Toon: The 60% Solution

At the risk of giving GQP politicians ideas...

On April 29, well ahead of its usual timetable of issuing rulings in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a congressional map that had been the result of a lawsuit against Louisiana's 2021 redistricting plan. A lower court had ruled that the 2021 map packed the state's Black voters into a single congressional district in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The Supremes continued their gutting of that Act, decreeing that as long as lawmakers are not actually wearing swastikas and Klan robes when they draw congressional district lines, they can discriminate against whomever they want.

Louisiana Republicans immediately called a halt to the state's primary elections in which early voting was already underway, so that they could re-redraw district boundaries. (Yesterday’s Senate primary went right on ahead as scheduled.) Fellow Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama, and Utah hurriedly followed suit.

This mid-decade scramble to jigger maps to tilt districts against Democrats was started by Donald Gimme-Gimme Trump's gerrymandering demand to the state of Texas — a demand with which Texan Republicans eagerly and speedily complied. 

Democrats have attempted to answer Texas's unprecedented move, but with mixed results. California drew up new Democrat-favoring maps; but Maryland refused to. New York is constitutionally prevented from mid-decade redistricting, and Virginia's high court tossed out a pro-redistricting popular vote on a legislative technicality that nobody seems to quite understand. The Supreme Court in D.C., after rushing to overrule the lower court ruling in Louisiana, has just decided to let the ruling in Virginia stand without comment.

Is my cartoon really such a far-fetched notion? I wouldn't put it past today's ReTrumplicans to push exactly this idea through every legislature in Dixie and the Great Plains.

Q Toon : Readin', Writin', and Religion

This week's cartoon does not deal, in a direct way at least, with LGBTQ+ issues. I still think it's relevant to point out Louisiana's new law mandating the posting of the Bible's Ten Commandments in each and every public school classroom, from kindergarten to science lab.

The LGBTQ+ community is a frequent target of the Christian Nationalists who are constantly seeking Establishment of their particular Religion in direct violation of the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. 44 years ago, the Supreme Court invalidated a similar Kentucky law on that very reasoning. But now, having stacked the Court with like-minded judicial activists, religious zealots are seizing the opportunity to cram their dogma down everyone else's throats.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry's mealy-mouthed platitudes about the Decalogue being the foundation of Western Law instead of a religious test are belied by the first three of the commandments. Many of us who revere the teachings of Jesus Christ do not share Mr. Landry's belief that the government has any business deciding who the Lord Thy God is. Or dictating how to spend the sabbath.

Nor did centuries upon centuries of religiously inspired war, torture, and bloodshed recommend itself to the Founding Fathers of this nation.

Tennessee was only the first to get its religious poster decree signed into law. West Virginia, Oklahoma and Mississippi are rarin' to follow suit. Oklahoma has gone ahead with requiring indoctrination teaching of the Bible in public schools. I patiently await reading about a teacher including the actual reason Y*w*h got pissed at King Saul in her lesson plan.

There is a meme going around proposing that teachers post the Ten Commandments in the original Hebrew. It's a clever thought, but the Tennessee legislature has already thought of that. They mandate what exact language must be used. The Required Tennessee Version of the Bible lists one commandment as "Thou shalt not kill," as opposed to the original Hebrew, which translates as "Thou shalt not murder." (OJB)

Distinctions like that do make a difference, and could very well be the basis for a lesson plan. That teacher might want the assign an essay on how to reconcile either translation of that commandment with Y*w*h's command that King Saul commit genocide. 

I patiently wait.

Klanwatch 1923

It is African-American History Month again. Having spent the last two weeks dwelling on foreign affairs 100 years ago, it's high time to turn to domestic affairs — particularly, the growth of the Ku Klux Klan.

"A Blot on the Escutcheon" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Jan. 3, 1923

We'll start with a Klan lynching that attracted national media attention — quite possibly because the victims were white.

In August 1922, members of the Ku Klux Klan tortured and killed Filmore Watt Daniels and Thomas Fletcher Richards. (Some accounts omit "s" at the end of both last names; I'm using the names from contemporary newspaper reports.) Daniels was the adult son of a wealthy landowner in Mer Rouge, Louisiana, a town near the Arkansas border; he and his father were vocal opponents of the Klan. Richards, a mechanic, was a good friend of the younger Daniels.

The Danielses, father and son, were returning home with Richard and two others from a ballgame in nearby Bastrop when they were stopped by heavily armed, black-hooded men. The five were blindfolded and abducted to a remote site where they were whipped and beaten for information on the location of another person. Their captors released the elder Daniels and the other two men; but the younger Daniels and Richards were tortured and killed, and their bodies dumped in Lake Lafourche. 

"When Klanhood Was in Flower" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 28, 1922

After their bodies were discovered on December 22, Louisiana Governor John M. Parker sought help from the U.S. Department of Justice in suppressing Klan violence within the state.

"A Blot on the Old Man's Journal" by Dennis McCarthy in New Orleans Times Picayune, ca. Dec. 29, 1922

If the meaning of Times Picayune cartoonist Dennis McCarthy's December 29 cartoon left any doubt what sort of "mob violence" was a blot on Old Man 1922's journal, his front page cartoon on January 9 was explicit.

"Explain This" by Dennis McCarthy in New Orleans Times Picayune, ca. Jan. 9, 1923

Reaction by members of the Klan differ from that depicted by McCarthy, according to the Shreveport Times, of January 7: 

Publication of the membership of the Morehouse klan 34 Knights of the Ku Klux Klan excited only passing interest here. Most of the charter and later membership were already known. The list included many of the many of the best-known and most substantial business and professional men, farmers, and officials of the parish. And the most pungent comment regarding it was, "why didn't they print the whole list, I felt slighted because they didn't have my name."

Prominent in the list was the name of J. Fred Carpenter, who happens to be the sheriff of Morehouse. The sheriff does not appear to be bothered that anyone should know he is a klansman.

"Resign?" he was asked.

"Not yet."

"Going to?"

"I hadn't thought of it." 

"Mer Rouge (Red Sea)" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 7, 1923

Other klansmen unmasked by the probe included a former mayor, the district attorney, the local postmaster, and a town marshal. The testimony of former klansman "Big Jim" Norsworthy exposed several locals as members, but in the end proved to be more flash than fire.

Meanwhile, Captain J.K. Skipworth, "exalted cyclops of the Morehouse klan" held court outside the courthouse to make sure that the media and anyone else in the vicinity could hear his opinion of the goings on inside.

There were klansmen in the grand jury, too. As a result, kidnapping and murder charges against named klansmen were dropped for "insufficient evidence." Even the minor charges against 17 men were dropped while the accused sheltered themselves out of state. 

By the end of 1923, the judge in the case had lost his reelection bid, and Governor Parker had retired.

"His Own Property" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, before Jan. 26, 1923

At the same time that investigative hearings were underway in Louisiana, a White mob burned the predominantly Black city of Rosewood, Florida, to the ground on January 8, 1923. Six Black Americans and two White rioters were killed. and the rest of the city's population fled by train.

"With Loose Rein" by Rollin Kirby in New York World before Feb. 4, 1923

As was usually the case in these pogroms, a White woman claimed that she had been assaulted by a Black man. The assault allegedly occurred on New Year's Day; enraged White mobs, bolstered by a Klan rally in nearby Gainesville, descended on Rosewood on January 4.

White mobs sought out one suspected Black man, then another, then turned their rage against the whole town. First setting fire to churches, they then began setting fire to homes and shooting at the residents as they tried to flee. White merchant John Wright sheltered some people in his home; others hid in the swamps outside of town.

Anonymous (Watson?), for Watson Studio, in Baltimore Afro-American, Feb. 23, 1923

One Black resident, Sylvester Carrier, shot back at the mob, killing two White rioters before being shot and killed himself. The news got even more White Floridians joining the mob. Governor Cary Hardee offered to send in the National Guard, but Sheriff Robert E. Walker claimed to have the situation under control. When the riot finally came to an end on January 7, the entire town had been destroyed. 

It will come as no surprise that although a grand jury was convened in February, 1923, nobody was ever charged with a crime of any kind in the Rosewood massacre. Nor will you be shocked to hear that it wasn't until 76 years later that any of the survivors received any compensation for their losses.

As for the nation's editorial cartoonists, when it came to addressing current events from their drawing boards, white riots and klan terrorism were just one issue out of many.

"The Three (Dis)Graces" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. Jan. 24, 1923

Even though these were only two klan/mob attacks among over 50 of them in 1922, many of the nation's cartoonists never even broached the subject at all in January or February, or at least never got an idea past their editors. On the other hand, every single editorial cartoonist at some point in January put out at least one cartoon satirizing Emile Coue's mantra of "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." (Coue was the Stuart Smalley of his day.)

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When your humble scribe started writing this essay several days ago, Blogger, the host of this site, began posting the following notice at the top of my post list screen:

I can't say whether Blogger's content monitoring bots flagged this week's essay as possible hate speech, or if Blogger management is cowering in fear of southern Republican politicians who have been cracking down on history lessons that make bigots feel bad.

To those of you brave enough to click past whatever content warning Blogger threw up at you, thank you.

Q Toon: Irony in the Fire

As risky as it was to draw a cartoon on Sunday featuring Steve Scalise (R-LA), the Congressman and House Majority Whip who was shot in the hip while practicing for a GOP-vs.-Democrat baseball game, the point of this week's cartoon is to highlight the role of Capitol police officer Crystal Griner.
Griner, an out and married lesbian, may even have been the one who fatally shot the failed assassin, James T. Hodgkinson.

Law-enforcement officials didn’t say who fired the fatal shot, but witness Jeff Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona, said it was Griner who took down the shooter, James Hodgkinson.
Flake later visited both officers in the local hospital where they were being treated, and said he “thanked them for saving my life.” ...
[Rep. Rodney] Davis (R-Ill.), who was at bat when the shooting began, said, "They're the ones that saved countless innocent lives and they're the heroes of today."
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), who was also at the practice, pointed out that they fought against superior firepower, because the shooter had a rifle and they had only pistols.
"But for their heroism there's no question that there would have been much more carnage, no doubt about it, because no one else there was armed and this shooter was not only active but he was really unloading so many shots," said the congressman, still in his baseball clothes at Capitol Hill hours later.

Griner was, of course, one of three officers who defended the congressmen's lives, but her status is worth pointing out, given Mr. Scalise's record (and that of Republicans generally) against marriage equality for same-sex couples. According to ontheissues.com, Scalise 

• Authored constitutional amendment to protect marriage. (May 2008)
• Voted to amend Constitution to define traditional marriage. (Jun 2008)
• Voted to protect anti-same-sex marriage opinions as free speech. (Sep 2013)
• Voted that any State definition of marriage supersedes federal gay marriage. (Feb 2014)
• Voted NO on enforcing against anti-gay hate crimes. (Apr 2009)

Now, as far as comparing himself to KKK Grand Wizard David Duke is concerned, this refers to a remark reported by Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana political reporter and columnist:

“He was explaining his politics and we were in this getting-to-know-each-other stage,” Ms. Grace said. “He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage."

Now, I'm not from Louisiana, but David Duke has popped up on the national scene repeatedly since being elected to the Louisiana statehouse in 1989. I'm left wondering what, if anything, there is about racist bigot David Duke that is not baggage. Benito Mussolini at least made the trains run on time; what good has Duke ever done?

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I acknowledged at the top of this post that drawing a cartoon about a victim of violence that levels the even slightest degree of criticism his way is rather dicey. (Now that Mr. Scalise has been upgraded to "fair" condition, I'm going to say that perhaps makes him fair game.) But some have tried to blame this shooting on editorial cartoons that have been critical of Republicans.

The Facebook "likes" of the gunman, a Bernie Sanders volunteer left disgruntled by last year's election, included a number of nationally published editorial cartoons, notably one by Stuart Carlson in 2015 about Scalise's speech to a white supremacist group in 2002.

Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles was also shared on Facebook by Mr. Hodgkinson, and has responded to criticism that his cartoons critical of Republicans and the Trump administration are somehow to blame for Mr. Hodgkinson's shooting spree — a criticism coming from people who have suddenly developed amnesia about their own rhetoric over past eight years.

[A]s to the question of incitement of violence, let’s indeed look at that. I am opposed to violence in just about every instance. But there are those who specifically define gun ownership as a tool of violence intended for potential use against the government. I have written here before about the dangers of this line of thinking. And it is not an isolated phenomenon, as it has been championed by a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Those words have consequences. Some less mainstream presidential candidates like former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have echoed it, while 2010 Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV) raised eyebrows when she floated “Second Amendment remedies” to protect against an out-of-control government.

Clay Jones adds to the list Donald Trump's suggestion to gun advocates that they take care of Hillary Clinton if she were to win the election: “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” And who can possibly count the number of right-wing AM radio and internet blowhards, NRA spokesmen and drunk uncles who have spewed the same incendiary Second Amendment Solution idiocy?

So now they're shocked, shocked! that someone outside their bubble was listening, too?

Q Toon: Gonna Party Like It's 1921

I figured that enough of the weekly papers which run my cartoon are going to run "double issues" this week (meaning that they won't publish next week), that their editors will be looking for something with a year-end theme.

Donald Berzilius Trump is assembling an incredibly right-wing cabinet. Recent Democratic presidents have always felt compelled to include some Republicans in their cabinet; Barack Obama named three to his inaugural cabinet and was vilified as a ultra-liberal extremist anyway. Even George W. Bush named a token Democrat as Secretary of Transportation. There's no seat at the table in Trump's White House for anyone but Republican ideologues, tycoons and racists, however.

But since I draw for the LGBT press, I couldn't draw this cartoon without sounding the alarm for the future of marriage equality.

If you think my concern is unwarranted, consider all the efforts in Republican statehouses to legislate marriage inequality. In Arkansas, the state Supreme Court ruled that while husband and wife are both recorded as parents to a child, even if one of them is not related by blood, same-sex parents are not.

Several states have put forth so-called religious liberty laws to the effect that anyone can discriminate against same-sex couples as long as they claim religious belief as their excuse. And by anyone, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that that means any corporation: your employer can refuse family leave, your insurer can refuse to cover your spouse; your hospital can refuse to let one spouse make decisions on behalf of (or even visit) an unconscious spouse.

It's not just wedding cakes, and with no check on their power, Republicans have promised that it's about to go national.

The Hazard of Duke

It's Schutzstaffelback Saturday again, so let's travel back in time to the late 20th Century. Because this is not the first time former Klan leader David Duke has been an embarrassment to the Republican Party.

In 1988, Duke actually did run for president as a Democrat, then as a Populist, switching his party affiliation to Republican that December. It was as a Republican that Duke was elected to the Louisiana legislature in a special election in 1989 (my cartoon about that is here). The next year, he ran for Louisiana's seat in the U.S. Senate and polled ahead of Republican Party-endorsed Ben Bagert; to avoid a run-off between Duke and the Democratic incumbent J. Bennett Johnston Jr., the GOP pressured Bagert into withdrawing from the race. Johnston won reelection.

Duke was back again in 1991, running this time for Governor. This time, he beat incumbent Republican Buddy Roemer in the primary, forcing a run-off between Duke and the ethically challenged Democrat, former Governor Edwin Edwards.

The most compelling argument in Edwards' favor was a bumper sticker that read, "Vote for the crook. It's Important." Edwards joked that the only thing he and Duke had in common "is that we both have been wizards beneath the sheets" and that being around so many burning crosses must have been bad for Duke's health.

Polls predicted an Edwards victory, but Duke countered that his supporters were merely reluctant to be honest to pollsters. In the end, a record 1 million votes were cast for the twice-indicted former Governor, versus only 671,000 for the klansman.

Duke tried running for President in 1992, this time as a Republican; but the GOP fought to keep him off the ballot, and there was already a much more prominent national figure who could appeal to the Duke Voter.

The high point of Duke's career was already behind him. Duke would later join the Reform Party to work on Pat Buchanan's 2000 presidential campaign. (Donald Trump explored running for the Reform Party nomination that year as well, but dropped out to host "The Apprentice" instead.) Since then, he has offered his support to various fascist and anti-Semitic politicians in Europe and the Near East.

Q Toon: Sermon at the Counter

As if last week's two marriage equality cartoons crammed into one weren't enough, I've got another one this week. Thumbing through almost 20 years of my cartoons on the subject, I'm surprised that I have anything left to say about it.

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate✒Jul 9, 2015 EditorialCartoonists.com

The "y'all" betrays the setting of this cartoon as being somewhere in the South, and that picture on the wall is supposed to be Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The news out of the Lone Star State is that with the encouragement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, County Clerks in Irion County and Hoods County have publicly vowed not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

But I could easily have set this cartoon almost anywhere in the South:

• A gay couple was denied a marriage license in Rowan County, Kentucky (they don't get up to the counter until ten minutes into the video at that link).
• Offices in Louisiana and Mississippi dragged their feet as hard as they could, hoping that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would somehow overrule the Supreme Court. "There is not yet a legal requirement for officials to issue marriage licenses or perform marriages for same-sex couples in Louisiana," wrote that state's Attorney General, Buddy Caldwell after the high court ruling.
• Pike and Geneva Counties in Alabama have announced that in order not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, they won't issue marriage licenses to anyone at all, and other counties may follow suit.
• Kansas will issue same-sex marriage licenses, but for some reason doesn't want those couples to file joint tax returns. (Some people would classify Kansas as a midwestern state, but it was part of the Confederacy, and I reckon that's South enough for me.)

The Race Card Canard

I try very hard not to ascribe racism as the motivation of people with whom I disagree. But when a woman who "can't stand to look at" President Obama is upset because Michelle Obama "doesn't look like a first lady," what else is one to think?

"I just - I don't like him. Can't stand to look at him. I don't like his wife. She's far from the First Lady. It's about time we get a first lady in there that acts like a First Lady and looks like a First Lady." --Bobbie Lucier, interviewed at the American Legion Convention in Indianapolis

Put Mrs. Obama next to either Laura Bush or Ann Romney and tell me what about her doesn't look like a First Lady. Her sleeve length?

Puh. Leeze.

Add to that the incident in which two white men at the Republican convention threw peanuts at a black female CNN cameraman and shouted "This is what we feed animals!" at her. It is not known whether they were delegates or alternates; to the Republican Party's credit, they were escorted from the floor.

The racists in these two incidents are white and around retirement age. Mrs. Lucier is from Manassas, Virginia; and while we don't know where the peanut throwers are from, cameraman Patricia Carroll seems to assume they were from the Deep South:

Carroll said that as an Alabama native, she was not surprised. "This is Florida, and I'm from the Deep South," she said. "You come to places like this, you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don't think I should do."

February, 1989: Klansman David Duke wins the Republican
 primary for a seat in Louisiana's House of Representatives

Retirement-age white southerners are perhaps the most resistant group that President Obama has notoriously failed to win over in the four years since he ran for president. (I can think of several retirement-age white northerners who have been equally skeptical of him from the get-go, too. And young white southerners, for that matter. You can picture the Venn diagram for yourself.) Clearly, the election of Barack Obama as President did not herald the arrival of the long-awaited "Post-Racial America" some were celebrating at the time.

Patricia Carroll is not giving interviews. She's there to record the news, not be the news. But immediately after the peanut incident, she did say this:

"I can't change these people's hearts and minds. No, it doesn't feel good. But I know who I am. I'm a proud black woman. A lot of black people are upset. This should be a wake-up call to black people. . . . People were living in euphoria for a while. People think we're gone further than we have."