The Summer of Kenosha Tribune

For today's wallow in history, let me take you back forty Augusts ago, when I was editorial cartoonist for a little start-up newspaper, the Kenosha Tribune. The Tribune was edited by Ken Meyer, my editor at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside Ranger in the 1981-82 school year. Initially offered for sale for 25 cents, by August, the paper was free.

in Kenosha Tribune, August 5, 1982

Most of my initial cartoons for the Tribune dealt with national topics, but by August, I was making a concentrated effort to focus on state and local issues. Thus the above cartoon concerned the problem of drunk driving, exacerbated by Wisconsin having, at the time, a lower legal drinking age than just over the state line in Illinois.

in Kenosha Tribune, August 19, 1982

Another cross-border issue was Commonwealth Edison's nuclear power plant in Zion, Illinois, and concern that communication to Wisconsin communities in the event of an accident at the plant was lacking. This was three years after the meltdown at Three Mile Island, and four years before that at Chernobyl, Ukraine.

A less severe accident at the Zion plant led to its being retired in 1998. A year earlier, someone incorrectly inserted and then removed some control rods in a reactor while it was shut down; ComEd ultimately decided that the reactor was no longer economically feasible, and it has been inactive ever since. It is scheduled for complete closure in December, 2026.

For the above cartoon, I sat outside the Kenosha Municipal Building in the heat of summer to sketch the place. Kenosha city government just moved out of the building this year.

for Madison Independent, July, 1982

I'm not sure whether this cartoon belongs in this blog post. For one thing, it's dated in July. For another, I'm having difficulty remembering what the Madison Independent was, and how I came to draw one and only one cartoon for it. I haven't found any record of the Independent on line, either.

But I vaguely recall that the Tribune's publisher, Al Holzman, had dreams of establishing a publishing empire in the area. Whether he had hoped to entice the management of Madison Independent into a deal with cartoons as part of the package, or whether the newspaper ever existed in the first place, I have no idea — except that I do remember that I mimicked the font of its flag for the credit line next to my signature.

for Kenosha Tribune, July/Aug. 1982

In addition to editorial cartooning, I drew illustrations for a number of news and feature stories, such as the above one for a article about drunk driving...

in Kenosha Tribune, July 8, 1982

...this one for a front-page article about competition for the cable TV monopoly in Kenosha...

in Kenosha Tribune, August 19, 1982

... and this one to accompany Ken's obituary for Henry Fonda. The editorial board also asked me to draw sketches of the regular columnists, on account of one who didn't photograph well; we were pleased with the resulting portraits. And I wrote a way-too-long-even-after-brutal-editing feature article about GenCon XV. (It's just as well that I wrote it under a pseudonym.)

Meanwhile, all was not running smoothly at the Trib. The publisher, owner of 51% of the paper, was at odds with the other seven members of the board, who owned equal shares of the remaining 49%. Somewhere along the line, Holzman's name was removed from the masthead, but he remained in control as majority owner.

One thing the seven other members of the board were able to do without Holzman's approval was to secure a lease on a second-story office suite in downtown Kenosha. They moved necessary equipment out of the shabby little storefront on 43rd Street, and didn't give the publisher keys to the new office.

Needless to say, this didn't sit well with Mr. Holzman. Lawsuits and injunctions were threatened and filed, advertisers withdrew their support, and the first issue published out of the Haugaard-Isermann building would be the Tribune's last.

in Kenosha Tribune, August 26, 1982

Good thing the economy was picking up. This was my editorial cartoon in that final issue, mocking one of the Republican candidates for Wisconsin's Governor — Wisconsin's fall primary being held in September in those days.

To wrap this all up, I have gotten back in touch with a few Tribune people through Facebook as we've gone our separate ways — and run into one or two around town whose ways have brought them back or didn't take them very far. Ken drowned in a swimming accident in Marble Falls, Texas in 1985. Al Holzman never became the Charles Foster Kane of the Midwest; I have no clue what ultimately became of him.

And Lowell Jackson didn't get the GOP gubernatorial nomination, but did serve as Transportation Secretary in Tony Earl's administration.

We Have All Been Here Before

"The King Is Dead..." by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1974

Very well: we have not all been here before; but if your mind's ear sang today's blog post title, yes, you were.

"'By the Dawn's Early Light'" by Eric Smith in Capital Gazette, Annapolis MD, Aug. 9, 1974

As we look forward to the end of one long national nightmare 68 days from now, Siricaback Saturday looks backward 46 years to the end of another. Facing certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and calls from leading Republican senators to resign, President Richard M. Nixon finally accepted the inevitable on August 8, 1974.

"Because I Have Lost the Support of the Crew..." by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, Aug. 9, 1974

By and large, the nation greeted Nixon's resignation with relief, and welcomed the new President, Gerald R. Ford, in spite of the fact that he remains the first and only person inaugurated President without having first run on a national ticket.

No caption, by Leonard Borozinski in Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), Aug. 9, 1974

Borozinski's cartoon, perhaps also punning on the new president's name, riffs on a television commercial for Hertz Rent-a-Car that was already a dated reference in 1974.

"Well, Let's Go At It" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, Aug. 11, 1974

Ford had been House Minority Leader before Nixon named him to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew, but the career politician was not well known outside of Washington D.C. or Michigan. Still, he seemed to promise a calm, steady hand, and an end to Nixon's paranoia and the partisan rancor over the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Conservatives and liberals alike wished him well.

No caption, by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, Aug. 17, 1974

I can't tell you how tempting it is to redraw Dick Locher's cartoon with President-elect Joe Biden firing the flit. Of course, Locher was making reference to Nixon's tape recording system — bugs— in the Oval Office. This time around, we have at least been spared whatever unitelligibles and deleted expletives might have been revealed on any Trump tapes. But you never know for sure. Keeping Up with the Kushners could be coming up on E! any day now.

No caption, by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, Aug. 7, 1974

A day before Nixon's resignation, Pat Oliphant drew Vice President Ford opening a White House closet to find the cobweb-ridden sign that had supposedly been carried by 13-year-old Vicki Lynne Cole at a 1968 Nixon for President rally in Deshler, Ohio. (Parts of the story may be apocryphal.) A friend of Nixon's had told his speechwriters about having seen the sign, and the phrase became a slogan for the campaign. It also figured prominently in Nixon's Election Night victory speech.

"I'll Try, Honey..." by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, August, 1974

Somewhere, that teenager, now hitting retirement age, is still waiting for a president who can bring us together.

Q Toon: Assault in the Wounds

Statues were not the only things laid low during last Tuesday's Black Lives Matter protest in Madison.

Tim Carpenter has represented Milwaukee in the state legislature since 1984. He's a progressive Democrat, openly gay, and from what I've read, reasonably well liked and respected among his peers.

Tuesday night, he started to take a video of the protests when two protesters charged at him, punching him to the ground and began kicking him in the head and ribs. After the assault, he started to walk away but collapsed and was taken to a hospital.

As it happened, Donald Berzelius Trump happened to have a Fox News town hall scheduled in Green Bay two days later, and a member of the audience asked him about the incident. Trump ... well, proceeded to be Trump.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Great to have you with us.  My question for you is: With all the unrest we’ve seen across the country, and right here in the state of Wisconsin last night, in our capital city —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  — a senator was beaten.  Lady Forward was ripped off her pedestal.  We lost some other statues.  What steps is the administration taking to give us back our streets?

THE PRESIDENT:  So, very strong.  You happen to have a Democrat governor right now.  If you would have had Governor Walker, that wouldn’t have happened.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That’s right.

THE PRESIDENT:  Wouldn’t have happened.  (Applause.)  I mean, I’m not saying it.  If Scott were your governor, that would not have happened.  But it did happen, and it was a shame.  And the person they beat up was a Democrat who happened to be gay.  And he was probably out there rooting them on or something, because Democrats think it’s wonderful that they’re destroying our country.  It’s a very sick thing going on.  Nobody has ever seen it.

The rest of his lengthy answer had nothing whatsoever to do with the question, so let's just move on.

"I don't know what's worse, the beating or having someone turn something so personal that happened to you and weaponize it against you," Carpenter told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after their reporter relayed Trump's comments.

If you ask me, the beating ought to be worse. When Donald Joffrey Trump trash-talks you, you're in pretty interesting company.

Toon: Said the Cat, We're All Mad Here

This week's cartoons comprise a triptych of sorts.

Black Lives Matter Protests in Madison turned violent last week after the arrest of a Black male who brought a bullhorn and a baseball bat into a downtown restaurant and allegedly demanded free food. This was not an arrest in which a Black man was killed; but force was used, and video was shared on social media and tempers flared.

The protesters engaged in quite a lot of destruction of property — and there was absolutely no incidence of boogaloo droogs this time — windows broken at the capitol, molotov cocktails thrown into buildings, and two statues were torn down.

Protesters removed two Capitol statues from their pedestals, WPR reported: “the Forward statue, located on the west entrance of the Capitol at the end of State Street, and a statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, located on the east entrance of the Capitol at the King Street corner of the square…. Protesters took the Heg statue and dumped it in Lake Monona, almost a half-mile from where it was toppled. And the Forward statue “as of early Wednesday morning, was about a block from the state Capitol in the middle of the street.”

We don't have monuments to Confederate generals in this state. "Forward" was a replica of an 1895 statue by Jean Pond Miner Stoneman of a woman gesturing in the direction of the state motto. The original was purchased by women's suffrage organizations and "presented to the state of Wisconsin on behalf of the women's suffrage movement." The copper statue was replaced in 1996 with a bronze one and moved to a museum. The replica was a frequent rallying spot for protests during the Scott Walker administration.

Far from being a slave-owner, Hans Christian Heg was a leader of a citizen militia that worked to thwart slave catchers. When the Civil War broke out, he was appointed colonel in charge of the largely Scandinavian 15th Wisconsin infantry, seeing action in Kentucky and Tennessee. After pursuing a retreating Confederate unit to Chickamauga, Georgia in September, 1863, he was fatally wounded by a shot to the abdomen.

But perhaps more to the interests of the spokesperson for the protesters, Heg was State Prison Commissioner in 1859, pushing for vocational training rather than the punishment of prisoners. I think that's actually one of the demands of this week's protesters. Too bad they never bothered to learn the history of the statue before tearing it down, beheading it, and dumping it in Lake Monona.

The protesters' spokesperson apparently had little to say about the Heg statue, which was a gift from the Norwegian Society of America in 1925, around the time that Confederate statues were spreading across Dixie like kudzu. Instead, she focused her contempt on Ms. Forward:

“We’re not moving forward, we’re moving backwards,” said Ebony Anderson-Carter. “This (statue) doesn’t need to be here until we’re ready to move forward.”
Anderson-Carter says she and the other protesters want to see something done about racial injustice in the state, and speak with the state’s Black youth.
“The Capitol is where we solve problems, and nobody’s coming here to solve problems,” said Anderson-Carter.

Statues can be repaired and replaced. But not all of the damage Tuesday night was to inanimate objects. I'll have more on that on Thursday.

Q Toon: Lightfoot Tango

Last week, Chicago elected former prosecutor Lori Lightfoot as their next mayor by a landslide: she won nearly 74% of the votes and carried all 50 wards over Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Chicago elected a woman mayor once before, and a black once before; but this is the first time Chicago has elected someone who is both (as is Ms. Preckwinkle for that matter), and a lesbian to boot. Both Jane Byrne and Harold Washington won election by challenging the Chicago Machine's preferred candidates, and neither had an easy time dealing with Chicago City Council. We can expect that Ms. Lightfoot will have her work cut out for her as well.

I would have liked to have come up with a cartoon that also acknowledged that Madison, Wisconsin also elected a lesbian mayor last week. Satya Rhodes-Conway ousted the straight male incumbent who was once dubbed "Mayor for Life," 62% to 38%. Sadly, nobody has written a popular musical about Madison yet (either the town nor Jemmy, although I can't be sure that there isn't one about Dolly). Besides, Madison has been represented in Congress by a lesbian and a gay man for 20 years, so the LGBTQ thing is pretty old hat around our capital city.

Lightfoot and  Rhodes-Conway join Pete Buttigieg, Phoenix's Kate Gallego, Salt Lake City's Jackie Biskupski, Seattle's Jennie Ann Durkin, and at least ten others as out LGBTQ mayors in the United States (Wikipedia's list here includes several former mayors). And there is a good chance that their number will grow later this year.

I'll try to remember that whenever the news out of D.C. makes me fear for the future of the country.

WisToon: That First Step Is a Doozy

In the wee hours of the morning, Republicans in an extraordinary session of the Wisconsin legislature approved hastily drawn-up bills to curtail the authority of the Democratic Governor-elect and Attorney General-elect. It's a blatant power grab by a legislature determined to safeguard minority rule in the state: Democrats consistently outvote Republicans in legislative races here, but 2011 gerrymandering has guaranteed lopsided Republican majorities in both the Assembly and Senate as well as our congressional delegation.

Assembly leader Robin Vos and Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald and their minions claim that the legislature has been considering these moves for a long time, and they probably have — at least since predictions of a "blue wave" began to cast its shadow over the un-gerrymander-able statewide races. As long as there was a Republican in the governor's office, they were happy to grant  him as much power as he could keep track of. Likewise with the past two Republican Attorneys General, J.B. Van Hollen and Brad Schimel.

But with Democrats due to assume those offices in January, Republicans rushed to make sure the new Governor and A.G. would have no power to shape the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (created by the GOP as a replacement for the Commerce Department), 2021 redistricting, or the Republican lawsuit against Obamacare.

Another of the bills they passed will move the state's 2020 presidential primary from April to March, between the nominally non-partisan February primary and April general election. Those bracketing elections will be for such positions as school boards, local sheriffs, and mayors; but most importantly to Republicans in Madison, for the state Supreme Court.

Republicans claim concern that it would be confusing, or unseemly, or gauche to have those non-partisan races on the same ballot as the partisan presidential primary.

Once upon a time, Wisconsin's Supreme Court was filled with respected, non-partisan legal judges; but in the past few decades it has become dominated by partisan stooges bought and paid for by the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce lobby and the Koch brothers. A Scott Walker appointee is up for election to a full ten-year term next spring, and Republicans don't want him to have to run in an election likely to attract lots of Democratic voters eager to have a say in whom their party should nominate for President.

It's not as if the Republicans don't already hold a majority on the state Supreme Court. But with their latest power grab likely to come up before the Court next year, they don't want to take any chances.

Update: Facing unanimous opposition from local election officials, the primary date change didn't pass the legislature after all.

Q Toon: Unequal Rites

Last weekend, Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin diocese sent an email to parish priests counseling against conducting funeral services for LGBT persons.

The confidential email, sent Saturday by Vicar General James Bartylla with Morlino’s backing, said rites “may be denied for manifest sinners” if providing the services would cause unavoidable “public scandal of the faithful.”
In Catholic doctrine, the word “scandal” can refer to something that is believed will lead others into sin or cause a confusion or weakening of others’ faith. Other parts of Bartylla’s message, published Sunday in a progressive Minnesota religious blog called Pray Tell, said “general considerations” priests should keep in mind if asked to perform Catholic funeral rites by the deceased’s family or same-sex partner include whether “the deceased or the ‘partner’ was a ‘promoter of the gay lifestyle.’ ”

In the manner of clerical communication, the language is less than direct, with "should" when the intended meaning is "must." Words like "gravely" and "notorious" leave little doubt as to what the local ordinary has to say about funeral rites. From Morlino's email:

You may encounter the situation in which a person in a homosexual civil union (thereby in a public union gravely contrary to the natural law) or in an otherwise notorious homosexual relationship gravely contrary to the natural law dies, and the family wants Catholic funeral rites for the deceased. My short answer to pastors and parochial vicars in these cases is to think through the issue thoroughly and prudently and likely call the local ordinary early in the process to discuss the situation. The main issue centers around scandal and confusion (leading others into the occasion of sin or confusing or weakening people regarding the teachings of the Catholic Church in regards to sacred doctrine and the natural law), and thereby the pastoral task is to minimize the risk of scandal and confusion to others amidst the solicitude for the deceased and family.

Bishop Morlino, then, counsels his pastors to join the priest and the levite in minimizing the risk of scandal and just continue on along the road. Let those notorious Samaritans handle the situation.

✒

A topic I had abandoned for this week's cartoon was the Million Moms' objection to an adolescent character on a Disney Channel program coming out as gay. All the ideas kept gravitating toward punch lines involving Kevin Spacey that I just wasn't comfortable signing my name to.

Back in my early twenties, I used to be involved in local theater, and I recall a (probably) underage cast member who pinged my gaydar. Even at a cast party at which much gin was consumed, I knew enough not to press —ahem— the issue with him. The theater world being what it was in those days before AIDS had a name (the debauchery at cast parties for an earlier production of Billy Budd was legendary), I was less concerned with the ramifications should my estimation of his sexuality prove wrong than should my estimation of his age prove correct.

I was no saint, and I certainly had a lot left to learn about life, but I at least enough common sense to know that no good comes from plucking unripe fruit.

So it's immensely disappointing that Mr. Spacey has come out as gay now only because his inexcusable and crass attempt to seduce a 14-year-old boy three decades ago has become public. Had Anthony Rapp not become an established and respected actor in his own right, Mr. Spacey would no doubt still be able to keep all his secrets under wraps in his closet.

Meanwhile, as the Harvey Weinstein scandal spreads to cover producers, directors, actors, journalists, academics, and at least three presidents of the United States — all men, gay and straight, are bracing themselves for the possibility that some forgotten unrequited attraction was someone else's #metoo moment. I can't think of any in my own past, but there's always a chance I may have told an inappropriate joke in mixed company that scarred you for life. Or perhaps you were offended by my plucking unripe fruit analogy a minute ago.

Please accept my apology.

WisToon: Hearing No Objection

After patiently ignoring hours of testimony against Right to Work for Less, Wisconsin's Republicans passed their union-busting bill in extraordinary session on a party line vote; and Darth Snotwalker quickly signed the bill he had publicly dismissed as "a distraction" but had privately described years ago as just one more "step" in his "divide and conquer" model of governance.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington, at left in the cartoon) told "Up Front with Mike Gousha" that he had only received a handful of messages from constituents against the proposed bill. He made no mention whether he had received more than a handful of messages from constituents in favor of it.

While RTWFL has been a priority for right-wingers at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce group, there has been no push for it from individual local chambers of commerce, as found by the Wisconsin Business Alliance's Lori Compas:

I wanted to learn the answer to this question: Is WMC really representing Wisconsin’s broad and diverse business community when it claims that businesses want legislators to enact “right to work” laws?

The answer was astonishing: I could not find a single Chamber in the districts of [Republican] senators Fitzgerald, Cowles, Olsen, Moulton, Petrowski, Nass, Lasee, or Harsdorf that supports “right to work.”

In fact, I heard statements like these again and again: “We’re not taking a position on that.” “We don’t take a stand on political issues.” “We only advocate for political issues when there’s a strong consensus among our members — and we don’t have consensus on this.”

A Chamber official in Senator [Scott] Fitzgerald’s [(R-Juneau), above right in my cartoon] district said, “We won’t take a stand on that one way or another. We’re part of WMC because we get a lot of resources from them, like mentoring and executive training and other benefits, but that doesn’t mean we support their legislative agenda.”

Another Chamber official, this time in Senator Lasee’s district, said, “Everyone I have talked to says that it is an issue that should be left between employers and their employees. I haven’t found anyone who says we need the government to tell us how to run our business.”

Me again: I've got to say, that is an astonishingly tepid response from a demographic that tends to skew Republican to a Republican bill guaranteed to pass a Republican legislature and be signed by a Republican governor.

It will take decades before the full effect of the push by Darth Snotwalker and his Madison Minions to depress wages, decimate benefits, and bring a third-world standard of living to the state of Wisconsin. To save their own jobs, Republicans have already begun their assault on the right to vote.  Our only hope is that Walker, notorious for not finishing what he starts, up and quits his current job in favor of heading some right-wing think tank somewhere -- rather than that other job he's got his eyes on.

A Problem Like Maria (Episode 2)

This business of photoshopping Maria from The Sound of Music into other pictures began with a college friend of mine who came home from a vacation through Virginia and posted a photo of rolling hills and distant mountains as his Facebook cover photo. Somebody suggested that the the only thing the photo lacked was Julie Andrews dancing in the foreground.

My friend, who is also named Paul, added Maria singing "The Hills Are Alive" to the photo, and a meme was born.

Paul followed that picture up by photoshopping Maria onto the balustrade of the West Virginia capitol building, which inspired me to replace the "Wisconsin" statue atop the capitol dome in Madison:

Maria should be warned, however, that Governor Snotwalker and his minions have decreed singing to be a capitol offense.

The Konopacki Case, continued

The Dane County District Attorney is seriously considering filing charges against Madison editorial cartoonist Mike Konopacki. I relayed the story on Tuesday: Konopacki sent a fake press release (at right) purportedly from State Assemblyman Steve Nass to the editorial page editor of the Capital Times, satirizing the Whitewater Republican's having forced the University of Wisconsin to cancel an exhibit of pro-labor posters from this past year's state protests.

Konopacki tells the Wisconsin State Journal that he has been suspended from the Cap Times for six weeks (he has free-lanced for them since the 1970's). Potentially more significantly, he could face up to 3½ years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of the Class I felony of impersonating a public official.

Unintimidated, Konopacki has struck again, but has at least learned to make it a bit more obvious that this follow-up press release is not the real McCoy:

Wisconsin Club for Growth Supports Walker's Union-Busting

Governor Walker's drive to strip state workers of most of their rights to bargain for a contract and the resulting protests by said employees has drawn national -- even international -- attention. The Wisconsin Club for Growth has been running an advertisement on TV urging viewers to call Republican Representative Van Wangaard to tell him to support Walker's bill (which seems to have unanimous Republican support, including that of Tea Partisan Wangaard, anyway).

The ad shows glum farmers and laborers with headlines about how workers were forced to make concessions at Mercury Marine, Harley Davidson, and other Wisconsin businesses which had threatened to move out of state otherwise. The voice-over announcer then complains that state workers haven't had to share the pain (it's not easy to move the state out of state) by surrendering their benefits packages "like the rest of us."

"All across Wisconsin, people are making sacrifices to save their jobs: frozen wages, pay cuts and paying more for health care. But state workers haven't had to sacrifice; they pay next to nothing for their pensions and a fraction of their health care. It's not fair. Call your state legislators and tell them to vote for Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill. It's time state employees paid their fair share, just like the rest of us."

If there were truth in advertising, the Club for Growth would have had to say "like the rest of you," but the Club are not sticklers for detail.

Nor is Governor Walker, when he pretends that his bill is all about fixing the hole in the state budget* and not about busting unions. Included in the bill are provisions freeing employees from having to pay union dues and forcing unions to let workers vote annually on whether to keep the union around. Those provisions have nothing whatsoever to do with the state budget and everything to do with breaking up the unions.

For today at least, Republican plans to grease the skids on the decline and fall of the middle class have been foiled by Democrats in the state senate absconding out of state to deny a quorum. That will only work so long. I wait with baited breath to find out what their Plan B is.

* About that "hole in the budget": As the Capital Times points out, the previous (Democratic) legislature had made the tough decisions to balance the budget, but Governor Walker

"and legislators aligned with him have over the past month given away special-interest favors to every lobby group that came asking, creating zero jobs in the process 'but increasing the deficit by more than $100 million.'"

(quoting Madison representative Brett Hulsey)