Q Toon: Prattville Prattle

Or, The Pastors' Prorogue.

In the interest of drawing about anything that has nothing to do with the impending Even More Corrupt Trump Administration, or the Republican campaign of persecution against transgender Americans, I present to you my annual Christmas Holiday Cartoon.

Prattville, Alabama, population just under 38,000, celebrated its annual Christmas Parade down East Fourth, Wetumpka, Northington, and Main Streets last Friday, with lights, marching bands, dancers, candy, beads and trinkets, but not without a bit of litigious drama.

The town's LGBTQ+ group, Prattville Pride, paid their $30 entry fee to have a float in the parade, only to have their application rejected by Mayor Bill Gillespie, Jr. Prattville Pride took the city to court to be allowed to march in the parade. With mere hours before the parade was to start, they won their case.

In his order, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker of the Middle District of Alabama wrote: “While there are areas of unprotected speech, such as incitement of violence, the City makes no argument and provides no evidence that Prattville Pride has engaged in any speech or behavior that would remotely fall into an unprotected speech category. It is undisputed that Prattville Pride has complied with the City’s regulations.”

“The City removed Prattville Pride from the parade based on its belief that certain members of the public who oppose Prattville Pride, and what is stands for, would react in a disruptive way. But discrimination based on a message’s content “cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment,” the order continued.

Toleration, as it turned out, was in somewhat short supply.

Two participants pulled out of the parade after Huffaker’s order: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which initially backed out after Prattville Pride was included only to reverse course after the city’s ban, and Drive-In Park, the headquarters of “mobile movie evangelists” Drive-In Ministries.

“Unfortunately we are back to our original stance of having to forgo the parade since the pride float with their drag queen is back in it,” said Father Den Irwin, pastor at St. Joseph’s. “I am sincerely sorry for any inconvenience. We were trying to support the City after they boldly removed the float. However Prattville pride challenged the ruling in court and won.”

Drive-In Park said in a social media post it was “disappointed” that it had to pull out of the event.

“Our convictions at Drive-In have guided us to decide that we should not participate this year due to the inclusion of the Prattville Pride float,” the post read.

Congregants of St. Joseph and Drive-In Park who had put in so much work putting their floats together were no doubt crestfallen, although I'm pretty sure at least one of them has a parking lot they could parade around and around in.

As for the town's official parade, I have not been able to find any reports of any further disruption thereto. Neither fire nor brimstone has rained down upon beautiful downtown Prattville, according to the latest from the Weather Channel.

Just beads and trinkets.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 Behold, I bring you tidings of great, um, joy...

Churchill: A Life in Cartoons

This week's Graphical History Tour is yet another book report: just in time for the 150th anniversary of Winston Churchill's birth, cartoon historian Tim Benson offers over 300 editorial cartoons from the British wartime leader's career in Churchill: A Life in Cartoons.

Back in October, I was curious about an Arthur G. Racey cartoon from 1924 that held up Churchill's propensity for wearing hats as something out of the ordinary, even though just about everybody wore hats in those days. The mystery is explained in Benson's introduction to the book: at the dawn of Churchill's career, cartoonists thought that unlike his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, he lacked "the features which lent themselves to easily recognisable conventional treatment" (— cartoonist Francis Carruthers Gould, August, 1904). 

Benson writes that heeding the advice of Gould and other cartoonists,

"Churchill started wearing a variety of hats, all of which were distinctive in that they were too small for his head. Churchill once claimed that this was a deliberate strategy, beginning in 1910 when he caused a stir by donning a felt cap several sizes too small in front of photographers."

"Our Choice of Political Leaders" by Victor Weisz in News Chronicle, London, Nov. 23, 1945

He later adopted the cigar (never smoked down more than an inch) and the V symbol for the same reasons, although by then cartoonists had sufficiently honed their caricatures of the man that they really didn't need the extra clues. But, as Donald Trump is always drawn with an extra-long red tie, the cigar was de rigueur in any Churchill cartoon.

When I ordered this book, I expected it to be full of David Low cartoons (like the one on the cover), but Benson has deliberately sought out cartoons which, according to the back page, "have not seen the light of day since they were first published." Low is not overlooked entirely, but you'll find many more cartoons by George Whitelaw, Victor "Vicky" Weisz, Clive Uptton, and Leslie Illingworth.

There are also plenty of cartoons from the United States, Germany, Italy, Australia, and the U.S.S.R.; even a few from Brazil, India, South Africa, Netherlands, and Mexico. What struck me, having just read and reviewed a book about Canadian editorial cartoonists, is that there is only one cartoon in this book from Canada. (The book has no index; if anyone finds a second Canadian cartoon in there, please let me know.)

"Das Alte Lied" ("The Old Song") by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Sept. 12, 1943

The cartoons published in nations that were Britain's enemies, such as this one by Arthur Johnson (sadly, not in color in Benson's book) in which it's the U.S. flag that Churchill is obliged to carry, serve as a welcome counterpoint to the patriotic wartime cartoons from the homeland. Benson notes as an aside that this is one of the few German cartoons that alluded to Franklin Roosevelt's polio — an absolute no-no in U.S. and allied cartoons, photographs, and reportage. 

If I have any complaint about the book, it is that there are a few cartoons that, when printed two per page, include print that is too small for these old eyes to read. Typically, that involves labels identifying politicians who are long forgotten or simply unknown this side of the pond. Since the text accompanying every cartoon does a more than adequate job of explaining their context and external references, my not being able to identify the Labour councilman from Westgloughingham is a very small point.

Churchill: A Life in Cartoons helps greatly in the understanding of the two World Wars from a British point of view (especially as distinct from the U.S. perspective). With a half century of cartoons dating from 1904 to 1954, including a number drawn by cartoonists who have graced our Graphical History Tour over the years, Benson's is a remarkable and praiseworthy contribution to the celebration of Churchill's sesquicentennial.

Now, I'm not one to tell you to run right out and buy this book. But Christmas is right around the corner and you might have someone in your life who is interested in cartooning, or history, or England; and perhaps that is something they would tell you.

Q Toon: Trump's DEI Hire

The odd couple of Liberal Leo and MAGA Max return to discuss a Trump cabinet nominee nobody else is drawing cartoons about.

Drawing for the LGBTQ+ press, I feel obliged to highlight President Re-Elect Donald Trump's naming of an out gay man to his cabinet. Scott Bessent stands out from Trump's other appointments not so much because of his sexual orientation, but more because in contrast to the rest of them, he's so normal.

Yes, he's a billionaire, not Mr. John Q. Public. But he's no worm-brain-addled RFK Jr., or Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, or pardoned blackmailer Charles Kushner, or sexual harasser Pete Hegseth, or snake oil huckster Doc Oz, or fascist weasel Steven Miller. Nor did he shoot his own dog, as Secretary-designate for Homeland Security Kristi Noem did. Or come to Trump's attention via World Wrestling Entertainment, like his choice to head the Department of Education, Linda "But We Asked Our Pederasts to Please Stop" McMahon.

As important as the post of Secretary of the Treasury is — being fifth in the line of presidential succession and all — you might not hear much about him during his time in office, unless he joy rides in an Air Force jet as Trump's last Treasury Secretary was wont to do. (Quick: without looking at the money in your wallet, who has been Treasury Secretary during the Biden years?)

Do I really think that Scott Bessent is a diversity hire? Not really. His financial support of Trump and the MAGA movement would have a lot more to do with his appointment. Trump may want to burn Justice, Defense, Interior, Education, Health and Welfare, and Veterans Affairs to the ground, but he has a vested interest in keeping his Secret Service detail paid so they can afford his hotel room rates. (Didja know that the Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department?)

To be honest, I suspect that if Bessent leaves the Even More Corrupt Trump Administration early, it will not be because he was the token gay hire. 

But when the Trump tariffs and draconian Muskaswami budget cuts push us into a new recession and eggs are still $4/dozen, somebody is going to have to be the scapegoat, and it's going to be the person who doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the Cabinet of Misfit Toys.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Our local County Executive died in office a few months ago, so we have a special election coming up on December 19. It's nominally a non-partisan post, so the election couldn't be lumped in with the November 5 national elections; why this election and its November 14 primary were scheduled on Thursdays is beyond me.

I haven't missed an election in four and a half decades, but I'm sorely tempted to skip this one.

Both candidates going into the general election are Republicans, which isn't terribly surprising. The office has been held for many years by men who have endorsed Republicans for other offices and have resisted actions of Democratic governors. There was at least one Democrat vying for the office in the primary, but local Democrats are still shellshocked by the November 5 results.

There had been at least one Democrat running in the primary: Lorenzo Santos, a Black Latino, currently an emergency manager for the county, who had declared candidacy for Congress this year only to withdraw in deference to former Congressman Peter Barca. (Barca lost the November 5 election to incumbent Republican Bryan Steil; our district hasn't elected a Democrat to Congress since unseating Barca — thirty years ago!)

The other losing County Exec candidate was Rev. Melvin Hargrove, Diversity Officer for the county and sometime school board member. He's Black, in case his job title didn't tip you off; I'm not personally aware if he has a party affiliation.

The candidates making it onto the December 19 ballot are both White. Wendy Christensen is County Clerk, in which office she declined to issue a marriage license to my husband and me. It's not as if she were as obstinate as Kim Davis of Kentucky; Christensen turned issuing our marriage license over to someone else in the office. In the years since, I have returned the favor by voting for someone else whenever she's been on the ballot — although that has meant writing in a name on the Democratic blank.

Judging from lawn signs we've seen driving across the county this weekend, I'd say the leading candidate is grocery store owner Ralph Malicki. I presume that he's a Republican, since in the areas I drive frequently, his lawn signs quickly sprouted up where Trump lawn signs used to be. 

The local newspaper and an on-line news aggregator have published, or will soon, the candidates' answers to a list of questions sent to both of them. Malicki hadn't answered RacineCountyEye.com's questionnaire before the primary; perhaps he doesn't feel he needs to let us know what he thinks about the .5% county sales tax, or incentivizing industrial development in current farmland.

What we won't see are any reports of which is the more Trumpy or Bible-Thumpy of the two candidates. (I have noticed that in yards where Trump lawn signs still stand and Trump flags fly, neither Malicki's nor Christensen's signs have joined them.) Absent that information, come December 19, I'm inclined to write in the name of the candidate I voted for in the primary.