Remembering Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union, died this week, age 91; so for today's Saturday History Tour, here are some of my cartoons of one of the most transformative leaders of the latter half of the 20th Century.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Nov. 14, 1989

With his election by the Politburo in March of 1985, Gorbachev became the USSR's fourth leader in as many years. Leonid Brezhnev's ill health had been kept secret for years before his death in 1982; his successor, Yuri Andropov, was felled by kidney failure after 15 months in office, aged 69. Konstantin Chernenko, a heavy smoker, was at death's door almost from the start of his 13-month administration, and died of emphysema and complications at the age of 73.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, March 21, 1985

Gorbachev came to power eager to make his mark. He signaled his willingness to negotiate arms limitations with the United States, a topic whose progress had ground to a halt after Ronald Reagan scrapped the talks begun under Brezhnev with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 10, 1986

The West added two Russian words to our vocabulary under Mikhail Gorbachev: perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). The former was actually a policy begun under Brezhnev in 1979, but to which Gorbachev announced a renewed and firm commitment. His reforms decentralized governance and economic controls while lifting some of the secrecy enjoyed by Kremlin bureaucrats.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Sept. 7, 1989

What Gorbachev hadn't factored in was the desire of the citizens of Soviet client states and some non-Russian S.S.R.'s to break away from Moscow entirely. It's not as if independence movements were unknown; Poland's Solidarność movement had been a headache for the government in Warsaw since 1980, and memories lingered of Moscow's brutal suppression of revolts in Czechoslovakia (1968),  Hungary (1956), and East Germany (1953).

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Nov. 9, 1989

When the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe completely collapsed in November and December of 1989, there were too many dominoes falling at once for Gorbachev to seriously consider sending the Russian military into every countries quitting the Warsaw Pact.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Nov. 16, 1989

Rough seas for Gorbachev's Mediterranean summit meeting with U.S. President George H.W. Bush were the perfect metaphor for the Soviet leader's predicament.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Dec. 5, 1989

(This was months before Bush would throw up into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, by the way.)

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Feb. 20, 1990

I still like this take-off on a scene from Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, even though you could plug just about any politician going through a rough patch into this scenario. Similarly with this next cartoon. 

May, 1990. Unpublished?

Reunification of Germany certainly horrified the elder members of the politburo; Gorbachev was also old enough to remember World War II. This, as much as any other single factor, led to the hardliners' attempted coup in the summer of 1991.

August, 1991. Unpublished?

The coup met sturdy resistance from their own citizens. Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin emerged as the hero of the moment, representing liberalization beyond what Gorbachev had ever intended.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Sept. 9, 1991

The end of the Soviet Union happened over Christmas break at the UW-M Post, and I don't have any cartoons about Gorbachev after that.

The memorial cartoons I've seen this week have all credited Gorbachev with bringing his country out of the oppression of the communist regime. Many have contrasted him favorably with Vladimir Putin, who has imposed a new oppressive regime of деконструкция and закрытость, and clearly believes that Gorbachev's administration was a disaster. 

I have not yet seen how any Russian cartoonists have responded to Gorbachev's passing. Are memorial cartoons even a thing there? If so, was Mikhail Gorbachev someone you can praise under Putin's regime without buying a one-way ticket out a sixth-story hospital window?

1989 in Review

Hey, since I devoted several posts last year to cartoons from 1989, here's the photo I took at that year's end of 1989's newspaper headlines.

Careful readers may notice a magazine headline that was repeated in my 2019 photo.

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P.S.: I've commented several times about how it is getting more and more difficult to assemble newspapers for these photographs. Today provides a sterling example.

On the morning after the Trump administration intentionally assassinated the top military official of a foreign, sovereign state against whom we have not declared war, while he was in a neighboring country in which we have troops stationed (and what about the Kurds?), without consulting anyone in Congress or any one of our NATO allies, here is the choice of my locally available newspaper front pages:

Only the Chicago Tribune managed to squeeze the story onto Page One.

Will I Make It Through the Eighties?

Spandexback Saturday rummages through the attic today and comes down with a handful of my cartoons from the closing weeks of 1989.

"Bless Me, Father" in UW-Milwaukee Post, November 21, 1989

On November 16, 1989, priests on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador opened the doors to their residence to a cadre of El Salvador soldiers. The soldiers assassinated all six priests, as well as their cook and her daughter who had the tragic misfortune to be in the residence at the time.

As they left, the soldiers shot up the outside of the building and scrawled graffiti intended to make it appear as if the murders had been carried out by Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMNL) rebels. But there was a witness.

"Think, Mrs. Cerna" in UWM Post, November 28, 1989

I caught some grief for the UWM Post cartoon at the top of this post. Struggling to understand what editorial cartooning is supposed to be about, reader Gerald Harp wrote in a letter to the editor,

"I'm not quite sure why I objected to the cartoon, but I'm not sure why you printed it, either, so I feel justified in writing to you.
"Why did you print it? My feeling is that the cartoon was not funny, but then that may not be the point. Next, the cartoon had enormous shock potential. I was shocked, but that by itself is not a redeeming value.
"My best guess is that you were attempting to educate your readers of the atrocities in El Salvador. That is a worthy goal, but my next question is, 'are all means equally valuable in presenting a message?'
"After thinking it over, I decided you were not trying to make some kind of statement about the Catholic Church, and the soldier making an obvious mockery of something important to me, namely confession, shouldn't insult me because I'm not supposed to identify with the soldier. Still the cartoon leaves me uneasy and vaguely offended.
"I don't disagree with your sentiments, but I'd ask you to be a bit more careful in the future to separate the statement you are making from any irrelevant theme, especially if people will feel strongly about the secondary theme."

Without any trigger warning, the Post reprinted my vaguely-offending cartoon right next to Mr. Harp's letter. (Did GenX even have trigger warnings in the ’eighties?)

"Well Worth a Look-See" in UWM Post, December 5, 1989

Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush held their first summit meeting aboard the TS Maxim Gorky off the coast of Malta on December 2. The summit was beset by gale force winds and choppy seas, inspiring my Post cartoon; navy veteran Bush was not yet known for throwing up in world leaders' laps.

"Dan, You Did a Good Job..." in UW-Parkside Ranger, December 14, 1989

In fact, both Bush and Gorbachev went into the meeting with ambitious sets of proposals and found significant areas of agreement. They declared the Cold War over, but Bush's Vice President was not quite ready to bury the hatchet. Dan Quayle joined a chorus of conservative Republicans warning against "getting caught up in the magnetic personality of Chairman Gorbachev."

A comedian named Julie Brown had recorded a song called "Will I Make It Through the '80's" in 1984. It hadn't garnered the MTV-play that her novelty hit "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" did (humor that really has not aged well), and was largely forgotten five years later or it might have been the basis of this last cartoon.

This was another cartoon about a serious topic. Homicides in the city of Milwaukee that year reached triple digits for the first time ever: 113 homicides in all.

"I Survived 1989" in UWM Post, December 7, 1989

That number would climb even higher, to 155, in 1990.

Faces in the Crowd

The cartoon I posted on Sunday employed caricatures of a number of House Republicans, when I could more easily have drawn a single GOP elephant at a microphone. So why didn't I do that and knock off an hour earlier?

June, 1996 for the UWM Post.

Pardon me if I step back a few years in order to answer that. In 1996, I drew a crowd of (hopefully) recognizable Republicans, grinning smugly, because that made more sense than drawing a single elephant, and was more effective than a bunch of smugly grinning elephants. Behind Bob Dole in this cartoon, mocking GOP claims of having a "big tent" on the abortion issue in spite of the hardline plank in the party platform, stand, from left to right: Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

(Since the UWM Post didn't put out any editions that summer, the above cartoon was never published, but I ended up drawing another one a lot like it for them in September.)

in UW-M Post, March 5, 1991

My cartoon of sheepish Democrats at the peak of George H.W. Bush's popularity would have been less pointed if I had drawn a donkey or donkeys among the sheep. (From left to right: Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt, Tom Foley, Al Gore, Mario Cuomo, Lloyd Bentsen, and George Mitchell.)

in UWM Post, September 28, 1989

Which is not to say that every editorial cartoon has to include caricatures of actual politicians. I liked the idea for my cartoon about multiple ethics investigations going on in the nation's capital in 1989, but there weren't enough politicians actually leading one investigation while being the target of another for me to have drawn a bunch of real people.

This idea is not far removed from Thomas Nast's "Who Stole the People's Money? Do Tell. 'Twas Him" cartoon showing easily recognizable members of the Tammany Ring standing in a circle, each pointing fingers at the man to his right. It's a great cartoon that had great impact when it was published and has stood the test of time, even though the real Richard Connolly was not accusing Peter Sweeney, who was not accusing Boss Tweed, who was not accusing James Ingersoll, etc.

for Q Syndicate, June 21, 2004

Here again, I could have drawn specific Republican senators pulling a prank in 2004, but I think this particular cartoon works better this way artistically.

Still, I believe it is useful for cartoonists to hold actual politicians accountable for their stands on issues. Thomas Nast's cartoons would have had little impact if he had tamely drawn generic "City Hall" characters — or comical Tammany Tigers — every week. Likewise, it's all well and good to draw a cartoon highlighting Lindsey Graham's or Matt Gaetz's craptasm du jour; but if one doesn't hold their feet to the fire, the effect is likely to be ephemeral.


We can't all be Thomas Nast, but we can still try.

And the Wall Came Tumbling Down

Sovietback Saturday puts aside the works of dead cartoonists this week to dredge up my own stuff from the momentous year 1989. That fall, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded in ousting three opponents of his glasnost and perestroika policies from the politburo, and even authorized a new degree of freedom for the state-run press.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., October 19, 1989

All the same, eyebrows were raised around the world when the Soviet news agency TASS reported, in all seriousness, that a three-eyed space alien clad in silver overalls and bronze boots landed in Voronezh and shot a 16-year-old boy with a device that made him disappear for a few minutes. Nor was it the only such story in Soviet media; Komsomolskaya Pravda reported finding a landing field for flying saucers near Perm, and printed a psychic interview with an extraterrestrial from the red star of the constellation of Libra.

Erich Honecker, head of state of East Germany since 1971, had been the communist official in charge of building the Berlin Wall in 1961. As protests in East Germany mounted and refugees from his regime found an escape route through Hungary and Czechoslovakia around his fortified East-West German border, Gorbachev rejected Honecker's pleas for Soviet help crushing dissidents. The 77-year-old Honecker was forced to resign on October 18.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers, Wis., October 26, 1989

The George H.W. Bush administration faced challenges in its own hemisphere: an attempted coup with U.S. backing in Panama failed to overthrow Manuel Noriega, who had voided the results of a fraud-riddled presidential elections in May rather than admit that his candidate had lost.

Through his rise from the Panamanian army, and head of intelligence, to becoming the country's military leader, Noriega had been on the CIA payroll since 1971. He helped fund the right-wing Contras in their civil war against the Nicaraguan government; U.S. intelligence agencies were well aware that drug trafficking was key to Noriega's financial assistance. When U.S. funding of the Contras came to an end after Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, the Contra insurgency came to an end and so did Noriega's usefulness to the CIA. He was suspected, furthermore, of passing intelligence on to the communist government of Cuba, the Medellin drug cartel, and anyone else who greased his palms.

in UW-M Post, November 9, 1989

The seas would prove no calmer —literally — during the U.S.-U.S.S.R. cruise summit in December.

Earlier posts have dealt with on the Polish situation, but I've given short shrift to what was going on in Hungary, the first country to go communist after World War I and the first country to be invaded by Russia after World War II. Fast forward to 1989, and Hungarian acting President Matyas Szuros publicly described the 1956 uprising as a "national independence movement" and declared that his nation was no longer a "People's Republic," which would certainly have gotten him hauled off to Moscow in chains 33 years earlier. Crowds on the streets jeered at Russian soldiers to go home, yet cheered Moscow's new leader with shouts of "Gorby! Gorby!"

in UW-M Post,  November 14, 1989

Then, in late October, Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Edvard Schevardnadze announced the eventual dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Brezhnev doctrine — the U.S.S.R. policy that "when forces hostile to socialism seek to reverse the development of any socialist country whatsoever," the Soviet military would invade and impose the Kremlin's will. In the words of Soviet spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, "You know the Frank Sinatra song My Way? Hungary and Poland are doing it their way. We now have the Sinatra doctrine."

And on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, November 16, 1989

I grew up in a world that had the freedom-loving democratic countries of Anglo America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand on the one side; and the rigid authoritarian communist countries on the other; and a whole lot of other countries stuck in a tug-of-war between them. There was an eternal state of Cold War, a precarious balancing act which could tumble into instant global annihilation at the slightest misstep anywhere.

As of November 9, 1989, all that changed. We saw a new age of peace and cooperation forged from the remnants of the Iron Curtain. There was talk of the "end of history," whatever that meant. If people in Russia and Eastern Europe had the power to triumph over their oppressive governments, perhaps people everywhere could find that same power.

in UW-M Post, November 30, 1989

P.S.: Speaking of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tienanmen, and all that, there's a 1991 cartoon of mine on page 368 of this rather formidable tome hot off the presses at Harper Collins in London:

...and in the soon-to-be published German translation from Random House GmbH. (It has been in this blog before, and no doubt will show up again two years hence.)

When Liberal Democracy Was Ascendant

With the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11 this past week, we now have young men and women old enough to serve in the military — and to vote — who have never known a time when the U.S. was not at war. Sejmback Saturday therefore serves this reminder of a September just thirty years ago when it seemed that mankind might be making progress toward a kinder and gentler world.

in UWM Post, September 5, 1989

Eight years of repression against the Solidarność movement in Poland had not only failed to weaken it, but weakened the communist government of Wojciech Jaruzelski instead. Even Solidarność leaders were surprised by their successes in the elections in August, 1989, winning all but one of the Senate seats they were allowed to run for, and all of the contested seats in the Sejm.

Meanwhile, eight years of Reaganomics in the U.S. had left George H.W. Bush with an enormous budget deficit.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, September 7, 1989

China's quashing of the Tienanmen Square uprising in June notwithstanding, the stunning success of Solidarność quickly inspired independence movements in Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Hungary and East Germany.

This is the cartoon I mentioned a couple weeks ago that didn't get returned to me; so this is as well as I'm able to clean up the image from the Ranger's on-line archive. You can't see it from the above, but I had drawn Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev speaking through gritted teeth; my recollection is that you couldn't tell that from the printed copy, either.

in UWM Post, September 19, 1989

So to make up for that poor copy, here's a colorization of what was originally just a black and white cartoon, aping Soviet imagery to depict the sudden exodus of East Germans. Hungary had opened its border with Austria, whereupon several thousand East German refugees were able to escape to West Germany in a round-about route through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria. In Berlin, there were signs that East German border patrols were no longer shooting to kill persons who tried to cross No Man's Land.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, September 14, 1989

Pressure for reform was not limited to the communist bloc. South African police initially responded to anti-apartheid protests that year with billy clubs, tear gas, and purple-dye water cannons; perhaps as many as 60 protesters were killed. In August, a new President took the reins from P.W. Botha, who had suffered a mild stroke in January. Claiming a mandate for reform in September's elections, F.W. de Klerk appeared to signal that his approach to dissent might be modeled after Gorbachev's rather than Deng Xiaoping's.

in UWM Post, September 21, 1989

Five Toons in Search of a Theme

Having dealt with Stonewall, the end of World War I, and the start of Prohibition over the past couple weeks, this edition of Surveyback Saturday rummages through my own cartoons from 1989 for the Racine, Wisconsin Journal Times.

in Racine (WI) Journal Times, February, 1989

Most of my cartoons for the JT were about transient local issues and local persons, but here are a handful for which I guess you didn't have to have been there. I don't remember how the furor over Health: Choosing Wellness turned out, but you can probably easily imagine how the story shaped up: educrats select a sex ed textbook that accomplishes teaching kids important information about sex, vs. religious conservatives who don't want their kids learning about sex until their wedding night.

There was sex ed in Racine before 1989; I remember my dad taking me to what was called "Sixth Grade Boys' Hygeine" one evening, where the school showed us a film strip about (among other things) how babies are made. I also remember that I came away from that evening with a completely erroneous understanding of how babies are made.

in Racine Journal Times, April 7, 1989

1989 was the year Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds was accused of gambling on games in which he played or managed. For those of you younger than us baby boomers, my cartoon riffs on a series of TV commercials for a brokerage firm.

in Racine Journal Times, June 2, 1989

I drew these last three cartoons to accompany editorials the Journal Times announced ahead of time and invited readers send in their comments to be printed on the same day as the editorials. "Training wage" was one of those Republican counter-proposals to raising the minimum wage, the idea being that employers could offer new employees a less-than-minimum wage for some set period of time.

The Democratic proposal at the time was to raise the minimum wage, then at $3.25/hour since January, 1981, to $4.35 per hour; the 60-day "training wage" was supported by President George H.W. Bush and Governor Tommy Thompson. But as one letter-writer pointed out, why wouldn't "unscrupulous employers hire unskilled people at the lower training wage, retain them for a few weeks and then fire them when they are eligible for an increased wage and fringe benefits. Then these employers hire another group of unskilled workers at the lower, training wage"?

Bush and Congress agreed to raise the minimum wage to $4.25 in stages over the next two years, with a training wage of $3.35 in 1990 and $3.61 in 1991, restricted to laborers aged 16 to 19.

in Racine Journal Times, July 20, 1989

In July, the Journal Times invited readers' opinions of Wisconsin's child support law determining what non-custodial parents are expected to provide to custodial parents in cases of divorce. Responses were numerous and strong; the JT quoted one non-custodial father who showed up at the newspaper office in person but who didn't want his name used: "All I need to do is say how I feel about it and my ex-wife will haul me back into court faster than you can imagine."

in Racine Journal Times, July 4, 1989

Since it's a long Independence Day Weekend for many of you, how better to close today's installment than by resurrecting the 1989 controversy over flag burning. The Supreme Court had ruled that burning the flag in protest was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, so Bush and the GOP proposed adding another amendment to criminalize that form of protest.

That amendment never got very far; it was far more effective as an issue to whip up the Republican base than as actual legislative policy. And they soon found railing against gay people was more effective still.

Which is why you would be free to burn your Betsy Ross Flag shoes from Nike, but tossing them at Colin Kaepernick can get you charged with assault and battery.

And wearing them might also be illegal.

Silence of the Sams

I had planned to save these cartoons for this summer, but after Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson's stunning performance in front of Congress this week, now seems to be a good time for Scamback Saturday to remember one of his predecessors at the department.

Samuel Pierce was Secretary of HUD from 1981 to 1989.  Pierce had the distinction of being the only African-American in Ronald Reagan's cabinet, and the only cabinet official to serve in the same post for all eight years of Reagan's presidency.

Several HUD Secretaries have been former mayors or otherwise professionally involved in urban renewal. But like Ben Carson, Pierce had no such experience before Reagan named him to the job. Also like Ben Carson, Pierce was African-American, the Republican euphemism for which is "urban," an area the increasingly exurban and rural Republican Party could hardly care less about. If a Republican president has to have one Black person in the cabinet just for appearances sake, he might as well be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, even if his field of expertise is brain surgery and he's totally unfamiliar with real estate jargon.

Unlike Carson, however, Sam Pierce at least had ample subcabinet-level experience, starting out in Eisenhower's Department of Labor and later as general counsel to Nixon's Treasury Department. But the tenure of "Silent Sam" at HUD was so low-key that when he and the president who appointed him attended a U.S. Conference of Mayors luncheon, Reagan thought Pierce was one of the mayors.

I'm not kidding.

Chuck Stone, a black editor at the Philadelphia Daily News and longtime acquaintance of Pierce, says the Secretary “has the three B’s Republicans like—brilliance, blackness and blandness. Republicans don’t like audacious blacks.”

It was only after Pierce was gone that an investigation by the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel uncovered mismanagement and political favoritism in HUD dating from his first days on the job.

UW-Milwaukee Post, July 25, 1989

Despite a pledge during his Senate confirmation hearings to ''sever'' his ties to his former New York law firm, Samuel R. Pierce Jr. regularly did personal favors for his former colleagues and interceded with subordinates in the Department of Housing and Urban Development on their behalf, documents from his office files show.

While there is no indication that the former Secretary broke any law barring conflicts of interest or directed subordinates to act improperly, Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, said the documents raised ''additional questions about Secretary Pierce's management at H.U.D.''  ...

Ethics lawyers at H.U.D. said Mr. Pierce's agreement to sever ties with the firm did not bar him from all dealings with it. And lawyers at the Office of Government Ethics said that to prove a criminal violation against an official like Mr. Pierce, a prosecutor would have to demonstrate that he personally and substantially took part in a matter affecting his former firm. 

Investigators also uncovered several cases in which outside agents managing the foreclosure of properties on behalf of HUD, instead of subtracting their management fees and turning the rest of the proceeds over to HUD, were pocketing the entire proceeds and never filing the paperwork. Contracts went to politically connected landlords and developers, funneling money to the campaigns of a number of politicians.

Drawn for an edition of the Post that wasn't published

As the scandals came to light, Pierce claimed that HUD was too big for him to follow individual programs, and he threw his chief aide, Deborah Gore Dean under the bus. She and others on Pierce's staff would be convicted on various felony charges, but Pierce himself was never charged with any criminal activity.

UW-Parkside Ranger, September 28, 1989

Now, I have to caution that there was never any connection between the shenanigans at HUD and the Iran-Contra scandal.

But one familiar name from the Corrupt Trump Administration pops up in those 30-year-old reports.

As one particular scam involving conversion of some abandoned World War II era internment facilities for Japanese-Americans into apartment dwellings was reported in Newsweek in 1989:

The moving force in the project was Paul Manafort, a Reagan campaign consultant in 1980 who later diversified into lobbying and power brokering. When a friend told him the ancient housing project was for sale, Manafort sounded out Deborah Gore Dean, Pierce's chief aide, and got informal encouragement that he could get a rehabilitation contract. Through another crony, he persuaded New Jersey officials to apply for a grant; with two associates, he formed CFM Development Corp. and bought the project for $4.4 million. HUD promptly approved the project, providing $5 million in construction funds and guaranteeing rent subsidies totaling $31.1 million over 15 years. CFM hired Manafort's firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly [okay, more than one familiar name there!] to keep the wheels greased at HUD, paying it a consultant's fee of $326,000. The rent subsidies guaranteed an operating profit, but the program offered a second bonanza in the form of $11 million worth of tax credits. ...
Mayor Bruce Peterson of Upper Deerfield Township, N.J., called the project "a horrible waste of the taxpayers' money." It was imposed on the community as a fait accompli, he testified; the housing wasn't needed, the buildings were too old and shabby, the work being done was shoddy and the subsidized rents were way above local standards.

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These four cartoons about Samuel Pierce are the most I've ever drawn about any Secretary of HUD. The only other HUD Secretary I've ever cartooned was Jack Kemp, who comes in second place, and only because he's in that second cartoon about Pierce. Which never got published until now, so it shouldn't even count.

UW-Parkside Ranger, November 2, 1989

On the other hand, Kemp did appear in at least one of my cartoons when he was Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 1996. For that matter, I've drawn Carson in at least three cartoons, but as a 2016 presidential candidate.

Since the ratio of verbiage to cartoons in this post is weighted too heavily to the former, here's one of those Carson cartoons.

The Rusty Curtain

Over the past two Saturdays, I've rehashed some of my thirty-year-old cartoons about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, abortion, and gun control. What 1989 will chiefly be remembered for, however, are the stunning changes in world politics.

UW-Milwaukee Post, March 28, 1989

Scarcely three months into George H.W. Bush's presidency, George Will used his back-page column in Newsweek to complain that "Bush seems to be a bystander watching to see who Bush turns out to be." Compared to his predecessor, who came in vowing to slash government down to size, stand up to the Soviets — and, oh, by the way, getting to announce minutes after his inauguration that the American hostages in Iran were coming home — Bush settled into the White House with no grand plan other than to avoid any new taxes.

But behind the Iron Curtain, great changes were brewing.

UW-Parkside Ranger, April 20, 1989

After nearly a decade trying to suppress the Solidarity movement led by Lech Wałęsa, Poland's communist government agreed on April 4, 1989 to allow Solidarność candidates to run in June 4 elections for the Sejm and a newly recreated Senate. 299 of the 460 seats in the Sejm were reserved for the Communist Party and its affiliates; Solidarność ended up winning all but one of the remaining Sejm and Senate seats.

UW-Milwaukee Post, May 2, 1989

Perhaps inspired by the Polish model, and taking advantage of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, citizens of the USSR's constituent republics began demanding independence. 150 people launched a hunger strike in Tblisi, Georgia; protesters forced the resignation of Uzbekistan's official Muslim leader; Lithuania's Sąjūdis movement declared the nation's independence in May; the Estonian Supreme Soviet had proclaimed the supremacy of Estonian laws over Moscow's the previous November. Border fighting broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Protesters in what is now Moldova pushed to get Moldavian recognized as their official language.

Sparked by the sudden death of retired Chinese General Secretary Hu Yaobang on April 15, students occupied Tienanmen Square in Beijing to demand democratic reforms, freedom of the press, and a crackdown on corruption. Some one million protesters occupied the square for weeks on end, staging a hunger strike and erecting their own statue of liberty. In one famous photograph, a lone protester stood against a line of Chinese army tanks. Protests spread to 400 cities around the country.

We know how well that worked for the Chinese protesters, however.

UW-Milwaukee Post, June 27, 1989