-ed about how when they came for democracy, you said nothing, because you weren't a Democrat?

This Week's Sneak Peek

This week's cartoon should be the last syndicated one released before Election Day, although not the last one drawn before the polls open.

By the way, if you weren’t aware that an election is coming up, congratulations on successfully becoming a complete ignoramus. That must have required a great deal of effort and determination.

Please don’t vote next Tuesday.

Rapport du Livre ce Samedi

I can't attend a convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists without coming home with at least one book to report on here, so today's Graphical History Tour is devoted to Sketches from an Unquiet Country: Canadian Graphic Satire 1840-1940, edited by Dominic Hardy, Annie Gérin, and Lora Senechal Carney. 

It's a dense tome; a reader must occasionally cut one's way through scholarly language such as “critical tradition that bifurcates aesthetic forms” and “historiographic metafiction.” The collected essays deal with the century between the failed rebellions of the late 1830's and the start of World War II. All of them address the nature of satire itself; some of them emphasize historical events, and others societal mores. Artistic styles also come in for assessment.

Nancy Perron displaying the work of Albéric Bourgeois at ACC-AAEC Convention

Some of the content was covered during presentations to the ACC and AAEC members at the Musée McCord-Stewart earlier this month.

One of them, as I mentioned in this blog, was Christian Vachon's essay arguing that the character of Uncle Sam as we know him today originated in Canada.

"Uncle Sam Kicked Out" by John Henry Walker in Grinchuckle, Montréal, Sept. 23, 1869

The idea of Uncle Sam existed earlier than this John Henry Walker cartoon, but Walker dressed him in striped breeches and a star-spangled coat weeks before Thomas Nast first did the same. In earlier cartoons, there is little to distinguish Uncle Sam from his predecessor, Brother Jonathan, a wise-cracking Everyman appearing in cartoons from the earliest days of nationhood.

To bolster the case of Nast getting his inspiration for Uncle Sam from Walker, Vachon cites examples that Nast also borrowed Uncle Sam's Canadian counterpart, Johnny Canuck, from Walker's cartoons. Uncle Sam, however, has survived Johnny Canuck as a cartoon stock character. (Johnny Canuck's revival during World War II as an action comic hero and again as the mascot of Vancouver's professional hockey team is outside the purview of this book, but it does include some examples of 21st-Century Canadian politicians cast as Canuck in editorial cartoons.)

Another essay follows the development of Miss Canada, a daughter of Britannia and sister of Columbia. All three are based on Greek goddesses; only one of them was typically accompanied by a beaver. Nowadays, all three are attic has-beens, and only the beaver survives in cartoons.

Cartoons of Arthur G. Racey, whom we featured here two weeks ago, appear with Jalene Grove's essay on "The Pretty Girl," chronicling Canadian artists' resentment of U.S. ideas of what constitutes female beauty.

Selections from "The American Girl" by A.G. Racey in The Moon, Montréal, 1902

 I've edited out some of the racist examples that accompanied Racey's satires above of U.S. cover girls (offensive cartoons are not limited to the chapter on anti-Semitism). The essay charts the progression from turn-of-the-century grotesque caricature to later cartoonists whose sly, wink-and-a-nod parodies may require a second glance nowadays to catch their satirical aspects.

It is unfortunate that the chapter on women's suffrage in cartoons does not include any cartoons arguing in its favor. Perhaps Pierre Chemartin and Louis Pelletier couldn't find any (U.S. cartoonists were certainly slow to come around to the idea). 

"Ulysse and the Sirens" by Henry Mayerovich in New Frontier, Montréal, Sept. 1936

The unfeminine harridans of women's suffrage are followed by a chapter showcasing the anti-Semitic, pro-fascist cartoons of Le Goglu (The Bobolink). Le Goglu's editor is at center in the above cartoon from the next chapter, about the anti-fascist press in Canada. Those two essays really have to be read as a pair.

Most of the essays are translated into English from their original French. The cartoons include the work of both Anglophone and Francophone authors; translations are offered for many but not all of the latter. One of the exceptions, "Les Pouilleux de Québec: Skidou!" is excerpted on the book's cover. It's a parody in Le Goglu of someone else's cartoon about hobos; I would translate the title as "The Lousy Ones of Quebec: Skidoo!"

The text gives an English translation of the seemingly innocuous poem accompanying the first panel of the cartoon, showing a woodsman settler in colonial times. The three other quatrains are given only in French. The book's cover illustration comes from the fourth panel, the poem for which proposes kicking all the Jews out of Canada to Palestine, the land of flying lice ("le pays de poux-volants"). 

The penultimate essay, on Albéric Bourgeois and his alter ego, Baptiste Ladébauche, by Laurier LaCroix serves as a welcome palette cleanser after the bitter and salty fare from the fascists and socialists.

In the end, I can't fault the scholarship in this book in any way. There are a few passages where cartoons are cited in the text without including them as illustrations, which is regrettable; Al though I understand perfectly well that some of them may not have been available, at least in the high-resolution quality of the cartoons that are included. The cartoons printed in color in the middle of the book, while limited, come as a pleasant surprise.

The U.S. educational system barely acknowledges the existence of our neighbor to the north, so much of the history here is bound to be new to us readers "from across the line." If you're interested in appreciating more about Canada than its back bacon and poutine, this book is a fine place to start.

Toon: Very Fine People on Both Sides

Former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly has written a book of his experiences in the Donald Schickelgruber Trump White House. According to an excerpt in the New Yorker Trump expressed to Kelly his admiration of "German generals" and wished that American generals were more like them.

"Do you mean Bismarck's generals?" Kelly told the Atlantic he'd asked Trump. He added, "I mean, I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, 'Do you mean the Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals?' And he said, 'Yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals.'"

Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the last sixteen months of Trump's presidency, is quoted in Bob Woodward's latest book as calling Trump "fascist to the core." Two of Trump's Secretaries of Defense, Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis and Army Lt. Col. Mark Esper, and one of his National Security Advisers, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, swell the chorus that Trump must never again be Commander In Chief of the U.S. military.

The White House and cabinet officials letting it be known that Trump is a fascist wannabe dictator who holds up Adolph Hitler as a role model only confirm what we've seen from the outside. Anyone who has been paying the slightest scrap of attention these past eight years knows that he worships the ground Vlad the Defenestrator Putin walks on, wants to be BFFs with Kim Jong Il, and adores what Viktor Orbán has done to Hungarian democracy.

Once upon a time, being exposed by that much military brass as Adolph Hitler's biggest fan would have been enough to send Trump slinking off in ignominy to Mar-a-Lagoon and thence to Argentina. But apparently, half the population of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina (and overwhelming majorities elsewhere in Dixie and the great plains) just don't care. 

For reasons that defy rational analysis, they enthusiastically plan to vote for an actual, literal, bona fide Nazi sympathizer for President of the United States.

Anything to get transgender folks out of the nation's rest rooms and defend the nation's aryan purity of essence. To Trump basest base, nothing else matters.

My cartoon today updates one by the great Australian-British editorial cartoonist, David Low. "Rendez-vous 1939" depicted Hitler and Joseph Stalin greeting each other: "The scum of the earth, I believe?" "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?" At their feet lay Poland, slain under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact partitioning the country that had separated them.

President Putin's policy since assuming power at the turn of the millennium has been to reconquer the nations that declared their independence from Moscow in 1989-1991. Trump will pull the rug out from under the government of Ukraine, which has been trying to fend off Russian aggression since 2008. Just as he pulled the rug out from under the government of Afghanistan.

If Trump is returned to the White House, no country in Eastern Europe will be safe from Russian lebensraum. No country anywhere else will be able to trust in United States assurances of friendship. There will be a new Axis of Evil, and we will be a junior member of it.

Dammit, this matters.

Q Toon: All Up In Her Business

Tammy Baldwin, the first out lesbian elected to the United States Senate, has had Republican opponents point out her sexual orientation in each of her four election campaigns. And I'm sure the guys have all just been trying to be helpful.

They don’t make it a campaign issue, but they never fail to mention it, in case there's some housewife up in Ashwaubenon who needed that nugget of information to make up her mind whom to vote for. I can't imagine why other Republican candidates don't bring up their heterosexual opponents’ sexuality unbidden, can you?

Senator Baldwin this year faces bank executive Eric Hovde, who has homes in both the Madison area and Laguna Beach, California; the latter described by the Los Angeles Times as "a mansion." Baldwin's TV and social media ads have played up his California residency, as well as statements Hovde made during his 2012 candidacy questioning allowing seniors who live in assisted living to vote, suggesting that farmers these days have it easy, proposing raising Social Security eligibility age to 72, and "completely" opposing abortion rights. Her tag line for these ads is "What's wrong with this guy?"

Hovde, since his last run, has grown a mustache that gives him the look of the guy in a 1980's movie plotting to steal away the girl, bulldoze the skateboard park, and buy out the rent-controlled apartment building where grandma lives. He has been trying to counter that California banker image with ads pointing out that Tammy Baldwin's girlfriend is a Wall Street financial manager whose investments might be affected by Senate legislation.

Some of his and his backers' ads call her "girlfriend," and some call her "partner." Hovde used the latter when he brought her up in the candidates' one and only debate appearance last Friday.

Baldwin and Maria Brisbane have been dating for about six years, and share an apartment in Washington D.C. They could get married if they wanted to, but for reasons that are none of our business, they haven't. Senate ethics rules have little to say about conflicts of interest covering the dating habits of unmarried members, and perhaps they should. Who wants the job of spelling out at what moment a relationship becomes reportable?

In the third panel of my cartoon this week, I quoted directly Baldwin's response to Hovde's demand that she report Ms. Brisbane's financial activities. I suspect it was a line Baldwin had ready and waiting to deliver, a handy pivot to Hovde's shared position with the Republican Party that women's health care decisions should be left up to statehouse politicians. 

She's hoping that it's a winning argument, and trends suggest it could be. Pro-choice advocates have done surprisingly well even in "red" states ever since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, revealing that Republicans' talk all this time about reducing the size of government meant making it small enough to fit inside a woman's vagina.

The couple in the fourth panel of my cartoon are fairly confident in Baldwin's prospects on November 5 — more confident than I am myself. The polls are reportedly running extremely close, within the margin of error. And you will recall that this state inexplicably tossed Senator Russ Feingold aside — twice — in favor of Ron Johnson, of all people.

Early voting in Wisconsin started on Tuesday, so I marched right on down to the village hall and did my part to send Ron Johnson Jr. back to Laguna Beach.

I'd keep my fingers crossed, but I still have some cartoons to draw.

Another Week's Sneak Peek

Instead of the usual snippet from my upcoming cartoon, here's an oldie on a related subject, starring my old standby Republican congressman character:

October Jest

Next stop on our Graphical History Tour: October cartoons up from the spooky basement! Ghosts? Goblins? Werewolves and vampires?

No! Worse! Presidential politics!

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Oct. 11, 1984

We were at the height of the political campaign season forty Octobers ago, so naturally, my cartoons were all about the candidates' debates.

President Ronald Reagan put in a poor performance during his first debate appearance with Democratic nominee Walter "Fritz" Mondale. Unlike President Joe Biden's poor performance this past June, it didn't result in hand-wringing from his side of the aisle urging him to pull out and let his Vice President take the wheel.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Oct. 18, 1984

And it barely moved his poll numbers.

Walter Mondale tried to spook voters with the zinger, "'Let's tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

But Reagan had the mic drop moment with "I want you to know also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."

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in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Nov. 3, 1994

I drew this cartoon for the Hallowe'en day edition of the student newspaper at the University of Milwaukee in 1994, but their October 31 edition had no editorial page — the entire issue being devoted to campus sports. So they held it for the Thursday issue, after Hallowe'en was past. At least Election Day was still to come.

The incumbent Congressman in my district, Democrat Peter Barca, would be defeated in that year's Republican wave. He's running for that same seat again this year, and the campaign of the current incumbent, Republican Bryan Steil, has one television ad out now featuring a group of veterans complaining about a vote Barca made in favor of cutting veterans' benefits.

One of those veterans, from the look of him, wasn't even born when Barca cast that vote. The tiny print footnote during the ad disappears quickly and refers only to the House Bill Number. I doubt anyone is going to look up whether it was a procedural vote, an omnibus bill, or an amendment. I don't see Politifact weighing in on it.

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In 2004, I was asked to draw a series of sketches about that year's presidential election for Lavender Magazine in Minneapolis. This was the cover drawing for their October issue:

in Lavender Magazine, Minneapolis, October, 2004

I had done color cartoons for the Milwaukee Business Journal the year before, but the cartoons I sent to Lavender Magazine were black-and-white images for their own people to colorize. I somehow don't have a copy of the published magazine, or even a downloaded image of the cover, and their on-line archive doesn't date back to 2004; so the above is how I colored it myself this week.

I'm fairly sure that I did see the published magazine. I just don't know whether I simply can't find it, or if it was among the stuff that had to be thrown out after our basement flooded several years ago.

in Lavender Magazine, Minneapolis, October, 2004

In any event, this is an example of what I sent them, and my recollection is that the illustrations like this one to accompany text of the cover articles appeared in color.

The editors asked for eight illustrations, in each case spelling out what sort of scenario they had in mind for each one.

in Lavender Magazine, Minneapolis, October, 2004

This is my colorization, from an earlier post, of another of the Lavender spot illustrations, of John Kerry getting a make-over from the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy crew.

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Well, that's enough politics for a Saturday, so I'll close with one of my most popular efforts, from October of 2014, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to overrule lower court rulings finding marriage inequality unconstitutional.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2014

The Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges making marriage equality the law of the land would come down the next year.

Three of its dissenting Justices are still on the bench, and share with the three Trump appointees who have since joined them a marked disdain for stare decisis.

Q Toon: GOP House of Terror

Requblican advertising in these late days of the presidential and congressional campaigns is focusing on their policy of persecuting transgender persons. 

The Trump campaign has recently dropped at least 17 million on ads highlighting Harris' support during her 2019 presidential campaign for access to gender affirming-medical treatment for transgender people. It's part of a broader Republican strategy casting the Democratic Party as taking transgender rights to extremes. According to data compiled by AdImpact for NPR, these ads have aired more than 30,000 times, including in all seven swing states, and with a particular focus on NFL and college football broadcast audiences.

Here in the battleground state of Wisconsin, the campaigns of Donald Duce Trump, Eric Hovde, and their ilk are desperately trying to tar Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin with anything they've ever said or voted for that treated transgender persons as having any humanity at all. Even if they have to lie outright.

(Hovde and his party's Senate Leadership Fund ads also play up, in sinister tones, that Senator Baldwin has a "girlfriend" who works for Wall Street and lives in a swanky New York apartment. The ads all include a black-and-white photo of the woman, just in case you hit the mute button during commercial breaks.)

Republicans are running the same sort of transphobic ads against Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Congressman Colin Allred in Texas, Sen. John Tester in Montana, and Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. The ads whip up fear and hatred against immigrants and the transgender community, using images of visibly gender-nonconforming people such as Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness and drag performer Pattie Gonia, neither of whom consented for their likenesses to be used.

Naturally, some GQP operative dug up the trifecta of an undocumented immigrant who had gender correction surgery while in prison for murder. The Trump ads make it sound as if Kamala Harris personally wheeled her into the operating room.

A Trump ad that began heavy air play this week begins with a ten-second video clip from Charlemagne Tha God's radio show on September 30 apparently calling Harris's position on the transgender issue "nuts," surely calculated to drive in the wedge between Harris and black male voters. 

He may have merely complimenting an earlier Trump ad. In any event, if the rights of transgender Americans came up during Harris’s hour-long grilling on Mr. Tha God’s show on Tuesday, I’ve found no mention of it in any news reports.

Harris was asked about transgender surgery for prison inmates at a Fox town hall later that day, and said little more than promising "I will follow the law."

She must have decided that the Trump team had enough material for their transbashing house of terror already.

Toon: Town Hall Do-Si-Don't

We interrupt today's regularly scheduled cartoon for this important breaking cartoon:

In case you missed it, Donald Disco Trump had a Town Hall rally in Philadelphia the other night, fielding pre-screened questions from the pre-screened audience, when, a couple of questions in, two members of the audience fainted.

Trump stopped taking questions, which is perfectly reasonable, and asked the backstage staff to play some music.

As a church organist, I've had to wing some music because somebody in the back pews has collapsed. I fainted in church once myself a very long time ago (fortunately, not as the organist). I've been in the congregation when a woman suffered a heart attack.

On those occasions, the worship service was interrupted, but not for long. In the case of the woman having a heart attack, the EMTs arrived soon and got her to the hospital as quickly as possible.

For reasons that defy logic, Trump had the backstage crew DJ an impromptu concert for 39 minutes, starting with not one, but two renditions of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria — two, because the DJ played an instrumental version and Trump wanted Luciano Pavarotti's performance.

Followed by several songs by artists such as Rufus Wainwright who have demanded that he cease and desist playing recordings of their performances at his rallies.

According to video from the evening, Trump played Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” as well as Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain,” James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” Elvis’ “An American Trilogy,” the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” and Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye.”

All the while, South Dakota Governor Kristi "Shoot the Pooch" Noem (the moderator for the evening) and a mute Greek chorus of special guests were trapped on stage. You could see them distractedly swaying and shuffling and clapping along with the Donald, clearly wondering how to get the hell out of there without being noticed.

In the end, Trump answered only four people's questions, and left town happy and pleased with his performance.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 I tasked myself with another outdoor setting at night this week:

That works really well in grayscale; I know of just one publication that prints my cartoons that way. It poses a challenge in colorizing the cartoon, as the Moody Blues said:

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray, and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion

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I learned this weekend of the death of Jerry Fearing, 94, editorial cartoonist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, and the papers that merged into it, from about 1957 to 1994. In his memory, here is the cartoon he drew after the death of Senator Hubert Humphrey in 1978:

The Long, Slow Race to the Finish

Our Graphical History Tour today finds the 1924 election campaigns heading into the final stretch, wrapping it up with a bow, and firing their last salvos. 

"Trying to Attract the Attention of the Enemy" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 17, 1924

From John McCutcheon's perch in the Republican stands, the U.S. presidential contest had come down to one between his party's incumbent President Calvin Coolidge and its defector to the Progressive Party, Senator Robert LaFollette. He cast Democratic nominee John Davis as the third-party also-ran.

"I Don't Believe That Chap Can Read" by Clifford Berryman in Washington [DC] Evening Star, Oct. 6, 1924

Democratic partisans put a brave face on things — such was their job, after all — in spite of polls and straw votes giving a marked advantage to the Republicans.

Straw votes in presidential contests date back one century further to 1824; and if the press generally reported them as indicating present mood rather than forecasting the official vote, editorial cartoonists were not alone in reading them as predictions. The straw polls might be limited to the students at a particular university, or members of a certain profession, or just passers-by at a busy street corner.

Opinion polls came along more recently, and supposedly were more scientific; the Literary Digest poll, launched in 1916, had successfully predicted the presidential races in that year and 1920. The first truly national poll, the Literary Digest mailed post cards around the country and tallied the results of those that were returned.

"The Dark Outlook" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Oct. 20, 1924

Tom Foley, who favored LaFollette, posed a scenario that minimized Republicans' chances by overstating LaFollette's and Davis's. In the end, LaFollette carried only his home state of Wisconsin; and Davis failed to win New Mexico, Arizona, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, or Delaware.

I won't even get into Foley's forecast of Upper Michigan casting separate electoral votes from Lower Michigan.

"Who Was It Who Traded Their Birthright..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Oct. 31, 1924

For the time being, Republicans' main worry was the possibility that LaFollette's candidacy could result in none of the three major presidential candidates reaching an electoral college majority. In that case, the election of a President would be decided in the House of Representatives, and the Vice President chosen in the Senate.

By the way, the answer to Darling's question was Esav Ben-Yitzchak, if you're wondering.

"What It Will Mean" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 24, 1924

GOP stalwart Charles Kuhn devoted nearly a dozen cartoons in October of 1924 to dire predictions of chicanery and chaos if the election were to be given to Congress to decide. (And still Kuhn had not ventured a comment on the Klan-ridden statewide races in his home state of Indiana.)

The Republican congressional majorities in both houses included some Progressives who could not be counted on to support Calvin Coolidge. Prominent Progressives Hiram Johnson (R-CA) and William Borah (R-ID) promised to support the Republican ticket, but Iowa Senator Smith W. Brookhart stirred things up by declaring himself for LaFollette.

"They've All Gone Wrong But Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Oct. 3, 1924

Charles Kuhn may have had no opinions about Indiana politics in the summer and fall of 1924, but other editorial cartoonists were happy to take note of races close to home. In Ohio, Governor Alvin "Honest Vic" Donahey had some reliable campaign help as he ran for a second term...

"This Looks Pretty Good to Me" by James "Hal" Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 14, 1924

His younger brother, James Harrison Donahey, was the front page editorial cartoonist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. From that perch, "Hal" repeatedly sang the praises of his older brother...

"My, What a Clatter" by James H. Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 24, 1924

...and pooh-poohed the corruption charges against "Honest Vic" made by his Republican opponent, former Governor Harry L. Davis. (I could have made a post here made up of Donahey's in-kind contributions to his brother's campaign, but I might not have been able to come up with much to say about the cartoons after the first four or five of them.)

"The Little Stick" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 4, 1924

Speaking of family, New York Republicans nominated as their gubernatorial candidate against Democrat Al Smith Theodore Roosevelt III, son of the late president. Sullied by the Teapot Dome scandal while Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Harding administration but cleared of any wrong-doing, he returned criticism from his cousin Franklin: "He's a maverick! He does not wear the brand of our family."

"With All the Heirlooms" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, Sept. 26, 1924

As we discussed last week, elections were held across the pond in the United Kingdom, too. The specific issues forcing Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government to stand for election were reported in the U.S. press, but I'm not finding many American cartoons getting into the particulars.

"We Got Company" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 16, 1925

There was certainly delight in some quarters, however, at his fall. 

"Well, Well, Still They Come" by Dorman Smith for NEA, ca. Oct. 25, 1924

Germany was headed for a snap election as well. The Reichstag was dissolved on October 20, with elections set for December 7. Given that it was Germany's second election that year, Americans probably greeted the news with a yawn — just another change of government in hapless Deutschland — but Germany was in fact just then entering into its so-called "Glückliche Zwanzigers," the brief period of economic recovery that ended with the global crash at decade's end.

"The Dancing-Master and the Bag-Piper" by K.A. Suvanto in Daily Worker, Chicago, Oct. 8, 1924

If you caught last week's sampling of cartoons by Montreal Star cartoonist A.G. Racey, you remember that the opposition to the Labour government charged that MacDonald failed to prosecute a communist newspaper for advocating mutiny in his majesty’s armed services and that he was an unwitting dupe of Soviet Russia. 

The commies at the Daily Worker in Chicago argued instead that MacDonald was a stooge of British capitalists.

"Took Me Just Three Weeks" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Oct. 30, 1924 

The British Parliament dissolved on October 9, and its Conservative Party won in a landslide on October 29. This Berryman cartoon just goes to show that Americans' longing for a shorter election season is nothing new.

And yet, our election season just keeps getting longer and longer, anyway.

Q Toon: Proof Through the Night

Something a little lighter this week:

I like to take note of National Coming Out Day when I can, even when it occurs during the most critical and fraught election season since 1860.

It's a holiday only a few decades old, offering an impetus, or at least an excuse, for LGBTQ+ people of any age who have been in the closet, or just realizing who they are, to celebrate themselves in public. To be honest with the people they love, they work with, or they meet. To be unashamed of the ones they love.

In some ways, there is less to lose by coming out now than there was on the first NCOD in 1988. Being out is not going to get you dishonorably discharged from military service. You can still be a big Hollywood star, or a highly paid athlete, or Senator, or cabinet secretary, or Ambassador to Luxembourg. Or pastor, doctor, nurse, school teacher, truck driver, or Tik Tok influencer.

Or parent.

True, there is still the possibility that coming out could leave you estranged from family, church, or friends. But it's a possibility that has become more remote for more and more of us, thanks to the brave men and women who have come out before you.

And your coming out will make that possibility even more remote for those who come after you, believe it or not.

If the fireworks surrounding your coming out experience are rough, take heart. I promise you that you will find new family, church, or friends. Your old family, church or friends might even come around someday. 

Or they might surprise you and keep loving you for who you are... just like they did before.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I just got back yesterday from this year's combined convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists.

It was a good meeting, aside from getting lost on the first day walking from the hotel to the Musée McCord-Stewart Museum because I read the map upside-down. I did stumble upon the gay district of Rue Ste. Catherine; by then, I was relying on Google Maps to get me headed back in the right direction. But because Google Maps thought I was driving, the app kept insisting that I turn off in the wrong direction just to get off the pedestrian mall.

It didn't like me walking against traffic on one-way streets, either, repeatedly demanding that I turn right and right two more times even though my destination was ahead and to the left.

Detail from "Some of the Strange Gods Worshipped in Johnny Canuck's Temple of Fame" by Charles W. Jefferies in The Moon, Montréal, Aug. 9, 1902

Well, I'm sure that I will find something else to say about the convention, if only to post a review of the book I bought at the Musée once I've finished reading it.

And to thank Christian Vachon, curator of the Musée and 1er recipient of the ACC's Golden Gable Award, for sending a link to the McClord-Stewart and further information about Saturday's Graphical History Tour subject, Arthur G. Racey. (Did you know that it was a Canadian who, Vachon convincingly argues, invented the cartoon characterization of Uncle Sam?)

My trip home started with a red-eye flight from Montréal to Toronto, so by the time I renewed acquaintance with my better half, unpacked, had an overdue meal, and sat down at my drawing board, I was falling asleep.

Come back in a few days to see what a mess I made of this week's cartoon.

A.G. Racey

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists are meeting with our Canadian brethren and sistren in Montréal this weekend, so today's Graphical History Tour celebrates the work 100 years ago this month of Montreal Daily Star editorial cartoonist A.G. Racey.

"The Firecracker" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 1, 1924

Quebecker Arthur George Racey (1870-1941) drew editorial cartoons for Montreal's Daily Star and Witness for 40 years starting in 1899. According to his 1922 book, Canadian Men of Affairs in Cartoon, he "enjoyed a position of unique prominence and popularity as a chronicler of the world, events and men. His work in the Montreal Daily Star is known all around the British Empire and beyond."

"Where Does It Come From" by A.G. Racey  in Montreal Daily Star, October 18, 1924

So let's start beyond the British Empire. From the Far East: Japan threatened to scuttle a negotiated League of Nations agreement on armaments reduction. Meanwhile, civil war had erupted in China, which factored into the Japanese government's reluctance to agree to military cuts.

Racey's is one of the least racist cartoons about the Chinese crisis that I've come across; admittedly, American cartoonists set a pretty low bar in that regard.

"Churchill and His Hats" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star,  September 30, 1924

In this early cartoon of Winston Churchill, he's missing the cigar and extra pounds that we usually picture him with nowadays. Apparently, in an era when absolutely everybody wore hats, Churchill was known for also wearing hats.

Churchill, representing Dundee, Scotland in Parliament as a Liberal, had been ousted from office in the 1922 election by candidates of the Labour and Scottish Prohibition Parties. With new elections called in October of 1924, Churchill would be elected again, but this time as a Conservative representing Epping.

The Daily Star was an Anglophile newspaper, allied with the Conservative Party in London and Toronto — Canada being a subject of the crown a century ago — so a prospective change in Tory leadership involving the wartime Secretary of State for War was certainly of interest to its subscribers. As it happened, Winston Churchill would have to wait another 15 years to take the helm of his once and future party.

"The Foundering Ship" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 4, 1924

The news dominating the British Empire, including Canada, were parliamentary elections called only nine months into the administration of Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the first of his party to hold the post. One of MacDonald's first foreign policy actions was to extend official recognition to the Soviet Union, and to open negotiations with the Russians toward a treaty on Anglo-Soviet trade and the repayment Imperial Russian loans to British bondholders.

MacDonald's minority government lost a vote of no confidence over the "Campbell Case," its decision not to prosecute the Communist Party Workers Weekly and its acting editor, J.R. Campbell, for a July 25 "Open Letter to the Fighting Forces" urging British servicemen to mutiny in the event of war.

"And He Needs It So Badly for Propaganda" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 22, 1924

Clearly, Racey and his editors shared the view of Britain's Conservatives and Liberals against the MacDonald Soviet-friendly foreign policy, and his cartoons amplify the Red Scare issue that was central to the Conservatives' campaign.

"St. George for England" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, October 27, 1924

In case it's too small to read on your device, the spear wielded by "Conservatism" against "Moscow Dominated Red Communism" is labeled "patriotism." I do not, however, believe that Racey intended to call the "British Electorate" a horse's ass.

"Mad Clear Through" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, October 28, 1924

Four days before the election in what we would today call an October surprise, the London Daily Mail published a letter, purportedly by Grigori Zinoviev, President of the Communist International (Commintern), intercepted by Great Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. The gist of the letter was that normalization of British-Soviet relations would facilitate the spread of Communist influence throughout the British Empire, culminating in revolution by its workers and soldiers.

"A Hallowe'en Tragedy" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, October 31, 1924

The letter is now believed to have been a forgery, but it nevertheless doomed the MacDonald government. Conservatives won a decisive majority in Parliament; Labour lost 40 seats.

Racey's cartoon overlooks one other development with the 1924 election: the Liberal Party lost 118 of its 158 seats in Parliament. Formerly the main rival to the Conservatives, the Liberals have been a  minority third party ever since.

"The Mote and the Beam" by A.G. Racey in Montreal Star, October 23, 1924

With so much excitement over the British elections, Racey hardly had time in October to address any Canadian issues. (In case you're wondering, he drew nothing about the election underway south of the border that month.) 

He did squeeze in this commentary on Canadian complicity in subversion of Prohibition in the United States. Here the province of Ontario, nose darkened by "manufacture of booze," lectures a grinning Quebec, whose nose is stained by "sale of booze."

The latest cartoons of Arthur Racey that I've found were in January, 1941; he died on December 21, 1941 after having been ill for several months. Just as the Parti Québecois was coming to power in Montréal, the Anglophile Montreal Star shut down in September, 1979, unable to recover from a strike of its press workers.