An Army of TestosterOne

Secretary of Butchness Pete Hegseth announced last week that military recruits — men, and any women that he hasn't yet driven out of the service — will now be tested for testosterone levels. Anyone found wanting in the T-level department will be offered the option of undergoing hormone therapy (the sort of thing the Trumpsters claim is so very, very dangerous for transgender persons).

Soldiers can, we are told, refuse the testosterone treatment. The choice is theirs, although future promotions and positive performance reviews may not be. 

Basing a cartoon on a popular internet meme is dicey. There is a good chance that somebody will have already beat the cartoonist to the idea. And probably has beat me to publication.

I considered basing the beefcake in the foreground after movie soldiers who dispense with wearing shirts early on, like Rambo or John Matrix; or the old GI Joe dolls. But since my print clientele is the LGBTQ press, patterning him after the hyperhomosexualized military hunks in Tom of Finland's cartoons seemed the more obvious choice. 

I'm not saying that Mr. Hegseth is part of that closeted gay Republican mafia that Hunter Biden was talking about this week.

Well, I'm not saying he isn't, either.

This Week's Sneak Peek

My tribute to the great editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant, who passed away a week ago, was posted here last year, so I didn't come up with another one for my latest Graphical History Tour. 

Several of my colleagues who actually got to meet him have put out wonderful remembrances of him. I have no such story to tell; one of my greatest regrets in life is and will forever be that I missed the convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in Salt Lake City at which he was a featured presenter. (I had been hired for a wedding that weekend, and it turned out that all the couple wanted me for was to start and stop a fucking CD.)

Since today is the 57th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon, here's a Pat Oliphant cartoon from the 1960's I came across in a 1972 civics textbook, America's Political System: People/Government/Policies by Woll and Binstock.

The book is peppered with several editorial cartoons in every chapter, brightening up a book that otherwise would be 790 pages of dry, gray text. What a pity that so few newspaper publishers see the value of illustrated commentary any more. 

(Okay, so cutting out the cartoons would probably have reduced the textbook by ten to fifteen pages...)

Toon: War Is Over If You Won It

Let me start off by saying that I have little patience for reporters, pundits, and politicians who want our military officials to tell them when a war that is impending or underway will be over.

That's not how war works. 

War is by its very nature out of control. The Pentagon generals, admirals, and think tanks can plan, contingency plan, strategize, and contingency strategize 24/7 until the cows come home; but, as we supposedly learned in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the enemy doesn't necessarily cooperate.

I watched most of the press conference by Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Dan Caine and Secretary of Defense, War, or Whatever We're Calling This Now Pete Hegseth, and I would have liked to see reporters ask what the goal of Operation Epstein Fuckery is, now that Iran's sclerotic leaders have been blown to smithereens.

Is it to wipe out Iran's defenses? To inspire the youth of Teheran to rise up and overthrow sharia law? Is it to install the highest bidder as viceroy and make Iranian oil production another wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc.?

Only time will tell. Hegseth certainly won't.

P.S.: Do not ask Ambassador Mike Huckabee.

Q Toon: The Sun Will Come Out, Ed Murrow

I had to draw this week's cartoon Sunday night, without knowing what the CBS Evening News set behind Tony Dokoupil took was going to look like, or what clothing choices he was going to make. But I did have this mission statement from the successor to Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley, Norah O'Donnell, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois:

“On too many stories, the press has missed the story,” he said. “And it’s not just us. It’s all of legacy media. Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates, and not the average American. Or, we put too much weight in the analysis of academics, or elites, and not enough on you.”

It seems to be the consensus of media consultant types that news viewers are fed up with what people who know what they are talking about have to say about news events. Rather, viewers want to hear what Average Joe Schmoes think. The local NBC affiliate where I live has been promoting itself with the same promise to eschew expertise in favor of whatever some random person who just heard about something five seconds ago has to say about it.

Dokoupil moved to the evening news anchor post from CBS's morning news program, where he had shared hosting duties with Gayle King and retired football player Nate Burleson. As Katie Couric could have told him, the switch from soft and happy morning news to the let's-get-serious evening desk is gonna be greeted with a lot of wariness and skepticism.

Swinging into your corn flakes, from CBS Mornings promo

So how's it going at Dokoupil's new job? He started his evening anchor stint two days ahead of time on Saturday to interview Pete Hegseth, who identifies as Secretary of War, about the U.S. military strike on Venezuela and kidnapping of President & Mrs. Nicolás Maduro. He lobbed a bunch of softball questions at Hegseth, allowing him to repeat his assigned talking points over and over unchallenged.

Although I'm still waiting to hear someone ask anyone from the Lawless Trump Regime why, if Congress was kept in the dark over our Venezuelan adventure out of concern that there might be a leak, Pete "Open Signal" Hegseth was included in the planning.

(Trump, by the way, has told reporters that oil company executives were kept informed of our invasion before and after the fact. I suspect that could have had something to do with the $436,000 bet somebody won on the Polymarket on-line gambling site by predicting that Maduro would be ousted by January 31. Or maybe that was just some Average Joe Schmoe included in Secy. Hegseth's group chat by mistake.)

Getting back to Dokoupil, there have been one or two technical glitches this week. But more importantly, viewers are waiting to see whether he will participate in Paramount's Bari Weisswashing of Trump regime news coverage by the network.

His leading off a segment on the fifth anniversary of Trump's attempted January 6 coup (the one at the U.S. Capitol, not the one in Venezuela) with cowardly both-sidesism and following up with weird cuddling up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio the other day are not exactly encouraging.

Good night, and good luck.

This Week's Sneak Peek

From the pencil rough that eventually became this week's cartoon:

It bothered me that most of the editorial cartoons about the My Lai massacre that I had selected for last Saturday's Graphical History Tour seemed to excuse Lt. William Calley's role in it; so yesterday, I dug up one more cartoon taking a contrary position and added it to the others. It goes against the rules of blogging, but apparently rules don't mean anything any more.

Q Toon; A War of Words

One would think that having his partner caught up for months in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime's lawless concentration camp program would have soured MAGA Max's enthusiasm for anything associated with the Felon-In-Chief.

But then how would I be able to address the very destruction of the Republic in an editorial cartoon feature that is supposed to be about LGBTQ+ issues?

I created these two as a device to discuss the sharp political divisions in this country, which the present regime has worked diligently to widen.

Strike that. What the present administration is working overtime to achieve is not to widen political divisions, but to crush dissent. Pardoning the January 6 rioters who sought to overthrow the duly elected government in Trump's name, purging everyone in the Justice Department and law enforcement who worked to bring them to justice; strong-arming any media into obsequious servility that might challenge their distortion of the truth; hauling those who have ever stood up to him into court on trumped up charges; the mawkish spectacle of cabinet officials assembled before cameras for the express purpose of heaping flattery upon the boss — the Trump regime models itself not on our Founding Fathers, but on the worst tyrants history has to offer.

One need look no further than that mandatory assembly of all the nation's admirals and generals in one auditorium to be harangued by Trump and his martini martinet at the Department Formerly Known As Defense. Much attention has been paid to the military brass refusing to whoop and holler the way ensigns and privates will at these events, the applause lines that fell flat, and the meandering blather of a president who never has an unspoken notion.

But what was chillingly important about Trump and Pete Hegseth's diatribe duet was their central message: this regime is declaring open war on anyone, anywhere, who stand in their way.

Hegseth declared that this regime will "untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

Trump made it clear that those "enemies" include all American citizens with the temerity to dissent from his rule: "We have war zones on both coasts — blue areas. The real enemy is more dangerous than China, Russia… [it is] the enemy from within.”

"These people don’t have uniforms," Trump bellowed. "At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out... We can’t let these people live.”

Calling this fascism is not exaggeration, hyperbole, fear-mongering, or stoking division. And it's definitely not fake news.

It's recognizing a clear and present danger.

Like shouting "fire" in a burning theater.

Q Toon: P.S., You're Fired

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, media from his side of the aisle leapt to the conclusion that his killer must be some leftist transgender anti-gun immigrant tree hugger from Berkeley. And, fess up, you thought so, too.

He turned out to be an ammosexual son of a local sheriff, raised Mormon, who etched right-wing mottos on the bullets he shot. 

Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he's got a transgender roommate and got converted to socialism during his one semester at college before dropping out to attend trade school instead. But the transgender roommate has been helpful to police — although I wouldn't be surprised these days if the transgender roommate turns out to be as real as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

The way the media bubbles of the left and the right have become so self-contained, Schrödinger's Assassin can be whoever you preconceive him to be. He's a disciple of Nick Fuentes. He's a card-carrying liberal thanks to a single semester at Utah State. He's Death Wish and Robocop. He's Crying Game and Brokeback Mountain.

He's a floor wax and a dessert topping!

What he has become, without a doubt, is a convenient excuse for the present authoritarian regime to crack down on and criminalize free speech that does not conform to officially permissible thought.

From Absolutely Corrupt Premier Donald Berzelius Trump on down, this gilded White House and its congressional majority lackeys are now demanding the firing of anyone who dares question Charlie Kirk's sainthood, fails to demonstrate adequate grief, or appears in public without sackcloth and ashes. "They're already under major investigation," Trump told reporters, adding that he means "A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left."

Vice President Shady Vance took time off from his vice presidential duties to guest host Kirk's podcast, telling his audience, "When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer."

Reichkulturkammer Stephen Miller threatened disloyal subjects, "The power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended an Army colonel for a social media post critical of Kirk. Attorney General Pam Bondi went on Fox Noise to admonish private business, "And employers, you have to have an obligation to get rid of people... They shouldn't be working with you."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is running for governor, called on social media for the firings of an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University. All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said Kirk “spoke his fate into existence.” (PBS News)

MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd — a George W. Bush administration strategist — for opining that "Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions." Washington Post global opinions editor Karen Attiah got fired for quoting on her own social media account Kirk's statements demeaning Black women's "brain processing power." Not for celebrating Kirk's death, but for quoting him. Accurately.

PHNX Sports, an online sports news site focused on Arizona, announced the firing of reporter Gerald Bourguet after he said on social media on Wednesday, in a since-deleted post, that "Refusing to mourn a life devoted to that cause is not the same thing as celebrating gun violence." (CBS News)

And just yesterday, ABC pulled the plug on Jimmy Kimmel over Monday night's monologue.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said. He also poked fun at President Trump’s response to a question from the press about how he was mourning Kirk’s death after Trump pivoted to a discussion of the construction of a new White House ballroom.

First Colbert and now Kimmel? Oh, well. I've been staying up too late at night, anyway.

Outside of government, the press, jocks, educators, and comedians, the people fired for reacting to Kirk's death the way the Fornicate Your Feelings mob has responded to the deaths of George Floyd and the assault on Nancy Pelosi's husband have included fire fighters, restaurant managers, airline pilots, Nasdaq employees, and who knows how many more by the time the Ministry of Truth Social declares another thoughtcrime wave?

Q Toon: What's In a Name

After three weeks of cartoons with little or no text, it was inevitable that this week's cartoon would be laden with logorrhea.

The shock and outrage over last week's leak from the Defense Department that Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to change the name of the USNS Harvey Milk has certainly been overshadowed by the shock and outrage over Usurper Trump sending the National Guard, Marines, Gestapo, and Jem'Hadar to Los Angeles this week.

But my bailiwick is LGBTQ+ issues, so this is where I'm venting my shock and outrage today.

In spite of all the text in today's cartoon, I couldn't even squeeze in all the U.S. Navy's ships to be renamed pursuant to Trump policy erasing LGBTQ, women, and melanin-forward people from U.S. history. I had to leave out the USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Harriet Tubman, and USNS Lucy Stone.

Hegseth will no doubt prescribe gender reassignment for each of them.

Meanwhile, the Trump regime's commitment to Straight White Male Supremacy has reversed the Biden administration name changes of U.S. Army bases that had been named for Confederate Army Generals. You know, guys that fought against the United States of America, Like General Braxton Bragg, known for his short temper, shooting his own soldiers, and for losing the Battle of Chattanooga.

We are told that the rechristened Fort Bragg, where Usurper Trump held another of his Reichsparteitage in front of carefully selected MAGA troops this week, is not named for Braxton Bragg, the General who wrested defeat from the jaws of victory at Chickamunga and Perryville, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. No, the Fort is named for Braxton Bragg, the current pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, lifetime ERA of 2.81, 1.1 WHIP.

And the Soviet-style military parade in the nation's capital this Saturday has nothing to do with it being Generalissimo Donald "Old Blood and Bone Spurs" Trump's birthday that day, either.

So, to the servicemen (just men, thankyou) who will soon be assigned to duty aboard the USNS Col. William Simmons, USNS Hiram Evans, USNS S. Glenn Young, USNS David Herold, USNS George Atzerodt, and USNS John Wilkes Booth, just tell your loved ones not to Google those names. Your ships are probably named someone other than the first names that show up.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.