2018 in Headlines

I've been taking photos of the year in newspaper front pages and magazine covers every December 31 for some 45 years now. These days, it's harder to get a comprehensive sampling, now that the local papers have ceded national news to the internet and hardly any newspapers play up international events.

So I have no banner headlines reporting the deadly tsunami in Indonesia, fascist victories in Brazil and elsewhere, the cock-up of Brexit, or the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen. There were devastating hurricanes, typhoons, and fires; was any one of them more important than the others?

Instead, this year's photo is dominated by the mercurial president of the United States and those "I hire the best people" in his cabinet discovering that he can't hear their advice over the rumblings of his gut.

Here, too, is a collage of my favorites of the cartoons I drew this year. I don't pretend for them to be a comprehensive review of the year, either. They're just the ones I happen to like right now. And since I didn't put them in a slide show, embiggenation is necessitatified.

Q Toon: #Metousiosis

Transsubstantiation: according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the change of substance or essence by which the bread and wine offered in the sacrifice of the sacrament of the Eucharist during the Mass, become, in reality, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In Greek, metousiosis.

For centuries, theologians have debated Jesus Christ's sermon in John 6 and at the Last Supper that bread and wine somehow become his own body and blood. Is it another one of those metaphors you find all over the Bible, or are we supposed to take it literally? In Catholic dogma, the bread and wine are no longer bread or wine; Lutherans believe that the bread and wine are simultaneously bread and body, and wine and blood. Baptists believe that grape juice miraculously becomes what Jesus meant to say.

Some people believe we're supposed to take every word of the Bible literally.

The New Testament calls Christ the “bridegroom” and the church his “bride.” Catholic priests are supposed to consider themselves "married" to the church, forswearing all others. That's not in the Bible, really; it's one of those reforms brought in because priests were making the church a family business handed down from Father to son.

The Catholic Church solved that problem, but was left with a dogma that seems to have attracted more than a few men with unsavory ideas about how to consummate their marriage to the church.

Literally.

Who's Got Soul?

I was reading Time magazine's 1968 cover story featuring Aretha Franklin yesterday in case I decide to draw a tribute cartoon about her. I have the suspicion that half my profession are going to draw the same cartoon, so I was looking to see if I could find inspiration from something else.

There were several notable things about the article, starting with the persistent, consistent use of the word "Negro" (except for a few quotations in which Black people use the word "Black") — there's even one "negritude."

There's also the capitalization of certain professions including "Gospel Singer Sam Cooke," "Savvy Producer Jerry Wexler," "Black Novelist James Baldwin," (okay, there's one exception to the Negro Rule), and "Bluesman and former Preacher Big Bill Broonzy."

I got a kick out of this footnote, beseeching the Time readers' forbearance for the printing of some bawdy language:

In the present day, when media of all kinds have had to print precisely how Donald Trump likes to grab women and how Harvey Weinstein likes to fertilize potted plants, having to beg forgiveness for the phrase "whip it to me" is quite quaint.

The other item that struck me is the magazine's attempt to list for their predominantly white readership Who Got Soul And Who Doesn't. (Exempli gratia: YES, People who use "got" as a present tense, third person singular verb. NO, People who use "doesn't." Also, people who spell out common Latin abbreviations.)

The body of the article suggests that the following list may have been previously printed in Esquire, although the Letter From the Publisher credits it to "Cover Writer Chris Porterfield, Senior Editor Jesse Birnbaum, Reporter Virginia Page and Researchers Molly Bowditch and Rosemarie Tauris Zadikov."

I've broken this sidebar article into three segments in order for it to be reasonably legible on line.

Somebody had better alert Lin-Manuel Miranda.

You may already have noticed that the list is overwhelmingly white. I suppose the writers decided that in comparison to even the least soulful Negro, even Søren Kierkegaard would be in the NO column. A quarter century later, they might have suggested YES, Thurgood Marshall. NO, Clarence Thomas.

Mary Worth got soul!? Whoomp, there it is.

Q Toon: Pumphandle Hold

You may remember Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan as the guy schooled by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for accusing him of threatening to subpoena phone calls.

The Freedom Caucus Republican is also in the running to replace Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, but is now dogged by accusations that while he was Assistant Coach of the wrestling team at The Ohio State University, he ignored and even laughed at multiple reports of the team doctor's sexually inappropriate examinations of team members.

That's in addition to a problem the department apparently had with staff and students who would ogle team members as they showered. The situation was serious enough to prompt the head of the athletic department to move the wrestlers' locker room to another building.

John Aravosis counts nine accusers who have come forward publicly so far, but with a possible 1,500 victims in The Ohio State wrestling and other team sports, OSU's liability could potentially dwarf the $500 million settlement reach in Michigan State's Larry Nassar case.

Jordan has denied any knowledge of the complaints, and called at least two of the men liars. He's even said that the scandal is the invention of Rod Rosenstein and the Deep State.

 “They know what they’re saying is not accurate,” he told [Fox News's Bret] Baier. “I know they know what they’re saying is not true. I know they know that. And they’re saying it anyway.”
... “What is driving these guys to say this now?” Baier asked. “The timing is suspect,” Jordan replied, citing his recent interrogation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server and possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Jordan added that the law firm in charge of OSU’s sexual abuse investigation, Perkins Coie, was “Hillary Clinton’s law firm,” the same firm that found “an ex-British spy to put together a dossier to go after President Trump.”

In April, The University began an investigation of the doctor, who committed suicide in 2005. Spokespersons for the University are not commenting on the accusations while the investigation is underway.

Some of Jordan's current colleagues are not so circumspect.

“This is the same Jim Jordan who as a Congressman has self-righteously demanded investigations of anything and everything under the sun,” [New York Democrat Sean] Maloney tweeted Saturday. “Well, times’s up, Jim. We need to hear these victims and investigate Jim Jordan now.”

Toon: Staking the MeToo High Ground

It's hard to imagine how Bill Clinton thought he could make the talk show rounds chatting up his book, co-authored by James Patterson, without having to discuss in light of the #metoo movement the sex he did not have with that woman.

Or why James Patterson stuck with the tour past Interview #1.

Republicans can safely make the rounds of every show on Fox News secure in the knowledge that they won't have to answer any uncomfortable questions; but Democrats, for all the blather about "liberal media bias," have no such safe space. Seemingly blindsided by pointed questions in a "Today" show interview, Bill Clinton was afforded a chance to revise and extend his remarks on Stephen Colbert's "Late Night" the next day. But it meant having to spend an entire segment of the show repenting for the horndog behavior that got him impeached 20 years ago.

Up until the #metoo movement, Bill Clinton remained the Democrats' second-best Elder Statesman after Jimmy Carter. Al Gore had insisted that Clinton stay at arms length from Gore's 2000 campaign, and lost West Virginia and Florida as a result. Barack Obama sent Clinton to campaign for the Good Ol' Boy vote, and got just enough of them to break the Republican lock on the South twice.

Contrast that with the Republicans' relationship with their most recently disgraced president, Richard Nixon. They defended him in office until the Smoking Gun tapes came out, but unlike the Democrats and Clinton, never gave him a speaking slot at their conventions or sent him out to campaign anywhere. 20 years later, Nixon was studiously rehabilitating himself, cranking out scholarly tomes on foreign policy but still not invited to speak at GOP nominating conventions.

Donald Joffrey Trump is unlikely to be around in 20 years (does even Brian Kilmeade believe the notes from Trump's doctor?), so I don't expect him to be churning out The Art of the Treaty or Everyone Is Saying The President is Missed, That I Can Tell You in 2038. Assuming we have our democracy back, perhaps Republicans will have made a more honest assessment of him by then.

Either that, or his visage will be beaming down on the America Great Again Party Convention, between those of Emperor Putin and our Dear Friend And Ally Kim Jong-Il, as Don Jr. accepts renomination to a fourth term as CEO of the United States.