Must've Been the Last Straw

Oh, well. I'm sure DJ Trump's Freedom 250 party mix will have the national mall groovin' and swayin'.

Anyway, here's this week's sneak peek:

✍

Our Foreign Desk

"The World 'Do' Move" by Dean O'Dell in Dayton Daily News, May 18, 1926

This week's Graphical History Tour takes a quick look overseas to catch up with events in the rest of the world in May of 1926.

Well, Europe and North Africa, at least.

"Rolling Up His Sleeves" by Fred Ellis in Daily Worker, Chicago, May 5, 1926

That May started off with a general strike in Great Britain, to the alarm of commie-fearing cartoonists, but to the delight of their cohorts at the Daily Worker. 

An editorial in London Daily Mail called the general strike revolutionary and subversive, sparking a walk-out by its pressmen.

"A May Day Moving That Will Move" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, May 1, 1926

The U.S. had a hand in exacerbating issues for British miners. It its effort to stabilize the German economy, the Dawes Plan for Europe subsidized Germany's coal industry; that in turn enabled Germany to provide free coal to France and Italy under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. As a result of this and overvaluation of the Pound Sterling, British coal exports plummeted and miners' pay was slashed by 35%.

"I Always Bring Trouble" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 1926

Meanwhile, working conditions in British coal mines were still basically pre-industrial. Whereas German and Polish mining firms had invested in mechanization, the British companies relied exclusively on manual labor.

"Why the Strikes" by T.E. Powers in New York Evening Journal, ca. May 8, 1926

Miners laid down their tools on May 1; the Trade Union Congress (TUC) called on all other workers to join them beginning at midnight May 3. 1.5 million workers from all over Great Britain joined the strike on the first day.

"Streik in England" by Wilhelm Schulz in Simplicissimus, Munich/Stuttgart, May 24, 1926

In response, the government sent police to escort busloads of strikebreakers to the mines and other affected industries, and posted troops at bus stations to ward off violent resistance. London's bus system was immediately overwhelmed. After a week or so, some striking workers began breaking the picket lines. Historian Jessica Brain takes it from there:

"The turning point came when the general strike was identified as not being protected by the Trade Dispute Act of 1906, except for the coal industry, meaning that the unions became liable for the intention to breach contracts. By 12th May, the TUC General Council met at Downing Street, to announce that the strike was being called off with the agreement that no striker would be victimised for their decision, despite the government stating it had no control over employers’ decisions.

"The momentum had been lost, unions faced potential legal action and workers were returning to their place of employment. Some miners continued to resist for as long as November, but to no avail.

"Many miners faced unemployment for years whilst others had to accept the bad conditions of lower wages and longer working hours. Despite incredible levels of support, the strike had amounted to nothing.

"The Sincerest of Flattery" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. May 22, 1926

"In 1927 the Trade Disputes Act was introduced by [Prime Minister] Stanley Baldwin, an act which banned any sympathy strikes as well as mass picketing; this act is still in force today. This was the final nail in the coffin for those workers who had taken part in one of the biggest events in industrial history in Britain."

"Gehnsucht" by Arthur Krüger in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, June 6, 1926

On May 11, Poland's former Chief of State, First Marshal Józef Klemens Piłsudski, launched a successful coup d'état against the newly elected Polish government of President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Prime Minister Wincenty Witos, the third administration in the previous six months.

"Polen" by Ernst Thöny in Simplicissimus, Munich/Stuttgart, May 31, 1926

Units of the Army loyal to Piłsudski quickly seized control of the major bridges in Warsaw. The Polish Socialist Party called for a general strike in support of the coup. The Railwaymen's Union brought transportation and communications to a standstill, and the government surrendered on May 14 to prevent further bloodshed.

"Clean-up Week Idea Reaches Poland" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer,May 27, 1926

At first blush, Hanny's cartoon appears to side with the coup, but he was actually referring to the name given to the new government by its principal leader. Piłsudski announced the creation of what he called a moral "Sanation" (Sanacja) dictatorship. In English newspaper reports:

"Marshal Pilsudski has stated that the policy of the Government immediately is for the restoration of the authority of the State and the introduction of administrative reforms, including the suppression of corruption in public life. He promises to hold a general election after the dissolution of Parliament. In the meantime he claims that only Presidential endorsement shall be required in order to enforce the law. He declares that his sole desire is to save Poland from the reaction of military operations which are not directed against the State or the people. I am, he said, fighting the Government, which since it assumed office has inaugurated a policy of defiance to the interests of the State and the army."

"Pan Pilsudki Imitating Senor Mussolini" possibly by Viktor "Deni" Denisov in Pravda, Moscow, ca. May 22, 1926

The Daily Worker gave no credit for this cartoon, so I am guessing its creator based on the style of the drawing (and overlooking the Roman rather than Cyrillic alphabet on Piłsudski's banner, which might have been used for a variety of reasons).

"Pilsudsky's In the Saddle But Where's the Horse" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, May 29, 1926

"Ding" Darling offered a different view of the Polish coup, but the anonymous cartoonist above hit closer to the mark. While Piłsudski never assumed a role as the titular head of state, he remained the real power behind the Polish government until his death in 1935.

Moving on:

"Frühlingslied in Morokko" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 30. 1926

Moroccan rebel leader Abd el-Krim surrendered to Spanish and French forces on May 27, 1926, bringing an end to the five-year-long Rif War (which we have been following here, here, here, and here) and the Al-Jumhūriyyah al-Rif. 

by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 27, 1926

Despite some early successes against the Spanish army, el-Krim’s 9,000 to 13,000 guerillas were no match for the Europeans once France entered the war in support of Spain in September, 1925. Spanish forces re-occupied el-Krim’s home base of Ajdir that October; by March, 1926, the Franco-Spanish armies had gained control of most of Morocco.

"The Triumph" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1926

El-Krim sued for peace in April; but talks collapsed, and the Europeans resumed hostilities. El-Krim was left with no option but to surrender to the French, who promised his safety and that of his family in exchange for the safe return of Spanish and French prisoners of war. El-Krim lived out the rest of his days in exile on Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

"Abd-el-Krim" by Ernst Thöny in Simplicissimus, Munich/Stuttgart, June 21, 1926

As far as some Americans were concerned, the principal outcome of the Europeans' victory was that France could now focus her attention on her dismal economic situation. And, by the way, repaying those wartime debts to the U.S.

"A Stitch in Time—Maybe" by Cecil Jensen in Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, May 28, 1926

Q Toon: Remembering Barney Frank

I promised to draw a memorial cartoon for the late Congressman Barney Frank, the first gay member of Congress to out himself, and here it is. 

The quotation in my cartoon is from a January 12, 2009 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin, and it's a slightly condensed version of a statement Barney Frank had made on the House floor the previous March.

It's important to point out that in 2009, none of the rights he was advocating for — marriage equality, the end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," or Employment Non-Discrimination — were yet the law of the land. And none of them came about by acts of Congress, meaning that any of them could be negated by an antigay president, Supreme Court, or Secretary of Whatever They're Calling What We're Doing In Iran These Days.

Barney Frank made these statements in response to Republicans who charged that advocating these rights was "radical" (a boiler plate response by Republicans to any Democratic proposal, even those that borrow from Republican ones).

But Frank was an incrementalist, which resulted in attacks from the idealists and purists to his left. Transgender advocates are still upset by his willingness to excise them from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in order to get Congress to pass workplace protections for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals — a ploy that failed anyway.

He was defensive about that in his final interview, with Lou Chibarro, Jr. in Washington Blade, but confident that the protections afforded by Bostock v. Clayton County would stand:

Blade: Are you saying we may not need an LGBTQ non-discrimination act by Congress for the states that haven’t passed that?

Frank: I would be in favor of that, yes. But again, I think you and I – you have always been pessimistic. There is a political time now that works in our favor. And as I said, on abortion, they burned themselves very badly on abortion. And yes, I’m still for a national anti-discrimination bill. But I do not think the right wing wants to be caught taking rights away that already exist. Because that’s a lot harder than denying them in the first place. And I don’t see any movement for that. You tell me what you are worried about. What bills are you worried about? 

Blade: I was simply saying they haven’t yet passed a federal non-discrimination bill. 

Frank: No, what’s going to change on the Supreme Court? I don’t see a pretty quick reversal on the Supreme Court. So, I think people are just – they have to have a cause. And they are inflating the likelihood that we are going to lose some rights when I see no evidence of it. And in fact, I see a lot of political reasons why those in Congress don’t want to do that.

Perhaps he was correct that "people's rights to get married, join the army, and make a living" are mainstream values now.

That assumes that there is a "mainstream" any more.

"The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the internet, and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality." ― Barney Frank

Memorial Day's Sneak Peek

I mentioned somewhere in Saturday's Graphical History Tour post what I intended to draw about this week; so instead of a snippet from my forthcoming editorial cartoon, here's one from 100 Memorial Days ago.

"Memorial Day" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha World-Herald, May 30, 1926

Sadly, 100 years later, its encomium that "none was sacrificed for national greed or aggression" no longer applies.

The Importance of Being Frank

Graphical History Tour remembers former Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), who passed away Tuesday night at age 86.

in Q SaltLake, March, 1999

Barney Frank was elected to Congress in 1980, succeeding Rev. Robert Drinan, who had left office in order to comply with Pope John Paul II's call for priests to withdraw from government positions. Q SaltLake asked me to draw the above caricature of Rep. Frank for their cover story on his upcoming speech at a dinner of the Utah Stonewall Democrats, an LGBTQ organization.

Frank earned a reputation as an outspoken, quick- and sharp-witted liberal, but it must be noted that he was very pragmatic, even on LGBTQ+ issues. In the 1990's, he counseled marriage equality advocates that the public were not ready to accept same-sex marriage. In his last public interview, however, he argued that marriage equality is safe because Republicans today would be afraid of the backlash were our marriages to be taken away.

Perhaps the interviewer thought it impolite to bring up the fate of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act during Republican rule.

Frank wasn't the first openly gay Congressman; Gerry Studds (D-MD) had been outed at the center of a scandal over Congressmen having affairs with congressional pages. (Studds was censured in 1983 for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old page ten years earlier; he retired from Congress in 1997.) Frank was, however, the first member of Congress to come out as gay voluntarily, in 1987.

in Ranger, University of Wisconsin at Parkside, Sept. 21, 1989 

The first cartoon I drew of Barney Frank was, unfortunately, when it appeared that his political career was about to be cut short because of a sex scandal of his own. He had befriended Steve Gobie, a prostitute, hiring him as an aide, housekeeper, and driver in 1985. He evicted Gobie in 1987 after their landlord told Frank that Gobie continued operating as a male escort, even bringing clients to their shared home.

This became public in 1989 when Gobie decided to sell his story to the highest bidder, but gave it away to the Washington Times. Frank called for a House Ethics Committee investigation, claiming to have had no knowledge of Gobie's extracurricular activities at their home. Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID) led the push to censure Frank; but in the end, he was merely reprimanded for misrepresenting Gobie's criminal probation record, and for using his congressional office to fix 33 parking tickets Gobie had racked up.

Craig, by then a senator, would have his own gay sex scandal in 2007.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 30, 1995

During a January 20, 1995 radio interview discussing a possible book deal, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) said, “I like peace and quiet and I don’t need to listen to Barney Fag, [pause] Barney Frank, haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book.” 

The slur was reported by several radio networks, whereupon Armey blamed the media for reporting on what he claimed was an audio glitch, not a slip of the tongue or intentional insult.

Rep. Frank refused to accept Armey's excuses, saying, “There are a lot of possible ways to mispronounce my name but that one, I think, is the least common, ... I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

After a separate incident of Armey making a poor joke about Frank's homosexuality, a reporter asked Frank if he wanted an apology from the Texan. "I’m trying to think of what I would be less interested in than an apology from Dick Armey," he replied. "Maybe the lyrics to the national anthem of Bhutan."

for Q Syndicate, Aug., 1998

Frank's office requested the original of this cartoon. I have no idea whether he still has it.

When Republicans in Congress were holding hearings in preparation to file impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton over his sex scandal, Barney Frank seemed to be the only Democrat willing to speak up in Clinton's defense.

for Q Syndicate, Nov., 1998

Wisconsin's Second District elected Tammy Baldwin to Washington in 1998, the first out lesbian representative in Congress, so I drew Barney Frank offering her some practical advice.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2009

I tried looking up why I included Barney Frank in this cartoon about the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but it dates from two months before I started this blog. (and I couldn't find it among oocities.com's cached pages of my previous Geocities blog). 

Did Frank call Scalia a homophobe? I guess I wouldn't have put it past him, and I can't think of another reason why I would have drawn him in the foreground.

It is, however, my best example of drawing his famously rumpled couture.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2011

This cartoon caught some ridicule from a web page (now long dormant) dedicated to ridiculing editorial cartoons, in part for daring to run afoul of the litigious Dr. Seuss Estate. The topic was the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed in successive Congresses to afford workplace protections to LGBTQ+ private sector employees.

It faced stubborn resistance from Republicans and other conservatives. In 2007, Frank proposed deleting transgender rights from the bill, in what proved to be a futile ploy to attract support from moderate Republicans which succeeded only in deeply dividing the LGBTQ+ community. 

for Q Syndicate, Oct., 2007

Frank's reasoning was that transgender rights could be added back in someday if ENDA ever became law; transgender activists and their allies are profoundly disappointed by what to this day they regard as outright betrayal.

Congress never has passed ENDA in any form. In an interview with Washington Blade's Lou Chibarro, Jr., after he entered hospice care this month, Frank noted that the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) that employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a ruling Frank was confident the Court would never overturn — and if it did, Congress would step in and pass ENDA into law.

He must never have met Mike Johnson.

for Q Syndicate, Dec., 2011

No, this is not my eulogy cartoon for the Congressman.

The 2010 census resulted in Massachusetts losing a seat in Congress. In the redistricting plan produced by the state legislature, the Democratic stronghold of New Bedford was removed from Frank's district. While Brookline, Newton and Wellesley remained in the district, Frank announced shortly after Governor Deval Patrick signed the redistricting plan into law that he would not run for a 17th term.

My reference, of course, is to the reported last words of Oscar Wilde, another gay icon with a not unblemished history. (In trying to verify the quotation for this post, I've found several variations on its theme, so take it with a grain of smelling salts.)

That was the last cartoon I have drawn of Barney Frank — at least so far. I am likely obliged to draw an actual eulogy cartoon for him for release next week. If not, he's got a book coming out in September.

Given his record, the book is not going to be pablum.

Q Toon: Us vs. Theme Nights

 It’s time to crank out a cartoon for LGBTQ2SAII+ Pride Month, so this year’s topic is the perpetual straight white cisgender sourpuss who gets upset whenever something is not all about him.

We’ve all met the guy. He’s terribly inconvenienced when offered to marcar dos por español (although he’ll happily have another margarita on Cinco de mayo). He voted for Trump to white-out Black History Month. And he’s only going to run into the store for a second, so anyone needing the handicap parking space will just have to hold their horses.

Major League Baseball teams put on a wide variety of special theme nights throughout the season, from movie tie-ins to cancer benefits to every ethnicity and nationality under the sun. If your favorite team doesn't have a Heritage Night celebrating your ancestry, rest assured that somewhere, some other team does.

Well, maybe there's no Tajikistani Heritage Night anywhere, but give the league time.

Anyway, Pride Nights are a staple in June, marking the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Naturally, people who hate gays hate Pride Nights.

I’ve only been to one Pride Night at the Brewers. We didn’t buy our tickets through the special promotion, so we didn’t get the promotional tee-shirts, although I did buy a cap with a rainbow “M” logo. 

I even made it onto the Jumbotron during an Everybody Get Up And Dance between late innings. My better half is a better dancer than I, but he  happened to be off talking to a cousin in another section of the stands, so I had the screen all to myself. (Well, the Cardinals fans behind me stooped down to get on camera, too.) 

It ain’t easy to dance like nobody’s watching when everybody is watching.

Victoria Day's Sneak Peek

There were topics I would dearly have loved to draw about this week but didn't because ideas stubbornly refused to gel.

I sketched out a memorial cartoon for Jason Collins, the gay basketball player who came out of the closet in Sports Illustrated in May of 2013 and succumbed to stage 4 glioblastoma on May 12 of this year at age 47. But I couldn't come up with anything besides a caricature that I wasn't entirely happy with — no trenchant quotation or iconic photo image — and I certainly was not about to draw a basketball shedding a tear.

Then there is a local story that I thought would be worthy of a cartoon for a national, if niche, audience: the school board in Watertown, Wisconsin, voted 7-to-1 to stop their high school's Wind Symphony from performing "A Mother of a Revolution!" by Omar Thomas at their spring concert this evening. Thomas wrote the instrumental piece as "a celebration of the bravery of trans women, and in particular, Marsha 'Pay It No Mind' Johnson. Marsha is credited with being one of the instigators of the famous Stonewall uprising of June 28, 1969..."

It's a technically demanding work, but the hours of practice those kids in Watertown spent mastering the music were all for naught when the school board decreed that it violated the district's "controversial issues" policy. Board Vice President Sam Ouweneel called the board's action “a perfect example of what everyone here ran on, which was ending indoctrination and radical curriculum.”

Watertown students staged a walk-out protest that was duly reported on state television news. Someone with sympathies for the school board complained that the coverage was all one-sided, so one TV station sent a reporter and cameraman out to the board members' homes to offer them opportunity to comment. None of them would answer the door.

Over the weekend, the owner of Minocqua Brewing Company invited the Waterford Wind Symphony to perform "A Mother of a Revolution!" at the biergarten he is sponsoring in Madison this coming weekend. He soon realized that the band's director could be in trouble with the school board were he to participate, but the invitation to the band stands.

The guy in Minocqua is a leftwing gadfly perpetually in trouble with the Republicans in charge of Minocqua city government over zoning and licensing type issues. He has declared his candidacy for Wisconsin governor as a Democrat, to which the Democratic establishment has responded, "Gee, thanks, but we have enough candidates already." 

To give you an idea of the sort of person he is, he has publicly promised that his brewery will host a "Free Beer Day" when Donald Trump kicks the bucket. After the latest assassination attempt, he posted "Well, we almost got #freebeerday. Either a brother or sister in the Resistance needs to work on their marksmanship or he faked another assassination to get a positive news cycle."

All of which seemed like a lot to cram into a cartoon for readers who may not have heard of any of this. So I ended up drawing about something else very late last night.

Toon: The 60% Solution

At the risk of giving GQP politicians ideas...

On April 29, well ahead of its usual timetable of issuing rulings in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a congressional map that had been the result of a lawsuit against Louisiana's 2021 redistricting plan. A lower court had ruled that the 2021 map packed the state's Black voters into a single congressional district in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The Supremes continued their gutting of that Act, decreeing that as long as lawmakers are not actually wearing swastikas and Klan robes when they draw congressional district lines, they can discriminate against whomever they want.

Louisiana Republicans immediately called a halt to the state's primary elections in which early voting was already underway, so that they could re-redraw district boundaries. (Yesterday’s Senate primary went right on ahead as scheduled.) Fellow Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama, and Utah hurriedly followed suit.

This mid-decade scramble to jigger maps to tilt districts against Democrats was started by Donald Gimme-Gimme Trump's gerrymandering demand to the state of Texas — a demand with which Texan Republicans eagerly and speedily complied. 

Democrats have attempted to answer Texas's unprecedented move, but with mixed results. California drew up new Democrat-favoring maps; but Maryland refused to. New York is constitutionally prevented from mid-decade redistricting, and Virginia's high court tossed out a pro-redistricting popular vote on a legislative technicality that nobody seems to quite understand. The Supreme Court in D.C., after rushing to overrule the lower court ruling in Louisiana, has just decided to let the ruling in Virginia stand without comment.

Is my cartoon really such a far-fetched notion? I wouldn't put it past today's ReTrumplicans to push exactly this idea through every legislature in Dixie and the Great Plains.

Ice Cream, Ice Cream Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink

"The Navy's First Lord Passes the Grog" by Edmund Duffy in Sun, Baltimore, May 31, 1926

I enjoyed the characterizations of a seaman and Navy Secretary Curtis Wilbur in Edmund Duffy's cartoon, so it gets to lead off today's Graphical History Tour. 

The U.S. didn't have army bases all over Europe during Prohibition, but recruits in the U.S. Navy got to take shore leave in ports where beer, wine, and liquor were sold like, well, beer, wine, and liquor.  

To combat naval inebriation, Wilbur authorized the sale aboardship of chewing gum and the like as something to replace the sailors' appetite for booze. In Duffy's cartoon, Wilbur is mollifying a tar with the offer of an ice cream cone —vanilla, of course — just the thing for a tar's night on the town.

"The Circus" by T.E. Powers in New York Evening Journal, ca. May 7, 1926

T.E. Powers correctly pointed out that the Republican Party platforms of 1920 and 1924 were solidly in favor of Prohibition. He overlooked, however, that there was still significant support of Prohibition within the Democratic Party, particularly in the deep South and the West.

"Something Bound to Happen" by Harold Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn. ca. May 23, 1926

A bipartisan proposal to allow the manufacture and sale of less intoxicating beverages such as beer and wine had support among Americans who were not so devoted to complete and total abstinence. Liquor would have remained illegal under most versions of modification, with acceptable levels of Alcohol By Volume (ABV) in legalized libations set by the government.

A primary election in Pennsylvania may have been a bellwether of actual public sentiment on the Prohibition issue.

"A Soaking" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Evening Tribune, May 20, 1926

Philadelphia Congressman William Scott Vare won the three-way Republican primary race for Senator over Dry candidates Governor Gifford Pinchot and incumbent Senator George W. Pepper on May 18. Vare ran on an anti-Prohibition platform, charging that the Volstead Act was resulting in a police state, and blaming Prohibition for a 300% rise in alcohol-related crimes in Philadelphia.

"The Ship of the Desert" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 20, 1926

The Philadelphia Inquirer dismissed Vare's calls for relaxing, if not repealing Prohibition as a distraction from his well-earned reputation as a machine politician. Nicknamed the "Duke of South Philadelphia," Vare was cozy with gangsters Waxey Gordon and "Lucky" Luciano. The cartoons of its editorial cartoonist, William Hanny, while highly critical of Vare, were mostly predictions that voters would send him down to defeat. 

"And That's What Little Candidates Are Made Of" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, May 28, 1926

National cartoonists conveniently overlooked the other major race in Pennsylvania, to succeed Pinchot as Governor. John S. Fisher narrowly edged out former Lt. Governor Edward E. Beidelman, who, in his legal practice, was more closely associated with the Wet cause than Vare.

"The New Band Wagon" by Wm. Sykes in Life, May 27, 1926

Even at least one international cartoonist (albeit a half-American one) also took gleeful note of Pennsylvania's Republican Senate primary, and his cartoon graced the front page of one of Germany's leading satirical weeklies.

"Der Sieg de Nassen in Pennsylvanien" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, June 13, 1926

(Note: I've attempted to recolor some of Arthur Johnson's cartoon.)

There is a good chance that we shall return to Pennsylvania's Senate campaign in future Graphical History Tours, so let's not get ahead of ourselves there. Suffice it to say for today's purposes that Vare's plurality win encouraged a number of politicians elsewhere to voice their reservations against the Noble Experiment.

"Page Moses" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, May 29, 1926

But repealing — or modifying — a Constitutional Amendment was never intended to be an easy task. Any celebratory champagne toast would have to wait.

Chewing gum, anyone?

🍸

And so ends Graphical History Tour for another day. Be sure to check in again tomorrow for a much more recent editorial cartoon from your humble scribbler!

Q Toon: A Gentleman in Moscow

Gay Republican operative Richard Grenell is reportedly interested in snagging a prominent foreign policy position in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™, including the post of U.S. Ambassador to Russia, vacant since last June.

"He had an interest in the job – or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues," one anonymous source close to Grenell told the Daily Mail of London, while acknowledging that "Putin's regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ."

Thirty years ago, Republicans' objections to President Clinton's nomination of James Hormel to be U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg included the claim that the fact of Hormel being openly gay would be an insult to Catholic Luxembourgers. If the citizens or government of Luxembourg were truly upset, however, I don't remember hearing anything about it, and I'm certain that the U.S. Senators who raised such a stink about Hormel's nomination would have been sure to point out any complaints.

Two decades later, during the First, Almost As Corrupt Trump Administration, Ric Grenell raised his hosts' hackles as U.S. Ambassador to Germany; but it was because he insisted on meddling in domestic German politics. It had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. 

Trump's State Department is apparently in no hurry whatsoever to put anybody in charge of our embassy in Russia. Trump crony Michael Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have been Trump's de facto conduit to the Kremlin (when he isn't getting his instructions directly from Putin), operating without the nuisance of having to get confirmed by the Senate. The two are likely to play a more important role in U.S.-Russian relations than whoever eventually becomes the next official ambassador, anyway.

As for the former Acting Director of the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Grenell just wants to get any foreign service appointment at all. He appeared most recently in my cartoons in March, when he was reportedly angling for a position with Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas."

By the way, if anyone has heard from Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas," please contact the Bureau of Missing Persons.

text?

This Week's Sneak Peek

What, another Ric Grenell cartoon? Oh, well — Scott Bessent will have to wait for some other time.

So I was mindful of being inclusive when creating the host in this week's cartoon. She's completely made up, by the way; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

I suppose I could have drawn Eugene Daniels or Jonathan Capehart, but there is no way that Grenell would be caught dead on MS NOW.

Revenge of the Sixths

This week's Graphical History Tour ventures once again into the Bergetoon vaults to haul up the stuff I was drawing about forty, thirty, twenty, and ten Mays ago.

1986

in Ranger, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, May 1, 1986

Today, Donald Joffrey Trump complains that our NATO allies are not stepping up to help him in his unilateral war excursion in Iran. Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan was similarly disappointed that only Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain lent any support to "Operation Eldorado Canyon," air attacks on purported terrorist centers in Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya.

The two military operations have some elements in common, Libyan involvement in significant terrorist attacks chief among them. Yet several distinctions must be made. Reagan consulted Congress before initiating this military action. The administration also kept our European allies up to date. Operation Eldorado Canyon was launched in express retaliation for a Libyan-sponsored bombing of a Berlin nightclub popular with U.S. servicemen (two were killed in the bombing and 79 injured).

And whatever other faults he had, at least Reagan didn't start bickering with the Pope.

1996 

The university newspapers for which I drew way back in the 20th Century always suspended publication in May for finals and graduation, so my cartoons in those months were mostly on local or special interest topics.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., May 3, 1996

The NIMBYism at the heart of this one is probably fairly universal, however.

Lutheran Social Services (LSS) provides housing, counseling, and child care services to underserved and at-risk communities. Its bid purchase a house on a semi-rural road in Mount Pleasant as an eight-bed halfway house for male parolees raised instant objections from neighbors. 

One neighbor complained that the parolees would get to "live in a $170,000 home because they committed a crime." Another told the Journal Times, "If it's not safe for these men to go home, it's not safe for them to be in my neighborhood. ... Some little child is going to be molested. Some woman is going to get raped. Someone is going to get beat up. Someone's house is going to get broken into."

LSS countered, "We will know exactly where every resident is every moment of every day." Their residents were to be carefully screened, and offered alcohol and drug abuse treatment, occupational and educational opportunities, and counseling.

But at a packed community meeting, LSS yielded to pressure from residents and state legislators, and announced that it would look for another site elsewhere.

No, it didn't end up being at the local shopping mall.

But these days, our local mall would welcome just about any tenant at all.

2006

May, 2006

To get really, really parochial, this is a cartoon I was asked to draw for the 25-year reunion of my college graduating class. It must have gone astray when I sent it in (perhaps because recipients of my e-mails see my husband's name as the sender, and we've both kept our maiden names). In any event, it didn't make it into the evening program.

It was a challenge trying to winnow down the collective experience of our four years; I was by not the sort of undergrad who participated in every major occasion, and lived off campus one year. The snippets that I focused on included:

•  the time ABC Sports decided to cover a football game at our college and asked the music department to come up with a halftime show
• the college's intention to tear down an old dormitory, Ytterboe, and the construction of a new one that got its name after we left
• the streaker at our graduation (didn't every graduation have at least one in those days?)
• the time Vice President Walter Mondale came to campus to swear college president Sidney Rand (New Dorm would be named after him) in as Ambassador to Norway
• our campus ID "caf" card
• the record album of of student performers at the Lion's Pause (an old theater in Ytterboe's basement)
• and of course, the hair and clothing styles of the time.

The hardest part of the drawing? Definitely the grooves of the record album.

2016

for Q Syndicate, May 2016

Here's a cartoon that brings together local, national, and special interest topics.

My hometown congressional district was represented by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) ten years ago. In May of 2016, he employed the power of his gavel to prevent passage of a component of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed time and time again to afford workplace protections to LGBTQ+ employees.

In this case, it was an amendment by Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) to a Defense Department bill; his amendment would have mandated that defense contractors not discriminate against LGBTQ+ employees and applicants. With time expired for House members to cast their votes, Maloney's amendment appeared to have passed by a vote of 219 to 206.

But Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) held the vote open so that Republican party whips could pressure enough of their members to switch their votes to defeat the amendment. As soon as seven Republicans had changed their votes from Aye to Nay, the gavel finally came down.

Maloney's amendment was thus defeated by a single vote, and the defense contracts of antigay wedding cake bakers and florists were saved.

Sort of. An Obama administration executive order was already in place protecting LGBTQ+ defense contractor employees.

Until, of course, the Electoral College awarded the presidency to one Donald Bifftannen Trump four years later.

ENDA is likely to come up presently in another Graphical History Tour, so please keep it in mind.