Toon: Circle Joke

If you spend a lot of time watching cable TV news, first of all, do yourself a favor and stop; and second of all, you will have heard a variety of pundits, academics, and people of the mistaken belief that they should run for president someday, who are weighing in on Why Kamala Harris Lost The Election.

One of the leading theories is that President Joe Biden and those closest to him handicapped her by running for reelection in spite of mounting evidence that his mental acuity had begun to decline. Many of us, myself included, had voted for him in 2020 on the presumption that at 77, he planned to serve one term to repair the damage left behind by The Corrupt Trump administration, then hand leadership of the party over to someone younger.

Instead, he decided to run for reelection, as he put it, "to finish the job."

Which is ridiculous.

The presidency is not a job you're supposed to "finish." Each president does what he or (someday) she can, and turns it over to the next person. The job is never finished until the Republic is.

Donald Berzelius Trump, I fear, may "finish the job."

Anyway, my worry back when Biden announced his 2024 candidacy was that he didn't have confidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was up to taking over the job from him. Or that a Democratic Party primary battle would leave its victor hobbled by constituencies feeling that they were denied their due, or ignored, or unwelcome. Or, in the absence of a primary battle, ditto.

As things have turned out, plenty of Democratic constituencies are complaining about being denied their due, ignored, or unwelcome anyway. The Left complains that Harris tacked to the center instead of wholeheartedly campaigning on their agenda. The Centrists complain that Harris embraced "wokism" and transgender rights and people who say "Latinx."

I saw a scholar on The Daily Show this week promoting his election post-mortem book, arguing to Jon Stewart that Democrats were doomed by their embrace of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). He wasn't saying that Democrats should join Republicans in promoting Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion; just that they should call DEI something else — as if the right-wing propaganda machine wouldn't devote itself to turning the new name into a dirty word.

Now, I suppose that had Harris listened to the Palestinian rights crowd and condemned Netanyahu's genocidal war in Gaza, it might have been enough to get her over the finish line in Michigan. But it wouldn't have made the difference in any of the other "blue wall" swing states. Vowing to send undocumented alien drug dealers to Guantanamo might have gained her Arizona.

On the other hand, those moves might have helped about as much as affecting a southern drawl helped her in Georgia and North Carolina.

Q Toon: Stefon Gets Political

Republiqans' gerrymandering since 2010 has emboldened their most radical elements to believe that they can successfully run their most extremist, oddball, weird candidates for statewide office as easily as they can in their hermetically sealed congressional and state legislative districts.

That they certainly can in states that are bent that way, and there are several from Alabama to Wyoming. It works elsewhere for offices voters pay little attention to, such as Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor — especially where Democrats have left way-downballot, county level races woefully uncontested. But when it comes to the marquee races for Senator and Governor, the electorate actually sits up and pays attention. (Flooded with campaign commercials on every electronic device, how could we not?)

Republiqans thought they had a sure winner for one of Georgia's Senate seats two years ago in football star Herschel Walker, only to be stunned when a solid majority of voters discovered what a loony, intellectual lightweight he was. 

They seem destined for another shock if North Carolina voters fail to overlook gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's antebellum ideas on women's suffrage and slavery. CNN has added to the mix, exposing posts by the self-described "Black Nazi" on a pornography website over a decade ago.

Walker was an unknown quantity as a candidate in Georgia beyond being a celebrity, so maybe one can cut Republiqan voters there some slack. But GOP voters in North Carolina have no excuse for not knowing what kind of person their Lieutenant Governor is. He has not been some Alexander P. Throttlebottom waiting quietly out of sight and out of mind. 

Robinson's inflammatory rhetoric caught more attention than your typical Lieutenant Governor ever gets. Heck, this is the fourth cartoon I've drawn about him, and I don't even live in North Carolina.

And I haven’t even mentioned that he is a Holocaust denier yet . 

Of course, time is short; but Tar Heel Republiqans could try stealing the national Democrats' playbook, and pressure their deeply flawed candidate to drop out so that they can replace him with someone else who is so much more appealing by comparison.

It's 2024. Anything can happen.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 You thought I was going to give this guy a pass?

On a totally unrelated matter:

I heard from a teacher in Georgia after last week's mass shooting at Apalachee High School that her school had received a bomb threat. Students and staff were told to evacuate the building.

Then the school administrators told teachers to go back in and search for anything that might be a bomb.

Think about that for a moment.

Clearly the school administrators didn't.

Think of your children's school teachers, and think back on any of your own. How many of them had any training in explosives detection? How many of them would be able to find a bomb hidden who knows where in a school building without setting it off?

Well, that's Miss Othmar all over.

Q Toon: Gay Lib

The Libertarian Party held its national convention last week, rejecting appeals from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and convicted felon Donald Johnny Rocco Trump, instead nominating Chase Oliver as its presidential candidate. It took the party seven ballots to select Oliver, who received 60.6% of the votes over 36.6% for “none of the above.”

Oliver, a pot-smoking, gun-toting, anti-war, out gay 39-year-old from Georgia, was his party's nominee in 2022 for the Senate seat held by Democrat Rev. Rafael Warnock. He pulled in a little over 2% of the vote that year — just enough to send the election to a run-off. 

He represents his party's "classical libertarian" wing, the wing whose beliefs are just a hop, skip, and a jump from anarchism: government shouldn't do anything for you, or get in the way of the big and powerful. If you want to have an abortion, do drugs, dump motor oil in the lake, or burn tires in your back yard, a libertarian government won't stop you. Neither will it deliver your mail, plow your streets, educate your children, put out your house fire, or step in when a pandemic sweeps the country. You want to defund the police? They're your guys.

Libertarian Party leadership is currently dominated by its "Mises" wing, founded by the likes of Ron Paul and which has come to embrace Trumpism. It's named for the Mises Foundation, which is named in turn for Austrian-American economist Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (1881-1973). Les Mises Rabble oppose abortion rights, immigration, transgender rights, and "wokism," for starters. They are accused of supporting racists, bigots, white nationalists, and Putin apologists.

The Libertarians' convention was more interesting than I expect the major parties' conventions will be. Trump and Kennedy were booed on stage; some delegate cast a vote for Stormy Daniels in the first round; and then there was this:

Michael Rectenwald, the favored presidential candidate of the Mises Caucus faction currently running the party, failed to secure the nomination after making a bumbling, post-Trump speech on stage while stoned, having made a spur-of-the-moment decision beforehand to pop an edible.

Could his speech have been any more ridiculous than rambling on about electric-battery-powered boats, sharks, low-flow dishwashers, and how nobody is allowed to watch "Gone with the Wind" any more?

Back to the Libertarians: the Misesthropes are refusing to accept Oliver as their party's standard bearer. The Libertarian Parties in Montana and Colorado quickly voted not to put him on their states' ballots, calling Oliver and running mate Mike ter Maat "culturally woke" "useful idiots for the regime" who are "unfit to represent our values." Its parties in Idaho and New Hampshire may follow suit.

Oliver being openly gay is only part of what makes him woke and unfit in the Mises-to-pieces' eyes. Apparently, he was seen wearing a protective mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not advocating a governmental mask mandate, mind you. Just choosing to wear one himself. But that's enough to tar him as a stooge of the feds.

Psst: I'll bet that he stores his guns in a locked cabinet with the safety on, too!

Q Toon: AG Stands for Almira Gulch

Impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton isn't going to let a little thing like his state's borders stop him from going after transgender kids and their families.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is requesting medical records of Texas youth who have received gender-affirming care from a Georgia telehealth clinic, marking at least the second time he’s sought such records from providers in another state.

The clinic, QueerMed, confirmed on Friday morning that they received the request. QueerMed said it stopped servicing youth in Texas after the state banned transition-related care last year. The clinic’s founder said the attorney general requested information about patients dating back to Jan. 1, 2022, before the ban took effect.

The clinic said that Paxton asked for private information about Texas residents who were provided with telehealth care in Texas before the ban, and residents provided with care outside of Texas after the ban. The request, they said, nearly mirrors one the attorney general sent to Seattle Children’s Hospital last year.

Paxton asked Seattle Children’s for a variety of patient information, including the number of Texas children they have treated, medications prescribed to children, the children’s diagnoses and the name of Texas laboratories where tests for youth are administered.

In response to that request, known as a civil investigative demand, Seattle Children’s sued the Texas Office of the Attorney General in December.

QueerMed confirmed that Paxton sent his request to them on Nov. 17, the same day that Seattle Children’s received the similar demand for documents. QueerMed received the request Dec. 7, due to mail delays. Its receipt of the letter was first reported by The Houston Chronicle on Friday morning.

I'm going to level with you here: I'm mighty sick and tired of having to come up with new things to say about Republicans' psychotic vendetta against transgender citizens. You think you're tired of hearing about Taylor Swift showing up at every Kansas City Chiefs game? Puh-leeze. Republicans launched this crusade over a decade ago, and now it's everywhere you look.

They started by frightening their impressionable minions with fanciful tales of hairy, brutish men in dresses lurking in women's bathrooms. Then they moved on to keeping transgender girls out of locker rooms, out of pools, out of sports. Now they're attacking transgender people's rights to vote, to work, to drive, to cross state lines, to be called by their own names. Above all, they keep passing laws to criminalize transgender persons' health care.

And yet it's those whiny MAGA snowflakes who think they're the ones someone is trying to "erase."

The Walton Impeachment's Klimactic KlonKlusion

"Around and Around" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Oct. 17, 1923

Today's Graphical History Tour makes one last stop at the impeachment of Oklahoma Governor Jack C. Walton in 1923.

"That Creepy Feeling" by W.K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 31, 1923

As you of course recall, progressive Democrat Walton was elected Oklahoma's fifth Governor by a plurality in 1922, a year and a half after the Tulsa massacre, and soon began working to wrest local government and law enforcement from the clutches of the Ku Klux Klan. In September of 1923, he declared martial law in Tulsa and Okmulgee Counties, censoring the press, suspending habeas corpus, and authorizing a military tribunal to investigate and prosecute assaults and intimidation of citizens the Klan deemed less than "100% American."

This upset members of the Oklahoma legislature, some of whom were themselves members of the Klan; and on October 23, the Oklahoma House voted to impeach the Governor.

"When Night-hood Was in Flower" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oklahoma City, Oct. 19, 1923

As I have noted before, it's a shame that Oklahoma's newspapers had no local editorial cartoonists in their regular employ, relying instead on syndicated cartoons from out-of-state. Some of those cartoonists supported Walton at first, but by the time he was impeached, nearly all agreed that he had overreached his authority. Several national editorial cartoonists ignored Oklahoma politics entirely, which probably suited Walton's censors just fine.

So one ends up with trifles such as Butler's "When Night-hood Was in Flower" series in the leftist Oklahoma Leader— a series which disappeared from that weekly newspaper after the issue carrying the above cartoon.

Ad in Jack Walton's Paper, Oklahoma City, Nov. 1, 1923

Responding to his impeachment, Walton and his allies published a newspaper of their own: a four-page broadsheet filled with bold, lurid headlines over accounts of Klan atrocities. This advertisement for a book appeared in some editions of the short-lived Jack Walton's Paper.

The cartoon Klansmen on Walton's book cover (assuming that this is an accurate depiction of it) certainly appears to have been inspired by a "Ding" Darling cartoon.

"Making the Citizens of Oklahoma Over Into 100% Americans" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Sept. 18, 1923

The beaten woman in the ad also reminds me of another cartoon, but I have not been able to place it. Louis Raemaekers, perhaps?

Back at the impeachment proceedings, Gov. Walton demanded that his accusers in the legislature confess whether they were Klan members or not; but he was ruled out of order. Walton eventually stormed out of the Senate chambers, complaining that the trial was unfair.

"Well, Walton Is Out" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 26, 1923

On November 19, 1923, Walton was convicted on eleven of the House's 22 charges against him, and removed from office. Lieutenant Governor Martin Trapp, a conservative Democrat serving in that office under Walton and two previous governors, succeeded Walton as Governor for the remainder of his term. (State law limiting governors to a single term prohibited Trapp from running for a term of his own.)

Daniel Fitzpatrick may well have been the last editorial cartoonist paying any attention to Oklahoma politics. His cartoon notes the ouster of Governor Walton without approval or condemnation; but with a great deal of contempt for Oklahomans in general. Right down to their dogs.

There were plenty of issues with the Klan elsewhere, of course.

"The Sinister Hand" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Nov. 8, 1923

On the same Memphis Commercial Appeal front page with this Alley cartoon about the Atlanta Grand Wizard's potential for influence in Memphis government were two unrelated reports about Klansmen on trial — in Houston, Texas, and Balstrup, Louisiana — and two more about warrants issued against Klan officials in Birmingham, Alabama, and the case in Atlanta of a Klan spokesman arrested for the murder of an attorney working for deposed Klan Wizard William Simmons.

"Is the Ku Klux Question Solving Itself" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, ca. Nov. 19, 1923

Alley's cartoon appeared on the Commercial Appeal's front page on the date of municipal elections in Memphis. The Commercial Appeal supported the reelection of the incumbent mayor, Rowlett Payne, over two rivals, one of whom was allied with the Klan. As an Commercial Appeal editorial put it, challenger Joe Wood's ticket "runs on an issue imported from Atlanta, the leaders thereof now being engaged in a bloody feud among themselves."

"Poison" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Oct. 18, 1923

Payne would win reelection, with Wood coming in second.

I checked, and found that the doings of the Klan never piqued the interest of Atlanta Journal editorial cartoonist A.W. Brewerton at any point that November. Here's his cartoon on the same day (a Thursday) as Alley's "Halt, Memphis" cartoon above.

"Here and There in the News" by Alfred W. Brewerton in Atlanta Journal, Nov. 8, 1923

At the same time that the intra-Klan murder in Atlanta gave some like William Morris hope that the Klan was in deKline, the Texas State Fair devoted an entire day to the hate group. Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans gave a keynote speech to a crowd numbering upward of 75,000 Dragons, Klaybees and Cyclopses, decked out in their finest gold, purple, and scarlet robes and "100% American" buttons at the fair.

Evans charged that Black Americans were infested with tuberculosis and venereal disease, that Jews were an "unblendable" element in American society, and that "Do you realize, my friends, that the illiteracy of Europe is practically confined to Catholic countries?"

"The Hooded Cobra" by Al Frueh in New York World, ca. Nov. 16, 1923

I wonder if Frueh didn't mean "Klobra."

The Great Nothern Migration, Updated

Three weeks ago, I led off a post with this John McCutcheon cartoon about Black Americans leaving Dixieland for more attractive job markets in the north.

"The South Will Soon Be Demanding Restriction of Migration of Its Labor," by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1923

I really should have hunted up some cartoons by southern editorial cartoonists to represent a different viewpoint. 

Well, better late than never: Memphis Commercial Appeal cartoonist James T. Alley answered McCutcheon with this cartoon cautioning any Black Tennesseeans that while the pay might be better up north, southern employers were more considerate of their workers than those cold, heartless Yankee businessmen.

"The Labor Agent Doesn't Picture This" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 24, 1923

Likewise, if you thought the hearts of those Yankee employers was frosty, wait till you got a load of their winters!

"I Wish I Wuz in de Land of Cotton" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 13, 1923

As hinted by the cut line below his May 13 cartoon, one shouldn't mistake Alley for a recalcitrant devotee of the Lost Cause. Still, I have difficulty imagining any of the emigres writing in to the Memphis Commercial Appeal to voice their regrets.

Alley did, however, have a point about the weather, particularly in 1923. That year, the winter lingered in the Northeast and Midwest unusually late, only to have an early summer hot on its heels.

"Hiptized" by Frank "Spang" Spangler in Montgomery Advertiser, May 4, 1923

Alabama cartoonist "Spang" Spangler chimed in that all y'all are gonna miss yer soul food, and who knows what gawdawful crap is in "The Great Mister Y Northern Hash," bless its heart, up yonder!

To be clear, we've got plenty of watermelon, cantaloupe, yam, and corn on the cob up here; the "Negro Exodus" brought collard greens and field peas along with it as well. Possums are all over the place, if not necessarily on the dinner menu. I will, however, confess to being ignorant of yallar laig.

I assume it tastes like chicken. 

"Northern Migration" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, by June 9, 1923

Last time around this topic, I skipped this cartoon because of Morris's crude racial caricatures drawn straight out of vaudeville. I get the reference he was making to migration, and I'm sure he had birds and butterflies in mind; but the resulting image reminds me too much of the flying monkeys in the 1939 "Wizard of Oz."

In 1923, Utah-born Morris had been living in New York long enough that he had to have seen what actual Black people look like. The Northern Migration had begun ramping up after World War I, but news coverage hints that it spiked dramatically in the spring of 1923.

Returning to the serious side of things, now: 

"Almost Burned Out" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. June 10, 1923

As per the cut line in Alley's May 13 cartoon, the job market was not the only reason Black southerners were leaving Dixie; but they would find the Klan expanding in the same direction.

Up North, the Klan attracted new members by agitating against Roman Catholics, foreign immigration, and alcohol. Yet there was plenty of anti-Black animus already there, as evidenced by the postwar race riots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington D.C., and elsewhere, as well as lynchings as far north as Duluth.

Elmer Bushnell was not a southern cartoonist (aside from working in Memphis at some point early in his career); he drew for the Ohio-based Central Press Association. I found this cartoon of his on the front page of Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer-Sun; and I have to wonder whether the caption, predicting that the Klan would soon sputter out, was his or the creation of a milquetoast editor wearing rose-colored glasses under his green eye shades.

To my eye, the caption ill matches the cartoon. Nor does it square with the historical record; the Klan was a force to be reckoned with nationwide throughout the 1920's.

"Going Back into Business for Himself" by Roy H. James in St. Louis Star, June 7, 1923

Certainly the inner politics of the Klan were still deemed noteworthy by other editorial cartoonists, as here commenting on a breakaway movement led by "Col." William Joseph Simmons. Inspired by Birth of a Nation, Simmons had founded the 20th-Century iteration of the Klan in 1915, but was ousted as Imperial Wizard in November, 1922. Simmons opposed a move championed by his successor, Hiram Wesley Evans, to admit women to the Klan, "in violation of a decree entered in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, and, further still, ... the original charter which defines that male members only shall be admitted to the Order."

Simmons's Knights of Kamelia, also known as Knights of the Flaming Sword, is estimated to have grown to 60,000 members nationwide. Estimates of Klan membership under Evans, meanwhile, vary widely from 2.6 million to 6 million members, the terrorist organization extending beyond Dixie, especially in Indiana and Michigan.

Q Toon: A Hallowe'en Classic

This week's cartoon goes out especially to my readers in Philadelphia Gay News, where the Republican candidate for governor thinks a local hospital is abducting homeless children to practice gender reassignment surgery on them. (I'm not making this up. He is.) 

It was the latest in a series of extreme and false statements by Doug Mastriano, who made the comments during an interview with a right-wing network that features Steve Bannon and a steady stream QAnon conspiracies. ...

During a program this week the host of a program on the “Real America’s Voice” network asked Mastriano a loaded question about his Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, Josh Shapiro, who is Pennsylvania’s Attorney General. Mastriano then took the opportunity to falsely claim: “He’s standing aside while the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and experimenting on them with gender transitioning, something that’s irreversible.”

Mr. Mastriano is not alone in fabricating false facts, of course. The Republicans' senatorial candidate in Georgia, football star Herschel Walker has become a laughingstock around the country for claiming that he's an FBI agent-cum-police special consultant who graduated valedictorian from the University of Georgia (no, he didn’t graduate at all) and started a breaded-chicken empire nobody else has ever heard of. Not to mention his denying the stray children and abortions he happens to be responsible for. 

Even his own campaign staffers admit that Walker is a serial liar.

And yet he stands an even or better chance of being Georgia's next senator.

The GQP candidate for governor in Arizona, Kari Lake, clings ferociously to the lie that some nefarious conspiracy stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Retrumplicans in her state tried over and over and over again to find evidence of massive voter fraud, only to come up with a greater Biden win in Arizona than in the original vote count.

If she is elected governor, she promises to add new restrictions on Arizonans' right to vote: only on Election Day, at a polling place, on paper (counted only by hand), and with voter identification on all ballots. That's right: no more secret ballot. And if she still doesn't like how the people vote, she'll simply refuse to certify the results.

And she has a five-point lead in the polls.

Here in Wisconsin, voters have already elected Ron Johnson to two craptastic terms in the U.S. Senate and may very well give him a third, in spite of his pretending that the January 6 insurrectionists were unarmed and peaceful, that mouthwash was as good or better at protecting against COVID-19 as the actual vaccines, and that Dr. Fauci had "overhyped" both COVID-19 and HIV-AIDS.

On January 6, 2021, Johnson sent lists of fraudulent electors to Vice President Mike Pence on the Senate floor in an effort to overturn the wills of Wisconsin — and Michigan — voters. Happily, Pence's staffer told Johnson's errand boy to get lost. Johnson's excuse once the episode came to light was that somebody, he doesn't know who, wanted something, he didn't know what, delivered to Pence that day, so he said, sure, whatever, what does it matter?

The list of these Republicans goes on and so forth, et cetera ad infinitum, with one after another running to be governor, secretary of state, attorney general, senator, congressperson, judge, district attorney, sheriff, school board member, and deputy assistant ombudsman of the water department from coast to coast — many of them firmly convinced that public schools are providing litter boxes for students who believe they are cats.

It's times like these when you wish the phrase "most important election in our lifetime" hadn't been used to describe every election in our lifetime.

Forward Into the Past!

 

But what's really interesting about Columbus, GA, is that its newspaper was entirely staffed by psychics who could see into the future.

Q Toon: Stiff as a Board

 

This week's cartoon could be about Walt Disney Corporation standing up (a bit tardily) to Florida state Republicans for passing "Don't Say Gay" into law, but having just drawn a cartoon about that law last week, I took a more generic approach this week.

Republican-dominated legislatures in one state after another after another have been attacking the LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender minors, with full fury this year.

The Alabama House of Representatives voted 66-28 for legislation to make it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones or perform surgery to aid in the gender transition of people under age 19. The bill now goes to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey for her signature as Alabama becomes the latest red state to promote legislation and policies aimed at trans youth.

and

The Arizona Legislature passed bills Thursday to prohibit gender reassignment surgery for minors and ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams, joining a growing list of Republican-controlled states attempting to restrict transgender rights as they gain more visibility in culture and society.

and

Texas Republicans’ growing focus on what they call “child gender modification” is the latest illustration of the state’s swing to the right after the 2020 election. And it reached an apex as both Abbott and Paxton were in the final days of primaries where they were getting pressured from their right over the issue.

and I haven't even gotten to the copycat "Don't Say Gay" legislation.

As I noted last week, Walt Disney Co. is only one of some 200 corporations protesting Florida's new law; major corporations across the country have done likewise in these other states.

But it has hardly deterred Republicans in any of them.

The GQP has such a lock on voters in gated communities, rural Mayberries, and the Foxosphere, that it hardly needs campaign cash from its American oligarchs any more. At least not on the national level. Thus it has turned its focus to local offices, especially school boards, brainwashing gullible Karens and Kevins that educators are teaching kindergartners post-graduate-level courses on sexuality, race, and Marxist dialectic.

(Well, they're right about the Marxist dialectic stuff. Only the schools call it "learning to share.") 

Perhaps it's time for responsible corporations, rather than pulling their advertising from right-wing media, to buy air time on Hannity and Tuckyo Rose. What these corporations say on Facebook and Twitter doesn't get past the algorithms and filters to get to the people who get all their opinions from Fox & Fiends.

Oh, who am I kidding?

What these corporations say on Facebook and Twitter about valuing LGBTQ+ employees and customers isn't half as important to them as larding up all levels of government with politicians who will gladly gut consumer safety laws, and ignore employee working conditions.

And most importantly, slash the corporation's tax burden. Those consumers and employees can pick up the cost.

Q Toon: The Great Right North

Here's a lede U.S. conservatives are very unlikely to match any time soon:

Conservatives led the charge in Canada's Parliament to vote to ban conversion therapy for minors.

The Senate voted without any objections on the bill proposed by Conservative Senator Leo Housakos and fast-tracked through all legislative stages December 7. Previously, the House of Commons voted unanimously to pass the bill brought forward by Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, who has become a proponent of LGBTQ rights since becoming head of the party. O'Toole allowed his party to have a free vote on the issue.

In an unusual occurrence, conservatives voted in agreement with their liberal counterparts.

"The community has been heard," Housakos said in the Senate, reported the Toronto Star.

"It was heard by the House of Commons and we saw the House of Commons do the right thing and pass this piece of legislation unanimously and they did so because they thought it was in the national interest to do so," Housakos continued.

The Senate's passage of the bill requires royal assent from the Governor General or her designate for it to become law, reported the paper.

Assuming that Joe Manchin is not the Governor General of Canada, it looks good for Canada to become the sixth nation to ban conversion therapy, which uses psychological, physical, or spiritual pressure to convert a patient's sexual orientation or gender identity.

20 states and the District of Columbia ban conversion therapy, and there are restrictions in five more. In Wisconsin, for example, while conversion therapy on minors isn't illegal, an executive order by Governor Evers prohibits use of state funds for it. Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, on the other hand, have brought suit in federal court to prevent local governments from enforcing their own bans.

It's mighty difficult to imagine any more than a scattered few U.S. Republicans casting any pro-LGBTQ votes, incurring the vengeful wrath of the right-wing rage machine and the televangelicabal. So let's hear it for the brave and principled conservatives of our neighbor to the north!

Cu-roo-coo-coo-coo-coo-coo-coo!

Toon: Taking the Seat Back, Revisited

It's possible that only we editorial cartooning nerds will get the reference made in my cartoon today.

Most of you are aware of the full-bore assault on voting rights underway in Republican state legislatures all across the country. Iowa has shortened in-person voting hours by a full hour in the evening because, I don't know, voting fraud between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m.

Republicans said the rules are needed to guard against voting fraud, though they noted Iowa has no history of election irregularities and that November’s election saw record turnout with no hint of problems in the state.

In Georgia, Republicans are making it a criminal offense to offer water to voters forced to stand in line for hours on end in order to exercise their constitutional rights. They are well aware that rural and suburban voters never have to wait anywhere near that long at their polling places; this measure has nothing to do with making sure voters aren't being bribed with bottles of Evian.

Just about everywhere the Republicans are making it tough for city folk to vote, by cutting the availability of early voting, absentee voting, and voting by mail. This on top of earlier voting restrictions such as requiring photo ID but not allowing student or municipal IDs. (Oh, sure, if you don't have a car, you can get a state-approved ID; but you still have to schlep way the fork out to the exurbs to the DMV office for it.)

Even Republican election officials readily admit that the 2020 general election was the most secure and fraud-free election in history. Republican elected officials, however, say that their voting restrictions are necessary to address allegations of voting irregularities — allegations which they themselves have fabricated.

Now, for some of you, I may need to explain that this cartoon references one by the great Bill Mauldin upon the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1963. 

"I've Decided I Want My Seat Back" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, September 6, 1963

It's not as famous as the Weeping Lincoln he would draw less than three months later. Still, I think it found its way into enough high school and college textbooks that you don't necessarily have to be an editorial cartoonist yourself to recognize it.

Toon: Georgia On My Mind

I've got one more spare cartoon before the syndicated one goes up tomorrow:

Republican-run Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, are rushing to reopen after only three weeks of sheltering in place.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp made the move without consulting any health experts, or any mayors of any of Georgia's major cities. But he did make sure to forbid those mayors from instituting health measures any stricter than his own. Because, you know, local government knows best why should the the state's essential businesses suffer when you can just build a wall around Albany, Georgia instead?

And what are those "essential businesses"?

I'm glad I asked me.

Bowling alleys, for one. Kemp is taking some heat for putting bowling alleys at the head of the list, but at least that's a sport in which players tend to stick their fingers only into their own personal ball. And the team's plate of nachos.

What I want to know is what the argument for including tattoo parlors is. It's mighty difficult to maintain social distancing between a tattoo artist and the client's bicep, neck, thigh, or buttcheek. Is the mental health of untattooed Georgia millennials at risk? Is Georgia in danger of falling behind Oregon in the race to achieve total tattoo coverage? Is Kemp hoping to lure Justin Bieber to the state?

At this point, managers of tattoo parlors appear to have more common sense than their governor.

Nicole Willingham, a tattoo artist at Apocalypse Tattoo in Buckhead, said many of her customers wouldn’t feel safe having a session, even if she takes extra precautions.“We have absolutely no plans of reopening until we’ve been provided with sufficient evidence that it’s safe,” said Willingham, whose husband, Ryan, owns the shop. “We probably won’t reopen until there’s a vaccine.”

Or, in the words of Atlanta barber Gabriel Ware, representing another essential business the governor would like to reopen:

 “If Brian Kemp wants to come by my house and pick up my equipment, he can go to the barbershop and cut all the hair he wants. Then, after two weeks of exposing himself to a deadly virus, he can come talk to me. This is inconsiderate of the health and safety of the people he is supposed to be leading.”

Come to think of it, it was probably a mistake to have talked about "social distancing." You know how much Republicans hate "socialism."

It's All Fun And Games Until Someone Puts An Eye Out

Last week, some vandalous miscreant glued a pair of googly eyes onto the statue of Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Greene in Savannah, Georgia. A disgruntled royalist redcoat scallawag, I'll warrant!

Officials were able to excise the offending eyeballs without any damage to the statue, and are hot on the trail of the jocular oculist, hoping to head off a wave of googly eye vandalism from sweeping the country.

We are under threat of a dastardly assault on public art that, left unchecked, could even reach into the White House!

 

Q Toon: Our Menu Hasn't Changed

In the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, the Florida legislature famously leapt into action to protect Florida students from the threat of deadly pornography.

And it didn't end there. Under the eyes of the surviving students, the Florida legislature went on to require the prominent posting of "In God We Trust" in all Florida classrooms. The gun control measures being urged by those students were quickly shelved because, unlike advertising Christianity on the wall, they wouldn't be 100% effective against future gun violence.

Well, to be fair, they also voted to approve letting Miss Othmar pack a pistol in class.

But let us not single out the Florida legislature for their commitment to non-responsive measures.

Republican legislators in Indiana are pushing a "No Promo Homo" bill, SB 65, that would explicitly prohibit the positive portrayal of homosexuality in schools. Ballot measures in Alaska, Alabama, Massachusetts and Montana seek to prevent or overturn state and local anti-discrimination laws based on gender identity in public places such as hotels, restaurants and stores.

Pennsylvania lawmakers have repeatedly tried to bar transition-related health coverage under Pennsylvania’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). New Hampshire lawmakers are considering a set of bills that to bar Medicaid from paying for transition-related care, prohibit minors from obtaining gender confirmation surgery and allow medical practitioners to decline to treat patients on the basis of  “their religious, moral, or ethical convictions.”

"Bathroom bills" are still being pushed in Kentucky, where one out of every five legislators is a sponsor of one bill, in Iowa, and in Wisconsin. Yet pushback against these bills is not limited to the LGBTQ community alone; business and industry have come to the defense of their LGBTQ employees and prospects — so much so that there appears to be little interest in resurrecting bathroom bills that have already been defeated in Georgia and Texas.

They have more important things to worry about, after all.

The President is coming for their guns.

Q Toon: Tears in a Bucket

Brenda Dale Knox, an actress, singer and celebrity of Savannah, Georgia better known as The Lady Chablis, died last week at the age of 59. The transgender icon came to national attention in John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (from which the quotation in this week's cartoon comes) and the Clint Eastwood movie adapted from it. As CNN put it, "She wasn't the book's main character, but she may have been its most memorable."

Berendt wrote of her, in the forward to her own book, Hiding My Candy, "She is a gifted comedienne whose humor is instinctive and whose power to amuse comes from exquisite timing, a flair for the outrageous, and — I trust she'll forgive me for saying so — balls."

Q Toon: Danse Macabre

On the evening after the Orlando massacre at Pulse, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California told his congregation:

"Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today? Um, no, I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight. ... There’s no tragedy,...I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.” 

After a terrorist attack, you expect the nut jobs at the Westboro Baptist Church to crawl out of their cesspool to insult the victims. When the victims are LGB or T, the Westboro cult has its share of company among so-called Christians.

"The left is having a dilemma of major proportions and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves.” -- Pat Robertson, 700 Club, Christian Broadcasting Network

"The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay? Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels. But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed." -- Pastor Steven Anderson, Faithful Word Baptist Church, Arizona

“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now. And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he will end their life, and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell, just like the rest of them, so that they don’t get any more opportunity to go out and hurt little children.” Pastor Donnie Romero, Stedfast Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas

Meanwhile, in Buford, Georgia, someone decided to spray paint over a hate message against gays and transgender persons that had been out front of The Back to the Bible Holiness Church for weeks before the massacre. Pastor Bobby Weeks bizarrely claimed that "I haven’t cursed anyone. I haven’t called anyone a name" with his sign which read "God created man and woman. Satan created gays and transgender." He further claimed that everyone is "welcome" in his church.

I suspect that the vandals possessed the same degree of restraint, love, and charity as Mr. Weeks.

Q Toon: The Ayes Had It

This past week, we were treated to the sausage-making spectacle that is the United States House of Representatives. Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) offered an amendment to a defense spending bill to require that defense contractors not discriminate against LGBT employees — writing into law an already existing executive order of the Obama administration.

In light of the healthy number of major corporations already having come out in defense of their LGBT employees (and prospective hires) after legislatures in Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and elsewhere pushed bills to legalize antigay discrimination, you would think the Maloney amendment would be a no-brainer. In fact, a majority in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives seemed to think so, too.

When time for the vote had run out, the Maloney amendment had the votes to pass. But then Republican leaders, horrified by the prospect that some antigay wedding cake baker somewhere might lose his defense contract, kept the vote open so that they could pressure enough Republican "aye" votes to switch to "nay" to defeat the amendment.

The identities of the seven vote-switchers were not publicly recorded on the House floor. The amendment failed 212-213. Democrats in the House were in an uproar, shouting "Shame, Shame, Shame," and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer protested because the presiding officer did not require that the members record the changes.
Later, Hoyer's press office tweeted the names of seven Republicans who he believes switched their votes.
They include California Reps. Darrell Issa, Jeff Denham, David Valadao, and Mimi Walters; Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, Iowa Rep. David Young and Maine Rep. Bruce Poliquin.

Hoyer's beef is with a breach of the rules of the House:

Once the time period allotted to a vote has expired and the voting is closed, the results and individual positions cannot be changed. In the House, it’s customary for Representatives to file “Personal Explanations” explaining missed votes, or votes they entered incorrectly. These don’t permit lawmakers to actually change a vote or record one after the fact. They are statements of intent that lawmakers can point to and say, “Here’s how I would have voted.”

Members can change their vote before time expires by presenting a card to the tally clerk. That wasn't done in this case.

Republican House leadership has responded to Rep. Hoyer's complaints by promising to require that amendments be "pre-printed." The new rules give Ryan and pals time to pre-instruct their members how to vote.

Q Toon: Keeping the Kids Safe

It should be noted that the state legislator in this week's cartoon is begin facetious from Frame One. The statute of limitations on Former Speaker Hastert's alleged sexual assaults expired decades ago. He was convicted of circumventing banking rules in order to pay hush money to one of his victims. He paid $1.7 million to a student whose groin he barely remembers having merely brushed in order to treat a pulled muscle, if you buy his defense.

Then there is the weird story of the leather recliner Hastert positioned in the locker room so that he could watch his wrestlers while they showered. Don't bother trying to imagine how he explained that expense to the school administration; school athletic departments have always gotten considerably more deference than, say, the English department.

Nevertheless, the deal with the recliner was pretty ballsy. I remember that after gym class at my junior high school in the 1970's, we had to parade through a shower room, towels held up above the spray, while the gym teacher stood on an raised platform enclosed by a wall that came up about his chest-level in the center of the shower room, watching to make sure that we were actually getting wet or something.

There were whispers that our coach was enjoying the show more than necessary, but at least he had to stand up. He wasn't relaxing comfortably in an overstuffed La-Z-Boy.

✒

Coming back to the present, Rep. Jeremy Durham (R-Natcherly), a vocal co-sponsor of the Bathroom Bill speeding through Tennessee's state legislature, has just been found to have a habit of sexually harassing women who have the misfortune to work in his vicinity. The allegations are so numerous that the Secretary of State has issued an official warning that "Representative Durham's alleged behavior may pose a continuing risk to unsuspecting women who are employed by or interact with the legislature." The Speaker of the Tennessee House Beth Harwell has banished Durham from his office, exiling him to an office across the street.

No word on whether he gets to take his La-Z-Boy recliner with him.

Q Toon: Deal Or No Deal?

As a cartoonist, I love sitting down to my drawing board when I have a subject who is ripe for caricature.

No, I don't mean Georgia Governor Nathan Deal. He's got a face like a bowl of grits.

I'll probably never have another reason to draw Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, but his face has all the definition a caricaturist could ever want. If Hollywood wanted to cast someone to play the president, generalissimo, or financier of Greece, Italy, or a Latin American country circa 1972, his face would be perfect.

In case you haven't been following Georgia politics lately, the state legislature has passed what they call a "Free Exercise Protection Act," which doesn't do anything to ensure the safety of weight lifters and joggers. Rather, it purports to protect discrimination against same-sex couples by anyone who professes "sincerely held religious beliefs" as the basis for denying housing, employment, or other services to people they don't like.

Blank's Atlanta Falcons have been pushing for a new football stadium in the hopes of hosting the Superbowl soon after it is finished, but now the NFL has announced that the league will not site any Superbowl in the state of Georgia if Deal signs the Free Exercise Protection Act into law.

Considering that, Blank, not surprisingly, opposes the Georgia bill.

"I strongly believe a diverse, inclusive and welcoming Georgia is critical to our citizens and the millions of visitors coming to enjoy all that our great state has to offer,” Blank said in a statement. “House Bill 757 undermines these principles and would have long-lasting negative impact on our state and the people of Georgia."

Disney, film production companies, tech firms, and even Coca-Cola — Coca-Cola! — have also threatened to pull out of the state over FEPA.

Governor Deal has until May 3 to decide whether sincerely held religious beliefs are trumped by sincerely held economic ones.