My Left-wing Cartoons and Francisco

Pope Francis died in the wee hours of Easter Monday after having greeted Vice President Shady Vance and the throngs who came to celebrate the Resurrection with him the previous morning. I didn't get invited to the funeral at the Vatican today, so instead, I've got a look back over his papacy for this week's Graphical History Tour.

March, 2013

I caught a little bit of flack for this initial response to Cardinal Bergoglio’s election to the papacy in 2013, but I thought it was a light, whimsical cartoon to celebrate Catholicism’s first Latin American Pope. Besides, I happened to be discovering the music of Astor Piazolla just then. 

for Q Syndicate, August, 2013

Taking his papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, Bergoglio quickly showed himself to be a very, very different pope than Benedict XVI. The archconservative B-16, breaking with longstanding tradition, had resigned the papacy rather than linger in the position while cruel age slowly robbed him of mind and body. (As critical as I was of Pope Benedict, I credit him with a selfless decision many aging politicians would have done well to emulate.)

for Q Syndicate, September, 2013

Conservative Catholics in America, who had weaponized their faith to impose their beliefs on pro-choice and LGBTQ+ fellow citizens, came to be extremely disappointed in the new pontiff... 

for Q Syndicate January, 2014

...and eagerly searched for another.

Here I suggested that Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt, Catholic League professional umbrage taker Bill Donahue, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, anti-marriage troublemaker Maggie Gallagher, and Senator Rick Santorum would be happy to invest Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson with the scepter of St. Peter.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2015

Rowan County Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who worked her refusal to issue to issue same-sex couples marriage licenses into national fame, subsequently boasted of having a private audience with the Pope. It eventually came to light that her private audience was shared with dozens of other Vatican visitors, and was private only in the sense that she hadn't brought the right-wing media along.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2020

Pope Francis gave his blessing to "civil unions" rather than marriage equality for same-sex couples in the fall of 2020 (although some conservative Catholics disputed the translation in English-speaking media of the papal Latin "convivenia civil"). A majority of the Catholic majority on the McConnell Supreme Court have been itching to overturn the 2014 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling favoring marriage equality in this country.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2021

Franciscan liberality notwithstanding, Catholic orthodoxy continues to condemn homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered."

As with the Anglican, Methodist, fundamentalist, and other denominations, antigay animus is especially dominant among Catholic clergy in much of Africa. Pope Francis's dialogue in this next cartoon is a direct quote, somewhat edited between panels two and three:

February, 2024

Ninety bishops and cardinals published a letter strenuously objecting to that papal pronouncement. They will be speaking up loudly as their conclave meets to elect a successor to this modern-day Pope. 

Don't be surprised to see someone more in the mold of Benedict XVI... if not Innocent IV.

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When I scour newspapers and magazines from 100 years ago for these Graphical History Tours, I never come across Pope Pius XI in U.S. editorial cartoons. I suppose that Protestant cartoonists didn't pay much attention to what Pius XI had to say about anything, and any Catholic cartoonists never presumed to differ with him. He did issue encyclicals criticizing capitalistic greed and warning against socialism and communism.

After initially supporting fascism in his native Italy and in Germany, Pius XI would issue an encyclical in 1937, smuggled in to Nazi Germany, lashing out against violations of a concordat between the Nazi state and the Holy See. In Mit brennender Sorge, Pius condemned "pantheistic confusion," "neopaganism," and "the so-called myth of race and blood," which he called a form of idolatry.

I bring that up in regard to modern-day cartoonists such as Michael Ramirez, who apparently believe that papal pronouncements on current politics are something new with Pope Francis.

"You'll Have to Leave That Behind" by Michael Ramirez for Las Vegas Review Journal, April 21, 2025

Pius XI never stood up to Benito Mussolini, although he was scheduled to deliver an address on February 11, 1939 in which he was expected to denounce il Duce's laws aping Nazi Arianism. The Pope died on February 10, however, and Mussolini tried to have all 300 copies of the address destroyed.

Under the next Pope, Pius XII, the Roman Catholic Church turned a blind eye to the atrocities of Mussolini and Hitler. 

Today's Republican Party and its Amen Corner cartoonists, teledemagogues, and duck dynasts would most certainly have approved.

What Kind of Nation Elects a Fascist?

The answer may depress you.

I'll give you a hint: not a great one.

for Q Syndicate, Oct. 2004

Today's Graphical History Tour kicks off with a cartoon I drew 20 years ago when George W. Bush was sailing on a swiftboat to reelection. It expressed my feelings about his GOProud supporters then, and seems a propos to the several demographics who, having witnessed the shitshow that was Donald Berzelius Trump's first term, decided to ask for another.

Rather than the usual recap of my cartoons from 40, 30, 20, and 10 years ago, I feel that I just can't ignore the foreboding of what's in store during the next four.

When the outcome of last week's election could no longer be denied, I changed my personal Facebook photo, which had been of my "I Voted Today" sticker and buttons for three of the people I voted for, to this cartoon that I had drawn the first time our Electoral College handed the nation over to Donald Trump:

for Q Syndicate, November, 2016

I soon learned that my esteemed colleague, Jack Ohman, had just published an extremely similar cartoon, based on the same Bill Mauldin classic that had inspired mine.

That is what we in the editorial cartoon biz call a "Yahtzee." Jack and I independently came up with the same idea, based on the same subject matter familiar to both of us, to express the same reaction to (more or less) the same news event. Or, in this case, the recrudescence of the same news event eight years later.

To be quite honest, however, neither of our Lincoln Memorial Barfing cartoons quite capture my reaction this time around. The election of Trump for a second reich, this time with the support of an actual majority of my fellow Americans, feels more like seeing a dog eating its own vomit.

I’m not drawing that cartoon. 

Pat Bagley drew a slightly more sanitized version of that sort of idea anyway, and it was still too risqué for his editors at the Salt Lake Tribune. I don't like to swipe my colleagues' work here, but I think you need to see what I’m talking about.

"Lap Lap Lap..." by Pat Bagley for Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 9, 2024

At this point, we’ve moved on from the initial shock and horror of Trump’s election, to the ever-accumulating nausea and dread of one outrageous cabinet appointment after another to the impending cabinet of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether.

I tried warning everyone about it with last week’s Graphical History Tour, but obviously, I wasn’t forceful enough. 

I didn't include this next cartoon last week lest it prove prophetic:

January, 2021

Perhaps I should have.

It has been noted that if you've ever wondered what you would have done when the Nazis took over Germany, congratulations, you're doing it now.

"'De Notenkraker' Een Hitler vanu Speculaies" by George van Raemdocnk in De Notenkraker, Amsterdam, ca. February, 1933. My rough translation.

Having seen the cartoons of Ben Garrison, Chip Bok, Gary Varvel, Henry Payne, and others gloating over the November 5 results, I'd suggest my colleagues substitute the word "drawing" for "doing."

Since this post is supposed to be about history, here's a little taste of what Germany's cartoonists were drawing when Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933.

"Die Meistersinger (Dritter Aufzug) by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Feb. 12, 1933

The Garrison types were in charge at the Berlin satirical weekly Kladderadatsch, where Hitler's rise to power was greeted with the above paraphrase of the poet Hans Sachs, a leading character in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. (February, 1933 happened to be the 50th anniversary of Wagner's death, so there were a number of cartoons referencing the composer at the time.)

"Immer Sein Kampf..." by Karl Arnold in Simplicissimus, Munich, Feb. 5, 1933

Simplicissimus, published in Munich since 1896, was a center-left counterpart to Berlin's Kladderadatsch. Its satire became less pointed during The Great War, under pressure to be patriotic; it was no friend of the Nazis during the Weimar period, however.

I don't know whether the date on their February 5, 1933 issue is when it hit the newsstands, or the date until which it was intended to remain on the newsstands, but the cover cartoon's intention was clearly to mock the prospect of a Hitler chancellorship on the strength of a bunch of hayseeds from the Teutoburg forest area.

"Zur Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches" by Karl Arnold in Simplicissimus, Stuttgart, March 12, 1933

Shortly after Hitler's rise to power, Simplicissimus had found it necessary to decamp from Munich to Stuttgart.

"Wagner in Walhall" by Thomas Th. Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, February 12, 1933

Having already spent time in prison for publishing a cartoon critical of Kaiser Wilhelm in 1898, editor Thomas Theodor Heine appears to have shied away from satire targeting individual politicians. I don't detect a political subtext in his tribute to Wagner; yet Heine still had commentary to offer about the new government's plans to fix the German economy.

"Vierjahresplan" by Th. Th. Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, Feb. 26, 1933

Within months, Heine, a Jew, was ousted from the magazine and would flee to Czechoslovakia. When that, too, proved unsafe, he moved to Norway, and finally to Sweden, where he died in 1948. His last cartoon in Simplicissimus was in the April 1, 1933 edition, under the appropriate title, "Epilogue." 

"Epilog" by Th. Th. Heine in Simplicissimus, Stuttgart, April 1, 1933

Toon: Very Fine People on Both Sides

Former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly has written a book of his experiences in the Donald Schickelgruber Trump White House. According to an excerpt in the New Yorker Trump expressed to Kelly his admiration of "German generals" and wished that American generals were more like them.

"Do you mean Bismarck's generals?" Kelly told the Atlantic he'd asked Trump. He added, "I mean, I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, 'Do you mean the Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals?' And he said, 'Yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals.'"

Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the last sixteen months of Trump's presidency, is quoted in Bob Woodward's latest book as calling Trump "fascist to the core." Two of Trump's Secretaries of Defense, Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis and Army Lt. Col. Mark Esper, and one of his National Security Advisers, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, swell the chorus that Trump must never again be Commander In Chief of the U.S. military.

The White House and cabinet officials letting it be known that Trump is a fascist wannabe dictator who holds up Adolph Hitler as a role model only confirm what we've seen from the outside. Anyone who has been paying the slightest scrap of attention these past eight years knows that he worships the ground Vlad the Defenestrator Putin walks on, wants to be BFFs with Kim Jong Il, and adores what Viktor Orbán has done to Hungarian democracy.

Once upon a time, being exposed by that much military brass as Adolph Hitler's biggest fan would have been enough to send Trump slinking off in ignominy to Mar-a-Lagoon and thence to Argentina. But apparently, half the population of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina (and overwhelming majorities elsewhere in Dixie and the great plains) just don't care. 

For reasons that defy rational analysis, they enthusiastically plan to vote for an actual, literal, bona fide Nazi sympathizer for President of the United States.

Anything to get transgender folks out of the nation's rest rooms and defend the nation's aryan purity of essence. To Trump basest base, nothing else matters.

My cartoon today updates one by the great Australian-British editorial cartoonist, David Low. "Rendez-vous 1939" depicted Hitler and Joseph Stalin greeting each other: "The scum of the earth, I believe?" "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?" At their feet lay Poland, slain under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact partitioning the country that had separated them.

President Putin's policy since assuming power at the turn of the millennium has been to reconquer the nations that declared their independence from Moscow in 1989-1991. Trump will pull the rug out from under the government of Ukraine, which has been trying to fend off Russian aggression since 2008. Just as he pulled the rug out from under the government of Afghanistan.

If Trump is returned to the White House, no country in Eastern Europe will be safe from Russian lebensraum. No country anywhere else will be able to trust in United States assurances of friendship. There will be a new Axis of Evil, and we will be a junior member of it.

Dammit, this matters.

Crime and Punishment

Today's Graphical History Tour takes us to April of 1924 to visit some of history's notorious villains.

"Down and Out Club" by T.E. Powers for Star Company ca. April 4, 1924

The Teapot Dome scandal continued to take its toll on holdovers from the Harding administration with the resignation of Attorney General Harry Daugherty. T.E. Powers depicts him walking past the "Little Green House on K Street" where many of the Teapot Dome deals were reportedly made; then meeting disgraced Interior Secretary Albert Fall, Gaston Means, and Dr. Frederick Cook.  Finally, Daugherty escapes to assume the role of elder statesman in Ohio Republican politics.

Coolidge replaced Daugherty with Harlan A. Stone, whose first action in office was to clear the place of Daugherty cronies. Coolidge would later appoint Stone to the Supreme Court; Franklin Roosevelt elevated him to Chief Justice in 1941.

(Means and Cook were only tangentially connected to the Teapot Dome case. Means, an agent of the Department of Justice, testified to the Senate in March that he had collected large bribes for Daugherty crony Jess Smith from a wide variety of persons interested in avoiding federal prosecution; Smith  committed suicide in May of 1923 — although as later with Vincent Foster, some raised doubts. Dr. Frederick Cook, a trustee of the Petroleum Producers Association, was convicted of illegally transferring some oil-producing properties in Texas to himself and his wife.)

"A Cabinet Officer Who Might Escape Congressional Criticism" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 2, 1924

Having no connection to any of the scandals then in the headlines, the actual Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, would serve out the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and well into that of Herbert Hoover. 

Side note: Attorney General Stone would launch an anti-trust investigation into Aluminum Company of America (now Alcoa), owned by the Mellon family, but it would be 14 years before any charges were filed.

"Who's Been Running It Night and Day" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 6, 1924

With Daugherty's resignation, the Coolidge administration was now free of any officers directly connected to the Teapot Dome scandal, the Veterans Bureau scandal, and other taint left over from the Harding administration.

by Charles Henry "Bill" Sykes in Life, April 10, 1924

Not that the scandals were about to stop generating headlines, of course. But the administration and Congress could at least claim to be doing what they could to expose and repair the damage.

"Still 'Demonstrating'" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger before April 12, 1924

Turning to other issues: Citizens of the mining town of Lilly, Pennsylvania repeatedly disrupted a Ku Klux Klan rally the week of April 6, spraying water from firehoses at the klansmen as they paraded through the town. The klansmen responded with gunfire, killing two and injuring several others.

Police in the town arrested 24 of the reportedly 500 klansmen as the group left Lilly by train, and confiscated some 50 firearms. The 24 were held without bail on murder charges. Four Lilly residents who were arrested for inciting a riot were released on their own recognizance. Trials were scheduled for May and June.

"The Penalty of Treason" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, April 2, 1924

Meanwhile, in Germany, verdicts came down in the trial of the Beer Hall Putsch leaders. General Erich Ludendorff, the figure most recognizable to American readers, was found not guilty.

These last cartoons are by German cartoonists; the first hangs on punning the city of Dusseldorf and the brash insult "Dusseltier," roughly, "dumbass."

"Großherzig" by Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 13, 1924

Among the nine putsch leaders found guilty were Nazi leaders Adolph Hitler and Rudolph Hess. They were to serve their terms in fortress confinement (festungschaft); there was talk of assigning deaf guards to watch over Hitler so that he couldn't talk them into freeing him.

"Der Erste April" by Thomas Theodor Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, April 1, 1924

Thomas Theodor Heine's front page cartoon in the Munich satire weekly Simplicissimus — the issue dated the very day of the verdict — saw Hitler as the stuff of April Fool's jokes.

Released from his festungschaft after only nine months, Hitler had just enough time to write Mein Kampf and to plot a more successful entry into Berlin.

"Treue um Treue" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 13, 1924

The other character in Oskar Garvens's cartoon is Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Generalstaatskommissar of Bavaria, who was giving a speech in the Bürgerbräukeller when Hitler's Nazis stormed the beerhall and began their attempted coup. Von Kahr shared Hitler's desire of overthrowing the national government in Berlin to set up a dictatorship, but one led by himself, Lt. General Otto von Lossow of the Reichswehr, and Bavarian police commander Hans von Seisser.

But the triumvirate of von Kahr, von Lossow, and Seisser acted to thwart Hitler's putsch, calling out the police to disperse the putschists before they could march on Berlin. For that, von Kahr lost the support of Bavarian right-wingers. Ten years later, he was arrested by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the "Night of Long Knives" and shot to death in detention.

Someday Mein Prince Will Come

"Rough Going" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Nov. 6, 1923

Turning our attention to foreign affairs in November, 1923, we find Germany in danger of splintering apart. A separatist movement in the Rhineland was actively supported by a vindictively hostile France (to the horror of its erstwhile Entente allies). There were Monarchists in Bavaria loyal to Crown Prince Rupprecht, and Socialists in Saxony inspired by Vladimir Lenin.

"The Prodigal's Return" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, Nov. 5, 1923

Roiling the Liebfraumilch further, Crown Prince Friedrich, the son of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II, returned from exile, although his visa was for a Christmas visit only. 

"Life Iss Choost Vun Ting After Anuder" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn, ca. Nov. 26, 1923

German President Ebert fired General Otto von Lossow as commander of the Reichswehr in Bavaria only to have Lossow reappointed by Bavarian dictator Dr. Gustav von Kahr.

in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Nov. 4

Then came the Beer Hall Putsch.

Staatskommissar von Kahr was giving a speech denouncing Marxism at the Bürgerbräu Keller in Munich when General Erich von Ludendorff and an Austrian named Adolph Hitler burst in and took over the bar. Hitler declared himself ruler of Bavaria and Chancellor of Germany.

"Die Gefahren der Münchener Bräuskeller" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Nov. 18, 1923

Oskar Garvens's cartoon here recalls the socialist Mathäser beerhall putsch of 1918 (also in Munich), and suggests a royalist coup in the not distant future.

"Kicking His Dog Around" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 14, 1923

The Bürgerbräu putsch was soon put down — by that same General Lossow whom President Ebert had tried to dismiss. Hitler and Ludendorff were arrested and charged with high treason; Hitler would serve nine months in jail, but Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges.

"The Distress Signal" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, Nov. 10, 1923

I may easily have missed another, but James's "The Distress Signal" is the earliest U.S. editorial cartoon I have come across in which Hitler himself makes an appearance. He showed up in earlier German cartoons of course, and there are earlier American cartoons about Nazism. But if another American cartoonist drew him before this one, I haven't seen it.

"Ein Trost" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Nov. 11, 1923

We shall use this Garvens cartoon, in which Uncle Sam towers over representatives of France, Japan, Russia, Italy, and an especially diminutive Great Britain, to pivot to a couple other events of note around the world in November.

"My Way Works Better" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, ca. Nov. 13, 1923

The Republic of Turkey was declared on October 29, 1923, bringing the Ottoman Empire to its official end. Field Marshall Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was already President of the Assembly, Cabinet, and Popular Party, was named President of the new Republic, without opposition. 

"The Multiple Dictator" by Ernest H. Shepard in Punch, London, Nov. 7, 1923

E.H. Shepard's take on the multitasking President borrows a stanza from "The Yarn of the Nancy Bell" by W.S. Gilbert — ironically, a poem originally rejected by Shepard's publisher because its subject was cannibalism at sea.

"Sittin' Pretty" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 1, 1923

I still see the occasional flurry of visits to this blog from students studying Philippine history, so here are a couple cartoons updating that topic.

A quarter century after the Spanish-American War, the Philippines remained a territory of the United States of America. Retired Major General Leonard Wood, a good friend of Teddy Roosevelt in the day and credible Republican presidential contender in 1920, was appointed Governor General of Philippines by Warren Harding in 1921.

His was a contentious governorship; he vetoed 16 actions of the Filipino legislature in his first year in office. His reinstating of a fired American police detective in Manila provoked Wood's entire cabinet to resign in July, 1923. His policy aimed at selling publicly owned railroads and agricultural operations to U.S. capitalists, was in stark contrast with the policies of his Democratic predecessor.

"Stay With It, Leonard" by Wm. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Nov. 9, 1923

I believe, however, that these cartoons concern the Moro rebels on Mindanao and Sulu, an Islamic minority not effectively represented in either the American administration or the Filipino legislature of the time. (I find contemporary newspaper reports in the U.S. referring to the Moro rebels as "pagans," a generic term likely used to describe anything and everything outside of Judeo-Christian religion.) Wood had some experience there as the U.S. Governor of Moro Province from 1903 to 1906.

An Associated Press report of November 26, 1923 charged the Moro uprising was a symptom of generalized Filipino disagreement of General Wood, and perhaps an excuse given by the General and the Coolidge administration to ignore the Philippine legislature's request that Wood be recalled home.

"One defense of the present policy in the Philippines is that the trouble in the islands is all religious, that the Moros will not consent to being governed by Christian governors. ... The fact is, during the World War when American troops were practically withdrawn, and when [Francis] Harrison was Governor General, there was very little in the Philippines that could be twisted into resembling a religious war. But every policy must have its argument in justification."

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Before I sign off: lest one forget on this Veterans' Day:

"Lest You Forget" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 10, 1923

"No War for Him, Let's Hope" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 10, 1923

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, generation by generation.

Q Toon: Scenes from a Mall

California lawyer Matt McLaughlin has plopped down $200 to propose an initiative for the state ballot mandating the execution of gays and lesbians. When I first heard about Matt McLaughlin's so-called "Sodomite Suppression Act," my first thought was that Matt McLaughlin must fancy himself an Andy Kaufman for the 2010s. Matt McLaughlin cannot possibly be serious.

Unfortunately, according to all news reports, Matt McLaughlin is not answering reporters' calls, and his answering machine is full, so it's really hard to tell whether Matt McLaughlin is a jerk who thinks he's funny, a jerk who thinks he's edgy, or a jerk who thinks he's Hitler.

I guess the media will have to camp out on Matt McLaughlin's doorstep, and hound all Matt McLaughlin's neighbors, Matt McLaughlin's ex-girlfriends, Matt McLaughlin's mother and Matt McLaughlin's legal clients in order to find out exactly what kind of jerk Matt McLaughlin is.

Performance Art or Hate Speech, there doesn't seem to be any way for California to deny Matt McLaughlin his right to collect signatures from other performance artists and hate speakers to get this blatantly unconstitutional measure on the state ballot. Not that this sort of stunt was totally unanticipated:

The growing number of proposed initiatives – from 47 in the 1960s to nearly 650 in the 2000s – prompted lawmakers to revisit the issue [of increasing the filing fee] in recent years. They contended that raising the fee would help defray the average $8,000 in administrative costs for state officials to prepare the title and summary for each proposal. It could also dissuade people from ...turning in what would generally be viewed as a frivolous proposal.

California has long had a problem with its citizens approving expensive ballot initiatives on the one hand and initiatives refusing to pay for them on the other. Turns out that's how the initiative process itself works.

Californians who love their annual avalanche of ballot initiatives counter that raising the filing fee sends a message that democracy is a plaything of the rich; nor do they want one of their elected officials to have the power to block any ballot initiatives.

In the end, we are left to trust that there aren't 365,888 hateful performance artists in all of California willing to put their names on Matt McLaughlin's affront to civilization.

Q Syndicate☛Mar 26, 2015

And thank goodness they don't have cheap ballot initiatives in Oklahoma.

Just Like Hitler

Some redneck with a guitar Jr. got hisself axed from his gig singing the opening to ESPN's Monday Night Football this week. I was at a meeting, so I missed the first half of the game, and didn't know anything about it until the next morning.

Funny thing is, I thought the game ran pretty long. You'd have thought that skipping the "Are You Ready for Some Football" opener would have shaved a good five or ten minutes off the show.

Well, anyway, the problem was that the guy had gone on Fox 'n' Friends and compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler. To most of Fox News's audience, that's about as controversial as vanilla ice cream -- and ESPN might have let it pass if Monday's game were between Atlanta and Houston -- but ESPN ultimately decided that this was a metaphor too far.

Last month, Phil Hands, editorial cartoonist for the Wisconsin State Journal, took some heat for a cartoon in which a protester against Governor Scott Walker responds to Walker's announcement that he will "focus on creating jobs" by saying, "Ya know, Hitler created jobs in Nazi Germany!" The cartoon followed a Nazi protest in Milwaukee, at which some flyer distributed by counterprotesters included a remark that Hitler, like Walker, sought to bust unions.

Hands still has his gig at the WSJ, which is a good thing. We really don't have many editorial cartoonists drawing about state politics in Wisconsin, what with the Milwaukee J. Sentinel having fired all its cartoonists and the Capital Times going web-only. Joe Heller appears in several state newspapers, and Mike Konopacki and Gary Huck draw for Labor papers. Since the Racine Post logged off, I haven't had a real outlet for any Wisconsin issue cartoons other than this here blog.

A friend asked me recently if I've ever used Adolf Hitler in a cartoon. I could only think of two, and have only been able to find one. Dating from 2003, it isn't likening anyone to Hitler; instead, it had to do with an allegation that Hitler was gay. 

The other cartoon was probably in the 1980's, and may be lost to history. If I ever run across it, I'll try to remember to post it -- it's just that I don't remember what it was about. Just vaguely that I drew him shocked or surprised about something or other.