The Flight of Abraham

Detail from "The Flight of Abraham" by unknown cartoonist, in Harper's Weekly, March 9, 1861

You have, no doubt, heard about Donald Taco Trump being sneaked off Air Force One via a food service truck at the Ankara, Türkiye airport to a waiting Air Force C-32A, because of an allegedly credible threat that Iran or its proxies were planning to shoot down the President's plane.

Members of the press and the White House staff on board were unaware of what was going on as the supposedly targeted plane they were on took off; happily, it landed without incident. That was two months ago, but was just reported this week by the Washington Post and New York Times.

Similar episodes have taken place involving Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Clay Jones summarizes them in his Substack, so I won't go into detail here, save to note that the head of the White House press corps was in the loop during the Clinton incident, and the others all entailed the media playing along with the fiction that the President was at Camp David, or his ranch, or the White House.

Those presidents may have avoided the mockery that editorial cartoonists and Jimmy Fallon have heaped upon the present one, but it has not always been that way.

"Passage Through Baltimore" by Adalbert Volck in Confederate War Sketches, Baltimore MD, 1863

On February 11, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln was about to leave for Washington D.C. by train, when railway security agent Allan Pinkerton informed him that there was a plot by southern separatists to assassinate him along the route. On Pinkerton's advice, Lincoln, wearing a Scotch cap and overcoat as a makeshift disguise, changed trains at Baltimore, avoiding a crowd that had gathered to greet him. He arrived in Washington before dawn, without any reception or fanfare.

The New York Times reported the episode on February 23, leading to merciless mocking of Lincoln as a coward in journals both Democratic and Republican. While it was a public relations disaster for the incoming president, Pinkerton used it to advertise how effective his security firm was in foiling the assassination plot.

Two years later, a German-American Confederate sympathizer in Baltimore, Adalbert Volck, published the above cartoon mocking Lincoln over the incident. His cartoon appeared in a book of his Confederate propaganda, distributed in Dixie but not in Baltimore. The book was one of a series, only one of which survived the Civil War.

I've seen reports of another cartoon, in Vanity Fair, lampooning the incident by depicting Lincoln borrowing his wife's dress as a disguise. If anyone knows of a copy of that cartoon in print or on line, I'd love to know where to find it.

Q Toon: The GOPranos

On Jennifer Welch's I've Had It podcast last month, and later on Don Lemon's eponymous Show, Hunter Biden confided that there is a cabal of closeted gay Republicans who take their self-loathing out on the rest of the LGBTQ+ community:

"Everybody in DC knows this: There is this closeted gay mafia, largely Republican, that exists in Washington, and everybody knows every single one of them, who's gay. The only reason that that is relevant is  because I believe that internal  conflict creates so much vitriol inside a person that they take it out on the rest of the world...

"And so what they do is their whole lives they've been closeted, and so you have this, like black ball inside yourself, this, like, blackened heart by the fact that you can't be who you wanna be, and so you take it out on everybody else."

Pressed to name names, Biden coyly replied, "I'm already in enough lawsuits, Don. Are you asking me if Josh Hawley [R-MO] is gay? Are you asking me if Stephen Miller [NSDAP-WH] is gay? Are you asking me if Speaker Johnson [R-LA] is gay?"

As if Don Lemon wouldn't already know who's gay in D.C. He's a journalist. He's got gaydar.

The topic came up upon the death of the famously closeted Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), at a time when the Republican Party from top to bottom has gone all-in on persecuting transgender persons, drag performers, and the gender non-conforming. If yethinks the party doth protest too much, you're not alone.

Republican policy may be "No Fats Or Fems" for the moment — paging the Secretary of Testosterone Testing the Troops! — but the party has established a record of moving the goalposts ever rightward.

Don't think your gym membership is going to keep you safe.

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: A Little Song, A Little Dance

Phoning in to the Fox Noise panel program "The Five" last Thursday, Donald Commodius Trump made the bizarre claim at the heart of my editorial cartoon today.

“Now I think I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, OK? And I think it probably helped me. But I did great. No Republican’s ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City.”

The "gay national anthem" Trump referred to is the Village People's "Y.M.C.A.," one of the staples of his 2024 presidential campaign appearances (including the one where Trump appeared on stage and called for a 34-minute impromptu concert, after the crowd had already been standing for hours listening to music while waiting for him to arrive).

For dropping their cease-and-desist order to stop playing their music at Trump rallies, the Village People were rewarded by landing the gig to perform "Y.M.C.A." at Trump's "Make America Great Again Rally" and the Turning Point USA Inaugural Ball on January 19, 2025. 

I hope they were paid enough to be worth it, because I would argue that "Y.M.C.A." can no longer be considered the gay national anthem. Not only is it now a staple along with "Mambo #5" and "Electric Slide" of different-sex wedding receptions, the Village People front man and co-author of the song Victor Willis has disavowed its gayness:

“There’s been a lot of talk, especially of late, that Y.M.C.A. is somehow a gay anthem. As I’ve said numerous times in the past, that is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life. 

“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout and since one of the writers was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people. To that I say once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not."

Don't count on being able to convince Secretary of Excursions Pete Kegsbreath to enlist "In the Navy" as a recruitment tool, however.

There are plenty of other nominees for Gay National Anthem, any of which is unsullied by association with the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime. There's "Born This Way," "I Am What I Am," "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," or "Supermodel (You Better Work)" — just for starters.

Dozens of new ones come out every summer, and I haven't even gotten around to the Lesbian National Anthems, Bisexual National Anthems, Transgender National Anthems, Queer National Anthems, and all the Plus National Anthems.

If you saw Monday's sneak peek, you will have noticed that I completely changed the last dialogue balloon. Originally, I had Trump "weaving" to the topic of his pens, the subject of a five-minute monologue during a recent televised cabinet meeting.

After I had nearly finished inking the cartoon, it occurred to me that it would be better to have him show off his ability to identify the five Village People. Just in case you thought he knew their actual names.

Inking on top of white-out doesn't work very well, so I wrote the substitute dialogue on a sheet of bristol board that I have used for drawing backgrounds for repetition in multi-panel cartoons. What I failed to consider was that the sheet of bristol board was from a bundle susceptible to bleeding. Instead of staying where I draw it, ink spreads out along the fibers of the paper. 

Not far, but not neat.

That's fine for backgrounds, which aren't meant to be in focus anyway. Lettering has to be neater, though, so I ended up spending a considerable amount of time cleaning up that lettering in PhotoShop.

So if someday you notice that I've switched over to using Comic Sans, cut me some slack. I'm not planning to do it, but lettering is probably the least favorite part of any cartoonist's job.

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.

Q Toon: 107 Days

Former Vice President Kamala Harris published a memoir of her thwarted dash for the Oval Office last week, and it caused quite the hubbub in Washington (until our Felon In Chief and his Martini Martinet bombed in front of a command audience of every general, admiral, and space marshall  in the U.S. military).

No doubt, books like 107 Days will be of great value to future historians trying to figure out how American democracy came to a tragic end. But for now, it joins a select few literary tomes by presidential runners-up — Hilary Clinton's What Happened and Richard Nixon's Six Crises come to mind — laboring to deflect the blame for coming up short in the Electoral College.

In so doing, Harris steps on a few toes.

Would we be better off had President Biden recognized his declining faculties? Well, duh. Nearly everybody in the Democratic Party wishes that Dean Phillips and Jason Palmer weren't the only ones willing to step up and advocate for a little age discrimination.

Would it have helped if Tim Walz had gone more forcefully for JD Vance's jugular in their televised debate? Well, maybe. But if you pick the Governor of Minnesota as your running mate, don't be surprised if you get a heap o' Minnesota Nice.

Harris explains that she passed over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro because he was too interested in the top job someday. Which is a hoot, because Harris herself was a rival to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Besides, I don't know where she could possibly have found a Democrat qualified to be Vice President with no interest in redecorating the Oval Office.

Her reasoning against naming Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate was that while she likes him personally and politically, she didn't think U.S. voters were ready to elect the ticket of a Black-Asian woman with a Jewish husband and a gay man with a husband of his own.

Buttigieg has responded that he was surprised by Harris's reasoning, and believes in "giving Americans more credit" in accepting the possibility of having a First and Second Gentleman at the same time. Harris might have had a point, however; the Trump campaign was able to successfully attack Harris as being "for they/them" even without Buttigieg on the ticket.

107 Days also includes swipes at Democrats Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, J.B. Pritzger, and Mark Kelly. Since just about every Democrat I've named in these paragraphs is considering a run for the presidency in 2028 (maybe not Joe Biden — I sure hope not), I'm pretty sure that Kamala Harris is not on their short lists for their own running mate.

Not that she'd be interested in the vice presidency.

Thomas Marshall, John Nance Garner, and Selina Meyer could tell you why.

There But For The Grace

The church from which I retired last year and the pastor with whom I served there have made national news — again — this past week. You can read coverage by the New York Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Kenosha News (subscriptions required) or Chicago Sun-Times. Or continue below for my own two cents worth.

New York Times, page 19A, August 20, 2025

I had taken the job as Grace Lutheran Church's parish secretary in 2017 against the advice of a former employee, who warned me of a toxic environment there. Grace Lutheran was founded in 1901 when English-speaking Lutheran Churches were somewhat of a novelty, located in what was once the city's fashionable uptown, but now in what is euphemistically described as "a changing neighborhood."

Your humble scribe answering the door to reporters after a 5-year-old child had been fatally shot in the house next door to the church

In its heyday, as with most mainline Christian churches the post-World War II baby boom era, it had hundreds of members on the rolls, including several faculty and administrators of Lutheran-founded Carthage College. There is a tension between folks with advanced degrees and people whose forebears are memorialized in the stained glass windows.

The following anecdote has nothing to do with this window.

I once came across a decades-old, five-page, hand-written letter to Grace's then pastor by the daughter of a founding family arguing strongly against the church's decision back then to participate in the INNS program, opening its doors as a homeless shelter one night per week. Her parents, she wrote, would be horrified to see their church abused in such a manner; the role of her church was to praise God, not to feed and house the poor.

If I know anything about Lutheran pastors of the 1990's, her pastor could hardly wait to preach on Matthew 25:41-46. And the lady who wrote that letter had probably left to join a nearby Wisconsin Synod or Missouri Synod congregation more in line with her idea of Christianity.

By the 2010's, Grace was an aging congregation, but one that wanted to be socially relevant, both to live the Gospel and also to attract younger members (while still clinging to century-old hymns every Sunday — a new music team switched to contemporary music in 2023). So they issued a call to a young firebrand pastor out of California, passionate about environmental issues and social justice.

They got more than they bargained for.

Rev. Barker speaking at a WisPIRG rally in front of Grace Lutheran Church

When I came along, the congregation was getting along financially thanks to a dozen or so of its wealthier members and outside grants to benefit its free diaper programs and its housing of a free breakfast and food bank service (the homeless shelter having moved out to its own permanent location years earlier). Then came COVID-19; as with many other mainline congregations, when the doors re-opened for in-person worship months later, attendance was way down.

In the middle of all that came the police shooting of Jacob Blake during a domestic disturbance call. Grace Lutheran Church was caught between the centers of riots, looting, and fires that followed. (See my post here.) The building was undamaged, but the inside reeked of smoke when I came to work the following Tuesday.

Rev. Jonathan Barker was on vacation at the time, but returned home to help lead Black Lives Matter protests (and, behind the scenes, to house water and first aid materials for protesters while the National Guard enforced a curfew). When the Greater Milwaukee Synod and churchwide office wanted to rally in support of the community, the front lawn of Grace Lutheran Church was its choice of venue.

Unbeknownst to nearly everyone at the rally, Grace had been recommended to the staff of Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden as the location for a listening session between the candidate and select representatives of the community the very next day. (See my account here.) First United Methodist was even closer to the rioting, but for whatever reason, Biden's people opted for Grace, and Pastor Barker was happy to oblige.

It was never intended to be a campaign event, but Pastor Barker's role in bringing Biden to Grace and his vocal advocacy of Black Lives Matter protesters drove away some church members, including some vital congregational leaders. Most Kenoshans did not appreciate their town being trashed and burned so that protesters could make a point about police violence.

Pastor Barker nevertheless devoted a lot of time to being a protester. He held weekly protests at one of Kenosha's busy intersections calling on Wisconsin's Republican Senator Ron Johnson to vote for President Biden's Green New Deal bill — a lost cause, since Johnson has always been firmly committed to despoiling the environment, slashing social services, and excusing the rich and powerful from paying their fair share to keep government running.

When the Republicans held their national convention in Milwaukee, Pastor Barker superglued his shoes (while wearing them) to the entrance of the convention's parking garage. He also tried disrupting a Trump campaign event, getting forcibly removed while Trump made fun of him.

I have to note that this was all on Pastor Barker's personal time, despite his choice of collar. Grace could not afford a full-time pastor, so he was only on the clock Saturdays through Tuesdays (plus Christmas Eve). Naturally, however, people expect their pastor to be available 24/7, regardless what they're paying him or her. Especially those members who spent a lifetime serving pot luck dinners and funeral luncheons, singing in the choir, volunteering at Vacation Bible School, or just putting $5.00 in the offering plate every week.

Grace is a congregation in crisis. Since my retirement, one member of the already short-handed church council quit after other members of the council had the leaders of the free breakfast and food pantry programs forcibly removed by police (the matter is the subject of continuing litigation; Grace tried and failed to keep the programs going on its own). Another council member quit the church over Pastor Barker's political activity. Yet another council member died suddenly.

With all this going on, Pastor Barker decided to respond to a new IRS ruling, allowing clergy to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without endangering their 401(c) charitable entity status, by announcing to the New York Times that he planned to endorse Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for President in his August 17 sermon.

Greater Milwaukee Synod Bishop Paul Erickson found out about Pastor Barker's plan when the Times contacted him for comment. The churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) had just ratified an official "social statement" opposing political endorsements from the pulpit, so Bishop Erickson warned Pastor Barker that his sermon was contrary to that social statement and would likely result in the ELCA revoking Grace Lutheran Church's coverage under the national church's group tax exempt status.

Rather than change his sermon, Barker posted a terse video message to the congregation, resigning as Grace's pastor and from the ELCA clergy roster. He delivered his sermon at some venue festooned with papel picado, and promises to continue preaching on his personal YouTube channel.

As for Grace Lutheran, Bishop Erickson was there this past Sunday, and issued a pastoral letter to the synod:

I also ask for your prayers for Grace Lutheran Church. I was present with them on Sunday, preaching and meeting with them as they consider whether they have a viable future. Many of you are aware of the recent challenges and controversies surrounding the congregation and their relationship with the former Grace Welcome Center. Please know that I have been and will continue to walk with the congregation and others in Kenosha and the surrounding communities as we work to discern God’s will for the future of ministry in that neighborhood.

What remains of the council has been disbanded, and my successor as office secretary has quit effective Monday. The synod office in Milwaukee will take over management of the church. Pastor Sheila Rawn, already planning to serve as interim pastor at Grace during what was to be Pastor Barker's upcoming family leave, has agreed to begin her service there right away. By ELCA practice, she would not be considered for a permanent position there, if in fact the congregation somehow becomes viable again.

I grieve with, and pray for, my sisters and brothers at Grace. I cannot offer much hope that all will turn out well in the end; but what hope there is will only come about after finding new paths through that old building. God's place is with the "changing neighborhoods" in which Grace stands, its people living up to the message of Matthew 25:35-40 as best they can.

Q Toon: Attention Get Her

Rosie O'Donnell, whom I haven't cartooned since she had her own talk show, once upon a time said something nasty about Donald Joffrey Trump — and probably true, whatever it was — setting off a celebrity feud with the thin-skinned whiny snowflake.

The rest of the world has forgotten their feud, but petty tyrant Trump nurses a grudge like it's Baby Jesus. So when he somehow convinced a majority of U.S. voters to return him to the office he had not been able to hold onto by force, promising to wreak vengeance upon all his enemies, perceived, imagined, immigrant and transgender, Ms. O'Donnell decided it was time to take her wife and their genderqueer child and hie them to the Emerald Isle.

That was months ago, which didn't stop Trump from taking to his social media app (which I refuse to call by its very misleading preferred noun), foaming at the mouse that he will issue a presidential proclamation stripping O'Donnell of her U.S. citizenship. 

I had completely finished drawing this cartoon and cleaned my pens when I checked my own phone and learned that Little Lord Trump le Roi had added to his list of presidential priorities unrenaming the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians. Because as far as he's concerned, they're genetically Redskins and Indians, and they had better not get caught using Commanders and Guardians rest rooms if they want funding for their new stadiums.

Fortunately, Photoshop means I didn't have to try drawing over half a bottle's worth of Whiteout.

The additional distractions Mr. Stable Genius has come up with after my Monday morning cartoon deadline — teasing irrefutable proof of Barack Obama's sedatious impudistry, releasing J. Edgar Hoover's files on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sending cabinet members to tour Alcatraz, gloating over CBS cancelling The Late Show with or without Stephen Colbert — and wait, I need a whole new paragraph for this next one —

promising “We will have reduced drug prices by 1,000%, by eleven hundred, twelve hundred, thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred, 700, 600,” which means that drug companies will pay customers huge sums of money to take their products, which Trump will achieve by threatening to ban the import and sale of Volkswagens, BMWs, Volvos, and Lamborghinis —

— all that will have to wait for another day. By which time he will have declared covfefe a vegetable, accused Hillary Clinton of masterminding Hurricane Katrina, named son Barron permanent Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and babbled obsessively to the Prime Minister of Iceland about Arnold Palmer's penis.

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.

This Week's Sneak Peek

If you were expecting me to jump on the bandwagon with a smart aleck cartoon about J.D. Vance waxing prosaic about Sofa King Unlimited in his memoir, Hillbilly Allergy, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.

That was just someone else's joke.

Like Sarah Palin being able to see Russia from her house.

Or George W. Bush saying "strategery."

Or Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet.

Or Gerald Ford being a klutz.

Of course, Ford did actually stumble on the Air Force One stairs a few times. But so has Joe Biden.

You'd think someone would have fixed those stairs by now.

A Stroll Down Malarkey Lane

Today's Graphical History Tour was supposed to be about some century-old stuff, but it can wait. It waited this long, after all, so what's a couple more weeks?

In light of Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential contest, here's a look back at some of the cartoons I've drawn (and not drawn) of his political career.

He came to speak at my college while I was a freshman at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. I didn't happen to sit in on the first-term Senator's lecture, or, as the Manitou Messenger's editorial page cartoonist, to draw a cartoon about it. Since Biden's appearance came after the last Messenger before first-semester finals was published, it wasn't reported in the next issue, which didn't come out until February.

I didn't see him then, but I did get to see him in person in 2020, after the Kenosha rioting, when he came to the church where I work to hold an invitation-only conversation with local church and community leaders. While I did not get to meet him up close, I did deal with his campaign staff and gave his Secret Service detail a thorough tour of the building.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., September 24, 1987

The first cartoon of mine featuring Joe Biden came after his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination foundered on revelations that he had plagiarized the life story of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock as his own in campaign speeches. Biden was justifiably raked over the coals for this rather stupid move.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Oct. 1, 1987

The gaffe, since it was the one thing most people knew about him, dogged his career well after the 1988 campaign was over and done with. He next came into the national spotlight as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. I thought I might have included him in one of my cartoons about that, but it seems I didn't.

for Q Syndicate, October 2008

Other than including him as one of many congresspersons in a cartoon about a Ronald Reagan State of the Union speech, the next time I saw fit to draw Biden was after his vice presidential candidates debate with Sarah Palin in 2008.

By then, I was drawing primarily for LGBTQ+ publications, so my focus was on the candidates' response to a question about marriage equality. Moderator Gwen Ifill asked Biden (at minute 35 here), "Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?"

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted — same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair.
It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

Palin, in her rebuttal, reframed the question as an opportunity to voice her and John McCain's opposition to same-sex marriage, although "I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue." The "some of my best friends are..." weasel.

Ifill then asked Biden for his ticket's stance on same-sex marriage, to which Biden demurred, "Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that."

for Q Syndicate, December, 2010

Vice Presidents, and candidates for that office, are expected to echo the position of the guy (or gal) at the top of the ticket. Candidate Obama was officially opposed to same-sex marriage, in spite of having told LGBTQ organizations in Illinois that he was open to marriage equality when he had run for the Senate in 2006.

So, many of us wondered whether Biden was floating a trial balloon or exercising his reputation for verbal gaffetude when, as Vice President in 2010, Joe Biden publicly averred that popular opinion in the United States was "evolving" toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

At that time, marriage equality was the law in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia. 41 other states had legislation or constitutional amendments forbidding same-sex couples from marrying.

for Q Syndicate, May, 2012

In 2012, President Obama's position "evolved"; he stated that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marital rights. The Democratic Party included an endorsement of marriage equality in the party platform for the first time. The Republican platform, of course, was officially opposed to it, calling instead for an opposite-sex marriage exclusivity amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oct. 2012

There were no bombshell announcements in Biden's 2012 debate appearance with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. Republicans groused afterward about the 69-year-old Biden supposedly smirking while the 42-year-old Ryan was speaking.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

Biden sat out the 2016 election, campaign season coming as it did just after the death of his son Beau. But he entered the ring again in 2020, the oldest presidential nominee in history up to that point. I suppose that historians will decide that in the midst of an epidemic the likes of which only centenarians had ever seen, and after four years of a chaotic, mercurial presidency, the United States was ready for a steady, experienced leader who promised stability and reason.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

The Democratic Party Convention, thanks to COVID-19, proved a disappointment to host city Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The city had tried to convince Republicans in Madison to allow bars to stay open past the legal 2:00 a.m. closing time, only to have the candidates and most delegates attending by Zoom rather than in person.

Republicans thought they could show up the Democrats this year by having their 2024 convention in the Brew City. Madison Republicans this time around happily extended Milwaukee bar time to 4:00 a.m. for the week. But with the security zones around the convention center practically forbidden to local residents, and the Republican Party largely made up of people who regard urban areas with fear and loathing, many of the restaurants and bars ended up with their extra staff scheduled to work the wee hours of convention mornings finding nothing to do but polish tables and sweep floors.

October, 2020

Over the years, my caricature of Joe Biden has been as elastic as his hairline. The one thing that came to the fore more and more was his 300-watt smile. How his choppers have remained so day-glo white is beyond me. Does he never drink coffee? Tea? I've heard that some Catholic priests refuse to offer him communion wine.

Maybe it's the ice cream.

for Q Syndicate, 2021

I may have drawn fewer cartoons about Biden as President than I drew about any other president during any given four years. That's largely because I draw for the LGBTQ press, and Biden has a great record on LGBTQ issues, in stark contrast to the leaders in the Republican Party.

The Dad Jokes thing didn't pan out as a running gag, whereas the Republicans' full-bore, sustained persecution of transgender persons has called for a lot of ink and colored pixels over the past four years.

But who knows? I have to come up with a couple cartoons for Q Syndicate to release during weeks when I'm away for the drawing board. If you see any more Dad Jokes here over the next six months, you'll know why.

Q Toon: We Could All Use One

You may have heard the news already, but just in case you've just awakened from a coma: President Joe Biden, sequestered by COVID and beleaguered by his party's call to quit running for reelection after his cringe-worthy debate performance on June 27, withdrew from the race and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, instead.

As unprecedented as his decision was, it was a long time coming. And probably inevitable.

Many who voted for him in 2020 expected him to be a one-term president, cleaning up the mess made by the tumultuous Trump administration. But then he declared his intention to run for reelection, to "finish the job."

Governance, however, is not a job that is there to be finished.

Unless you're planning to implement Project 2025 and finish the Trump job of dismantling democracy once and for all.

Biden's performance in his June debate with Trump obliterated the confidence of every supporter who had been encouraged by his State of the Union speech. It demonstrated why the people around him had scheduled so few press conferences for our octogenarian president during the past four years.

Incidentally, I have heard that people who heard that debate as live-translated into Spanish thought that Biden had won the messaging contest. The Spanish language translators had to make sense of what the candidates said, whether what they actually said made sense or not. Trump's lies, however, translated easily and transparently.

I was pianist last weekend at a wedding where they had two ASL signers up in front for deaf family members and guests. Got me wondering how deaf viewers of the debate thought it went. ASL interpreters don't just use their hands; they also use facial expression — which can be quite exaggerated — to convey more than just the literal spoken word.

Anyway, Democrats now have a lot of enthusiasm and hope invested in Kamala Harris, and will need to keep that intensity up for the next three months. 

Harris has a reputation for having a rough relationship with staff. It supposedly doomed her 2020 campaign aborning, and if there's anything like that during this one, we will hear about it. The media love to report on the nuts and bolts of campaigning, because the campaign staffers are the people the press on the campaign trail talk to all the time. And disgruntled staffers tend to be eager to vent.

So Harris came to Milwaukee this week for a previously scheduled campaign event, and the staff had to find a larger venue to accommodate the increased interest. The Harris for President organization raked in a record amount in donations in the first days of her candidacy. And I dug out the Kamala Harris button I'd picked up at a union picnic in 2019.

Meanwhile, let's see whether Harris can appeal to those doggedly undecided voters out there. 

Like the woman in the focus group on CBS Morning News yesterday who thought that the the first name of the incumbent Vice President of the United States is Camilla.

Yeah, let's not pop the victory champagne just yet, folks.

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Drawing this cartoon put me in mind of a cartoon that was showing up in my social media feed while back. (I'd credit the cartoonist, but now that I want to cite it, I can't find the cartoon.) A guy has brought his car into the shop, and the auto mechanic has the car's hood up. He turns to the vehicle owner and says, "Here's your problem. The cartoonist doesn't know how to draw an engine."

This Week's Sneak Peek

One side note that I hadn't been able to work into Saturday's round-up of cartoons about the second week of the Democrats' 1924 national convention was that President Coolidge's 16-year-old son, Calvin Jr., died that Monday. While playing tennis on the White House lawn, young Calvin contracted blood poisoning from a blister and succumbed to a staph infection.

I could have included any of the cartoons commiserating the president's sorrow, but the post already had more cartoons than usual. None of the sympathy cartoons really stood out from the others, anyway.

During a political convention, cartoonists' attention tends to focus on the party throwing the party. The death of Coolidge's son tended to dissuade cartoonists from drawing cartoons of the president either enjoying the Democrats' difficulties, or of Coolidge and Davis facing off immediately upon the nomination being finally settled.

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In the aftermath of last week's gawdawful presidential (for lack of a better word) debate (ditto), I'm somewhat in a bind. I draw my cartoons days before they get published, in newspapers and magazines that will be on their newsstands for a week or more after that. With the mainstream media drumbeat that Democrats may or may not pressure President Biden to drop out, I'm finding it hazardous to come up with any cartoon about the presidential race that might not have any shelf life to it.

We'll see how this week's cartoon holds up.

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By the way, the cartoon I posted on Friday seems to be unusually popular. Maybe. Blogger reports to me that it has about six times the number of hits of the average cartoon I post, although Blogger only tells me that those extra hits are coming from "Other."

Could just be those thousands of bots that used to be in Singapore but have lately moved to Hong Kong.