Q Toon: The Sun Will Come Out, Ed Murrow

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

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

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

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

Swinging into your corn flakes, from CBS Mornings promo

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

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

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

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

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

Good night, and good luck.

This Week's Sneak Peek

The Trump maladministration won't tell you, but today is World AIDS Day.

Last week's cartoon mused that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Health and Human Services Department could use the occasion to spread unscientific garbage about HIV/AIDS. Instead, the State Department has issued a directive that forbids anyone in the executive branch from even mentioning World AIDS Day.

The state department has directed its employees and grant recipients not to use US government funds to mark the event – which falls annually on 1 December – and not to promote the day publicly. The news was first reported by the journalist Emily Bass and confirmed in an email viewed by the New York Times. ...

[T]hey should “refrain from publicly promoting World Aids Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging”.

The email also reportedly said the government’s policy is “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day”, even though Donald Trump has issued proclamations for dozens of other observances, including Anti-Communism Week and National Energy Dominance Month.

As Emily Bass notes,

[U.S. Government] personnel may attend external, locally organized World AIDS Day events but may not speak at these events or promote their attendance via social media or media channels.

I suppose it's better than promoting the sort of half-baked crackpot fantasies that are the hallmark of the present regime.

But yes, Silence = Death.

Q Toon: It's Only a Day Away

It’s gonna be a rough four years — more than four, from what plans were already seeing of Republican plans to circumvent and stifle democratic norms and safeguards.

Let me just say here that I'm aware that some people are tired of politics, politics, politics. I get it. The 2024 election in this country went on too loud and too long, and only partly thanks to all those Trumpsters who have been flying their Trump flags in front of their house and from the back of their pick-up trucks non-stop for the past eight or nine years.

But there is a guy in my age cohort whose TikTok video explained succinctly what those of us who care about democracy are going through right now. America has spoken loudly and clearly that all the values we were taught to live by since we were kids belong in the garbage. The role model they want to hold up for their children is a lying, cheating, grifting, self-centered, infantile, spiteful, hateful, racist, sexist, fascist, financial ignoramus without one single redeeming social trait.

Who, in the words of the guy he wants for his next Secretary of State, had he not inherited a fortune from his old man, would be selling counterfeit gold watches on the street.

By the way, if you're in the market for those gold watches and tennis shoes he's been hawking on Trump Social, better get 'em now before the tariffs kick in.

Meanwhile, if America has decided to trade all those virtuous values I grew up with for a cheaper carton of eggs, I'm sorry, folks.

No deal.

Silence of the Sams

I had planned to save these cartoons for this summer, but after Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson's stunning performance in front of Congress this week, now seems to be a good time for Scamback Saturday to remember one of his predecessors at the department.

Samuel Pierce was Secretary of HUD from 1981 to 1989.  Pierce had the distinction of being the only African-American in Ronald Reagan's cabinet, and the only cabinet official to serve in the same post for all eight years of Reagan's presidency.

Several HUD Secretaries have been former mayors or otherwise professionally involved in urban renewal. But like Ben Carson, Pierce had no such experience before Reagan named him to the job. Also like Ben Carson, Pierce was African-American, the Republican euphemism for which is "urban," an area the increasingly exurban and rural Republican Party could hardly care less about. If a Republican president has to have one Black person in the cabinet just for appearances sake, he might as well be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, even if his field of expertise is brain surgery and he's totally unfamiliar with real estate jargon.

Unlike Carson, however, Sam Pierce at least had ample subcabinet-level experience, starting out in Eisenhower's Department of Labor and later as general counsel to Nixon's Treasury Department. But the tenure of "Silent Sam" at HUD was so low-key that when he and the president who appointed him attended a U.S. Conference of Mayors luncheon, Reagan thought Pierce was one of the mayors.

I'm not kidding.

Chuck Stone, a black editor at the Philadelphia Daily News and longtime acquaintance of Pierce, says the Secretary “has the three B’s Republicans like—brilliance, blackness and blandness. Republicans don’t like audacious blacks.”

It was only after Pierce was gone that an investigation by the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel uncovered mismanagement and political favoritism in HUD dating from his first days on the job.

UW-Milwaukee Post, July 25, 1989

Despite a pledge during his Senate confirmation hearings to ''sever'' his ties to his former New York law firm, Samuel R. Pierce Jr. regularly did personal favors for his former colleagues and interceded with subordinates in the Department of Housing and Urban Development on their behalf, documents from his office files show.

While there is no indication that the former Secretary broke any law barring conflicts of interest or directed subordinates to act improperly, Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, said the documents raised ''additional questions about Secretary Pierce's management at H.U.D.''  ...

Ethics lawyers at H.U.D. said Mr. Pierce's agreement to sever ties with the firm did not bar him from all dealings with it. And lawyers at the Office of Government Ethics said that to prove a criminal violation against an official like Mr. Pierce, a prosecutor would have to demonstrate that he personally and substantially took part in a matter affecting his former firm. 

Investigators also uncovered several cases in which outside agents managing the foreclosure of properties on behalf of HUD, instead of subtracting their management fees and turning the rest of the proceeds over to HUD, were pocketing the entire proceeds and never filing the paperwork. Contracts went to politically connected landlords and developers, funneling money to the campaigns of a number of politicians.

Drawn for an edition of the Post that wasn't published

As the scandals came to light, Pierce claimed that HUD was too big for him to follow individual programs, and he threw his chief aide, Deborah Gore Dean under the bus. She and others on Pierce's staff would be convicted on various felony charges, but Pierce himself was never charged with any criminal activity.

UW-Parkside Ranger, September 28, 1989

Now, I have to caution that there was never any connection between the shenanigans at HUD and the Iran-Contra scandal.

But one familiar name from the Corrupt Trump Administration pops up in those 30-year-old reports.

As one particular scam involving conversion of some abandoned World War II era internment facilities for Japanese-Americans into apartment dwellings was reported in Newsweek in 1989:

The moving force in the project was Paul Manafort, a Reagan campaign consultant in 1980 who later diversified into lobbying and power brokering. When a friend told him the ancient housing project was for sale, Manafort sounded out Deborah Gore Dean, Pierce's chief aide, and got informal encouragement that he could get a rehabilitation contract. Through another crony, he persuaded New Jersey officials to apply for a grant; with two associates, he formed CFM Development Corp. and bought the project for $4.4 million. HUD promptly approved the project, providing $5 million in construction funds and guaranteeing rent subsidies totaling $31.1 million over 15 years. CFM hired Manafort's firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly [okay, more than one familiar name there!] to keep the wheels greased at HUD, paying it a consultant's fee of $326,000. The rent subsidies guaranteed an operating profit, but the program offered a second bonanza in the form of $11 million worth of tax credits. ...
Mayor Bruce Peterson of Upper Deerfield Township, N.J., called the project "a horrible waste of the taxpayers' money." It was imposed on the community as a fait accompli, he testified; the housing wasn't needed, the buildings were too old and shabby, the work being done was shoddy and the subsidized rents were way above local standards.

✍

These four cartoons about Samuel Pierce are the most I've ever drawn about any Secretary of HUD. The only other HUD Secretary I've ever cartooned was Jack Kemp, who comes in second place, and only because he's in that second cartoon about Pierce. Which never got published until now, so it shouldn't even count.

UW-Parkside Ranger, November 2, 1989

On the other hand, Kemp did appear in at least one of my cartoons when he was Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 1996. For that matter, I've drawn Carson in at least three cartoons, but as a 2016 presidential candidate.

Since the ratio of verbiage to cartoons in this post is weighted too heavily to the former, here's one of those Carson cartoons.

This Week's Sneak Peek

While we wait for Ben Carson to venture out of the wings and for Marco Rubio to stop skipping Rubio to stop skipping Rubio to stop skipping Rubio to stop skipping Rubio to stop skipping Rubio to stop skipping *scrrrratch!*

...I'm still stuck on last Saturday's discussion of Hillary and marriage equality.

Q Toon: Smother of Exiles

The Republicans are standing by the golden door again, making damned sure it stays shut...

I couldn't possibly fit all the candidates still in the presidential race into this cartoon, so I offer my  thoughts and prayers to any of them who feel slighted and left out.

QToon: Tommy v. Tammy

National media attention this week has been on tonight's debate between President Barack Obama and Bain Capitalist Mitt Romney. Less attention gets paid to the congressional and senatorial debates around the country, by and large, although the Elizabeth Warren v. Scott Brown debate over the weekend did get some tongues wagging.

(As an aside: I don't buy the media spin that it was a gaffe when Warren started to answer a question about which Republican now in the Senate she could work with on major issues by citing Dick Lugar. Dick Lugar is "now in the Senate," as David Gregory phrased the question, even if Lugar won't be there once the next Congress is sworn in. And while a Democrat might be able to work with, say, Marco Rubio on immigration reform, or Rand Paul on limiting government surveillance of private citizens, on "major issues," the Republicans who will be calling the shots if Scott Brown is reelected have no interest whatsoever in working with any Democrats.)

Last Friday in the race to succeed retiring Senator Herb Kohl, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and Madison area Congressman Tammy Baldwin met in what was billed as a debate. It was no such thing; the format consisted them taking turns answering questions from four TV/radio people. They each got to give one answer to each question, and there was no opportunity for rebuttal or response to each other. The one time a questioner asked what he called a follow-up question, he changed the subject from abortion to marriage equality. Well, that's not a follow-up question; that's a question asked out of turn.

Having breezed through several debates in his races for governor, Thompson was at ease with the format, repeating his favorite talking points frequently but as if they were fresh new thoughts each time -- so that any given one of those sound bites could be used in news reports or his own campaign commercials. Baldwin faltered a bit more at the outset, with enough umms and uhhs that I began to wonder if she had only crammed for the event on the drive to the studio. But she addressed the questions directly, with detailed facts, and without harping on a select few talking points all night; and she seemed more comfortable by the end of the hour.

And, unlike Thompson, Baldwin did not come off as downright scornful of her opponent. It rang strange when, after Baldwin had given her answer to a late-in-the-debate question asking what could be done to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, Thompson blurted out with mock astonishment, "I'm absolutely surprised! That's the first time I haven't been blamed for something or George W. Bush!"

Thompson brought up his wife three times during the debate, although, curiously, he never said her name. Now, admittedly, that's fewer times than he said that he'd cut taxes 91 times, but one wonders what kind of point he was trying to make. There was nothing all evening that he said that he hadn't planned beforehand to say. I have to suspect that this was a "dog whistle" to the people whom he wanted to remind that Ms. Baldwin is one of those scary lesbians.

What else went on during the evening?

We learned that somehow, when nobody was looking, Tommy Thompson built a hospital in Afghanistan. The morning-after research finds that not all is well with that particular project:

A contractor's assessment of the hospital found that Afghan physicians at the hospital often did not have basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology and lacked skills needed to resuscitate women and infants. In addition, the hospital routinely lacked basic supplies, including surgical gloves and antibiotics.

More impressively, he also built Wisconsin. He even claimed to have brought Wisconsin unemployment down below 2%. (Politifact disagreed with an earlier claim of 2.1%.) But don't blame him for any of today's problems. He's not in Congress, he's a private sector.

From the campaign trail

"America needs Republicans who will stand up to Barack Obama, not join him."

-- Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio, R-FL, in his opening TV campaign ad.
More proof positive that President Obama's efforts at bipartisanship are a complete and utter waste of time.