Q Toon: Democratic Response

Republicans in this election cycle can't run on the economy, what with an unpopular war started by the most unpopular president ever that has sent fuel prices ballooning, furthering inflation sparked by his ill-conceived tariffs. Many of them are therefore running on culture war issues, number one among them trans-bashing.

(Alabama's Tommy Bubbaville has tried to expand the culture war to include airplane pilots who are "furries" in their off hours. I'm not sure where he came up with that one, although he claimed, "You can't make this stuff up." We know it's not something he read somewhere, because he proudly announced that in order to keep from being confused, he doesn't read. Perhaps he vaguely remembers seeing Chewbacca at the controls of one of them flyin' machine contraptions a while back.)

In a perfect world, Democrats would ignore Republican efforts to divert the electorate's attention away from their party's disastrous record. Instead, we live in a world where Republican-slanted media and Elon Musk-funded PACs doggedly try to keep distracting voters toward Republican talking points.

James Talarico, a target of one of Musk's "He's For They/Them Not You/Us" ads, is running to become the first Democratic Senator from Texas since Talarico was four years old. This week Talarico told  Fox Noise, "As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes. I care a lot about our students. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it risks safety or fairness.”

Talarico's decision to throw trans student athletes to the wolves has disappointed his trans supporters who had been attracted to his earlier sympathy for the trans community.

As a state representative, Talarico voted against GOP restrictions barring trans student-athletes from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. He said such proposals amounted to a push for the government to "police people's private parts" and would harm "the least of these," a reference to Jesus' remarks in scripture. And he compared the justifications offered for the bans — that trans athletes had a genetic advantage and excluding them would promote safety — to rationales historically used to bar Black athletes from competing in professional sports.

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton announced that she " doesn't support boys playing in girls' sports," and Representative Marcy Kapture voted for a Republican bill to require schools to notify parents of a student's request to change their gender, pronouns, or preferred name, and to deny federal funding to schools that "teach or advance concepts related to gender identity." 

Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, has also come out against transgender athletes participating in school sports, although he also promises to veto any “stupid culture-war-Trump bill”

Iowa's Republican legislature has no intention of rescinding its 2022 law criminalizing transgender athletes, so it's not an issue likely to face the state's next governor. At a campaign stop in September, Sand echoed Talarico's faith-based stand on transgender rights in general:

“Now, I’ve been clear … the civil rights repeal for transgender people was wrong,” Sand said. “It was wrong. You should not be fired from your job in the state of Iowa for being different. You should not be evicted from your apartment in the state of Iowa for being different.

“This to me is a question of faith. My faith is all about the outcast, it’s all about the people who are pushed aside, who are not favored. And I think that we have to be making Iowa a place where state government is as welcoming as Iowans are.” 

When pressed at the same event to justify his position on transgender athletes, Sand sidestepped the question.

“This is a conversation I’m interested in having,” he said instead. “I’ve met with One Iowa, I’ve talked to a lot of other trans advocates, and I’m listening to them. I’m open-minded about it. I don’t have anything different to say than what I’ve said before. But again, hearing from you is important, and I don’t think that we recognize how important it is that we just talk to each other. Right?

“Everybody is welcome here. Everybody is welcome at this event, everybody should feel welcome in the state of Iowa. I might not offer you full agreement with everything you believe … I’m doing my best to do what I think is the right thing to do, but I also want to make sure that it’s doing the right thing. Which is why I’m interested in listening to people about that, and I’m going to continue to listen to people.”

As Sand moved on to the next questioner, someone in the back of the crowd called out, “Coward!” Sand heard the voice, but apparently misheard the word, thinking it was “louder.”

These are close races, and Democrats can't really afford to turn off the 1% of voters who are trans (even if the percentage of voters who are trans student athletes is much smaller). Many of us in the cisgender 99% realize that when Republicans get tired of demonizing transgender persons, they will come after some other minority — gays, lesbians, bisexuals, Roma, Latinos (oops, sorry, we're already there), Moslems (ibid.), atheists, Quakers, Unitarians, countertenors, low-T southpaws, vegan paraplegics,  type AB– librarians...

And of course, furries.

Q Toon: Devices to Their Own Left

Wisconsin failed — by a whisker — to follow Democrats in the rest of the country in the march to Democratic Socialism this Tuesday. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley edged out Madison Statehouse Representative Francesca Hong in the race for the party's gubernatorial nomination.

In polls, Hong, a self-identified Democratic Socialist, had led a crowded field for months, and Republicans were eager to run against her. Not that their campaign against Crowley will be any different than their campaign against her; Tom Tiffany and his corporate backers will simply edit his face into their attack ads in place of hers.

The embarrassing tweets played up in Republican ads will be significantly older than the stuff they wanted to hang around Hong's neck (Crowley has semi-plausible deniability that he was responsible for them). We can make a drinking game for every time a commercial warns us that "David Crowley Is Too Liberal For Wisconsin." We're a heavy-drinking state, you know.

Well, anyway, Max and Leo hadn't heard the Wisconsin primary results before walking their dog in this week's cartoon. Zoran Mamdani's election as New York City Mayor heralded a string of high profile victories by young, left-wing Democrats over older, more "establishment" incumbents: Melat Kiros in Colorado; Abdul El-Sayed and William Lawrence in Michigan; Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota.

On the other hand, 

The winners in the Democrats’ moderate faction include Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), who fended off a leftist challenger; former Rep. Elaine Luria (Va.) and Richmond-area prosecutor Shannon Taylor, who won swing-district primaries; and Rep. Wesley Bell (Mo.), who prevailed in his rematch against democratic socialist former Rep. Cori Bush.

Republicans purged moderates (and anyone willing to stand up for constitutional democracy) from their number several election cycles ago, so as far as the GOP is concerned, there is no difference between moderate Democrats, liberal progressives, Democratic Socialists, Socialists, and Communists. Potayto, potahto. 

French fries, gnocchi, tater tot, lefse, spud.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Wisconsin's partisan primaries are tomorrow, and if the polls and the Republican-interest advertising are to be believed, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who identifies as a Democratic Socialist is going to be victorious over three more mainstream Democrats.

Even without the endorsement of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocaso-Cortez, Francesca Hong (D-Madison) has become the left-wing's darling here. Outside interests have been attacking Hong on television and in social media for weeks; one Republican-affiliated group, however, has been using language that won't scare off any Democrats, calling her "progressive" and "liberal" and accusing her of being opposed to Trump's immigration policy.

Like every Democrat who isn't named Fetterman.

Hong has given Republicans plenty of ammunition to use against her in the general election. Before announcing her campaign, she had called for "defunding the police" and shutting down all the state's prisons; she advocated cancelling Thanksgiving because it "celebrat[es] colonialism." Now she is busy backtracking all of that.

The early mainstream favorite, Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, was obliged to withdraw from the race due to a campaign accounting snafu; Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley had suspended his campaign because of lackluster poll numbers, but rejoined the race when Rodriguez dropped out. He immediately won the endorsement of retiring Governor Tony Evers in spite of Evers's promise to keep mum about his preferences.

The others still in the race are State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and former Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration Joel Brennan, neither of whom has been able to poll above the statistical margin of error in spite of their bona fides and worthy résumés. Also on the ballot are former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, who have also dropped out of the race.

Meanwhile, Republican Tom Tiffany faces only token opposition on his side of the ballot, and has flooded the airwaves with feel-good, folksy ads before whoever the Democratic nominee is will have a chance to characterize him as a right-wing Trumpster eager to return Wisconsin to the Scott Walker era of Ruthless One Party Rule.

The Recycling Bin of History

Every once in a while, I come across editorial cartoons for these Graphical History Tours that I like, but which don't make the cut for one reason or another.

Which is just to say that there ain't much by way of an overall theme to today's post. And here we go!

"The Grist of War" by Winsor McCay in New York Herald, ca. June 18, 1926

I was all set to include this Winsor McCay cartoon in a recent post about Abd El-Krim's surrender to  colonial French and Spain troops in Morocco, but something just seemed off about it.

Given the timing of its publication, it seems that the cartoon ought to be about the Rif War, but it's curious why the "Militarist" character is drawn with ridiculously exaggerated white lips, in the manner that White cartoonists and minstrel shows of the day portrayed Black people.

German cartoonists in the aftermath of World War I frequently drew African soldiers carrying out French military actions as a way of highlighting African soldiers' presence in France's occupation of the Ruhr region; the cartooning practice was meant to inflame German resentment at being policed by untermenschen.

Was McCay echoing that same racist propaganda here? If so, the cartoon was more likely about French policy against Germany, not France's adventures in Morocco.

"Well, Anyway, a Good Time Was Had By All" by James North in Washington Post, June 4, 1926

Meanwhile, a much-ballyhooed disarmament conference was underway. The French poppinjay in the foreground of James North's cartoon is more representative of how U.S. cartoonists represented France: stiffly waxed goatee and upturned mustache.

"But Isn't It Kind of Dangerous" by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, June 1, 1926

Here’s a “Ding” Darling cartoon I liked about New York Governor Al Smith’s position on Prohibition. It didn’t quite fit in with my post on spring primary results — Smith was not in a reelection race — and I already had two other Darling cartoons having to do with Iowa’s GOP Senate primary.

I do like to keep an eye out for cartoons featuring the men who were destined to run for president and vice president later on. I shouldn’t need to warn of a spoiler alert when I explain that Smith would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, and it’s not as if the "Happy Warrior" were an obscure pol in 1926. Nor is he largely forgotten today.

Unlike his 1928 running mate.

By the way, I came across this campaign button at a resale store recently. I wonder whether whoever wrote the price sticker was unaware that Franklin Roosevelt was not at the top of the ticket, but was the vice presidential nominee in that 1920 campaign.

"Kompromissflaggen" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, June 6, 1926

This cartoon suggesting designs various German political parties and interests might have had for the Weimar Republic's flag didn't fit in with recent posts on European affairs. This is an unretouched image from the Heidelberg's on-line archive; besides adding English translations, I would have tried to eliminate the yellowing of the page and to emphasize the black lines.

Perhaps Herr Garvens would have appreciated my coloring in some red on his flags, too, assuming I would be coloring the correct rectangles. My guess is that the red isn't missing because it has faded over time, but rather that it was never there — because Kladderadatsch could only afford black and yellow ink for the cartoons on its inside pages that week.

Finally, it would have been timely, in this week when the Supreme Court floods the zone with a blizzard of rulings like a college student cranking out all his term papers at once, to have put together a post about historic Supreme Court decisions. Sadly, editorial cartoons about the Court are somewhat rare in the 1920's.

"Memories of Dred Scott" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1926

Cartoons about the Court do show up in newspapers appealing to a Black audience, however. This Wilbert Holloway cartoon concerns the Supreme Court's decision that it had no jurisdiction to rule in Curtis & Corrigan v. Buckley et al., a case contesting the legality of private contracts restricting the sale of homes to Black persons.

The case made by the bill is this: the parties are citizens of the United States, residing in the District [of Columbia]. The plaintiff and the defendant Corrigan are white persons, and the defendant Curtis is a person of the negro race. In 1921, thirty white persons, including the plaintiff and the defendant Corrigan, owning twenty-five parcels of land, improved by dwelling houses, situated on S Street, between 18th and New Hampshire Avenue, in the City of Washington, executed an indenture, duly recorded, in which they recited that, for their mutual benefit and the best interests of the neighborhood comprising these properties, they mutually covenanted and agreed that no part of these properties should ever be used or occupied by, or sold, leased or given to, any person of the negro race or blood, and that this covenant should run with the land and bind their respective heirs and assigns for twenty-one years from and after its date.

Justice Edward T. Sanford delivered the Court's decision that the 5th, 13th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution did not apply to private contracts. Sanford, a Harding appointee from Tennessee, was a friend and protegé of Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Like Taft a conservative jurist, his earlier majority opinion in Gitlow v. New York ironically established precedent for the liberal Warren Court's decisions expanding civil rights. 

Q Toon: He's Also (Gasp!) a Serial Perambulator

Democrats keep wishing upon a star that they can flip one of Texas's Senate seats. This year, their star is named James Talarico, a former seminarian currently serving in the state House of Representatives.

Democrats' hopes are up because Republicans tossed incumbent Senator Cornyn in favor of scandal-ridden Texas Attorney General Kenneth Paxton, indicted for fraud, and impeached by the state house but not convicted of abusing the power of his office and accepting bribes. He has been roundly criticized for a plea deal he struck for a politically-connected pedophile to serve only a single day in jail. (He's also a serial adulterer, but nobody besides Mrs. Paxton cares about that kind of thing any more.)

Without anything Republicans can say in favor of Mr. Paxton other than he has the enthusiastic endorsement of likewise ethically lacking Donald Trump, the GOP's talking point is to question Talarico's manhood. They seized on his having ordered a pair of vegetarian breakfast tacos to falsely label him a "soy boy vegan"; they pretend that he's gay, forcing his girlfriend to be more public about their relationship than she wanted to be.

Paxton himself calls his rival "Low-T Talarico," "Tofu Talarico," and "Talafreako." Trump declared his assessment that Talarico “can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas.” Senator Ted Cruz quipped that Talarico risks getting blown away by any stiff breeze. White House Deputy Ghoul of Staff Stephen Miller lied that Talarico is "the first transgender Senate candidate." 

Yeah, these Republican hate-mongers think that kind of thing is funny. Like that roid-rage meathead calling Michelle Obama a man at the White Waffle House Cage Match on Trump's octogenarian birthday party on Sunday.

For the record, she isn't. Not that there's something wrong with that.

I’d post some photos of the current First Lady here, but slutshaming is wrong.

Anyway, it's hard for Talarico to deny being gay, vegan, or transgender without offending gays, vegans, or transes (what the hell is the plural of trans anyway?). His campaign did tweet an “Official Statement from James Talarico on Vegan Accusations” that consisted entirely of a picture of him taking a bite out of a turkey leg at the Texas State Fair.

He has yet to drop his drawers to disprove the transgender slur.

The right-wing echo chamber wouldn't accept that as proof anyway.

June Toons

Today's Graphical History Tour head down into the Bergetoon vaults in search of cartoons from ten, twenty, thirty, and forty Junes ago. 

2016

June, 2016

I noticed that the Philadelphia Gay News, which usually runs my cartoons in grayscale, chose to print my Barney Frank tribute cartoon in full color in their annual Pride issue currently on newsstands. I did offer a grayscale version of it, which I did not do for the cartoon I drew ten years ago this week in response to the Pulse nightclub massacre.

Rainbows do not translate well into grayscale or black-and-white. For the first 16 years or so when I began drawing for the LGBTQ+ press, I didn't incorporate color except for special projects. At first, whenever I put a rainbow flag in a cartoon, I could only suggest the colors by drawing six shades of cross-hatching. Around 2005, I started employing computer-generated halftones in my work, but it was another seven years before I began regularly colorizing my drawings.

Changing the mood entirely:

2006

for Q Syndicate, June, 2006

Some guys just aren't second date material. And some other guys just don't know how to break it to them.

The non-topical nature of this cartoon suggests to me that although I drew it in June, it may have been sent to Q Syndicate as a reserve for a later date when I might be on vacation or any other reason miss deadline.

So I assume it was published sooner or later, because if it is still languishing in the retired computer back-up files at syndicate offices, I ought to change the Q in the final panel to an N in order to keep it relevant.

1996

June, 1996

Here's a cartoon I drew for the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee student newspaper, the UWM Post, and drove it up to their office only to discover that they had no plans to publish during summer break.

Previously, the Post put out three issues each summer, publishing biweekly instead of its regular semiweekly schedule.

As for the content of the cartoon: Sen. Bob Dole, having secured the Republican presidential nomination with a record of supporting the party priority of criminalizing abortion, now sought to appeal to supporters of abortion rights. Not by softening his position on reproductive rights, but by welcoming the support of pro-choice Americans willing to have that choice taken away from them.

Standing behind Dole in this cartoon are House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senators Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms, and theocratic activists Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

1986

June, 1986

Speaking of cartoons that never saw print, I have not been able to determine whether or where this cartoon might have been published. It stars my congressman, Les Aspin, after he had voted in favor of President Reagan's military aid package for the right-wing Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras.

Aspin's vote stunned liberals at home and in Washington. Elected on a peacenik platform during the Vietnam War in 1970, his prior experience in the Pentagon garnered him the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in 1985.

I populated this cartoon with a number of actual Democratic politicians: I can be certain of Alan Cranston, Daniel Inouye, Majority Leader Jim Wright, House Speaker Tip O'Neil, 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and future President Joe Biden (which means that I was wrong about when I first drew him according to this Graphical History Stop). Some that I'm less sure of might be Representatives Barbara Mikulski and Dick Gephardt, Party Chair Paul Kirk, and Senator Robert Byrd.

Jumping back to 2016, I'd like to end up with a cartoon that I'm fairly certain got published somewhere.

for Q Syndicate, June, 2016

Republicans' mythical Big Tent popped up in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, when he claimed to have great support among the LGBT community while simultaneously wooing the antigay evangelical vote that had become so critical to becoming a GOP nominee. Since then, the evangelicals have bowed before the Baal of Trumpism, ceding their dominance to the oligarchs and broligarchs, Nazis and apartheiders.

By the way, I couldn't find the file of the colorized version of the Friends with Benefits cartoon, so I've recolored the original scan. I probably didn't originally paint Trump's face orange like I do now, since I also hadn't drawn tiny hands or the overlong necktie in this cartoon. The pig snout came a bit later.

Now, I don't know what LGBT supporters Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee at this point, had in mind, aside from Ric Grenell, Scott Bessent, Milos Yiannopoulos, and Caitlyn Jenner. But Trump's campaign message after the Pulse Nightclub massacre was that Hillary Clinton would "bring[] in more people who will threaten your freedoms and beliefs" (his tweet). He also told an audience in Atlanta: 

"The LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community — they are so much in favor of what I've been saying over the last three or four days. Ask the gays what they think and what they do, in, not only Saudi Arabia, but many of these countries, and then you tell me — who's your friend, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?"

This ties in, not just to the cartoon at the top of today's post, but also to the Bob Dole cartoon. I doubt that Dole, or any of the guys drawn behind him, seriously thought that he had fans of the pro-choice persuasion. Inviting them to vote Republican was just one of those things politicians used to do even in the days when we were sorting ourselves into irreconcilable adversaries.

But one does get the impression that Donald Trump lives in a fantasy world where facts become true (or crooked) simply because he says so. He hears the LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community agreeing with him in his head, so they must be his bigliest friends, that he can tell you.

Ditto the adulating crowds at Madison Square Garden, the praise for his gilded ballroom, any number of big men who have come up to him with tears in their eyes, and those peace negotiations about to bring Iran's surrender any minute now.

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

Q Toon: Early Indications

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was a guest on Stephen Colbert's show recently — it seems that there is a different Democratic politician on every night trying to get their fare-thee-wells in before CBS pulls Colbert's plug — and was asked about the possibility of his running for president in 2028.

It's too early for Democrats to declare candidacies for president, and Colbert acknowledged as much in his question, so Buttigieg naturally did not throw his metaphorical hat in the proverbial ring on late-night television. I nevertheless see a lot of his posts on my social media feed, even more than those of Gavin Newsom.

That's the fault of Al Gorithm, I suppose. Al and I have never met, but he seems to think he knows a lot about me.

Anyway, Mr. Buttigieg tells us that his main priority these days is getting Democrats elected to office around the country. That's the sort of thing a former Secretary of Transportation and small-city mayor has to do in order to have elected Democrats return one's calls after one launches a presidential campaign.

There isn’t much Buttigieg can do in the present Gerrymandering War, but he has been lending his star power to various congressional candidates. His strategy for helping get Democrats elected also appears to involve a good amount of showing up on TV. 

He certainly has the skills to hold his own against the Republican mouthpieces on Fox Noise. Perhaps he should give Chuck Schumer some lessons.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this little respite from the constant Trump Trump Trump of Invasive, Pervasive, Inescapable, Omnitrumpified Trumpitude.

If not, please tune in again tomorrow.

Darling Catches Up

Graphical History Tour Inc. couldn't let April get away without celebrating the centennial of J.N. "Ding" Darling's return to the drawing board after a year battling peritonitis.

Jay N. Darling, "Ding," returns to the Register's front page this morning with the first cartoon he has drawn after more than a year's absence. Mr. Darling has completely recovered his health, following the serious illness with peritonitis with which he was stricken March 19, 1925. Ed LeCocq, the young cartoonist who substituted for Mr. Darling, will draw cartoons for the Evening Tribune.

"If You Don't Think the World Moves..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, April 5, 1926

In Ding's first cartoon upon return, he appears undaunted by the challenge of catching up with the whirlwind of world events since his pen fell silent.

"Things Seem Just About Where We Left Them a Year Ago" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 6, 1926

But one day later, he realized that it was still the 1920's after all. Prohibition was still the law of the land, if not universally observed; the Democratic Party was still out of power and searching for some winning issue; Congress was still promising aid to farmers but not delivering; isolationists were still thwarting Uncle Sam trying to fetch peace off the shelf; and, apparently, President Coolidge was hard at work sawing logs.

Darling approved of Calvin Coolidge, which is why he is the only figure not beset by cobwebs in the cartoon.

"Looks As Though He'd Adopted Something" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 13, 1926

Darling returned to his drawing board just in time for the culmination of Iowa Democrat Daniel Steck's challenge to overturn Republican Senator Smith Brookhart's 1924 election victory.

Brookhart was elected to the Senate in 1922 to fill out the term of William S. Kenyon, and immediately challenged Senate norms, preferring cowhide shoes and overalls to suits and ties. A progressive "radical," he publicly backed Robert La Follette's 1924 presidential campaign over Coolidge's reelection while running for a full Senate term of his own. Republican party leaders withdrew their support over this unforgiveable defection from party loyalty.

Election night returns appeared to indicate that Steck would be the first Democrat elected to the Senate by Iowans since the Civil War; but late results from rural counties gave Brookhart a 754-vote margin of victory. Brookhart was sworn into office on March 4, 1925. 

Steck, backed by the Iowa Republican Party, filed an official challenge with the Senate Committee on Elections and Privileges. On April 12, 1926, 16 Senate Republicans figured they would rather have another Democrat in the minority than Brookhart within their caucus, and joined their 29 Democratic colleagues voting to recognize Steck as the winner of the 1924 election.

Brookhart promptly announced that he would challenge Iowa's Senior Senator, Albert Cummins, in 1928. He did so, successfully.

"First Blood" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Evening Tribune, Apr. 13, 1926

Since "young cartoonist" Ed LeCocq has graced our pixels repeatedly over the past year, I thought it only fair to let him comment on Brookhart's ouster here. I wonder if he had been prepared to draw a glum Miss Democracy in case the Senate vote had gone the other way. His GOP Elephant could have remained disappointed in either event.

LeCocq's editors at the Evening Tribune seemed to view Steck's victory as a portent of Democratic victories yet to come. It wasn't; even the Great Depression couldn't get Steck reelected in 1930.

"To Retrieve the Family Fortunes" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 7, 1926

Getting back to those Things Where We Left Them a Year Ago, the Democratic Governor of New York, Al Smith, was a champion of the "Wets," pushing for loosening, if not repeal, of Prohibition. In the spring of 1926, the Wets proposed decriminalizing beer and "light wines" (5.5-10% Alcohol By Volume), while leaving hard liquor fully illegal.

"Important If True" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 20, 1926

One argument in favor of loosening Prohibition laws was that organized crime was trafficking profitably — and violently — in contraband hooch. It was well known that powerful crime bosses had help from corrupt elected officials, law enforcers, and judges, not to mention otherwise upstanding citizens.

"The Voice of Authority" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 25, 1926

This Darling cartoon points out a powerful force within the "Dry" constituency: the Women's Vote.

Prohibition became law because of a coalition of Progressive social reformers, religious conservatives, Southern Democrats, and wives tired of their husbands coming home drunk all the time.

Moving on to foreign affairs...

"The Audience Will Kindly Refrain from Applause Until the Act Is Over" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 9, 1926

"All There Was" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 10, 1926

The Coolidge administration reached agreements with World War I allies France and Italy for their repayment of war debts to the U.S. Both countries were left heavily damaged after the war, yet many editorial cartoonists and their publishers demanded prompt repayment in full and would settle for nothing less. Darling took a more nuanced view of things.

I really like how, in his cartoon about settling the debt from France, he draws your eye from the oversized trapeze artiste, to the gentleman reaching to catch her, to the Master of Ceremonies on the ground, and finally to the expectant crowd.

"No Wonder the Neighbors Are Beginning to Talk" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Apr. 23, 1926

Darling stood apart from many of his fellow Republicans in consistently advocating for international cooperation, the Wilson-inspired League of Nations, and the International Court. Resistance to these efforts was especially effective in the U.S. Congress under Republican domination, even when the Coolidge administration was open to them.

By the way, it was another month before Darling resumed drawing cartoons for Collier's. He tweaked one of the above cartoons for this last one.

"Putting It Up to Papa" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Collier's, May 29, 1926

Q Toon: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Few of us editorial cartoonists are known for drawing cartoons that second what a politician has said, but given the distressing events of the past week, I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

Former President Joe Biden gave a brief speech, from which today’s cartoon is excerpted, to the annual International LGBTQ+ Leadership Conference last week. The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, an organization of elected LGBTQ+ officials, had invited Mr. Biden to attend, the first former president to do so, to present him with their Chris Abele Impact Award for his contributions to the LGBTQ+ community.

The Victory Institute emphasized that Biden’s administration set records for LGBTQ+ inclusion. Nearly 15 percent of Biden’s appointees identified as LGBTQ+, far surpassing any prior administration. They include former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Human Rights Campaign Senior Vice President for Campaigns and Communications Jonathan Lovitz, who was a Biden appointee in the Department of Commerce, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Admiral Rachel Levine, and Ambassador Chantale Wong. Beyond representation, the administration reinstated and expanded federal civil rights protections, reversed the ban on transgender military service that Trump has now reinstated, strengthened antidiscrimination rules in employment and health care, and expanded protections for LGBTQ+ youth and families.

In his speech, Mr. Biden noted that as Vice President, he had gotten out in front of the Obama administration in publicly advocating for marriage equality. “I just couldn’t remain silent anymore,” he said. “I expressed my support for gay marriage a little earlier than some folks had been expecting.”

“America is the only country founded on an idea,” he told his audience. “We hold these truths to be self-evident … all are created equal, all deserve to be treated with dignity throughout their lives.” Though the country has not always met that ideal, he said, “we’ve never walked away from it.”

His remarks stand in stark contrast to the wildly offensive, divisive, and disgraceful ravings that are the stock in trade of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

“Folks, Donald Trump and his Republicans are trying to derail and distort our fight for equality. They’re trying to turn it into something scary, something sinister. But folks, it’s not really about anything that’s all that complicated. At its core, it’s about giving every American an opportunity to be treated with the basic decency, dignity and respect they all deserve.”

Biden closed his speech by audience members currently serving in elected office to stand up (that's one way to get oneself a standing ovation). “We just have to get up. Remember who in the hell we are. We’re the United States of America … and there is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together.” 

I'm not quite ready to draw a "Miss Him Yet?" cartoon, but I sure do miss an administration that embodies everything — dammit, anything — Mr. Biden said.

Toon: Can't Argue With That

 

Q Toon: Catching Up

It is finally time to extricate Leo the Liberal from Trumplinka Concentration Camp and extrajudicial expulsion to Shitholistan, so I've decided that his partner, MAGA Max, finally checked his phone messages and discovered that Leo was waiting for him at the Ottawa airport.

How they will explain returning to the United States without any luggage I leave to your own imagination.

Having recently traveled by car through southern Ontario, I can report that passing into Canada at Niagara Falls was a breeze, whereas coming back into the U.S. at Port Huron entailed a twenty-minute traffic jam at customs. The questioning at either border was friendly and non-problematic; we did see one car directed aside for further examination, but of course, we have no idea why.

But while a real human being who was returned from unjust banishment to a Salvadorian concentration camp is now being threatened with expulsion to Uganda, I'm going to let Leo fall between the cracks of Trump's lawless deportation purges. Probably.

The stumbling block I had to surmount for this cartoon (besides the Canadian flight attendants union strike) was Max's dialogue in the second and third panels. It doesn't quite sound like something a MAGAzoid would say.

But for the past several months, Trumpian fascism has affected Max directly. Now that it no longer does, Max, like the rest of the MAGA flock who used to see threats to democracy and the Constitution everywhere, will go back to blind Trump l'oeilty.

In 2020, Trump's blustering, blundering response to the COVID-19 pandemic was something that affected all of us directly, and helped convince a majority of the U.S. electorate that he had to go. 

Four years later, few of us were still directly affected by COVID-19; the pandemic seemed manageable. So a majority of the U.S. electorate decided, hey, what the heck, better to elect a manifestly corrupt, lying, self-absorbed, dim-witted, venal, seditious convicted felon who nearly got us all killed, than that Black woman.