Q Toon: A Gentleman in Moscow

Gay Republican operative Richard Grenell is reportedly interested in snagging a prominent foreign policy position in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™, including the post of U.S. Ambassador to Russia, vacant since last June.

"He had an interest in the job – or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues," one anonymous source close to Grenell told the Daily Mail of London, while acknowledging that "Putin's regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ."

Thirty years ago, Republicans' objections to President Clinton's nomination of James Hormel to be U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg included the claim that the fact of Hormel being openly gay would be an insult to Catholic Luxembourgers. If the citizens or government of Luxembourg were truly upset, however, I don't remember hearing anything about it, and I'm certain that the U.S. Senators who raised such a stink about Hormel's nomination would have been sure to point out any complaints.

Two decades later, during the First, Almost As Corrupt Trump Administration, Ric Grenell raised his hosts' hackles as U.S. Ambassador to Germany; but it was because he insisted on meddling in domestic German politics. It had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. 

Trump's State Department is apparently in no hurry whatsoever to put anybody in charge of our embassy in Russia. Trump crony Michael Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have been Trump's de facto conduit to the Kremlin (when he isn't getting his instructions directly from Putin), operating without the nuisance of having to get confirmed by the Senate. The two are likely to play a more important role in U.S.-Russian relations than whoever eventually becomes the next official ambassador, anyway.

As for the former Acting Director of the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Grenell just wants to get any foreign service appointment at all. He appeared most recently in my cartoons in March, when he was reportedly angling for a position with Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas."

By the way, if anyone has heard from Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas," please contact the Bureau of Missing Persons.

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October on the Ones

I lead this Saturday Flashback with an unpublished cartoon I drew after Herblock died 20 years ago this past Thursday. The cartoon references several Herblock cartoons and recurring characters. I was tempted to put together a retrospective of his over 70-year career today — the man published cartoons almost up to the day he died — but you can visit the Library of Congress's exhibit of his work, or buy the book.

So rather than incur the wrath of the Herblock Foundation, I herewith present a smattering of the other cartoons Little Ol' I drew in Octobers of 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011. Let's start with the little oldest:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Oct. 1, 1981

President Reagan had an advertisement on TV, if I remember correctly, urging viewers to call their congressional representatives to express their belief in Reagan's "bipartisan economic recovery plan" —i.e., tax cuts. (Finding a few Democrats willing to sign on to a Republican bill was an easier lift than the opposite is nowadays, especially since there were Democrats to choose from who would soon start calling themselves Republicans.) For the moment, however, the stock market appeared shaky, and a recession was indeed around the corner.

There must be over 100 horizontal lines in that cartoon, all painstakingly drawn by hand. The thick ones behind the window were the most challenging.—

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Oct. 22, 1981

Somewhere along the line, all of my cartoons from the fall of 1981 have somehow gotten mislaid. I still had them a few years ago when I posted one I drew in October, 1981 about the situation in Poland; I had certainly scanned that from the original. The originals aren't where they belong now, so unless Mom or I clipped them for our respective scrapbooks, I have to resort to copying them from the University of Wisconsin Ranger on-line archives, like this one above.

Continuing along to 1991...

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Oct. 3, 1991

Members of the Supreme Court have been at pains lately to deny that they are "partisan hacks." What they cannot deny is that for over half a century, the selection process by which most of them made it onto the Court has been overtly partisan. 

Reacting to civil rights rulings of the 1950's and '60's, conservative partisan hacks have been determined to remake the Court in their own image. Liberal Congresses were able to block the most egregious nominees — Clement Haynsworth, G. Harrold Carswell, Robert Bork — but not right-wingers William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, or, in spite of allegations of sexual harassment, Clarence Thomas, now the most senior Justice on the Court.

in Racine, WI Journal Times, Oct. 17, 1991

Conservatives, for their part, have "Borked" Abe Fortas, Homer Thornberry and Merrick Garland, and pressured presidents of their party to name "No More Souters." Thus we have six currently serving Republican appointees who are all products of the right-wing Federalist Society. I was startled to hear it put this way on NPR this week, but the center of today's Court is no longer Chief Justice John Roberts (himself a conservative George W. Bush pick), but Kevin-Boofing-Kavanaugh!

in Milwaukee WI Business Journal, Oct. 5, 2001

Moving right along to 2001, the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee wrote an editorial critical of labor lawyers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. I drew a silly cartoon to go along with it.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2001

Of course, there were weightier issues in the fall of 2001 than genii safety. The Bush II administration was about to launch a 20-year war in Afghanistan, so naturally, the Christian Right weighed in with their reservations... about the nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Romania.

As with Bill Clinton's appointment of James Hormel to be Ambassador to Luxembourg, antigay groups such as the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America opposed Bush The Younger's appointment of Michael E. Guest as Ambassador to Romania. But unlike with Hormel, the Senate approved Guest's appointment. Also unlike Hormel, who was pressured into promising not to bring his then partner to Luxembourg, Guest's partner, Alex Nevarez, moved into the ambassador's residence with him — with Secretary of State Colin Powell's explicit blessing.

“It put the Secretary of State on record as supporting homosexuality as if it were as normal, healthy and morally sound as marriage," sniffed Concerned Women for America's Robert Knight. "This means that America will be represented to the Romanian people by an openly homosexual couple. How trendy. How decadent.”

for Q Syndicate, October, 2011

Ten years later, when antigay activists were pushing an amendment to enshrine marriage discrimination in the Minnesota state constitution, it only seemed natural to set a cartoon in the Mall of America.

Besides, I enjoy giving odd and punning names to imaginary specialty shops.

Hormel, Hormel, Hormel, Eggs, Bacon and Hormel

Why another post about Ambassador James Catherwood Hormel?

He wasn't the first public figure to ask for an original of one of my cartoons about him, but he is the first one to publish that cartoon in a book, so he holds a special place in my career. The book is his memoir, Fit to Serve, much of which relates what it took for him to get himself appointed by President Bill Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg — America's first openly gay ambassador to a foreign country (not counting James Buchanan).

Hormel and the Clinton State Department initially expected trouble from vociferous homophobe Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), but were surprised when Helms was satisfied with Hormel's promise that his boyfriend would not live with him in the ambassador's residence. There being no possible legal relationship between Hormel and his boyfriend in 1998, any sort of spousal benefits involved was completely out of the question to begin with.

Q Syndicate, May, 1998

Instead, it was Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) who put holds on Hormel's nomination, joined after the holds became public by Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH). Their holds came in response to a right-wing smear campaign; someone had dug up video from KOFY-TV's coverage of the 1996 Pride Parade in San Francisco in which Hormel was chatting with the television hosts as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence passed by. 

As Hormel described the incident in Fit to Serve,

"We can't miss these girls!" [reporter] Ginger [Casey] said. From background notes, Ginger read: "They acquired those genuine habits from a convent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Legend has it that they told the Mother Superior that they needed them because they were putting on The Sound of Music."

I laughed, as did [station owner] Jim [Gabbert].

She followed up, spontaneously: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

I continued laughing, heartily. That's what I did. Not a single word, just a few laughs. It all seemed like good fun.

The vast right-wing conspiracy, the Family Research Council, and their Republican cohorts painted the episode as proof that Hormel was anti-Catholic, bound to offend the sensibilities of the devoutly Catholic Luxembourgoisie (Luxembourg governmental assurances that Hormel would be welcome notwithstanding).

Q Syndicate, January, 1999

This is the cartoon in Hormel's book, drawn when the Senate returned from its December recess to find that Hormel's appointment was still on the docket. I'm somewhat curious why the book describes the cartoon as having appeared in the Seattle Gay News when Mr. Hormel might have been more likely to have seen it in the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter or Washington D.C. Metro Weekly, both of which ran my cartoons in those days.

It may have been a good thing that Hormel (or whatever staffer contacted me through Q Syndicate) hadn't asked for the original of the cartoon at the top of this post; instead of the usual bristol board, I had drawn it on a less firm type of artists paper. At some point, it got crumpled and torn by a rubber band I was using to hold that year's cartoons together. On the other hand, if I had received the request before the cartoon was damaged, it was on paper that, unlike bristol board, would have rolled up easily into a mail tube.

Q Syndicate, June, 1999

So anyway, James Hormel made it to Luxembourg by virtue of a recess appointment when the Senate adjourned for the summer, and I drew a third cartoon about the new ambassador. The embassy did not request the original of this cartoon.

Ambassador Hormel served out the remaining months of the Clinton administration representing American interests in Luxembourg. 

Q Syndicate, January, 2001

Surprisingly, even after that short tenure, one of the next administration's cabinet appointees, former Senator John Ashcroft, had to defend his opposition to Hormel's appointment on his way to becoming Attorney General.

Q Syndicate, January, 2013 (drawn in December)

By the time President Barack Obama nominated Republican another former Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, to be Secretary of Defense in his second term, keeping Luxembourg safe for heterosexual privilege was no longer quite the guaranteed safe issue in Washington, D.C. that it was in Nebraska in 1998.

Hagel's 1998 comments weren't enough to derail his nomination in 2013; they presented only a minor hiccup on his way to the Pentagon. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had been repealed in December of 2010, allowing LGBTQ+ military personnel to serve openly, and was by 2013 a settled issue.

And Hagel did apologize to Mr. Hormel during the course of Hagel's confirmation process, an apology Mr. Hormel accepted.

Q Toon: In Memory of James Hormel

Today's cartoon is based upon one of the photographs in the late Ambassador James Hormel's memoir, Fit to Serve, and a quotation which sums up the main point of the book written with Erin Martin.

While much of the book focuses on what Hormel went through to become U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1999 to 2000, the lead-up to that point describes his process of coming out as gay — first to himself, then to his family, and finally as a public activist and philanthropist.

When Fit to Serve was published in 2011, marriage discrimination (DOMA) was still the law of the land, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act couldn't get through the newly Republican Congress. The literal  LGBTQ-bashing that he also cites is still going on. Hormel concludes that progress only becomes possible when one is out and true to oneself.

"We have to be out. If not, we are complicit with the old order, the one that would have us remain invisible."

 

R.I.P. James Hormel

James Catherwood Hormel passed away today, August 13, 2021, age 88. Mr. Hormel was the United States' first openly gay ambassador, serving under the Clinton administration as Ambassador to Luxembourg.

I am proud to have a cartoon of mine included in Ambassador Hormel's memoir, Fit to Serve.

I have a Saturday history post all set to go tomorrow on a completely different topic, so I'll have to come back next Saturday with the other cartoons I drew about Mr. Hormel's nomination ordeal.

Mr. Hormel Goes to Luxembourg

I mentioned yesterday that former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg used one of my cartoons in his memoir. It may well be this one, the original of which I sent to Mr. Hormel in 1999 at the request of his staff:

I drew this cartoon upon President Clinton's recess appointment of Hormel, which is why the senators (Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Robert C. Smith) are shown on vacation at the beach.

As for the Ambassador's costume, that stems from the allegation that he was anti-Catholic, based on some San Francisco TV footage of him chuckling off-camera as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence skated by during a parade.

None of these senators are still in the Senate; Helms, of course, has passed on. The staffer who wrote me expressed a wish that Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) had been in the cartoon, feeling that Inhofe had been leading the opposition to Hormel's appointment. Inhofe is still in the Senate, and I have had occasion to draw cartoons about his antigay statements and votes from time to time; I think that I did include him in an earlier cartoon.

Q Toon: D'OD!

Because of holiday vacation schedules at Q Syndicate, I drew this week's cartoon a couple weeks ago. From that vantage point, I had no idea whether the trial balloon of former Senator Chuck Hagel's rumored nomination as Secretary of Defense would still be afloat in the new year; so I tried to come up with a formulation that would stand whether or not he was still being considered for the job.

The cartoons for the last two weeks have centered on current and former U.S. Senators who have appeared on television a lot, but haven't been the subject of a lot of editorial cartoons. Looking back, I think I needed to elongate Hagel's face and to shorten Lindsey Graham's. I think allowing Hagel's eyebrows to curve back down was a mistake. If I ever draw him again, I think I'll leave them angling upward.

It might have been helpful to leaf through the work of Paul Fell of the Lincoln Journal Star -- although he doesn't add keywords to his cartoons on the AAEC site, so it's not to easy to search for his drawings of any particular Nebraska pol.* A Google search turns up cartoons by Steve Brodner and  a Neal Obermeyer. I love Brodner's work, but he sometimes sees people very differently from you or I.

Now, for the benefit of those readers who don't recall what the reference to an American ambassador to Luxembourg is about -- which is probably nearly everybody (Quick! Name any living American ambassador to any country anywhere!) -- back in 1997, President Bill Clinton nominated San Francisco philanthropist, Democratic party donor, and heir to the Spam fortune James Hormel to be his ambassador to Luxembourg, a grand duchy wedged in between France, Germany and Belgium. (That's in Europe, got it?)

Pat Robertson's TV station broadcast a scurrilous report alleging that Clinton was sending a known supporter of pedophilia and pornography to be our ambassador to Luxembourg. He was accused of being anti-Catholic. A number of Republican senators announced their opposition to the appointment -- and after Clinton made a recess appointment of Hormel in 1999 over their objections, senators continued to protest that at the very least, Hormel should not be allowed to bring his partner, Timothy Wu, along. Or that Wu should be made to use only the service entrance under cover of darkness, wearing a full burqa and speaking to no one.

I drew a couple cartoons about these senators, such as Howell Hefflin of Alabama, Robert Smith of New Hampshire, and of course, North Carolina's Jesse Helms -- who had faces rich for caricature. Ambassador Hormel has included one of my cartoons in his memoir of these events, Fit to Serve: Reflections on a Secret Life, Private Struggle, and a Public Battle to Become the First Openly Gay U.S. Ambassador.
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* Update: A day after my cartoon was posted, Fell posted his take on Chuck Hagel being hung out to dry.