Q Toon: Will He Be Greeted with Flowers?

Looking over my shoulder as I was sending this cartoon to my syndicate editors over the weekend, my husband asked the immortal question: "Too soon?"

If anything, my publication schedule rendered this cartoon too late. The news cycle keeps on rollin', and all the other editorial cartoonists have moved on to other topics.

Frankly, mine is perhaps the mildest cartoon about the passing of former Vice President Dick Cheney that I've seen. Quite a few of my colleagues chose to chastise him one last time for leading the country into Iraq War II under false pretenses and with unrealistic expectations. 

Those weapons of mass destruction were never found, and we were greeted not with flowers but with IEDs. Then there was the true cost of the war: not the $728 billion spent by the U.S. government on hostilities, but 4,492 U.S. soldiers killed and 32,292 wounded, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 Iraqis killed.

Looking back from an LGBTQ+ perspective (as your humble scribbler did this past Saturday), one can muster up a demimodicum of sympathy for a man who has been rated the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history who had to hold his tongue is deference to the homophobic policies of his President that worked to the detriment of his own daughter. George W. Bush campaigned for reelection pushing a constitutional amendment denigrating people like Mary Cheney, in a committed but legally unrecognized relationship with a woman with whom she would raise a family.

Democrats exploited that conflict in 2004, earning the Cheneys' everlasting resentment; but he was after all the loyal Republican from his days as Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff onward. But then, Republicans turned on Dick and Lynne's other daughter after Donald Trump's thwarted coup attempt in January, 2021. Liz Cheney joined Adam Kinzlinger on the House impeachment panel, the only two House Republicans brave enough to stand up for country over party.

Even the Wyoming Republican Party turned against the Cheneys; Liz was trounced in her 2022 reelection bid for not pledging allegiance to Trump, who has complained ever since that she ought to be prosecuted for treason. 

For the first time in his long life, Dick Cheney endorsed a Democrat for President in 2024. Publicly and strongly.

Not that it helped Kamala Harris a whole hell of a lot. But it's the thought that counts.

Is Cheney's unjust war outweighed by turning away from the Dark Side in his twilight years? You, dear reader, get to decide which direction the celestial elevator in today's cartoon is headed.

Heavy responsibility, ain't it?