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

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.

Quel Hommage

Today's Graphical History Tour dives into the archives in my basement and comes up with a quartet of cartoons from Januaries from decades ago.

I mentioned earlier this week that some of my fellow editorial cartoonists mimicked Ann Telnaes's drawing style in their #StandWithAnn cartoons, while I and others had not. I've drawn a number of cartoons over the years in the style of other artists, particularly when appropriating their ideas. Other times, I have simplified the drawing, as in this one:

in UW-P Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Jan. 31, 1985

I was referencing a nearly 75-year-old cartoon drawn by Puck cartoonist Johannes Keppler when then-President William Howard Taft was having similar problems getting his legislative agenda through Congress and the courts.

"I Must Have Been Dozing" by Johannes Keppler in Puck, June 22, 1910

I didn't include anywhere near as much shading, the window, the doorway, or anything outside the room, but I kept the Capitol sewing basket, the table it rested on, and two of the cats.

Now, there was a problem with my cartoon in that hardly any of the Ranger's readers would have had any reason to be familiar with the original Keppler version. Not even the professors would have had a subscription to Puck magazine in 1910; only someone else with The American Presidency in Political Cartoons 1776-1976 (Peregrine Smith Inc., 1976) could possibly have caught the reference.

The message of the cartoon still applied, and should have been understood by anyone paying any attention to current events; but as a tribute, the cartoon was, frankly, just stealing an old idea.

Reusing someone else's old cartoon works best if the original cartoon is (or ought to be) well known: Thomas Nast's "Who Stole the People's Money," or Charles Schulz's cartoons of Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown. I am reminded, however, of a recent cartoon by a fellow editorial cartoonist that referenced a specific episode of The Simpsons. According to the reader comments, I wasn't the only person who had missed that particular episode and therefore the reference.

Then there was the time that I drew a cartoon for the NorthCountry Journal relying on a reference to "Calvin and Hobbes," a very popular comic strip running in many newspapers at the time. The NCJ editor and publisher, however, had never seen "Calvin and Hobbes," so I had to explain it to her and assure her that her readers would get the cartoon.

By the way, the credit line under my signature in my Ranger cartoon says "again," because I had drawn a cartoon the previous November about Ronald Reagan's reelection, based on a Keppler cartoon celebrating Teddy Roosevelt's 1905 inauguration. I don't suppose many Parkside students or faculty were familiar with that cartoon, either.

✍

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, Jan. 30, 1995

I include this cartoon in part to set up a subsequent homage cartoon. Dick Armey (R-TX) was the new House Majority Leader in the 104th Congress, and one of the architects of the 1994 Republican Revolution.

During a January 20, 1995 radio interview, Armey referred to fellow Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), the only out gay man in Congress, as "Barney Fag." The quote, verbatim, as Armey was discussing a possible book deal, was: “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, and 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.”

✍

in Business Journal, Milwaukee, Jan. 21, 2005

A propos the Washington Post editor's excuse for spiking an Ann Telnaes cartoon on the grounds that it reiterated past and future opinion columns, here's one of the many cartoons I drew for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee reiterating the editorial it ran alongside.

That was, in fact, the role I was expected to fill at the Business Journal from 1996 to 2005. I was brought in to replace conservative cartoonist Craig DuMez, who had often drawn whatever was on his mind. The editors at the Business Journal were interested in having editorial cartoons that reflected the week's editorial — which weren't always as far to the right as DuMez was.

Or, in this case, political at all.

I've never met the guy, but DuMez might have chafed at having to draw as many cartoons about hospital expansions, mergers, and construction as I had to do in my nine years with the Business Journal. This editorial had something to do with an addition to Froedtert Hospital, which the Beej hoped wouldn't be tarted up with a bunch of fancy frills — the sort of things one assumes architects dream about and hospital planners hope will make patients feel they're in a five-star hotel.

✍

for Q Syndicate, Jan., 2015

Finally, 2015 was going to be the year that the Supreme Court discovered that criminalizing same-sex marriage discriminated against same-sex couples, so Republican legislatures around the country were desperately preparing mechanisms to keep unconstitutional discrimination legal.

This is one of my cartoons in which the characters are not based on real people, even if their actions or opinions are based on those of actual persons. My clue to the reader that I've made up the person in the cartoon is if their name is somehow a pun.

You might find Lauryl's name in the list of ingredients on your shampoo bottle. Senator Beautron can be found overlooking a sports arena and displaying scores, stats, and replays.

I was considering last names for my latest recurring characters, MAGA Max and Liberal Leo, whom I named purely for the alliteration. "Headroom" has already been taken, so perhaps Max's surname should be K. Passidy. Or something less obvious, like Carpone. How about O'Delay, Leo?

I'll have to get back to you on that.

Q Toon: John Lewis

So many cartoons eulogizing Congressman John Lewis have focused on his work to advance the cause of civil rights for Black Americans. He was also in the vanguard of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, so I hope you will excuse yet one more drawing of him and that bridge.

Today's cartoon quotes from a column Congressman Lewis wrote in the October 25, 2003 edition of  the Boston Globe, "At a Crossroads on Gay Unions."

The column itself cribs extensively from a floor speech Lewis gave in the House of Representatives against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, way back in 1996:

"Marriage is a basic human right. You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to say, of people talking about interracial marriages, I quote: 'Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married.' Why don't you want your fellow men and women, your fellow Americans, to be happy? Why do you attack them? Why do you want to destroy the love they hold in their hearts? Why do you want to crush their hopes, their dreams, their loves, their aspirations? ...
I fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color [not] to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I've known racism. I've known bigotry. This bill stinks to the same fear, hatred and intolerance."

This is the kind of thing that earned him the sobriquet "The Conscience of the House." LGBTQ+ rights have come a long way since 1996: in spite of Lewis's speech, 118 Democrats joined 224 Republicans in voting for that odious bill. Only 65 Democrats and one Republican voted against it. (Two Democrats voted "present"; 22 Democrats and nine Republicans missed the vote.)

Many state legislators showed the same willingness to knuckle under to antigay bigotry as one state after another passed its own version of DOMA. And that included many legislators who claimed to be straight allies of the LGBTQ+ community.

Lewis ended his column in the Boston Globe on much the same note as his 1996 floor speech:

"Rather than divide and discriminate, let us come together and create one nation. We are all one people. We all live in the American house. We are all the American family."  

Updates on the Eights

August has a reputation for being a month of summer doldrums in which little happens by way of news, but I find plenty to disprove that reputation when leafing through my cartoons drawn in August years ending in 8. That is partly because of national political conventions in election years, but not entirely.

August, 1978 saw the election of Cardinal Albino Luciani as Pope John Paul I, who broke with tradition both by selecting a double name and by having the Roman numeral I after it (unlike, for example, Pope Francis). Allied with neither the conservative or liberal activist cardinals of the time, Luciani had not been among the popularly rumored successors to Pope Paul VI.

Black smoke rose from the Sistine Chimney as the first three inconclusive ballots were burned. White smoke should have signaled the election of a new pope, but witnesses described the smoke from the fourth and conclusive ballot as gray.

John Paul I's papacy would last only 33 days (which still doesn't rank as the shortest papacy on record; ten popes reigned more briefly than he). He apparently had a heart attack while reading in bed, leaving little legacy besides the double name taken up by his successor, and rumors — fictionalized in Godfather III — that he was murdered.

Skipping ahead ten years, August, 1988 was an election year in the U.S. Wisconsin's statewide partisan primary was held in September back then (reminder: now it's this Tuesday!). There were races to succeed retiring Senator Bill Proxmire in both parties. Two of the candidates were Democratic former Governor Tony Earl and Republican Steve King, best known for having held and drugged Martha Mitchell, wife of Nixon's Attorney General, in her hotel room to keep her from talking to the press.

My cartoon for The Journal Times took note of the senatorial candidates' names as well as a nickname for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. "Duke" didn't really suit the man well, and it didn't stick. As for King and Earl, both lost their parties' nominations to State Senator Susan Engeleiter and the ultimate winner, Milwaukee Bucks owner Herb Kohl.

Earl currently serves on the governing board of the governmental watchdog group Common Cause Wisconsin. King has been Trump's ambassador to the Czech Republic since 2017.

The National Republican Party held its presidential nominating convention in August. Vice President George H.W. Bush had the nomination all locked up, so the only suspense was over whom he would name as his running mate. His choice of Senator J. Danforth Quayle (R-IN) surprised everyone, including your humble cartoonist, who had not included Dan in the above cartoon.

Skipping ahead another ten years to August, 1998, I was freelancing separate cartoons for University of Wisconsin campus newspapers (yes, even in August), the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, and LGBTQ biweekly In Step News.

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO) had sponsored an amendment to a vital appropriations bill; the amendment would have gutted President Clinton's Executive Order 13087, which added sexual orientation to the federal government's nondiscrimination policies. Lobbying the Republican-controlled House and Senate to defeat the amendment was a chief goal of the Human Rights Campaign that year. Surprisingly, the House voted 252-176 to defeat the Hefley Amendment.

Of course, the George W. Bush and Donald Joffrey Trump administrations revoked Executive Order 13087 and its Obama administration equivalent, E.O. 13672.

I had to get one Business Journal cartoon in here. I think you ought to be able to figure out the point of the editorial it accompanied.

But the Big Story out of August, 1998 was not about appropriations bills or rural property taxes.

President Clinton's vehement denials of sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky were given the lie when Lewinsky turned over a blue dress stained with presidential semen (which her pal at the Pentagon, Linda Tripp, had encouraged her to save as evidence).

These days, there's an entire cable news network devoted to defending the current president, no matter how overwhelming the evidence against him, and crowds of ardent supporters who will hoot and holler their fervent belief in his obvious lies. But in August, 1998, it seemed that the only person in the whole country willing to stick his neck out in support of William Jefferson Clinton was Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA). He may still have the original of this cartoon.

I'll leave you in suspense over how the Lewinsky story turned out, and instead jump ahead another ten years to August, 2008. The Olympics were coming for the first time to Communist China, where the authoritarian government took strict measures to clean up Beijing in time for the games.

If only they could have worked as hard to clean up the smog!

Even while authorities were shuttering the dance floor of Destination, Beijing's one and only gay dance bar (claiming the bar was too small to be a club), official state media were highlighting Destination as proof of the country's friendliness to its LGBTQ citizens. From the Xinua news article “Beijing’s Gay Scene Comes Out of the Closet”:

At weekends, the floor is always crowded with young men dancing close to each other to hit songs from Rihanna, Justin Timberlake or Kanye West. The strobe lights flash over their ecstatic faces and sweating bodies. Some stand in the corner drinking, flirting or just watching. … Today, China's young gay men enjoy a freer environment. With the thriving online gay communities, such as aibai.com, idanlan.com, gays can easily find each other and arrange activities through on-line forums or chat rooms.

2008 was also another presidential election year, of course.

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain (the party convention wouldn't be held until September) launched a peculiar attack on Barack Obama on the grounds that it was somehow a bad thing that the Democratic nominee wanted drivers to keep their tires properly inflated.

The party's convention mantra of "Drill, Baby, Drill" would prove catchier than "Drive, Flabby, Drive." But George W. Bush's Great Recession would hit in September, totally changing the national conversation.

Q Toon: Adjusting to Retirement

You can't keep a good man down.

Qtoon this week: Barney Frank Retires

If a public figure wears glasses, and the public generally never sees that public figure without them, a cartoonist is obliged to draw glasses on a caricature of that person. In fact, the glasses are often an essential identifying feature of the person. But some situations call for the glasses to be off... and the My Name Is ___ label to go on, as the familiar face becomes unrecognizable without them.

Such a wordy cartoon!

Vintage Barney Frank cartoons

16-term Congressman from Massachusetts Barney Frank announced yesterday that he would not run for office again in 2012. He cited his redrawn district as one factor, and that at 71, he wanted to spend some time in academia before settling down to retirement.

As the first out gay man in Congress, he has been the subject of occasional Q Syndicate cartoons over the years. Rep. Frank's office requested the original of this one from August, 1998.

At the time, revelations of the affair between President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky were coming out fast and furious; that the famous semen-stained blue dress was in existence and in evidence was a recent headline. While many congressional Democrats whispered that perhaps it was time for Clinton to resign and let Al Gore assume the presidency, Barney Frank was vocal -- and alone -- in his defense of the President.

Later that year, Frank was joined in the House by Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who has the distinction of  being the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to Congress. The above cartoon  refers to an incident where Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) was recorded referring to the Gentleman from Massachusetts as "Barney 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."

I'll wrap this post up with a cover I drew for Q Salt Lake. Playing up Rep. Frank's role on the House Banking Committee, I drew him as he might look on U.S. currency. This was in 1999, well before the subject of this week's Q Syndicate cartoon advocated throwing Mr. Frank in jail for the temerity of imposing rules and regulations on the banking industry whose reckless abandon (not, as Republicans have been trying to convince people ever since, schoolteachers' retirement plans) created the worst recession in 80 years.

Q Toon: Green ENDA and Ham

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) will reintroduce the Employment Non-Discrimination Act into the current Congress, although he concedes that it has virtually no chance of passage in the current Republican-majority House.

I wanted to draw the Capitol dome in the style of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, author of Green Eggs and Ham. His editorial cartoons for PM during World War II were drawn with the same whimsy and fantastic imagery that he used in his children's books. His GOP elephants look like Horton (of Who-hearing fame); his eagles more closely resemble sneetches than any eagle you've ever seen. Improbable machines and strange landscapes are common.

But the one and only drawing I found of the Capitol building was in the background of a November 18, 1941 cartoon, and is squarely representational:
Here I had visions of the dome topped with a lazily drooping attic and Wendy Who holding a torch aloft. In my minds eye, it looked so Seussian. On paper, I'm afraid it just looks like I don't know a thing about perspective. (Sketching and resketching the cartoon, I gradually shoved the figure atop the attic up and out of the cartoon frame.)