Q Toon: At the Independents' Table

Democrats did not even get 24 hours to savor their 51-vote majority in the U.S. Senate before Senator Kyrsten Sinema decided to upstage Rev. Raphael Warnock and announce that she was bolting the party.

She joins Socialist Bernie Sanders (a Democrat in Presidential Politics Only) of Vermont and true Independent Angus King of Maine as the kids at the table in the corner. Both of them came to the Senate without pretending to be Democrats, and their voters elected them with full knowledge of where they stand on the key issues.

Sinema, on the other hand, an erstwhile Green Party activist from Arizona, has been a difficult member of the Democratic caucus, especially in the last two years. She stubbornly defended the chamber's filibuster rules that allow Republicans to block much of President Biden's agenda. Liberal activists have been suspicious that she has allowed herself to become beholden to big-money right-wing donors. 

Given how radically the Republican Party has lurched to the extreme right, I don't expect Sinema to stray far from Democratic Party stands on personal liberties. Fiscal and border issues seem likely to be another story. If the Republican House starts impeaching Biden administration officials willy-nilly, who the hell knows what Sinema would do?

She's up for reelection in 2024, and had been facing a strong challenger in the Democratic primary. By declaring herself an Independent, she sets up a three-way general election; and since Arizona does not have Georgia-style run-offs, even a Requblican who would make Kari Lake look reasonable could take the seat with a measly 34% of the vote.

Hold onto your tater tots.

What Is So Rare as a Ding in June?

I had originally intended to post this a couple weeks ago, but other things kept coming up. Better late than never:

The editors at Colliers Magazine carved out a bit of space in their issue of June 10, 1922, to highlight J.N. "Ding" Darling, their regular weekly editorial cartoonist:

A clue to Darling's fame here is that he never signed his cartoons for Colliers with his nickname; yet I'm sure that all of his readers knew exactly whom this paragraph was about before reading a word of it. Of the other editorial cartoonist "classics" cited in the article, Nast and Davenport were dead and gone, but McCutcheon was very much still active at the Chicago Tribune.

Before launching this weekly Graphical History tour half a dozen years ago, I was familiar only with Darling's pen-and-ink work for the Des Moines Register and New York Journal, so I find his wash work for the national magazine interesting. I suspect cartooning afficionados will, too, so today's installment shares his Colliers cartoons from June, 1922.

"Two Miserable Extremes" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, June 3, 1922

The percentages cited in Ding's June 3 cartoon are more or less the same now as they were at the start of the Roaring Twenties (we can ask Sen. Bernie Sanders to confirm the figures for us). The 1% these days, however, are crying not just all the way to the bank, but all the way to outer space.

"Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, June 10, 1922

Some things do change over time. Nowadays, hardly anybody is going to be familiar with Longfellow's poem about the village blacksmith. Heck, do today's millennials even know what a blacksmith was?

"The Modern Generation..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, June 17, 1922

Speaking of millennials — or centennials as you might have called them then — we're back in familiar territory with this cartoon. Ding is commenting on the national coal miners strike more than on flappers' manners

"Rearranging Pa's Things for Him" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, June 24, 1922

Ding's output in this period is pretty impressive: he drew these weekly cartoons for Colliers in addition to his seven cartoons a week for the Des Moines Register, plus the occasional local cartoon for the New York Tribune.

Bernie Brewer

I had to come back for just one more.

Chillin' with Bernie

Your Uncle Bernie is in town for a couple days, so why don't you two have a night out? Show him around town, stop somewhere for a few drinks, get to know each other. It'll be fun.

Q Toon: Faith, Hope and Love, aBiden

Human Rights Campaign issued their endorsement of Joe Biden for president this week on the eighth anniversary of his having proclaimed his support for marriage equality. That support was not an isolated outlier on LGBTQ+ issues, as the announcement explained:

As a Member of Congress over 36 years, Biden championed dozens of pieces of legislation providing greater protections for LGBTQ people. His support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) advocated for our dignity in the workplace. And his courage to do what’s right, even though it may be unpopular, twice stopped two constitutional amendments enshrining marriage discrimination as the law of the land. Biden’s early support for HIV/AIDS resources helped establish the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. While as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden helped secure the reauthorization of PEPFAR, which significantly expanded the funding and targets for treatment, care, and prevention of HIV/AIDS and repealed a statutory ban on visas for people who were HIV-positive.
As Vice President, Biden continued his decades-long fight for LGBTQ hate crime prevention playing an integral role in passing the landmark Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. He played a leading role in repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and opening service for transgender people giving LGBTQ service members the visibility and respect they deserve. In 2012, his support for the freedom to marry marked a major turning point for the marriage equality movement, contributing to a sea change in public opinion that ultimately culminated in a Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that made marriage equality the law of the land.
Throughout his career, Biden has been ahead of the curve on expanding protections and rights for transgender Americans. In 2012, he called transgender rights the “civil rights issue of our time” articulating a truth that many — even in his own party at the time — left unaddressed. He reiterated that statement when launching his LGBTQ platform earlier this year. He worked with President Obama to install transgender Americans throughout the administration including to positions within the White House. Throughout his campaign, Biden has elevated the need to address the epidemic of violence facing the transgender community — especially transgender women of color — and articulated a strong plan to empower transgender Americans in the workforce to help combat conditions that lead to that disproportionate violence.

Not that Biden's LGBTQ+ record is solid gold. In 1996, he voted for the Republicans' "Defense of Marriage Act." He had a lot of company; it passed the Senate 85-14. (Bernie Sanders joined 65 Democrats and Steve Gunderson, R-WI, in voting against it in the House; none of this year's other major presidential contenders were in Congress at the time.)

On the other hand, the only LGBTQ+-positive thing the Corrupt Trump Administration can point to is Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell's advocacy of decriminalizing homosexuality in other countries, which has yet to produce any tangible results.

The Log Cabin Republicans endorsed his reelection last year, notwithstanding Trump's attacks on transgender service members in the U.S. military. Rhapsodizing that "For LGBTQ Republicans, watching the 2016 GOP convention before Donald Trump took the stage was like a dream fulfilled," the Log Cabinettes were swayed by general issues of tax cuts and trade negotiations. Frankly, the Log Cabin Republicans are no more likely to withhold their endorsement of an incumbent president of their own party than the Stonewall Democrats would be.

The Stonewall Democrats haven't made a presidential endorsement yet this year. Social distancing, don't you know.

Q Toon: Buttigieg Out

Pete Buttigieg's suspension of his presidential race caught me just as I was about to draw something else for Q Syndicate, and it was something of a scramble to come up with a cartoon marking his withdrawal. Given that the syndicate's market is the LGBTQ+ press, I figured it was what those editors would want.

Even though one or two of the other candidates in this cartoon were bound to drop out after Super Tuesday.

Originally, this cartoon had Amy Klobuchar in it, but then she pulled out of the race just a few hours after I sent my cartoon off to the syndicate. Fortunately, I had put her somewhere where she was easy to remove — although that bit of plaid betrays where she had been. (It's gone from the higher-resolution files I sent chasing after the first emails to Q Syndicate.)

Some of my newspapers won't be on the newsstands until Thursday or Friday, by which time the more difficult task of removing Bloomberg and/or Warren is likely to be warranted.

Well, that's the drawback to not having my cartoons printed within a day of being drawn. Events have a way of ganging agley of expectations. For all I know, Tulsi Gabbard could ride her second-place finish in American Samoa all the way to November. And then this cartoon would look pretty stupid.

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Buttigieg's campaign was remarkable in that a young, gay, married, small-city mayor was taken seriously at the presidential level; and that the small-city part, and perhaps the young part, probably ended up being larger obstacles than the gay thing.

What might the future hold for Mayor Pete? The political landscape in Indiana being what it is, he has little chance of being elected to higher office there. He might try taking on four-term Republican Congressman Jackie Walorski, but getting elected Governor or Senator there would be a steep uphill climb. 2020 seems an unlikely year for a Democratic white male presidential nominee to select another white male as his running mate, so perhaps a cabinet post would be a more realistic opportunity.

But the guy showed that he could be taken seriously; so even as he heads into the sunset for now, I hope we haven't heard the last of Pete Buttigieg.

Q Toon: Pete, or Repeat

Video went viral last week of a woman learning at her Iowa Democratic caucus that a candidate she supported, Pete Buttigieg, is gay. Somehow, she had never heard this before, and since there's no same-sex marriage in the Bible, she asked to change her vote.

This week's cartoon is not about her.

That woman was also wearing stickers for Amy Klobuchar, a perfectly reasonable alternative for any voter who may have been interested in Pete Buttigieg. They're both centrist Democrats from the Midwest, with similar stands on most major issues. Chances are good that either is the second choice of many of the other's supporters.

If few of the Democratic candidates are catching fire yet, it's because most Democrats would be just as happy voting for any of the candidates besides the one they favor the most.

Most Democrats, that is, other than certain Bernie Sanders supporters from whom I hear a lot. So do pollsters.

In 2016, pollsters found that ten percent of Bernie Sanders voters in the primaries cast ballots for Donald Trump in November, which flabbergasts me. Wanting to shake up the system is one thing, but the differences between Socialist Sanders and Plutocrat Trump are so vast one has to wonder what exactly it was that the 10% saw in both of them.

10% of Bernie Bros may not sound like a lot, but they were enough to tip Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to Trump.

I'm guessing that if he doesn't get the nomination, most Buttigieg supporters today will support, more or less enthusiastically, whomever the Democratic nominee turns out to be rather than Donald Berzelius Trump. But you can never be sure about these voters who have only started paying attention to the race in the past week or two.

I don't know how else to explain a voter who had no idea that Buttigieg is gay and finds that fact to be a deal breaker.

Every one of the other Democratic candidates supports marriage equality, anathema to the crowd pushing to legislate Leviticus. If this woman gets all her news from her evangelical preacher, there's a good chance Revrunt Soandso's has forgiven Trump his multitude of sins past, present and future, but still thinks that Barack Obama was the Antichrist and that the current Democratic field is just as bad.

Oh, by the way, did she know that Amy Klobuchar is a Vikings fan?

Q Toon: Bernie's Brand New Bro

Comedian/podcaster Joe Rogan — depending on your age, you may remember him from News Radio, Fear Factor, The Joe Rogan Experience, or The Fast and the Furious, in which case you're confusing him with Vin Diesel — endorsed Bernie Sanders for president last week.

“I think I'll probably vote for Bernie... He’s been insanely consistent his entire life. He’s basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from.” 

The Sanders campaign put out a video touting Rogan's rather tepid endorsement, only to receive heated demands from fellow progressives from MoveOn.org to the Human Rights Campaign to apologize.

“It's one thing for Joe Rogan to endorse a candidate. It's another for @BernieSanders’ campaign to produce a video bolstering the endorsement of someone known for promoting transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny,” MoveOn tweeted Saturday.
“We urge Sen. Sanders and his campaign to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement. We stand in solidarity with folks hurt by this.”

“Bernie Sanders has run a campaign unabashedly supportive of the rights of LGBTQ people. Rogan, however, has attacked transgender people, gay men, women, people of color and countless marginalized groups at every opportunity,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “Given Rogan’s comments, it is disappointing that the Sanders campaign has accepted and promoted the endorsement.” 

Rogan's fans enjoy his coarse, politically incorrect, blunt, no-holds-barred brand of humor, I presume. I've seen Rogan described as libertarian, which makes his endorsement of a card-carrying socialist all the more bizarre. But he has had a wide variety of guests on his podcast, including Sanders, during which episode I assume Rogan refrained from deliberately misgendering transgender persons, or talking about "walking into Africa" in New York City, or sharing his insights on the history of Islam.

To his credit, Sanders has a history of reaching out to people in settings that most Democrats view as enemy territory, to wit his address to the students of Liberty University in 2015. For that matter, how ballsy is it for a guy to mount a credible run for the Democratic presidential nomination — twice — when he isn't even a Democrat?

In the end, candidates know that there is a risk to associating with others who may support them but may have said or done things with which one might be uncomfortable, whether it's Joe Rogan, or Jane Fonda, or Alec Baldwin, or Bill Maher. It's a question of how publicly and closely one wants to be associated with them. There's no hard and fast rule to this; one can't expect to accept support only from sainted souls pure as the driven snow.

Somewhere between one and thirty-six, however, there is a number of photographs one can be in with Lev Parnas after which one cannot credibly claim not to know him.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Aside from a caricature four years ago, I think this is the first feature length Bernie cartoon I've ever drawn. About time I got around to it, I suppose.

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I was replacing more of those defunct links to the old AAEC site the other night and came across one that, unlike every other one I've been replacing, still showed the cartoon thumbnail. 

(Don't bother clicking there to view; the above is just a screen grab, as is this example of what the rest of the defunct links have looked like.)

Like all the rest, the link led to a 404 Page Not Found message at the new AAEC site. It's just odd that the thumbnail still exists somewhere in the cloud or the ether or the wherevernet. There aren't any of my cartoons older than 2010 at the new AAEC site. 

I didn't have the flash drive with 2007 cartoons handy the other night... I'm kind of tempted to keep the defunct link up as a souvenir, though.

Q Toon: The First Rule of Book Club

As Buzz and Killer explain in this week's cartoon, a transgender activist named Andi Dier disrupted a book-signing event of Rose McGowan, an actress who has accused Harvey Weinstein of raping her. McGowan had been on the talk show circuit to promote her autobiography, Brave.

One thing I've learned in life is that if someone says they've been raped, you should try to show some respect and sympathy. One thing you should not do is start telling her "Oh, you think that's bad?"

Ms. Dier thought this was a good opportunity to go on the attack.

The video begins as McGowan is challenged by the activist, Andi Dier, about remarks she made on a RuPaul podcast last year: “I have a suggestion. Talk about what you said on RuPaul. Trans women are dying and you said that we, as trans women, are not like regular women. We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. There was a trans woman killed here a few blocks… I have been followed home.”
McGowan then cut her off: “Hold on. So am I. We are the same. My point was, we are the same. There’s an entire show called ID channel, a network, dedicated to women getting abused, murdered, sexualized, violated, and you’re a part of that, too, sister. It’s the same.”
Dier then asked what McGowan had done for transgender women, and McGowan asked Dier what she had done for women, and then all hell broke loose.

Nobody came out of the incident, shall we say, smelling like a rose.

Dier was ejected from the event. McGowan accused Dier of being a paid stooge of unnamed nefarious forces, and, after meeting an obligation to appear on Late Night with Stephen Colbert later that night, McGowan abruptly canceled her book tour, complaining that nobody had stepped up to defend her at the Barnes & Noble.

So, in case you're still wondering what the hell this was all about, here's what McGowan said on RuPaul's podcast:

She said they think they know what it’s like to grow up female because they "felt like a woman on the inside" but concluded this was false. McGowan said: "That’s not growing as a woman, that’s not living in this world as a woman and a lot of the stuff I hear trans [women] complaining about, yeah, welcome to the world."

As for Diers, there are internet accusations that pre-transition, he was a sex offender himself. (She denies this, and there doesn't appear to be any criminal record involved.)

Her life now seems to be devoted to punishing people who are slated to appear on a certain television program. Although claiming to have supported Bernie Sanders's run for the presidency, Diers wrote about badgering the Socialist-Democrat on the campaign trail:

After confronting Senator Sanders on stage, he walked away in a hurry and kind of ignored what I was saying. I was regretting not shutting it down but focused my efforts on making sure he wouldn’t leave this city without knowing my name. So we drilled him 3 more times that day.
By the time we got [to] the Late Night with Colbert, he was practically running away from us.

So now you know what this week's cartoon is all about. Don't you feel better?

2016 in Headlines

Since ’16back Saturday coincides with New Year's Eve this year, I'm going to post my annual photo of newspaper and magazine front pages here.

I offer my usual caveats: with only newspapers from the midwestern United States to choose from, I can't include many big international stories, such as the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The slow crushing of the rebellion in Syria lends itself more to photojournalism than a banner headline. And I might have included the death of Fidel Castro if he hadn't already turned the reins of power over to his brother years ago.

Meanwhile, I don't have a home paper publishing my stuff that would put together a 2016 in cartoons spread, so here are my own favorites from this crappy year:

Q Toon: Judging by Its Cover

Caitlyn Jenner is going to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing nothing but an American flag and an Olympic medal.

There's not a whole lot of point getting worked up about that, so let's talk about the West Virginia primary.

There's not much point in getting worked up about that, either. It's late in the primary process; the Republican contest has already been decided, and the state's Democrats have a history of voting against the front-runner.

Or do they?

Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton 51% to 36%; it's hard to imagine that coal mining enthusiasts who disagree with Hillary Clinton that there's little future in coal mining found much more in Sanders's position on mining to agree with. (On guns, maybe. Mining, no.) Indeed, an additional 9% of the vote went to a protest candidate, Paul Farrell, upset with the two candidates' attitude against coal mining, and 2% went to Keith Judd. In 2012, Judd, a felon who filed from a Texas prison to be on the Democratic primary ballot, garnered 41% of the vote against President Obama. And in 2008, Democrats there were just fine with Hillary Clinton, voting overwhelmingly for her over the presumptive nominee, The Black Guy.

44% of Sanders voters in West Virginia's open primary plan to vote for Donald Trump in November, even if Sanders somehow seizes the nomination from Clinton. There might very well have been down-ballot races of interest to genuine Democrats, but I suspect that a significant chunk of Sanders's so-called support could be chalked up to Trump voters making mischief in the Democratic race. (Trump himself told his supporters there not to bother to voting for him.)

I confidently predict that West Virginia will vote against the Democratic nominee in May and November of 2020. And 2024. And 2028. Even if any of those nominees are Donald Berzilius Trump.

The problem here isn't with West Virginia; it's with the presidential primary and caucus system. Come May, one or both parties have no contest remaining, leaving the voters in the late states — including the largest one in the nation — no voice in deciding who will be on the ballot in November. Who is more likely to bother to vote at this point: someone who is fine with the choice made by the early state voters, or someone who thinks that choice is full of crap?

Candidates spend a full year campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the whitest states in the union. Those states are followed by South Carolina, then "Super Tuesday" throughout the South, so moderate candidates tend to be out of the race by February. Any candidate running third in March is viewed as a joke no matter how serious his or her issues are. By April, at least one of the contests is usually in the bag, which is why the New York primary forces voters to declare way back in October which race they plan to vote in.

In a country the size of the U.S.A., I don't know what system would work better. A national primary would put lesser-funded candidates at an even greater disadvantage than U.S. v. Citizens United already has, and regional primaries would tilt the race in favor of the predominant biases of whoever comes first.

Maybe states should vote by month the same way voters do in line at the polls: states A through D in February, E through L in March, M through R in April, and S through Z in May. Four years later, rotate the order just to be fair.

Okay, fine, Iowa and New Hampshire can get to be first all the time. But at the conventions, their delegations don't get to cast their votes until after the balloons have dropped for the winner.

Report from the Polls

Today was Spring Election Day in Wisconsin. Primary election for the presidential race, and general election for many state and local offices.

My habit is to vote on the way to work in the morning; I had an 8:00 appointment this morning, so I showed up at the polls at 7:40 to find two lines (A-L, M-Z) leading from the hallway into the polling booth room. The M-Z line appeared shorter, but that was only because the M-Z table was further from the door.

My wait was only five minutes, but everyone I've spoken with this afternoon reports that their lines have been longer. My husband voted this afternoon, when the line extended back beyond the table where the person telling voters which line to get into was seated. Still, the lines in our village were nowhere near as bad as the lines in urban polling places.

National pundits find it remarkable that Cruz and Sanders are polling so well in this state. Wisconsin media skew conservative (a recent Washington Post blog post calling the Milwaukee J. Sentinel "left-leaning" showed that the writer hadn't read the Sentinel in decades), and talk radio was unanimous preaching their Vote Cruz To Stop Trump line. Whether Governor Snotwalker's endorsement of Cruz convinced anyone to vote for him, or Scotty was just following the prevailing right-wing winds is up for debate -- but I suspect the latter is true.

I think Sanders appeal among Democrats can be traced to the Republicans who came to power here in 2010 and crammed their agenda down our throats -- in marked contrast to the agonizing and futile attempts by President Obama to appease Republicans on health care, fixing Bush's wrecked economy, or scheduling a state visit to Indonesia. Incrementalism doesn't sell well among Wisconsin Democrats who see nobody on the Republican side open to reason.

I just hope that some of these millennials Feeling The Bern have taken some time to check out some of the other races on the ballot, particularly that for our Supreme Court. If JoAnne Kloppenburg can't beat the anti-gay, anti-contraceptive shill for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Rebecca Bradley, liberals might as well stop trying to elect any independent thinker to the court.

Locally, thanks to the Republican micromanaging gerrymanderers in Madison, my local school board went from nine seats at large to nine district representatives this year; and as a result, I had no choice in my district's school board race. The woman running as the sole candidate on my ballot may very well be a nice, intelligent and thoughtful civic-minded individual; but I seriously considered refusing to vote for her as the only way to protest having my voice in school board matters taken away.

Not that Madison Republicans would listen.

A Little Bird Told Me

Sometimes you find yourself in a Disney movie. Sometimes it's Hitchcock.

Q Toon: The Price of Admission

Well, it's about time I drew a cartoon about Hillary Rodham Clinton again.

One of the commentaries I read this week compared Hillary Clinton's self-inflicted problems to Joe Biden's reputation as the Great Gaffesby. But while Biden's loose talk comes across as candor, Clinton's somehow does not. One gets the impression that, for example, the remark about not knowing where Bernie Sanders was during her 1993-94 fight for health care reform came out of her campaign War Room and was carefully tested with a focus group before she said it on stage.

On the other hand, her "We didn't lose a single person in Libya" remark this week, a gift-wrapped present to the Republican witch hunters, would have been nixed by any semi-sentient human being in the Clinton campaign organization. And Siri, Alexa, or even Magic 8-Ball could have told her to avoid praising the Reagan's "effective, low-key advocacy" on HIV/AIDS.

On that topic, there was another cartoon I could have included in last Saturday's post remembering Nancy Reagan, drawn right after the one of Nancy answering the phone while Ronnie played with his Star Wars. Nancy Reagan wasn't in this February, 1987 cartoon, but her anti-drugs slogan was central:

But getting back to Hillary Clinton and the Joe Biden comparison: what if Hillary Clinton's gaffes this month are part of a carefully scripted plan to counter the perception of her that she's always carefully scripted?

(Clinton cameo appearance on Broad City last night)

Q Toon: Log Cabin Fever

At the risk of piling on Mrs. Clinton, here's this week's cartoon:

Last month, The Log Cabin Republicans emerged from their hole in the ground to issue a political ad criticizing Hillary Clinton for being “wrong on gay rights when it mattered.” Their ad shows clips of Hillary Clinton making statements such as "I do not support gay marriage" in 2002 and 2004, followed by one of Bernie Sanders on Rachel Maddow's show last October in which he says, "It's great that people evolve... but it's important for people to stand up when the going is tough."

Now, whatever one thinks about Bernie Sanders' record on LGBT issues, it's hard to imagine that LGBTs who identify as Republican actually want to see the Vermont Socialist elected President of the United States. (The Log Cabin Boys do post a disclaimer at the end of the ad stating that they aren't endorsing either candidate. Whew! I'm glad they've cleared that up.)

Log Cabin president Gregory Angelo told the Washington Blade, "I personally think and Log Cabin Republicans thinks [sic] that voters should be aware of Hillary Clinton’s past, specifically on marriage equality. We felt that urgency to do so now ... because other LGBT organizations have not done due diligence regarding Hillary Clinton’s past, and we felt we were in a unique position to step up in that regard."

A decade ago, you'd have been very hard pressed to find any Democrat at the national level willing to vouch for marriage equality. Civil unions were as far as most of them were willing to venture.

You'd have had a hard time finding any Socialists at the national level pushing for marriage equality, either. Not included in the LCR ad is Sanders, in the same Rachel Maddow interview, defending having told the Rutland Herald in 2006, when asked whether Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, “not right now.”

Nor do the Log Cabin Boys include anything from this 16-year-old column by the late Peter Freyne about Sanders' reaction after Vermont's Supreme Court ordered the state legislature to do something to afford same-sex couples equal rights with different-sex couples. I'll quote Freyne at length:

Obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders’ position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth...from a rhinoceros. Last month, shortly after the decision of the Amestoy Court was issued, Mr. Sanders publicly tried walking the tightrope — applauding the court’s decision and the cause of equal rights without supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples.
This week we were no more successful getting a straight answer. All we did get was a carefully crafted non-statement statement via e-mail from Washington D.C. And Bernie’s statement wins him the Vermont congressional delegation’s Wishy-Washy Award hands down.
Once more he “applauds” the court decision but won’t go anywhere near choosing between same-sex “marriage” and domestic partnership. “By all accounts the legislature is approaching this issue in a considered and appropriate manner and I support the current process.”
Supports the current process, does he? What a courageous radical!
That’s as far as Ol’ Bernardo would go. It’s an election year, yet despite the lack of a serious challenger, The Bern’s gut-level paranoia is acting up. He’s afraid to say something that might alienate his conservative, rebel-loving rural following out in the hills. Something that could be interpreted as “Bernie Loves Queers!”

As Freyne noted earlier in the column, however, the two Democrats running for Sanders' seat in Congress that year were both on the record in support of full marriage equality. Sanders easily won reelection in 2000, so I guess Sanders had the better read on those rebel-loving rural Vermonters.

To be perfectly honest, I tend to think the Democrats would be better off not nominating a guy who wasn't even a member of their party a year ago (and the Republicans would be better off not nominating a Donnie-Come-Lately, too, for that matter). But wherever the candidates stood on marriage equality in 1972, or 2000, or 2004, or 2006, I want to support a candidate who'll stand up for LGBT rights "when it matters."

Like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires.

Hillary Clinton: HRC in NYC

For today's episode of Statenback Saturday, I dredge up some more of my old cartoons about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Last week, I posted some cartoons dating from her First Ladyship, and the Sandersnistas among my readers might be forgiven if they criticized me for a pro-Hillary bias. Today's cartoons date from her tenure as the U.S. Senator from the state of New York and were drawn for an LGBT audience -- and posting them again is probably not doing her any favors. (Especially since they criticize her for stuff which somehow failed to make this comprehensive list of all the terrible things she has done.)

Hillary Clinton chose to run for New York's open Senate seat because New York, having many citizens who are from somewhere else, have a history of electing public officials who are from somewhere else, too. Those citizens can be mighty proud of being from somewhere else, or at least that their great-grandparents were from somewhere else. There are also those who are from somewhere else because they aren't accepted for who they are somewhere else, and by golly, now they are proud of how far they've come.

Senator Clinton probably wished she had stayed somewhere else during the collision of ethnic pride and gay pride that New York enjoys every St. Patrick's Day. Running for the senate seat in 2000, she had marched in both the New York City Ancient Order of Hibernians parade, which banned LGBT participation, and also in an earlier "St. Pat's For All" parade in Queens, created as a gay-friendly alternative. Her attempt to please everybody placated nobody.

She skirted the controversy in 2001 by marching in Syracuse's parade upstate instead.

The St. Patrick's Day Parade issue had still not gone away when she was preparing to launch her 2008 presidential campaign.

But there were more substantive LGBT issues on her plate, too, such as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and marriage equality. My only cartoon depicting her efforts to distance herself from DADT  was when she was running for the Senate in 2000. As for marriage equality, a window of opportunity opened in California in 2008, but neither she nor her rival for the Democratic nomination were inclined to lead on the issue.

I'm skipping right past her tenure at the State Department now, but both Mrs. Clinton and President Obama did come around, eventually.

Feel the Bern

Presenting the fourth of my caricatures of 2016 presidential candidates: Independent Socialist Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

People who viewed the first Kennedy-Nixon debate on television came away thinking that the youthful Jack Kennedy won the debate, while those who listened to it on radio thought that pasty, sweaty Richard Nixon won it. Likewise, people who saw this week's Democratic presidential debate on CNN thought that Sanders won the contest, while those who relied on Washington beltway pundits thought the winner was Hillary Clinton.

People who listened on radio thought it was a tie between Lincoln Chafee's father and the guy who shot Jim Webb.

Q Toon: The Stonewall Boycott

This week's cartoon goes far afield from the centers of media attention, so let's start with the back story.

Next month, director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012)  is coming out with a movie, Stonewall, about the gay uprising that broke out when police raided a gay bar on the night of Judy Garland's death in June, 1969. According to Emmerich, the film is a “compelling, fictionalised drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth.” Imdb.com has this synopsis:

The plot revolves around the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the violent clash that kicked off the gay rights movement in New York City. The drama centers on Danny Winters [Jeremy Irvine], who flees to New York, leaving behind his sister [Joey King]. He finds his way to the Stonewall Inn, where he meets Trevor [Jonathan Rhys Meyers] before catching the eye of Ed Murphy [Ron Perlman], manager of the Stonewall. He colludes with corrupt police [Matt Craven] and exploits homeless youth [Caleb Landry Jones -- okay, I'm just guessing on that one].

Publicity image from "Stonewall," the movie. Looks like a musical number.

The problem some LGBT activists have with the movie is that it appears to center on a white, "cisgender" (as opposed to "transgender") male character. Pat Cordova-Goff, described as "a trans activist feminine person of color," launched an on-line petition to boycott the movie, signed by over 23,000 persons as of yesterday:

From the previews alone, queer folks have gathered that the centralized character is a white cis gay man. (WHY?) From the previews alone, queer folks have gathered that not many people of color are even in the film. (WHY?) To make this short, we have also gathered that white folks are being credited in throwing the brick, starting the riots, starting the "gay liberation front" and also capturing the heart of a light-skinned transwomyn. (Of course we all fall in love with the white saviors. WRONG.)

Emmerich and Irvine have responded that the role of non-whites and transgender persyns is given its fair due in the movie. Emmerich posted on Facebook that:

I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film - which is truly a labor of love for me - finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.

Irvine posted on Instagram:

Marsha P Johnson is a major part of the movie, and although first hand accounts of who threw the first brick in the riots vary wildly, it is a fictional black transvestite character played by the very talented @vlad_alexis who pulls out the first brick in the riot scenes. ... In my opinion, the story is driven by the leader of this gang played by @jonnybeauchamp who gives an extraordinary performance as a Puerto Rican transvestite struggling to survive on the streets.

Now, if you see any of these people wresting the microphone from Bernie Sanders, you'll know what they're shouting about.