Government v. Press

This week's Graphical History Tour bravely sallies forth against censorship of newsmedia in the United States.

As a political cartoonist who has just been among a few dozen other political cartoonists, Your Humble Scribbler has a vested interest against censorship of editorial cartoons in particular. 

During the First Golden Age of my profession, in the late 18th Century and into the next, newspaper publishers saw the popularity and influence of the Thomas Nasts and Johannes Kepplers drawing for the national weeklies, and hired some of the best editorial cartoonists to grace their newspapers' front pages. And not incidentally, to push the publishers' political agendas.

"No Honest Man Need Fear Cartoons" by Homer Davenport in New York Journal, Apr. 22, 1897

Local politicians did not take kindly to being lampooned on those front pages. Upset by Homer Davenport's cartoons of influential Republican Mark Hanna, New York political boss Senator Thomas Platt, pushed a bill in the state assembly to ban cartoon depictions of real persons without their consent.

Davenport drew the parallel with Platt's predecessor, William Tweed, who had famously complained that although his constituents didn't read the papers, they saw "them damn pictures." Platt's bill failed to pass, but that didn't stop similar bills from cropping up elsewhere.

"The Governor Has His Revenge" by Robert Edgren in San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 25, 1899

A copycat bill by California Republicans failed to pass on its first go-around, but was passed during the next legislative session and signed by newly elected Republican Governor Henry Tifft Gage. As in New York, the partisan Democratic cartoons in Hearst newspapers were a major impetus for the bill; specifically, a cartoon of Gage being led on a leash by railroad magnate C.P. Huntington.

Having been signed into law, California's anti-cartoon bill was laughed — and ignored — into obscurity. Hearst cartoonist Robert Edgren offered an unusual motive for Governor Gage to sign the anti-cartoon bill: that the cartoonists were not drawing him any more.

Frankly, the man was a caricaturist's dream. Too bad he was voted out of office after one term.

by Walter McDougall in North American, Philadelphia, Jan. 30, 1903

Responding to daily cartoons in Philadelphia's North American by Charles Nelan depicting gubernatorial candidate Samuel Pennypacker as the pet parrot of Republican Party boss Senator Matthew Quay, Pennypacker's inaugural address demanded censorship of the "disreputable" North American. Obligingly, State Representative Frederick Pusey introduced a bill outlawing publication of any cartoon 

"portraying, describing, or representing any person, either by distortion, innuendo, or otherwise, in the form or likeness of beast, bird, fish, insect, or other unhuman animal, thereby tending to expose such person to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule."

The North American's other editorial cartoonist, Walt McDougall, responded with a cartoon stretched across the top of the front page depicting Quay, Pusey, and Pennypacker as a series of inanimate objects. (I have folded his cartoon to fit into a square format.) In an accompanying editorial, McDougall exhorted his fellow cartoonists, "Every cartoonist has a Noah's Ark full of worn, broken, and decrepit animals, bugs, and such, but the fresh vegetable field is untouched."

Pusey's bill nevertheless passed the Pennsylvania legislature and Pennypacker signed it into law. It was promptly repealed after Pennypacker was defeated in the next election.

by Frank Spangler in Montgomery [Ala.] Advertiser, Feb. 3, 1915 

As part of a package of election regulation laws, the Alabama legislature entertained a bill sponsored by Samuel D. Weakly prohibiting the caricature of any "prominent" man or politician. "It will make the average newspaper reader smile," the Advertiser editorialized, 

"that a sacred class is to be made of officeholders and office seekers, for they are the bulk of prominent people whom newspapers cartoon. A cartoon is a semi-editorial expression, and a powerful method of reaching public opinion, because ridicule and sarcasm are vividly presented to the eye. Both weapons are enormously effective on the stump, and there is no reason why the press should be deprived of their use. In fact, such a bill is a distinct effort to muzzle the press, and is an infringement of its constitutional powers."

As far as I have been able to determine, Weakly's proposal did not make it into the final bill. The Act (#171, § 11) did require cartoons expressing an opinion on any candidate or election issue to include "upon its face" the name of the newspaper's owner or the chief executive of its corporation.

"The Light that Must Not Fail" by Harry Murphy ca. May 5, 1917

U.S. entry into World War I opened the doors for government censorship of newspapers, and not just for their cartoons.

The Espionage Act of 1917 made it a crime to publish with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies during wartime; to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States; or to willfully obstruct military recruiting or enlistment.  The Act also gave the Postmaster General authority to impound publications that he determined to be in violation of the Act.

"That Wooden One" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 5, 1917

The U.S. was drawn into Europe's war due in part to the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania by a German U-boat. Nelson Harding, in a single-column cartoon on the Brooklyn Eagle's front page, turned the incident back against advocates for press censorship.

"Is This Somewhere in Germany or Somewhere in America" by Beaumont Fairbank in Brooklyn Sunday Eagle, May 5, 1918

In the same newspaper on the same day, Beaumont Fairbank drew his cartoon in support of an amendment to the 1917 Espionage Act by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) stating, 

"The use of the mails should not be permitted to any newspaper, magazine, periodical, circulars or pamphlets which are printed in whole or in part in the German language." 

Fairbank was by no means alone in advocating governmental censorship of the foreign language press. While that amendment had failed to be included in the final bill, local officials outlawed German-language newspapers in several cities in New Jersey and Long Island.

"Wenn Uns Jetzt Unsere Vorväter Sehen Könnten" by John Lenz in Vorbote, Chicago, Oct. 31, 1917

Protest against this censorship was almost exclusively limited to the foreign language newspapers themselves. The banner behind Congress in John Lenz's cartoon translates to "Freedom of Speech, Press Freedom, Right of Assembly." The rolled parchments beneath George Washington represent the Constitution and First Amendment.

"O Sorry Plight" by Arthur Young in Masses, New York, September, 1917

The Creel Commission also employed the U.S. Post Office to censor publication of material counter to the official line. Art Young's cartoon above appeared in the September issue of  the marxist, antiwar Masses after Burleson's USPS had declared the August issue "unmailable under the Act of June 15, 1917."

"A Convenient Perch" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, May, 1918

If Art Young expected other publications to rally in solidarity with Masses, he would be sadly mistaken. The Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel created a Bureau of Cartoons, which produced a weekly bulletin for cartoonists to direct their attention to matters the Wilson administration wanted them to draw about. By and large, cartoonists and their publishers fell right in line.

Masses ceased publication after its November/December issue.

"It's Nothing Important" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, Dec. 20, 1972

Jumping ahead over half a century, President Richard Nixon tried very hard to force newsmedia to slant the news the way he wanted it reported. His administration enlisted the Federal Communications Commission to pressure television networks, cut funding to public broadcasting, and took newspapers to court. He was stymied, however, without a cooperative Congress or courts.

Instead, his communications team went on to found Fox News.

"Ask Me Anything" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, Nov. 15, 1973

In the meantime, we learned that President Richard Nixon kept an "enemies list" of critics of his administration, including many journalists. Nixon had always had a testy relationship with the media well before being elected president. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, it was revealed that he used the Justice Department, FBI, and Internal Revenue Service to open investigations against individuals on that list — although at least he never barred Jack Anderson, Daniel Schorr, or Mary McGrory from White House press briefings. 

for Bergetoons blog, August, 2018

There has been no assault on the media and the facts to rival the Absolutely Corrupt Donald Trump Regime's campaign to quash any reportage that doesn't fawn upon Dear Misleader. The two terms of his presidency have seen government websites erased, responsible reporters banned first from the Pentagon and now the White House, and weaponization against the media of both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, this time with general compliance on the part of Congress and the Supreme Court.

for Q Syndicate, February, 2025

Unless approved by Trump himself, it's all just fake news.

"They give me only bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away, ... That’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said. But when you go back, take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They're giving me all this bad press, and they're getting a license. When you have a network and they have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that's all they do — that license, they're not allowed to do that!" — Donald Joffrey Trump, September 16, 2025

Drawn During Dog Days

It has been a couple of months since I've featured my own cartoons in these weekly Graphical History Tours, so it's about time to rummage through my archives in search of my favorite August cartoons from years ending in three.

The summer pickings in some years are meager, so all of these have appeared here before.

UW-Parkside Ranger, Sept. 8, 1983

As it happens, I drew several cartoons in August of 1983 in spite of not having a place ready to publish them. But I really liked this one, so I submitted it when the student paper at University of Wisconsin-Parkside resumed publication in September.

August, 1993

I drew this cartoon for the University of Milwaukee student newspaper, the Post, in August of 1993. I had just returned home from having attended a church secretaries' convention in Minnesota during widespread disastrous flooding of the upper Mississippi River and its tributaries that summer. The bus from Minneapolis to St. Peter was diverted so often by washed-out roads that I ended up missing a TV reporter waiting to interview the only male secretary signed up to attend the convention.

Perhaps that missed interview was still on my mind as I started my cartoon, based on the timeworn criticism of people who rebuild in disaster zones.

Unfortunately, the Post didn't publish any issues that August, so the cartoon has only appeared on your humble scribbler's blog.

I suppose the latest home of the poor fellow starring in the cartoon might be on Maui. But really, with climate change, he'd be in danger living just about anywhere in the world.

You gotta wonder why we keep rebuilding on this planet.

Business Journal, Aug. 22, 2003

Moving on to lighter fare: The Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee had its editorial nose out of joint over a gloomy article in the New York Times about Milwaukee, which the Times characterized as being a decaying, crime-ridden small city with third-rate sports teams and no future.

The problem with criticizing the Times's assessment, however, is that crime and urban decay have indeed been significant problems for Milwaukee. The halcyon days of its Socialist mayors was followed by the Freeway Era, when superhighways bulldozed their ways through vibrant neighborhoods and promoted the flight of the Middle Class, high-paying jobs, and their accompanying tax base into the suburbs.

Milwaukee has since done a lot to revitalize its downtown, converting old factories and warehouses into attractive apartment and commercial buildings. But it still suffers from outstate hostility, exemplified by former Governor Tommy "Stick It To 'Em" Thompson, Scott Walker's Act 10, and this year's wrangling over state aid.

The four Racing Sausage mascots pictured in the cartoon, Italian, Polish, Hot Dog, and Bratwurst, have since been joined by Sr. Chorizo, reflecting most of the predominant ethnic groups in Milwaukee. (Is there any encased ground meat that could represent the Black community?)

While you can find Norwegians everywhere in the state of Wisconsin, we haven't been prominent — or assertive — enough to rate our own festival on the Summerfest grounds, and certainly not our own racing sausage.

I think I should have had the reporter ask "Which one of youse is the lutefisk," though.

Q Syndicate, August, 2013

I had been sending colorized cartoons to Q Syndicate for a year by August of 2013, but I decided that this reference to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho had to be in grayscale only.

The news story behind the cartoon was the ruling of the California Supreme Court rejecting an appeal by the antigay interest group ProtectMarriage. ProtectMarriage wanted the court to overturn an appeal court judge's ruling that the so-called Definition of Marriage Amendment passed by Proposition 8 in 2008 was unconstitutional.

Much as I dislike drawing buildings, I remain mostly pleased with how this cartoon turned out.

✍

I have to apologize here for a post consisting entirely of rerun material. (I can't even blame the writers' strike.)

But in fact-checking this post, I did run across some stuff that I have not posted before. I'm still hunting through my archives for the original artwork, and hope to have new reminiscences here next Saturday.

Q Toon: The Things That Guide My Life

I've finally gotten around to my Jimmy Carter tribute cartoon this week. It quotes extensively from an interview the former president gave to Huffington Post in 2012:

Q: A lot of people point to the Bible for reasons why gay people should not be in the church, or accepted in any way.

A: Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.

As president, Carter didn't have a lot to say about homosexuality. Not because gay rights weren't an issue, mind you. Lesbian and gay activists were openly pushing for non-discrimination laws, and the other side had Anita Bryant crusading against us. Sgt. Leonard Matlovich was suing the Air Force to reinstate him after it had discharged him in 1975 for being gay (he won his suit in 1980, but accepted a monetary settlement instead). San Francisco's gays and lesbians rioted after the antigay assassin of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone was sentenced to only seven years in prison. The first homosexual rights march on Washington D.C. was in 1979.

On the other hand, the disease that would later be named HIV/AIDS was known only to a few and understood by even fewer. Even within the lesbian and gay community, there was little interest in marriage equality.

Carter's administration did, through Midge Costanza and her Office of Public Liaison, urge federal agencies to adopt and enforce antidiscrimination policies, however. And in 1978, when pressured at a pre-election rally by gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown to endorse a "no" vote on Proposition 6, the antigay Briggs Amendment, (and promised that Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan had already done the same), Carter returned to the mic and added his support for California's lesbians and gays as a postscript to his appearance there.

Well, I suppose the 1970's were a different time. I don't remember Senator Joe Biden speaking up for us, either; yet that doesn't negate his endorsement of marriage equality in 2012. 

So I return here to the Huffington Post interview. Toward the end of the interview, Carter explains his Christian life philosophy more fully. It wouldn't all fit into my cartoon, but his answer to a question about people who cite selected biblical passages to defend their homophobia deserves to be included here in full.

A: The example that I set in my private life is to emulate what Christ did as he faced people who were despised like the lepers or the Samaritans. He reached out to them, he reached out to poor people, he reached out to people that were not Jews and treated them equally. The more despised and the more in need they were, the more he emphasized that we should go to and share with them our talent our ability, our wealth, our influence. Those are the things that guide my life and when I find a verse in the Bible that contradicts those things that I just described to you, I put into practice the things that I derive from my faith in Christ.

Amen, Mr. President. Amen.

Meanwhile, in Non-Gump Election News

"Keeping to the Main Highway" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 9, 1922

I hope you enjoyed our recounting the past two Saturdays of Andy Gump's election to Congress and the recount that took his victory away. But it's time now to get serious and to catch up on what really happened in the off-year election of 1922.

Gustavo Bronstrup, with a nod to the initially victorious Mr. Gump, celebrates the Republican sweep in California that year. Friend Richardson was elected Governor and Hiram Johnson was reelected Senator, both by landslides. (Ironically, Richardson, supported by a Republican majority in the legislature, would proceed to undo several policies enacted when Johnson had been Governor.) 

The Proposition 19 straw man fallen off the back of the car represents a defeated constitutional amendment that would have granted the governor authority to create and fund a board to develop, distribute and fix rates for water and electrical energy.

"Nearly Everybody in the House Knew..." by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Nov. 10, 1922

The California results ran counter to the national trend that year, however: Democrats gained 72 seats in House and a net gain of six seats in the Senate. 

"Shrinkage? It's a Washout" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 9, 1922

The Democrats' gain was not quite enough to regain the majority lost in the elections of 1918 and 1920, but was an impressive showing nonetheless, and set off a wave of prognostication as to where the Republican Party had gone wrong.

"Now We'll Hear the Specialists" by Edwin Marcus in New York Times, Nov. 12, 1922

One of Edwin Marcus's "specialists" is an "anti-prohibitionist" who doesn't look anything like the Mr. Dry used by every other cartoonist of the time (see John Cassel, below). That may well be because Mr. Dry looks more like an undertaker than a doctor; but it leaves me suspecting that Marcus had everything drawn before the election results were in but the labels and the elephant head.

"After the Downpour" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, Nov. 10, 1922

To the extent that Republicans were hurt by the "wet" vote, it was primarily because they happened to have more incumbents in office than the Democrats did in 1922. Prohibition sentiments pro and con crossed party lines; support for the 18th Amendment included both conservative Southern Democrats and northern progressive Republicans. Opponents included big-city Democrats and Republicans alike.

"Home Again" by John Knott in Galveston Daily News, Nov. 13, 1922

One of my disappointments in covering the 1922 election is that I was not able to turn up any cartoons by John Knott of the Dallas News and Galveston Daily News having anything substantial to say about the Klan candidate Texas elected to the U.S. Senate that year. Instead, he chose to celebrate Tennessee returning its governor's chair to the Democrats — and I do apologize for that character carrying Miss Tennessee's bags.

"The Retreat of the Lame-Duck Brigade" by John Baer, reprinted in National Leader (Minneapolis), December, 1922

Former Congressman John Baer cites a few of the ailments diagnosed in Edwin Marcus's cartoon and adds a few more: a proposed sales tax (to replace the income tax), an anti-strike bill, and a subsidy for shipbuilders.

What I was expecting to see in the National Leader was a celebration of Minnesotans' election to the Senate of the Farmer-Labor candidate, Henrik Shipstead, ousting Republican Senator Frank B. Kellogg, seated in the wheelchair in Baer's cartoon. (The Democrats' candidate, Anna Dickie Olesen, came in a distant third). The Farmer-Labor Party was the offspring of the Leader's "Non-Partisan League," after all, and the Leader had emblazoned a heroic sketch of Shipstead all over the front page of its November issue.

Front page of National Leader, Minneapolis, MN, November, 1922

Other than that, however, the Leader seems not to have found much to say about his campaign or his election.

Shipstead, a former and future Republican, would serve in the Senate until losing a GOP primary in 1947. An isolationist, anti-Semite, and conspiracy monger (Protocols of the Elders of Zion and all that crap), a senator described by the British Foreign office as "bigoted and crotchety," he is not remembered fondly these days.

"A Case for Careful Diagnosis" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Nov. 13, 1922

But returning again to 1922: it must be noted that for all this talk of the Republican Party needing to find out where it had gone wrong, the 1920's would continue to be a solidly Republican decade in most of the United States.

"He Fits the Niche" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, Nov. 8, 1922

To wit: 1922 saw the election of one of the Democratic Party's enduring heroes, Alfred E. Smith, as Governor of New York. As the party's presidential nominee in 1928, he would lead the Democrats to their third consecutive landslide loss.

And lucky for him, too.

Independence Day 1922

"The Old Man Who Never Grows Old" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, July 4, 1922

It's a holiday weekend here at Bergetoons Central, and we're in the mood to take a break from the Trump Putsch, supply chain issues, monkey pox, and SCOTUS returning us to the days when men were men, women were chattel, and the environment was at the mercy of everyone who had a bunch of shit they wanted to send up a smokestack or dump in the lake.

"His 146th Birthday" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, July 4, 1922

The United States turned 146 years old on July 4, 1922, although one might quibble that Uncle Sam was actually a few years younger than that. But let's not: he was already an adult when he first appeared shortly after the War of 1812. Whether he turned 36 that year would be difficult to determine, given the ageless quality attributed to him by Grover Page and Charles Kuhn. 

"A Privilege and an Honor" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July 4, 1922

100 years ago, most cartoonists were content to put aside for a moment whatever contentious issues they were dealing with. Gustavo Bronstrup, an American-born cartoonist, chose to celebrate naturalized citizens arriving here from other countries — even as the drive to end our open-door immigration policy was gaining steam.

"The Spirit of the Day" by O.C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, July 4, 1922

Independence Day wasn't about to drive all unity and harmony from existence, however. As evidence, contrast O.C. Chopin's Independence Day cartoon with his opus on July 5:

"Another Declaration of Independence" by O.C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, July 5, 1922

John McCutcheon also thought it was time for a new Declaration of Independence:

"A Second Declaration of Independence Needed" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1922

Northern California is still a part of California, and the Harding Administration had just scored a victory in limiting the growth of naval armaments, so those Declarations of Independence are still pending. (Well, we've kind of left those 1922 arms limitations in the dustbin of history...)

"Oh For the Spirit of '76" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, July 4, 1922

Clifford Berryman brings up an issue more in the forefront of public concern, but in a hopeful way. Organized Labor was fighting back against the postwar  anti-labor practices of Big Business and the Harding administration. The national strike by United Mine Workers of America, begun in March, had turned deadly in June.

"They Seem to Have Forgotten About Us" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1922

W. J. Lester, owner of the Southern Illinois Coal Company in Herrin, Illinois, had originally agreed with the UMWA to observe the strike; but when the price of coal went up, he hired non-union workers to produce and ship out coal.

Enraged that the owner had disregarded their agreement, on June 21, union miners shot at strikebreakers going to work, where the mine had armed guards. When striking union members armed themselves and laid siege to the mine, the owner's guards shot and killed three union miners in an exchange of gunfire. The next day, union miners killed superintendent McDowell and 18 of 50 strikebreakers and mine guards, many of them brutally. A twentieth victim from the non-union group was later murdered, bringing the death total to 23. Ultimately, three miners and 20 non-miners were killed, including the superintendent and 19 strikebreakers.

"We Had Been So in Hopes" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 4, 1922

Meanwhile, railroad workers renewed their threat to go on strike as well over wage cuts mandated by the Harding administration. Union members had voted not to go on strike the previous October after the Railroad Labor Board had agreed to delay halving railroad workers' pay. But by summer, it was becoming clear that the Interstate Commerce Commission intended to go forward with those cuts sooner or later.

"Dampened" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, July 3, 1922

For the time being, however, the Railroad Labor Board managed to kick the strike farther down the line.

"North Dakota Celebrates" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, July 3, 1922

Changing topics but continuing the firecracker motif, John Cassel celebrates the primary election victory of "Non-partisan League" senatorial candidate Lynn Frazier over incumbent Porter McCumber for the GOP nomination. A former governor, Frazier had been recalled from office in October, 1921 after a campaign against him by banking and industrial agriculture interests

Lynn Frazier in 1921 and California Governor Gray Davis in 2003 are the only two U.S. governors ever to be successfully recalled. Frazier, however, won election to the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1941. (For a cartoon of Mr. Frazier, see my post about the Non-partisan League in July of 2020.)

"Back to the Unsafe and Insane Fourth" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 4, 1922

Nelson Harding throws everything but the Dyer anti-lynching bill (see yesterday's post) into his cartoon of stuff scaring Uncle Sam witless. I guess his Uncle Sam grew old after all.

"Still Burning" by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, July 4, 1922

If we're going to give an Independence Day award for cantankerousness and curmudgeonry, the prize goes to Fred Morgan of the Philadelphia Inquirer for taking a perfectly innocuous holiday drawing and ruining it with a Get Off My Lawn You Damn Kids caption. 

"Life's Little Tragedies" by Alfred G. "Zere" Ablitzere in New York Post, July 3, 1922

So let us end instead with a couple light-hearted Independence Day cartoons from the funny pages.

"Freckles and His Friends" by Merrill Blosser for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., July 4, 1922

Wishing you a happy, safe, sane, and curmudgeon-free Fourth, I remain,

—Your Friendly Gayborhood Cartoonist.

Toon: Stop the Insanity

 Three mass shootings, and it's only Tuesday.

Q Toon: Keeping Up with the MAGAshians

 

At the moment, one of the leading candidates to replace Governor Gavin Newsom in California's recall election is former Olympian, Wheaties cover athlete, and surreality TV personality is Caitlyn Jenner. In a crowded field, that may simply be a matter of name recognition, but California has a history of electing  celebrity candidates; viz., Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, and Clint Eastwood.

You will note that all five celebrity candidates in that paragraph are Republicans. Non-GOP celebrities running for office elsewhere tend to get dismissed as lightweights in general elections (except in Minnesota).

In a series of interviews, Jenner's grasp of the issues has proven less than impressive: she didn't vote in the last election because she wasn't interested in any of the propositions on the ballot, and she is upset that homeless people have driven away the owner of the airplane hangar across from hers. So why is she running?

Although a lifelong Republican and a Trump supporter, the 71-year-old performer possesses a flimsy résumé; she’s not a natural candidate any more than she is a crooner. The smart money in California says she doesn’t have a chance to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who enjoys the support of 56 percent of the California electorate. (Though the examples of Donald Trump, Al Franken, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sonny Bono suggest you can’t be too sure.) 

She told Dana Bash that she would make up for her inexperience in government by surrounding herself with "really good people," which sounds an awful lot like a certain twice-impeached former president's promises in 2016. But the Politico article speculates that her run is "a reality show by other means," or perhaps intended to set up a congressional run.

Interviewers have had a hard time pinning Jenner ("I don't like labels") down on the issues — even on the one issue with which she is most identified. Accepting the Arthur Ashe Award at the 2015 ESPY's, she voiced her support for young trans athletes, telling the audience, "I also want to acknowledge all the young trans athletes who are out there — given the chance to play sports as who they really are."

 

But now that Requblican legislatures around the country are passing bans on transgender athletic participation, Jenner has done a complete 180, telling TMZ, "This is a question of fairness. That's why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls sports in school. It just isn't fair. And we have to protect girl sports in our schools."

 

When Sean Hannity attempted to bring up the subject during their airplane hangar interview, Jenner kept diverting the conversation away toward Joy Behar or Jenner's mother having misgendered her. As Hannity pressed her on the issue, Jenner complained, "To be honest with you, I don't know why they keep asking that. What do you think, Sean? I don't know. Why do they keep asking me that question?" and decided to come out strongly against wildfires instead.

✍

Drawing Caitlyn Jenner is going to present a challenge to cartoonists insofar as, well, let's just say it's pretty obvious that she's had some work done over the years, and it has made drawing her in a way that avoids charges of being anti-trans damned near impossible.

I completely understand that Ms. Jenner wishes to appear the way she sees herself, and she may not see herself as a 71-year-old woman. There's nothing exclusively transgender about that, or even exclusively Californian. Plastic surgeons are able to sell the fantasy that nips, tucks and collagen injections will make someone look like Angelina Jolie circa 2003 because nobody sees themselves as Dame Judy Dench except Dame Judy Dench's stunt doubles.

Some other cartoonists are choosing not to dignify Ms. Jenner's campaign by expending ink and pixels on her. That's their choice and their right, and solves the problem of how far to take her caricature.

But LGBTQ+ news is my bailiwick. Until she sinks to asterisk levels in the polls, I may be stuck with her.