Space. The Final Vomitorium.

When I slap together these Graphical History Tours featuring my own cartoons, I usually dredge up one cartoon from each decade marker for the month. But when I started looking through the cartoons from April of 1985, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to write about.

So here are a whole bunch of them.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Apr. 25, 1985

With the current maladministration punishing any media that don't kowtow to Trumpspeak, here's a reminder of an earlier president's efforts to get reporters to echo the Official Line.

Unlike the Gulf of Mexico, which has bore that name for centuries, the Reagan administration's space-based "Strategic Defense Initiative" was brand new. But it was popularly called "Star Wars" after the film series. Reagan and spokesflack Larry Speakes were up against late-night comedians and editorial cartoonists. "Star Wars" was shorter than "Strategic Defense Initiative" and pithier than "SDI."

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 4, 1985

This cartoon starred local Congressman Les Aspin (D-WI) in a triple role. The inset copies a cartoon I had drawn for the Ranger the previous November, after Aspin had debated Republican challenger Pete Janssen on the Parkside campus, cruising on his way to an eighth term. First elected in 1970 as a critic of the Vietnam War who had served as a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam and a Pentagon systems analyst under Robert MacNamara.

With some serious seniority under his belt in 1985, the Defense Department gadfly was named Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and his more conservative positions soon came to the fore. I drew this cartoon after he voted in favor of Reagan's Star Wars program and the controversial MX missile system.

He would also support Reagan administration aid to the Contras fighting against the socialist government of Nicaragua, and later, George H.W. Bush's build-up to the Gulf War I. It got him deposed as Armed Services Committee Chair, but only briefly; it also got him named Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense.

In the meantime, his House position in those days got us Blue Angel fly-overs on Fourths of July hereabouts.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 11, 1985

Wharton School of Business D-student Donald Trump has been wreaking havoc recklessly imposing and revoking draconian tariffs, eviscerating your 401k and college savings fund. It's all part of his cunning plan to undo decades of global free trade.

Forty years ago, the postwar American dominance of world markets was suddenly challenged by Japan. In the 1960's, Americans considered Japanese products cheap and of inferior quality; but after the energy crisis of the 1970's made gas-guzzlers unfashionable, Japanese automakers produced fuel-efficient cars while U.S. automakers were slow to retool.

The U.S. complaint was that Japan was not letting American goods into their country while underselling our domestic manufacturers. (And then buying our domestic manufacturers.) At the end of March, both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of resolutions calling for retaliation against Japan unless it reduced its trade imbalance with the U.S. Over the course of the year, 300 protectionist bills were introduced in Congress by members of both political parties. 

So the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations hammered out free trade agreements wherever they could; and thus Coke was able to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. And domestic manufacturers moved all the jobs to Mexico, China, and wherever the median wage was a bushel of beans per month.

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I drew an alternating pair of comic strips for the Ranger that year. "Reductio and Absurdam" starred a man and a woman — I never established which was Reductio and which was Absurdam — who appeared in a variety of situations. They might be a couple, or co-workers, or teller and customer, as the gag warranted.

"Reductio and Absurdam" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., April 11, 1985

The only consistent conceit was that, except for any text, I drew the cartoon in charcoal. The problem with charcoal as opposed to india ink is that I couldn't go back and erase pencil marks showing around the charcoal. 

I called the other cartoon "Post Nasal Strip." That I drew with india ink, the medium I've relied on for most of my cartoons for not quite 60 years. 

"Post Nasal Strip" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 11, 1985

"Post Nasal Strip" tended to be more topical than "Reductio and Absurdam," here highlighting a quote by Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT) upon his return from a jaunt into outer space on the space shuttle Discovery. NASA had publicly mused about sending a artist, journalist, or teacher as the first civilian into space, but gave the seat to the Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies instead.

Garn had flown as a pilot with the U.S. Navy and the Utah National Guard before winning election to Congress in 1974. Designated "payload specialist" for the Discovery flight, he was the guinea pig for experiments on Space Adaptation Syndrome. So basically, he was there to throw up.

And so he did. And the rest is History.

"Jake Garn was sick, was pretty sick. I don't know whether we should tell stories like that. But anyway, Jake Garn, he has made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain, and so the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most guys will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high. And within the Astronaut Corps, he forever will be remembered by that."

Two side notes about my cartoon: I snuck in the Ranger Features Editor, Jim Niebuhr, as the fellow delivering the punch line in the final panel. And yes, having performed on a thrust stage, I know what a vomitorium really is.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., May 2, 1985

Last week's Graphical History Tour was all about the fall of South Vietnam, so I'll close with this cartoon drawn for its tenth anniversary.

The cartoon was supposed to accompany an article about the anniversary. The article didn't run, but the Ranger ran my cartoon anyway, just below the cartoon I had drawn for the editorial page.

You'll notice that there is one president missing from my cartoon. There was a war in Vietnam (this time with China) during Jimmy Carter during his presidency, but the U.S. stayed out of if. Nor did Carter commit American troops to a shooting war anywhere else, so there was no particular reason for me to include Carter in this cartoon.

Q Toon: Healther Skelter

Faced with such a blizzard of wanton destruction from the Corrupt Trump Regime, it’s easy to miss the individual losses as they continually pile up. Today’s cartoon highlights the deep cuts in federal funding for health and safety programs under the reckless authority of one Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy came to the Cabinet of Total Incompetence by virtue of his embrace of anti-vaccine quackery (although faced with a thoroughly predictable epidemic of measles out of Texas, he has reluctantly come out in favor of letting parents who haven't succumbed to anti-vax hysteria get their children vaccinated, while leaving the anti-vaxxers free to spread the disease far and wide).

Of particular concern to the LGBTQ+ community are cuts already made to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs.

The “reductions in force” last week at the CDC gutted branches responsible for a slew of prevention services: Expert guidance on preventing infant infections, a national at-home testing program, long-running surveys to follow people living with and at risk for HIV, statistical analysis to estimate national HIV incidence, and guidelines on how to use HIV prevention drugs or PrEP, including a powerful new medicine likely to be approved this summer.

STAT has also learned that funds have been suspended for the HIV Prevention Trials Network and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the two most prominent networks for testing prevention drugs and vaccines. Funds have also been suspended for the AIDS Clinical Trial Group, a nearly 40-year-old system that has been responsible for key breakthroughs dating back to the first effective AIDS drug, AZT. All three have been waiting on money that were supposed to be sent out in February. 

Another AIDS Clinical Trial Group study testing four interventions to prevent HIV in Black men who have sex with men in the South, a particularly vulnerable group, was also slashed. The ACTG announced that for lack of funds, it has paused enrollment for all of its studies but one.

HHS cuts are negatively affecting plenty of other department responsibilities as well, from Alzheimer's, to child welfare, Meals on Wheels, mental health, lead abatement, and more. My Dad serves on the local Board of Health here, which is one of many having to deal with deep cuts to COVID response funding.

When Kennedy was interviewed by CBS News's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Jonathan LaPook, this week, the HHS Secretary pleaded ignorance of specific cuts he had theoretically overseen.

LaPook provided Kennedy with an example of a $750,000 University of Michigan grant focused on adolescent diabetes, which was eliminated.
"I didn't know that, and that's something that we'll look at," Kennedy said. He added that he could not speak to if it should be considered a DOGE cut.

It's therefore hard to put any stock in any claims that Medicaid and Medicare will be spared debilitating cuts to workforce and services. Republicans from top to bottom dislike any program that does not directly benefit people who aren't their billionaire sugar daddies.

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I'm still working on how to capture RFK Jr. in caricature. For now, I trust that the little brain worm sticking out of his ear suffices in lieu of a text label.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I had to undergo a routine colonoscopy last week. The procedure itself isn't so bad; they drug you so that you don't remember any of it.

The worst part, of course, is having to chug a gallon of this stuff called GoLytely that makes you completely clean out your bowels. By the gallon. You can flavor the jug, but I don't recommend it. I added lime flavoring to it my first time, and it put me off anything lime flavored for months afterward. Personally, I recommend taking a few drops of honey, but only when the GoLytely aftertaste is making it a challenge to keep quaffing the stuff on schedule.

The second worst part, this time, was having three nurses take turns poking holes in my hands and arms in search of a vein. My procedure was scheduled in the mid afternoon, by which time I was thoroughly dehydrated. My husband, a recently retired nurse, could only watch and offer suggestions, which can only have been frustrating for him. He's generally one to step in and take over, not sit by and advise.

The third worst part was trying not to listen to the patient in the next partition, separated only by a curtain as thin as a bedsheet. She was the patient ahead of me, and she was adamant that she not receive any transfusions of "vaccinated blood." Seriously.

Her nurse tried telling her that the hospital doesn't separate donated blood according to vaccination status, but Mrs. Virginia Pureblood insisted that she had had her GP put on her chart that she didn't want any vaccinated blood polluting her purity of essence, and she had made sure that they noted that at the intake desk, too.

I wouldn't be surprised if she had ordered a testing kit from the MyPillow guy to make sure they weren't sneaking vaccines into her GoLytely. (Trust me: nothing in that stuff is staying in your body long enough to vaccinate you against anything.)

One hopes that she hasn't convinced some Republican wingnut in the state legislature or Congress to author a bill mandating separation of vaccinated and vaccine-free blood supplies. Heck, what are the chances that it's not already the law someplace where Drawl is the Official State Language?

...It Tolls for Thieu

"American Monument in Southeast Asia" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, March 20, 1975

Two weeks ago, our Graphical History Tour visited southeast Asia for the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge. Today, we return for Part Thieu.

"We're Gettin' Out of Here" by Dave Engelhardt in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 1, 1975

North Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of the South in January, 1975, its People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (properly, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam)  racking up a string of victories. As it became crystal clear that the U.S. Calvary was not going to ride in to save the day, South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu pulled back the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) for a last-ditch, desperate bid to protect his capital, then known as Saigon.

"We Would Be Much Braver Than This" by Pat Oliphant in Washington [DC] Star, ca. Apr. 3, 1975

ARVN’s hurried retreat left  military hardware abandoned in its wake, and ran through the panicked evacuation of civilians. Anyone with any connection to civilian government or the U.S. military fled in fear for their lives, with whatever they could carry.

The Chicago Tribune reported isolated instances of Americans in the path of the retreat being robbed by ARVN soldiers. The report quoted an anonymous Westerner that, "The South Vietnamese soldier feels he has been stabbed in the back by the Americans. He feels that he has had to suffer because of the war, but Americans come and go in Vietnam, brandishing their dollars, and he feels they owe him something, anything."

by Jeff MacNelly in Richmond [VA] News-Leader, ca. Mar. 30, 1975 

That report quoted an American teacher in Saigon: "The Vietnamese people are convinced that America has betrayed them. They believe we led them into the battle, then ran away and left them to fight. They have very little respect for us as a people."

On the other hand, a Vietnamese teacher at a Catholic school told the same reporter, "Americans have a tremendous guilt complex about what they have done in our country, the mistakes they have made, and now they feel everybody here hates them for it. Actually, the Vietnamese people don't hate the Americans, they just don't understand them. But who does?"

"Selling It to Congress Won't Be Easy" by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1975

Acknowledging that the United States still had an obligation to the people who had relied on American promises, the Ford Administration opened the doors to as many Cambodian and South Vietnamese refugees as wanted to come to the U.S. 

In a joint effort, the U.S. military and Immigration and Naturalization Services (predecessor to today's ICE) scrambled to accommodate an estimated 120,000 refugees.

"Can the Congress Be So Calloused" by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, April 16, 1975

The airlift started with Cambodian and Vietnamese children — mostly given up by terrified parents — arriving a Camp Pendleton, California, to be adopted by American parents. Then came whole families, sponsored by religious congregations and civic groups until they could make a living for themselves in a country where nobody spoke their language.

Sponsoring agencies had to commit to finding housing and jobs for the refugees, most of whom arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs, whatever their circumstances might have been back home.

"There Goes the Old Neighborhood" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1975

The cost of caring for the refugees while they were in temporary camps awaiting resettlement was predicted to cost $500 million (in 1975 dollars, or nearly $3 billion today). Inevitably, Americans being Americans, resistance and resentment soon arose to the wave of  strangers who would supposedly — this may sound familiar — eat the neighborhood dogs and the cats. 

U.S. News & World Report described refugees as "a motley mixture, from professors to bar girls." Washington Post Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman accused some of being "the pimps, madams, and hijackers of American food and material" and "the torturers from Gen. Thieu's political police."

"Thank God It's All Thieu's Fault" by Tom Curtis in Milwaukee Sentinel, April 3, 1975

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu had been President of South Vietnam since 1967. What opposition there was to his rule was unable to unite around any rival leader during elections in 1971.

Refugees fleeing south as the communists advanced "are voting with their feet," wrote National Observer columnist James M. Perry. "Trouble is, there is no one for them to elect. The army is in panic, the Thieu regime is broken, and Thieu himself is finally exposed as the pusillanimous fraud he has always been."

by David E. Seavey in National Observer, Washington DC, April 12, 1975

Thiệu resigned the presidency on April 22 in a rambling speech in which he revealed that to get him to sign the 1973 Paris Peace Accord, then-President Richard Nixon had promised that the U.S. military would return if the peace failed. Tearfully blaming the U.S. for his plight, he told his nation, "I never thought that a man like Mr. Secretary of State Kissinger would deliver our people to such a disastrous fate. ... If the Americans don't want to support us any more, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!"

"King Rat" by Paul Szep in Boston Globe, April 22, 1975

Thiệu turned the government over to his ailing 72-year-old Vice President, Trần Văn Hương, who then resigned, succeeded by ARVN General Dương Văn Minh, 59. A leader of the 1963 coup that overthrew Ngô Đình Diệm, "Big Minh" had nevertheless earned a reputation for indecision.

Three days after ascending to the presidency, with PAVN advancing into Saigon and the U.S. hastily evacuating its embassy, Minh ordered ARVN to lay down its arms and surrendered to North Vietnam. Having offered no resistance to the victorious North, he was allowed to retire in peace, but eventually left for France.

"Will the Last One Out..." by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1975

Thiệu retired to the United States, living out his days here in obscurity. He died at age 78 in Boston, Massachusetts on September 29, 2001 after suffering a stroke.

Q Toon: This Boycott's for You

Two years ago this month, transphobes got their knickers in a knot over Budweiser for signing transgender internet personality Dylan Mulvaney on to advertise their light beer. Mulvaney, a stage actor and comedian, had documented her transition on TikTok during the COVID lockdown, gaining millions of followers.

She became enough of a celebrity to snag an interview with President Joe Biden, raising the dander of the likes of Senator Marcia Blackburn (R-I Want to See Your Manager). Then Budweiser's parent company, Anheuser-Busch, entered the picture.  

On April 1, Mulvaney shared a video promoting Bud Light as part of a partnership with the beer. She appears dressed as the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” character, Holly Golightly, while joking about confusing the meaning of the term “March Madness.” While some people were celebrating sports that month, Mulvaney said she was celebrating a milestone with her “365 Days of Girlhood” series, the one-year mark since her transition. Bud Light gave her a custom can of their beer with her face on it to commemorate the milestone.

And the right wingnuts went, well, nuts.

Fox Noisemakers, Republican Congresskarens, and southern Governors called for a nationwide boycott of the beer. Bubbas TikTokked themselves running over cans of Bud Light with their pick-ups, and Kid Rock famously shot up three cases of the stuff with a semiautomatic rifle.

At the time, an Anheuser-Busch spokesman defended its partnership with Mulvaney, issuing a statement that the company “works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics."

Harvard Business Review reported that sales of Bud Light fell by nearly a third over the rest of 2023. The company's President of Operations loudly quit, blaming DEI for Bud's problems and joining up with anti-diversity activist Vivek Ramaswami (remember him?) to promote Conformity, Inequity, and Exclusion.

Two years on, we have a White House mandating trans-bashing, and Budweiser has hired Shane Gillis as their advertising spokesbubba. And in March, Anheuser-Busch announced that it would no longer be a sponsor of the LGBTQ+ Pride Festival in St. Louis, or anywhere else. The announcement of the end of a partnership begun in 1995 was a front page banner headline in St. Louis Post-Dispatch and has prompted a new boycott from the other side of the sociopolitical gulf. It has also left a gaping hole in Pride St. Louis finances.

"It was just interesting that the longest partner of ours for 30 years that they've been at the table with us and a true ally just decided to walk away after basically just saying that they just don't see the value in it anymore," Pride St. Louis President Marty Zuniga said Tuesday.

Now personally, I've never been a Bud Light drinker in the first place. It's yellowish water that foams a bit if you pour it enthusiastically, and I prefer something with considerably more body and flavor. Something that will satisfy my thirst after one or two mugs, say, a porter, stout, or lager. So my contribution to any boycott will be negligible.

Unless you calculate my boycott starting from my 18th birthday.