By the way, it's amazing to me that in grayscale, every scanner that I've ever worked with thinks that white bristol board is this dark. Had I scanned this sketch in color, I'm sure that the paper would have read as cyan to blue.
The star of this week's Graphical History Tour is Robert Jr., the son and namesake of a famous father, following in Daddy's footsteps all the way to Washington, D.C.
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| Detail from "Politics Again Attracts Attention" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 15, 1925 |
Not a Kennedy.
Robert M. La Follette Jr. was 30 years old when he declared candidacy for the Senate seat of his late father, "Fighting Bob" La Follette. Called "Young Bob" to distinguish him from his namesake, he was just old enough to qualify for the Senate under the U.S. Constitution.
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| "Practicing Those 'Thunderous Footfalls'" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Sept. 20, 1925 |
Skeptical political cartoonists naturally questioned the young man's qualifications to fill his father's shoes, even if they weren't fans of the elder La Follette when he was alive. I will give J.P. Alley (whose editorial cartooning shoes at the Commercial Appeal would later be filled by his son, Cal Alley) credit for the unique and unorthodox observation that "Radicals" had cause for concern.
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| "On to Washington" by Jesse Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. Oct. 3, 1925 |
Outlook magazine expressed the more conventional view that
"During [Robert La Follette Sr.']s lifetime, he found an able lieutenant in his son, Robert M. La Follette, Jr.; and now that La Follette is regarded as his successor. This is partly because the younger La Follette has explicitly subscribed to the political beliefs of his father, but in no small measure because he has an engaging personality of his own."
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| "Young Independence Is On His Way" by (Louis T.?) Merrill in Beloit Daily News, Sept. 8, 1925 |
It wasn't just the senior La Follette's shoes that were too big for his son, according to this Wisconsin cartoonist; so were his reputation and his hat. Blaine, whose collar Merrill drew chained around Young Bob's neck, was Governor John J. Blaine, a Progressive Republican.
I haven't come across any other cartoons by Merrill; this cartoon originally appeared in the Beloit Daily News and was reprinted in a few other newspapers around the state. Louis Taylor Merrill was on the Daily News masthead as the newspaper's Editorial Writer, so my guess is that this cartoon was drawn by him or someone in his household.
Maybe his son.
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| "It's The Old Familiar Touch" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha World Herald, Sept. 17, 1925 |
Footwear notwithstanding, La Follette decisively won the September 15 primary over Roy P. Wilcox of Eau Claire, the Coolidge Republican candidate, and half a dozen other candidates.
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| "Where It Fades Out" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 19, 1925 |
The general election two weeks later was universally expected to merely ratify the primary election results. La Follette received more votes in the open primary than all the other candidates put together. The Democratic candidate, William George Bruce, ran so poorly in the primary that under state election rules, he didn’t even qualify to appear on the September 29 ballot.
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| "La Follettes All Look Alike to Him" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, Sept. 18, 1925 |
Head of the Republican National Committee Senator William Butler (R-MA) called upon Wisconsin Republicans not to back Young Bob.
"Regardless of the fact that Mr. La Follette is running under the Republican machinery, he supported a candidate and platform in the last national election opposed to the candidate and platform of the Cleveland convention, [Calvin Coolidge,] and the Republican committee will not support him in any event. I cannot look upon a man who opposes the candidate of a party and the principles of a convention as a Republican, whether he runs under the Republican machinery or not."
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| "Sort of a Beauty Spot to Her" by Chas Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Sept. 18, 1925 |
Following Senator Butler's lead, the Wisconsin Republican Party met to endorse an alternative to La Follette. Wilcox yielded to pressure from party leaders to withdraw in favor of former Lt. Governor Edward Dithmar of Baraboo. A telegram from Sen. Irvine Lenroot (R-WA) urged "Wilcox should let Dithmar try in view of his poor showing in the primary" — in which Dithmar had not been a candidate.
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| "Weather Report" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, Sept. 29, 1925 |
The general election results were so pre-ordained that over the state line in Minneapolis, Tom Foley could confidently draw the above cartoon for the day of the vote. Young Bob La Follette carried every county in the state except for Rock County (which happens to include Beloit).
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| "The La Follette Estate" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, Oct. 1, 1925 |
Running nominally as an Independent, Dithmar finished a distant second to La Follette. Socialist John M. Work came in third, largely due to votes from Milwaukee (yet underperforming previous Socialist candidates there); Democrat Bruce, waging a write-in campaign, placed fourth.
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| Unsigned cartoon in Capital Times, Madison, Sept. 30, 1925 |
If there was a signature on this cartoon, the Cap Times cropped it out. Whoever drew it included Senators Butler and Lenroot among the "old guard" bowled over backward by "Young Fighting Bob" striding toward Progress — in reasonably sized shoes.
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| "Seeing Things in Wisconsin" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, ca. Oct. 7, 1925 |
Editorial cartoonists never quite agreed on what animal should represent the Progressive Party. Some drew it as a goat, while others, seizing on the La Follettes' first name, drew it as a bobcat. Use of the Bull Moose to represent the Progressive Party had ended with the death of Theodore Roosevelt.
Robert M. La Follette Jr. may have run as a Republican, but Ted Brown agreed with the Stand Pat Republicans that La Follette was not purebred GOP.
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| "Don't I Look Like Dad" by Edward G. McCandlish in Washington Post, Oct. 5, 1925 |
Actually, doesn't he kind of look like a young Marlon Brando?
Cartoonist Edward McCandlish (1887-1946) had a varied career, authoring 21 children's books and designing toys; during World War I, he painted camouflage markings on military uniforms, that being how it was done back then. He was perhaps best known for his "Bootlegger's Map of the United States," which first appeared as a two-page spread in Washington Post on March 14, 1926. (News reports at his death state that the map first appeared in the Detroit Free Press, but I don't find it printed there until 1930, and then much smaller.)
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| "It's Sink or Swim for Young Bob Now" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 5, 1925 |
Young Bob would win reelection to the Senate as a Republican in 1928, and as a Progressive in 1934 and 1940, championing organized labor and supporting much of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but also advocating isolationist foreign policies. He was defeated for reelection to a fourth full term in 1946 by a Wisconsin Republican you might have heard of.
Joseph R. McCarthy.
I could get into the debate over whether the Wicked Witch of the West was calling for Dorothy to surrender, or demanding that her friends surrender her, but here's the thing: Elphaba forgot the comma. Case closed.
Anyway, today's cartoon is about Attorney General Pam Bondi subpoenaing detailed information on minors who receive transgender therapy, including names and Social Security numbers of patients.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a statement July 9 that the department had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide [gender-affirming] care. The request represented an elevation in President Donald Trump’s administration’s effort to halt the medical treatment for transgender youth, even in states where it’s legal.
Bondi said the requests were part of investigations into “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.” No charges have been announced so far, but the probes have had a chilling impact on the availability of care.
Specifics of the requests were not made public until a court filing in a separate lawsuit this week.
Court filings last month revealed that at least one of the subpoenas, sent to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, ran 18 pages long listing detailed patient documentation demanded by the Absolutely Corrupt Trump regime, HIPAA be damned. “It turns doctor-patient confidentiality into government surveillance,” said Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law’s senior director of Transgender and Queer Rights.
Republican state Attorneys General are sticking their noses into the confidential patient data of transgender minors, too. An appeals court this week overturned a lower court ruling and allowed Missouri's Attorney General to subpoena records of 1,165 patients of the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis.
On the other side of the political divide, Democratic Attorneys General from fourteen states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime to block Attorney General Bondi from seizing transgender youths' confidential patient records, charging, "The administration has explicitly threatened civil and criminal prosecution of providers of this care and launched criminal investigations into children’s hospitals."
“These threats have no basis in law. No federal law prohibits, much less criminalizes, the provision or receipt of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents,” the attorneys general argued.
Will Democrats shut down the government if Republicans slip a provision changing that into the must-pass budget bill on Tuesday? Stay tuned.
Absolutely Corrupt President Donald Joffrey Trump went before the United Nations General Assembly yesterday and delivered an unhinged, hour-long rant; and somehow, Americans from Alabama to Wyoming can still wake up to this anodyne headline in their morning paper.
A kudos or two goes to the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel for hitting closer to the mark, but my collage above doesn't quite include all the cookie cutter front pages of whatever vulture capitalist corporation owns these ten newspapers.
But I thought I'd help out any of them planning to put out a second edition today.
The more I think about it, I wish I had used "You're fired" as the punch line for last week's cartoon.
The "indefinite suspension" of Jimmy Kimmel after direct and explicit demands from Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr that ABC cancel Kimmel's late night television show – and after Reichsfuhrer Donald Berzelius Trump promised after Colbert's cancelation that Kimmel would be next – was the real story of the week, not social media's wild speculation as to the motives of Charlie Kirk's assassin.
Somebody must get Carr to answer what exactly, was Kimmel's offense. Did he quote the nasty things Kirk has said over the years after George Floyd was killed, or Paul Pelosi was attacked? Did he mock him for saying that school shootings and the other thousands of gun deaths every year were worth it to keep Second Amendment rights? Did he say that Kirk deserved what he got?
No, no, and no.
You don't have to judge Kimmel by the no-context chyrons on the evening news, or the ten-second clip shared by Colbert, Fallon, Meyers, Oliver, et al. Here is how Kimmel's final monologue actually went:
"We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
"In between the finger pointing there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level you can see how hard the President is taking this."
The late-night host then played a clip of President Trump being asked how he has been holding up since the killing, to which Trump responds: "I think very good" and begins to talk about plans for the new White House ballroom.
The show then cuts back to Kimmel, who continues: "Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief; construction.
"Demolition..construction...
"This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend, this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, ok. And it didn't just happen once".
The host then played another clip of the President on Fox News revealing the moment he was told Kirk had been shot while he was with the architects for the new White House ballroom.
The show cuts back to Kimmel, who says: "And then we installed the most beautiful chandelier...[inaudible] you wouldn't believe.
"There's something wrong with him — there really is. I mean, who thinks like that and why are we building a $200million ballroom in the White..., Is it possible that he is doing it intentionally, so we can be mad about that instead of the Epstein list?
"By the time he's out of office, the White House will have slot machines and a water slide.
"Trump is in major change the subject mode, on Friday he stopped by the always friendly morning crew at Fox. Whenever Trump goes on Fox & Friends it's funny because the hosts are so eager for him to be reasonable, they spell it all out for him. They desperately want to avoid having to nod along with anything crazy or contradict him so they give him the question, and their preferred answer too.
Kimmel then plays a clip from the Fox & Friends interview where the hosts asked the President: "Is the message too, to the right, the people who are going to go 'I want revenge', not to have revenge, Charlie Kirk would not want revenge?" To which the President responds "he would want revenge at the voter [ballot] box"
The show cuts back to Kimmel, who says: "Good answer right, take it to the ballot box. That's reasonable, that's almost presidential but that's the thing, he can never just stop right there."
The late-night host then plays another clip from the Fox & Friends interview where the President remarks that California "doesn't have ballot boxes."
The show cuts back to Kimmel, who says: "Oh well, in that case begin the purge."
"For the record, we live in California we do have ballot boxes, we've got mail boxes, we have lunch boxes, we have all kinds of boxes, you should come see them sometime, we'll give you a toolbox, you can live in it.
"And then we have this head of the FBI, this character Kash Patel who so far has handled this investigation into the murder of Charlie Kirk like a kid who didn't read the book BS-ing his way through an oral report."
The show cuts to the FBI director on Fox, defending a social media post he made about the arrest of a "subject" in the hours after Kirk was shot, who was later released, telling the show: "I was telling the world what the FBI was doing as we were doing."
The show cut backs to Kimmel, who says: "...which was claiming we caught the killer when we had not.
"Kash Patel always looks like he just got hit by a Volkswagen."
He continues: "The Governor of Utah, Governor Spencer Cox, has been a rare voice of sanity after what happened in his state, he urged Americans to choose humanity, connection and love and even encouraged us to listen to people we disagree with, which is not the plan according to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
"Klan Mom wrote today, 'There's nothing left to talk about with the left, they hate us. They assassinated our nice guy who actually talked to them, peacefully debating ideas. Then millions on the left celebrated and made clear they want all of us dead. To be honest I want a peaceful, national divorce,' the same thing her husband said about two and half years ago.
"But a peaceful national divorce, how would that work? You get Florida, we get Vermont? We share custody of Disney World every other weekend? She's right. The right it feels like we are all stuck in a marriage to Marjorie Taylor Greene right now."
The spineless cancelation of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC has gotten a lot of attention this week. Almost lost in the hubbub has been this dark warning from Premier Donald Berzelius Trump on Air Force One on Wednesday:
"They give me only bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away, ... That’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said. But when you go back, take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They're giving me all this bad press, and they're getting a license. When you have a network and they have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that's all they do — that license, they're not allowed to do that!"
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| "We Hear That You Have the Ridiculous Idea That Freedom of the Press Includes the Right to Criticize Our Administration" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 18, 1969 |
This week's Graphical History Tour makes an emergency landing at a presidency not so long ago to some of us.
President Richard M. Nixon had a notoriously testy relationship with news media, dating back to his running for Vice President with Dwight Eisenhower. Upon losing the race for Governor of California in 1962, he blamed the press, growling "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more!"
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| "You Have Just Heard a Speech by the President of the United States" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, Nov. 16, 1969 |
But of course, he was elected President in 1968, and very quickly determined to bringing news media to heel.
In November of 1969, Nixon gave a televised speech about the Vietnam War. His Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Dean Burch demanded transcripts from the three television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) of all their commentaries on the address. Days later, Vice President Spiro Agnew set out on a speaking tour to criticize the media.
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| "Anybody Else, Boss?" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, Nov. 18, 1969 |
"One Federal Communications Commissioner considers the power of the networks to equal that of local, state and federal governments combined. Certainly, it represents a concentration of power over American public opinion unknown in history.
"What do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the commentators, most Americans know little, other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence, seemingly well-informed on every important matter.
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| "Well, We Don't Have Nixon to Kick Around Any More" by Don Wright in Miami News, Nov. 21, 1969 |
"We do know that, to a man, these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City."
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| "We Feel the Public Is Getting All the Views It Needs" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, Sept. 25, 1970 |
Agnew protested that "I am not calling for government censorship," but his speeches raised the prospect of denying broadcasting licenses to broadcast outlets that leaned left, or were, in the words written for him by Patrick Buchanan, "the nattering nabobs of negativism."
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| "It's Nothing Important" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, Dec. 20, 1972 |
White House Director of Communications Herbert Klein was explicit: “You in TV should examine yourself or the government will come in.”
Lest you think, however, that President Nixon was just like Dear Leader For Life Trump, please note that there were important differences between then and now.
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| Uncaptioned by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun Times, 1972 |
We have not gotten to the point where journalists are getting thrown in jail for not revealing their sources. Largely because newspapers and TV are pulling their punches when it comes to investigative journalism.
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| "Ask Me Anything" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, December 15, 1973 |
And asking embarrassing questions doesn't get you put on the president's Enemies List. Instead, you show up at the press room to find that your seat has been taken by the dude from the White Guys Grievance Podcast Dot Com.
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| "We're Considering Him for a High Position" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, Nov. 12, 1971 |
Herblock made a clever little play on words here, but when it comes to high positions nowadays, being a right-wing spokesflack on Fox Noise is plenty qualification enough to head a cabinet department in the line of succession to the presidency itself.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, media from his side of the aisle leapt to the conclusion that his killer must be some leftist transgender anti-gun immigrant tree hugger from Berkeley. And, fess up, you thought so, too.
He turned out to be an ammosexual son of a local sheriff, raised Mormon, who etched right-wing mottos on the bullets he shot.
Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he's got a transgender roommate and got converted to socialism during his one semester at college before dropping out to attend trade school instead. But the transgender roommate has been helpful to police — although I wouldn't be surprised these days if the transgender roommate turns out to be as real as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
The way the media bubbles of the left and the right have become so self-contained, Schrödinger's Assassin can be whoever you preconceive him to be. He's a disciple of Nick Fuentes. He's a card-carrying liberal thanks to a single semester at Utah State. He's Death Wish and Robocop. He's Crying Game and Brokeback Mountain.
He's a floor wax and a dessert topping!
What he has become, without a doubt, is a convenient excuse for the present authoritarian regime to crack down on and criminalize free speech that does not conform to officially permissible thought.
From Absolutely Corrupt Premier Donald Berzelius Trump on down, this gilded White House and its congressional majority lackeys are now demanding the firing of anyone who dares question Charlie Kirk's sainthood, fails to demonstrate adequate grief, or appears in public without sackcloth and ashes. "They're already under major investigation," Trump told reporters, adding that he means "A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left."
Vice President Shady Vance took time off from his vice presidential duties to guest host Kirk's podcast, telling his audience, "When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer."
Reichkulturkammer Stephen Miller threatened disloyal subjects, "The power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended an Army colonel for a social media post critical of Kirk. Attorney General Pam Bondi went on Fox Noise to admonish private business, "And employers, you have to have an obligation to get rid of people... They shouldn't be working with you."
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is running for governor, called on social media for the firings of an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University. All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said Kirk “spoke his fate into existence.” (PBS News)
MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd — a George W. Bush administration strategist — for opining that "Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions." Washington Post global opinions editor Karen Attiah got fired for quoting on her own social media account Kirk's statements demeaning Black women's "brain processing power." Not for celebrating Kirk's death, but for quoting him. Accurately.
PHNX Sports, an online sports news site focused on Arizona, announced the firing of reporter Gerald Bourguet after he said on social media on Wednesday, in a since-deleted post, that "Refusing to mourn a life devoted to that cause is not the same thing as celebrating gun violence." (CBS News)
And just yesterday, ABC pulled the plug on Jimmy Kimmel over Monday night's monologue.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said. He also poked fun at President Trump’s response to a question from the press about how he was mourning Kirk’s death after Trump pivoted to a discussion of the construction of a new White House ballroom.
First Colbert and now Kimmel? Oh, well. I've been staying up too late at night, anyway.
Outside of government, the press, jocks, educators, and comedians, the people fired for reacting to Kirk's death the way the Fornicate Your Feelings mob has responded to the deaths of George Floyd and the assault on Nancy Pelosi's husband have included fire fighters, restaurant managers, airline pilots, Nasdaq employees, and who knows how many more by the time the Ministry of Truth Social declares another thoughtcrime wave?
I intentionally did not add any commentary below the cartoon I posted on Friday evening. I wanted the cartoon to stand alone, and not have its impact diluted by my fretting that I had drawn the hand too large, or discussing how my first thought had been to put Charlie Kirk's own statement that "I think it's worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment" (April 5, 2023 at Talking Points USA Faith event, Awaken Church, Salt Lake City UT).
Having thought better of making the cartoon about that quotation, rather than join the crowd posting it all over the internets, I decided to address the cliché that follows so many major gun incidents (right after "thoughts and prayers") that "This Is Not Who We Are."
Clearly, it is who we have become.
Just the same, out of respect to Mr. Kirk, I am refraining from empathy for him, for his family, for his fans, and for his admirers.
The Graphical History Tour is waiting to take you away to September of 1925, where we find France and Spain launching a new offensive against the Rif rebels in Spain's Moroccan territories.
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| "Madame Fiasko" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Sept. 6, 1925 |
Johnson's cartoon hinges on wordplay in German, blending "Geh' ab" (go away) with the name of Rif leader Abd-el-Krim.
In 1925, Abd El-Krim's Riffian guerillas controlled roughly three quarters of Spanish Morocco. Styling himself to the outside world as President of the Republic of Rif (Al-Jumhūriyyah al-Rif), el-Krim, he was popularly known as mujāhid (war leader). He had set up a functioning government and a cabinet which employed no small number of his relatives.
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| "Bei Abd El Krim" by Friedrich Heubner in Simplicissimus, Munich/Stuttgart, Sept. 21, 1925 |
I'm rather confused by this German cartoon, which appears to me to depict German tourists asking Abd el-Krim, a Moroccan Berber, where to find Turkish concubines.
The cartoons in the satirical Munich weekly Simplicissimus in the middle of the 1920's seem to have steered away from explicitly political commentary in favor of light jokes about societal stereotypes (the lovable drunk, the lothario, the hausfrau, the ingenue, etc.). Although Abd El-Krim spent some time during World War I in prison for expressing German sympathies contrary to Spain's official neutrality, that doesn't appear to be relevant to Heubner's cartoon in any way.
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| "The Jolly little Game of Tossing the Pancake" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 19, 1925 |
I'm also not familiar with this game of tossing the pancake of which Dorman Smith speaks. Yeah, you bake pancakes by flipping them, but what's the game? Seeing which one of you can catch it?
I guess the game is to see how high you can toss the pancake without it landing on the floor. There must be some military equivalence there that explains why Spain and France were having so much fun with it.
In any event, France and Spain launched a new offensive in September of 1925. Spain landed 18,000 troops at Alhucemas Bay, while 20,000 French soldiers marched into the Spanish protectorate from the French-controlled south.
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| "Another 'Contemptible Little Army'" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, Sept. 29, 1925 |
According to modern estimates, Edmund Duffy overestimates Riffian manpower; Encyclopedia Britannica puts the Moroccans' forces around 13,000 men. Just the same, the Riffians overran the French front line positions in the initial stages of the offensive.
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| "Abd-el-Krim" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, Sept. 26, 1925 |
El-Krim's forces won several initial battles, justifying Gale's depiction of the armored hands of France and Spain having so much trouble catching a tiny fly.
Those hands could still swat, however, and that is how the game would end.
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| "Can't Pay for the Old War" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 21, 1925 |
At the same time as the Franco-Spanish offensive, French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux was in Washington to present the French counterproposal for repaying its World War I debts to the U.S., a debt American cartoonists were impatient to collect.
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| "One Can Carry this Business of Bluffing Too Far" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 25, 1925 |
Elsewhere in the Islamic world, Turkey sought to reclaim Mosul, in the north of present-day Iraq, from Great Britain.
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| "Another Explosive Situation" by Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Sept. 30, 1925 |
There is very little mystery as to Mosul's importance to the British Empire and the Turkish republic. Until the opening of the Suez Canal, Mosul was once a vital trade post between Europe and the Middle East on one side and India and China on the other. Since then, the major powers have had a keen interest in the region's oil.
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| "The Old, Old Story" by Orville Williams in New York American, Sept. 26, 1925 |
The British assumed control of Iraq at the end of World War I, up to then a distinct region of the Ottoman Empire since the 16th Century, consisting of the three districts of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Turkey claimed that Mosul was still under Ottoman control when the armistice ending the war was signed.
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| "They Tear Up Tickets in Europe, Too" by Cecil Jensen in Los Angeles Post, Sept. 30, 1925 |
Under the Treaty of Lausanne, the status of Mosul was left for the League of Nations to decide. In the meantime, the British had set up Faisal ibn Husayn as King of the three districts of Iraq, ruling under British mandate.
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| "Fact Versus Fiction" by Orville Williams in New York American, Sept. 30, 1925 |
Although Turkish-British disagreements did not erupt into armed conflict, the disputes over Mosul and Morocco offered plenty of ammunition to politicians, publishers, and editorial cartoonists who opposed U.S. participation in the League and any other international institutions.
So naturally, when Tucker Carlson fantasized about getting Pete Buttigieg on his podcast so that he could grill him on whether he's really gay, my mind immediately leapt to the "Nudge, Nudge" sketch of Eric Idle and the late Terry Jones.
In a recent interview on his namesake podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, the former Fox News prime-time host raised some concerns about former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Carlson was speaking with Michael Knowles, another conservative political commentator, about a litany of issues including Trump's dustup with Harvard.
“The fake gay guy?” Carlson asks when Buttigieg’s name is mentioned. “My gay producer is always like, ‘He’s not gay.’ He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago and like he wants to be the Democratic nominee. It’s like: ‘Time for a gay guy!’” ...
“I’ve always wanted to interview him,” Carlson continued, later. “He’s never agreed to an interview but I’m going to ask him like some very specific questions about gay sex and see if he can even answer. I doubt he even knows. You’re not gay, dude, stop.”
In the interest of space, I had to condense the dialogue considerably for this cartoon, especially the part of Jones/Buttigieg. Regrettable, but necessary. I also wish that I didn't have to include the ultimate punch line; but I recognize that some readers out there might not have the exhaustive knowledge of 55-year-old British television comedy sketches that I do.
I suspect that Secretary Buttigieg doesn't need me to tell him that he should not take Carlson's bait. Buttigieg has demonstrated a talent for going on Fox Noise, MAGA podcasts, etc., and holding his own against their right-wing point talkers. He was arguably the Biden administration's best spokesperson: cogent, logical, and unrattled by their hyperbole, whataboutism, and mischaracterization.
Carlson's aim, therefore, is to destroy whatever gravitas Buttigieg has accrued through his service in the military and elected office by getting him to talk about who does what in his bedroom, how often, and what is his favorite lube, so that the right-wing echo chamber can repeat it ad infinitum any time he tries to talk about urban renewal, international alliances, tax policy, or airplane safety.
Which could come in handy when ReTrumplicans need to distract the rest of us from the moral and sexual depravity of the thrice-married, 34-times-convicted, pussy-grabbing Epstein pal currently making the White House over into a gilded bordello fit for Louis XIV's favorite concubines.
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The uptick in visits to your humble scribbler's blog keep coming, and now I'm worried that someone in the White House has stumbled upon my page.
In last week's cartoon, an unspecified Republican member of Congress floated the idea of banning gun ownership by transgender persons. I didn't want to attribute the idea to any particular congresscritter, because depriving any man, woman, child, or fetus of the right to bear arms is utter anathema to the party that believes that the Constitution begins and ends with the second half of the Second Amendment.
But lo and behold, some anonymous transphobe in Trump's White House has floated the very same idea in apparent seriousness.
In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.
The talks, described as preliminary in nature, appear to build on an idea that has gained some currency in conservative media...
Will the ammosexual community sit quietly for this blatant disregard of the Guns For All Amendment? Will the NRA sleep through a tyrannical government that they've warned everyone about for half a century finally showing up?
Yeah, probably.
By the way, according to Blogger, second place in the list of websites visited on viewers' way to my blog is no longer that of the burger chain. Now second place apparently is a website where Lwaxana Troi's manservant gets all his hardware, white goods, and garden supplies.
Almost ten years ago, I posted a collection of my cartoons I drew in response to mass shootings in the U.S. Even though my bailiwick is the LGBTQ+ press, I'm still drawing cartoons on that same tragic topic, because the carnage hasn't stopped, and the LGBTQ+ community has by no means been spared.
Today's Graphical History Tour highlights one cartoon I've drawn about mass shootings in America per year since my last round-up of the damn things.
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After the Pulse nightclub massacre nine years ago, when a gunman killed 49 patrons of an Orlando nightclub with a predominantly Latino clientele, I submitted two cartoons to Q Syndicate. One, featuring an American flag at half staff, a rainbow rising out of black clouds, and a quotation attributed to one of the victims, was the one run by most (if not all) publications that printed my cartoons.
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| June, 2016 |
Because I thought that the cartoon did not work in grayscale, I also submitted this alternative cartoon, highlighting the callous reaction of the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, and his non-apology apology for it. But even the Philadelphia Gay News, which prints my cartoon in grayscale, went with the flag and rainbow cartoon.
The next year, a heavily armed gunman holed up in an upper floor room of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas and opened fire on an outdoor country music festival across the strip. Armed with enough high-powered rifles and bump stocks to equip a battalion, the gunman fired 1,000 rounds into the crowd over the space of ten minutes. 58 concert goers were killed and hundreds injured before the gunman turned a gun on himself.
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| October, 2017 |
The list in this cartoon is tragically incomplete. I could have added Catholics at mass, Jews at synagogue, newspaper staffers, Veterans Home workers, Waffle House patrons, and on and on.
Some forty years ago, we used to call mass shootings "going postal," on account of cases of disgruntled postal workers shooting up their place of employment. Nowadays, we can just call it "going American."
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| February, 2018 |
In February of 2018, the scene of mass shooting was Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Death toll: 17 students and staff. Injured: 18. Response by the Florida legislature: legislation to protect students from the evils of pornography and requiring the posting of "In God We Trust" in every classroom in the state.
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| August, 2019 |
In one week in July and August, 2019, a mass shooting at a Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California left three dead; 23 were killed at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and two at a Walmart in Southaven, Mississippi; yet another outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio killed nine; and one was killed and fourteen injured in a pair of mass shootings in Chicago.
Those were only five mass shootings out of 417 that year as defined by the Gun Violence Archive — more than one per day on average — with a total death toll of 15,381.
Such incidents dipped in the COVID year 2020. There were no mass shootings recorded between March 20 (Springfield, Missouri) and September 19 (Rochester, New York), the longest such gap since 2003.
And all it took was a mysterious, incurable disease taking hundreds of thousands of lives the old-fashioned way.
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| December, 2021 |
Congressional Gun Nuts Thomas Massie (R-KY, and yes, he's the Republican co-sponsoring a bill demanding release of the Epstein files) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) responded to a late 2021 school shooting by posting photos of themselves and their families posing in front of their Christmas trees, everyone brandishing a high-powered rifle.
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| November, 2022 |
Five patrons of Club Q, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, were killed and 25 injured when a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle, a Glock 17 style polymer handgun, and wearing protective body armor, shot his way into the LGBTQ+ nightclub. The attack took place the night of November 19, 2022, the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance. (Facing hate crime charges, the killer claimed after their arrest to identify as non-binary, but no acquaintances or family remember them so identifying before that.)
Colorado Springs is in Congressbanshee Boebert's district, so she dutifully issued the tweet I summarized within her Christmas card of the previous year.
You may have noticed that I didn't have a mass shooting cartoon for 2020; so here's an extra one from 2022 — because I've drawn more than one cartoon about mass shootings almost every year:
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| May, 2022 |
Americans were shocked by the mass shooting of schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, in the spring of 2022, despite mass shootings having become commonplace in this country. While Uvalde police dithered around Robb Elementary School for over an hour, an 18-year-old with an assault rifle and black body armor went from room to room, methodically shooting children and staff. Children had to pretend they were dead as he returned to rooms he had left, shooting the wounded and anyone who called for help. 19 children and two teachers died before Border Control agents stormed the school and shot their murderer.
As in the aftermath of other school shootings, there was much talk by opponents of gun control of "hardening" our schools — making them impenetrable to mass murderers and just about everybody else. The nitwit Senator from my home state, on the other hand, went on TV to prescribe getting rid of "wokeness" and Critical Race Theory.
For the record: the Uvalde killer entered Robb Elementary through a locked door that failed to latch; and Critical Race Theory has never been part of the curriculum for schoolchildren in Uvalde or anywhere else.
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| April, 2023 |
Congresscretin Tim Burchett (R-TN) responded to the April, 2023 massacre of six schoolchildren and staff in Nashville, saying, "It’s a horrible, horrible situation, and we’re not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, ‘Buddy,’ he said, ‘if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’"
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| September, 2024 |
There were some 50 or so school shootings in 2024, but what most concerned presidential candidate Donald The Terrible Trump was his bonkers delusion that kids were going to school and undergoing gender reassignment surgery in the nurse's office. (JD Vance's presence in my cartoon references an awkward campaign photo op in a doughnut shop.)
But yes, Trump literally did respond to a mass shooting in Iowa, in which a sixth grader was killed, with "It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it."
I nearly pulled this cartoon, drawn the same weekend that a bullet supposedly grazed Trump's ear at a Pennsylvania campaign rally. He got over it — you and I have had worse paper cuts — but his loyal minions spent the next week wearing gauze over the sympathetic injuries to their own right ears.
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I'm afraid I don't have any witty remarks to wrap up this week's Graphical History Tour. No words of encouragement. No easy answers.
Just the Gun Violence Archive map of mass shootings so far this year.
