August on the Ones

To follow last Saturday's post of cartoons published on August 1, 1921, here are some of my cartoons from August 1991, 2001, and 2011.

I would have liked to start this post with cartoons from August of 1981, but it looks like I didn't draw any. That's probably not entirely true; my best friend and I used to have a game called "Kill the Character" in those days. One of us would draw a person, either a caricature of a real person, comic character, or just some random anybody, and then we would take turns adding bad things happening to him/her on the page.

But I didn't keep any of those sketches, so I'll have to start with a cartoon from August of 1991 instead.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., August 23, 1991

I've re-run this cartoon before linking the failed Soviet coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev with Milwaukee Police Union displeasure with Police Chief Philip Arreola. The first Latino-American to hold his position, his firing of the three officers who returned a wounded 14-year-old boy, Konerak Sinphantomphone, to Jeffrey Dahmer to finish killing him (and who failed to notice the rotting corpse in the bedroom) rankled the rank and file. Arreola did, however, last five more years as head of the department.

Thirty years later, Milwaukee is just now resolving the demotion of another Latino Chief of Police, Alfonso Morales. I've never quite understood what the Common Council's reasoning was for demoting him to Captain last August; apparently, the courts couldn't understand it, either, and ordered the City to reinstate him as Chief. After a week or so of pushing back the effective date of his reinstatement, Milwaukee agreed to pay him a $627,000 settlement and Morales agreed to move on.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2001

Jumping ahead ten years, I've re-run this cartoon before, too — if not in the current blog, then on my old GeoCities page. It upset some Michigan readers who came to the defense of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, an annual event hystorically limited to womyn-born-womyn.

I don't recall anyone objecting to my use of the word "transgendered" twice in the cartoon, however. That word is officially frowned upon, "transgender" being a noun or an adjective but not a verb.

Once upon a time, "lesbigay" was the term of art for the community; transgender people gradually got the "T" appended to LGBT. But even though more and more letters keep getting added onto our increasingly awkward acronym, the transgender community still finds itself unwelcome in some LGBT-IAA2SQQ+ circles. 

Part of the womyn-born-womyn's objection to having transgender persons at this particular festival is, as I understand it, that people there enjoy the freedom to wear as little clothing and as much body paint as they please. (So I've heard.) What they don't enjoy is having non-womyn-born-womyn genitalia anywhere on display.

I can respect that; yet I have to wonder whether the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival Board is comfortable with the Republican social injustice warriors taking their exclusionary policy cues from them.

August, 2011

Leaping ahead another ten years, we find gaffe-prone Minnesota Congresscritter Michele Bachmann exhorting attendees at a campaign rally to wish Elvis Pressley a happy birthday. It happened to be the anniversary of his death.

The King could not be reached for comment.

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Well, since I couldn't dig up anything from August of 1981, here's a cartoon from all the way back on the day before yesterday.

QToon: Bachmann Terror Overdrive

Retired Congresscritter Michele Bachmann (R-Oort Cloud) was on the radio last week, claiming that "transgender Black Marxists" are trying to take down the United States government.

"These are transgender Marxists — transgender Black Marxists — who are seeking the overthrow of the United States and the dissolution of the traditional family," Bachmann said in the interview on The Victory Channel, televangelist Kenneth Copeland's right-wing Christian network, while discussing the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests taking place around the country.

Mrs. Bachmann may be safely out of the halls of Congress, but lest you congratulate the American electoral system for shedding her and fellow batshit crazy ass Steve King, let me remind you that Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz ain't going anywhere. At least one solid GOP district in Georgia and another in Colorado are poised to send a QAnon conspiracy-spewing mouth-breathers to Washington to augment the GOP's loony bin caucus this November.

President Donald Berzelius Trump, crackpot extraordinaire, is not a bug of the Republican machine but a feature (as Daily Cartoonist columnist Mike Peterson is wont to note). The party was heading this way before Sarah Palin, even before Dan Quayle. 

Republicans have ridiculed intelligence at least as far back as 1950's (Adlai Stevenson is an egghead!), attaching ever-increasing value to ignorance and superstition. From insisting that creationism is equally valid as empirical science, to believing that natural disasters are evidence not of climate change but of God's homophobia, it's barely a bunny-hop of faith to accepting that injecting bleach will cure disease.

All the scientific evidence to the contrary can't hope to refute "I don't think science knows, actually" from our willfully ignorant president and his doggedly ignorant followers. These are people who still believe the out-and-out lie that Barack Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya in spite of all the proof that he isn't and in spite of the complete lack of a shred of evidence that he is. They happily swallow and regurgitate the absurd notion that Democrats are drinking the blood of children in the crawl space below a pizza parlor because immorality flat earth trickle-down economics.

I tell you one thing, though: when the transgender Black Marxists do take over, they're going to have a big challenge before them if they try sending all those Trumpletons to reeducation camps. Which they will do, being Marxists, of course.

You can't reeducate someone who was impervious to education the first time around.

So Long As She's a Gentleman

"Pogo" by Walt Kelley, March 9, 1960

Senecaback Saturday offers a break from coronavirus (save to observe that there really was a St. Corona, and she really is the patron saint of pandemics. You can make this stuff up, but why would you?).

Instead, keeping in mind that March is Women's History Month, let's consider the history of women running for president of the United States.

Partisans of Senator Elizabeth Warren have complained that her late lamented presidential campaign was doomed by sexism. She entered the race amply qualified to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Not only did she have her plans, she was every bit a lefty as Bernie Sanders but without wearing the Socialist label.

Sexism in these matters being nothing new, of course...

"The Age of Brass" by Currier and Ives, 1869

Women couldn't even vote for president until 1869, and that was only in Wyoming. Elsewhere, female suffrage was pooh-poohed as a fantastically ludicrous idea, so Wyoming had to drive a hard bargain to keep women's right to vote when the territory was admitted as a state. Nevertheless, they persisted.

"An Unexpected Effect" by Charles J. Budd in Harper's Weekly, May 18, 1912

Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (R-MT) in 1916, four years before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She ran unsuccessfully for the Senate two years later as a third-party candidate, losing partly because she had voted against U.S. entry into World War I. She was elected to Congress again in 1940, in time to vote against U.S. entry into World War II.

Uncaptioned, by Sidney Maxell for Guy Gannett Publishing Co., Portland, ME, October 29, 1950

In the years after ratification of the 19th Amendment (and even beforehand), a few women ran for president on minor party tickets. The first to try for the nomination of either the Republican or Democratic party was Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) in 1964. [Update: but see also here: Lucy Page Gaston was on the GOP ballot in 1920, if only in South Dakota.] Floated as a possible running mate with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Chase Smith's high water mark in '64 was garnering 25% of the vote in the Illinois primary; placed in nomination at the GOP convention, she refused to withdraw her name from the final ballot, thus denying Barry Goldwater a unanimous nomination.

Jack Davis for Time magazine, January 31, 1972

Eight years later, Representative Shirley Chisholm (D-NY; the woman in Jack Davis's cartoon) was the second. Chisholm was less successful but won a meaningless "beauty contest" primary in New Jersey; still, she came in fourth when delegates voted at the Democratic National Convention.

"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" by Pat Oliphant, August 25, 1987

The presidential campaign of Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-CO) in 1987 didn't get beyond the exploratory stage, sorely disappointing editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant. Oliphant has never spared complimentary cartoons lightly, so this one is a rarity. His Puck, however, unintentionally brings up a standard by which male presidential candidates are hardly ever judged.

"Doonesbury" by Garry Trudeau, May 28, 1999

Elizabeth "Liddy" Dole, a twice former cabinet secretary and the wife of retired Senator Bob Dole, declared her candidacy for the 2000 GOP nomination. She came in a distant third to heir apparent George W. Bush and Steve Forbes in the Iowa straw poll in August of 1999 and withdrew in October. She might well have been Dubya's vice president if the guy Bush put in charge of finding his running mate hadn't decided there was no better choice than the man in the mirror.

"Of Course I Do," July, 1984

Backing up a bit, and turning to my own cartoons, a woman had made it onto a major party ticket in 1984. Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. What should have been a bold, historical move was tempered by the impression that Mondale had been pressured into his choice by the National Organization of Women and the National Women's Political Caucus.

"Sarah's the One," September, 2008

John McCain didn't have that problem when he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. If anything, she seemed to be more popular with Republicans than he was. Her folksy, in-your-face style wowed party regulars while striking outsiders as fairly ridiculous. The "Caribou Barbie" moniker was sexist and unfair, but oh so deliciously clever. And, frankly, no worse than Dan Quayle had to endure.

"So Happy to Be Back in Waterloo," July, 2011

Another woman who ran for the Republican nomination and earned merciless ridicule was Minnesota's Michele Bachmann. Citing various outrageous statements she had made in Congress and on the campaign trail, Chris Wallace actually asked her on Fox News Sunday, "Are you a flake?" There was, however, a moment when she was leading polls of GOP voters, and she won the 2011 Iowa straw poll — but she ended up coming in sixth in the actual caucuses there in January, and dropped out of the race.

"That Time of Year Again," February, 2007

And so we come to Hillary Clinton. Having paid her dues as First Lady and then Senator from New York, 2008 was supposed to be her year. Unfortunately, she had gained a reputation for being overly calculating. Ruining her plans, Barack Obama swept the Democratic Party, which tends to have a thing for bright, shiny, new, exciting candidates (well, not this year, obviously), off its feet.

Besides, had she won, future historians would have been puzzled why the United States decided for an entire quarter century that the best it could do were Clintons and Bushes.

"I Don't Get It," March, 2016

Eight years later, she was back as the Democrats' heiress apparent. And we know how that came out.

Q Toon: Heaven and Michele

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate👼Jan 11, 2018 EditorialCartoonists.com

Former Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann announced on the Christian Broadcasting Network that she might consider running for the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Al Franken, but she hadn't heard from God on the matter quite yet. Editorial cartoonists are now waiting with bated breath in hopes that God gives the go-ahead to the woman who believes that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, that Iraq and Libya should have reimbursed the U.S. for overthrowing their leaders, that Barack Obama was allowing Islamic extremists to impose Sharia law in the U.S. by 2015, and that

"Because our K-12 public school system, of which ninety per cent of all youth are in the public school system, they will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality."

But wait, there's more.

"What a bizarre time we’re in, Jan, when a judge will say to little children that you can’t say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.”

“You have a teacher talking about his gayness. [The elementary school student] goes home then and says 'Mom! What’s gayness? We had a teacher talking about this today.' The mother says 'Well, that’s when a man likes other men, and they don’t like girls.' The boy’s eight. He’s thinking, 'Hmm. I don’t like girls. I like boys. Maybe I’m gay.' And you think, 'Oh, that’s, that’s way out there. The kid isn’t gonna think that.' Are you kidding? That happens all the time. You don’t think that this is intentional, the message that’s being given to these kids? That’s child abuse.”

"I am not here bashing people who are homosexuals, who are lesbians, who are bisexual, who are transgender. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders."

"So now we find out these people are making decisions based on our politics and beliefs, and they're going to be in charge of our health care. There's a huge national database that's being created right now. Your health care, my health care, all the Fox viewers' health care, their personal, intimate, most close to the vest secrets will be in that database, and the IRS is in charge of that database? So the IRS will have the ability potentially — will they? — to deny health care, to deny access, to delay health care? This is serious! Based upon our political beliefs? That's why we have to repeal Obamacare."

Of course, the last time political wags thought the very idea of a dimwitted, factually-challenged narcissist running for political office ought to be good for a laugh, we ended up with President Trump.

Conventional wisdom, which tends to emanate from NYC, DC and LA, not Lake Wobegon, is that Minnesota is a Blue State; but it's worth remembering that Al Franken was only elected Senator in 2008 by the slimmest of margins. Republicans can and do win statewide races there; Minnesota Democrats have won only five senatorial elections and two gubernatorial races over the last 20 years.

Both of Minnesota's Senate seats will be up for grabs this year. The last time that happened, in 1978, Republicans won both races.

If that should happen again, heaven help us.

Q Toon: Michele You Say

I thought I wouldn't be drawing any more cartoons about Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann now that she's retiring from Congress, but I guess I was wrong.

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Gay blogger/Sirius dude Mike Signorile tried to engage Bachmann on the topic of marriage equality at the Value Voters Summit, but she would have none of it. According to Signorile's tweet, she walked away sniffing that gay marriage is "not an issue... in fact, it's boring."

Bachmann later qualified the remark to the right-wing World Net Daily, saying, "What I said is that this won’t be the issue that drives the 2014 election. I told the reporter it’s getting boring having them only press this issue with Republicans while ignoring Democrats."

Bachmann has a history of running away from non-sycophantic reporters, so it's entirely believable that she is still very interested in discriminating against same-sex couples. The Republican party in general, however, has suddenly taken a vow of silence on the issue now that it appears opposition to marriage equality turns off moderate and independent voters.

Not that they're getting off that nest any time soon.

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(Something appears to have gone wrong with the AAEC site today. My apologies for the watermarked version of this week's cartoon, but I have to protect my editors' interests.)

Remember When the Posse Comitatus Was a Fringe Group?

How are we as a nation supposed to have civil discussion about our political disagreements when elected conservatives are nothing short of fucking nuts?

It's not just idiots like Congressman Todd Akin, who thinks that his only mistake in describing how a woman's hormones will protect her against pregnancy during a "legitimate rape" was using the word "legitimate" when he meant "forcible."

There's Tom Head (pictured at right), who has been a county judge in Lubbock, Texas, since 1999. He was being interviewed on the local Fox affiliate on Monday, and defended a proposed 1.7-cent  tax increase to fund the sheriff's department and courts because Barack Obama's reelection will result in civil war -- and Judge Head wants to be in the front lines of the armed insurrection:

"He's going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the [United Nations], and what is going to happen when that happens? I'm thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We're talking Lexington - Concord - take up arms and get rid of the guy. Okay?

"Now what's going to happen if we do that? He's going to send in U.N. troops. I don't want 'em in Lubbock County, okay? So I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say 'You're not coming in here'. The sheriff, I've already asked him, I said, 'Are you gonna back me?' He said, 'I'll back you.'

"I don't want rookies. I want trained, equipped and seasoned veteran officers to back me."

So now we know what it takes to get one of these Red State Republicans to support a tax increase. *

If this longhorn moron were the only Republican talking about armed insurrection, that would be one thing. But here's something from the Greene County (Virginia) Republican Committee newsletter, written by its editor, Ponch McPhee:

”[W]e shall not have any coarse [sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November.  This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.”

This editor could use a copy editor.

Passage of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") was greeted with death threats against Democrats in Congress and vandalism to their home district offices, including that of Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords -- who would be shot in the head by a deranged assassin a few months later.

Over a year after those shots were fired in Tuscon, the Supreme Court upheld the ACA this past June. Matt Davis, formerly a spokesman for Michigan's Republican Party, sent out an email with the somewhat less radical view of Gee, I Hope It Doesn't Come To That:

"If the Supreme Court's decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified? God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired."

How about an elected Republican that you've actually heard of?

“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back,” --Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

And who can forget Nevada senatorial candidate Sharon Angle proposing "Second Amendment Remedies" to change Congress in 2010?

So much of the vandalism, death threats, and plans for armed insurrection came in response to health care reform -- people willing to take up arms to defend their right to have private health insurance companies price them out of the health insurance as they have kids, grow old, file claims, and become less profitable to the corporate bottom line.

Contrast that to the uproar over state governments' crackdown on union workers these past two years. As vitriolic as the confrontations in Wisconsin and other states were, I don't remember any elected or party officials calling for "Concord - Lexington - take up arms" "Second Amendment remedies."

The most violent reaction? Some jerk poured beer on Wisconsin State Representative Robin Vos (R-Burlington) in a bar.
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* UPDATE: I had wondered whether antitax crusader Grover Norquist would approve of Judge Head's little tax hike. Apparently not.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Stop -- hey -- what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down...

This Week's Toon: Gqhadđaƒphįyee

Well, that's just silly.

Or is it?

The lawyers for Brandon McInerney, the boy who shot and killed fellow student Lawrence King amidst an entire classroom of kids, successfully achieved a hung jury by use of the "Gay Panic Defense" -- that is, the idea that killing someone can be excused if the deceased is the same sex as the killer and thought that the killer was cute. This transfers all blame for the crime onto the victim, and transfers all victimhood onto the killer.

(Important: this only applies in the case of same-sex attraction. A gal is not allowed to kill a guy who asks her out on date, no matter how much of a creep she thinks he is. Creeps like him go on to become influential businessmen, lawyers, congressmen, and AM talk radio hosts who look out for the interests of their fellow creeps.)

The gay panic, blame-the-victim narrative appeared in the initial Associated Press account of the murder:

"Larry King was a gay eighth-grader who used to come to school in makeup, high heels and earrings. And when the other boys made fun of him, he would boldly tease them right back by flirting with them.
"That may have been what got him killed."

And somehow, in spite of the undisputed facts that McInerney told a friend the day before the shooting that he intended to kill King, that McInerney brought his father's gun to school, that McInerney sat down in the seat behind King (who didn't happen to be wearing any makeup, high heels or earrings that day), waited 20 minutes and then shot King in the back of the head at point blank range, the jury couldn't agree whether this was murder in the first degree or not.

So is it so silly to think that Muammar el-Qaddafi might try the same tack? It would at least garner him the sympathy of some in the religious right who have leapt to McInerney's defense.

Michael Brown, founder of ICN ministries ("Israel, the Church and Nations"), blamed gay activism in general:

"Some of the teachers in Larry's school, along with his adoptive father, specifically accused former assistant principal Joy Epstein, an open lesbian, of encouraging Larry's flamboyant behavior in order to promote her 'agenda.' If there is any truth to this, it is not just irresponsible, it is reprehensible. (At the least, there is no indication that she discouraged his pushy, sexual behavior.) ... It is true that Brandon McInerney murdered Larry King in cold blood, but gay activism is complicit in his death.

(By the way, who could Brown be quoting with that "agenda" crack? Not Ms. Epstein, I bet.)

Consider Tim Ravndal, the Tea Party leader in Montana who complained on Facebook that America is no longer America because you can't kill homosexuals at will any more and asked for an instruction manual on how Matthew Shepard was killed. (At least Ravndal was forced to resign.) Conservatives from North Carolina Congressman Virginia Foxx to presidential candidate Michele Bachmann argued against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes act on the grounds that criminalizing assault and murder of LGBT people is an infringement of free speech.

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When Chris saw this cartoon, his first question was whether Qaddafi had really said that the people he has killed are gay. When there are stories like that of the Catholic woman who is afraid to leave her house for fear that her children will see same-sex couples, it can be hard to tell fact from exaggeration. My convention for real news stories is to have "News Item:" in front of the caption. Perhaps captions such as this week's need to be prefaced with "Might Be an Onion News Item."

Bergetoon: Pat Robertson Doesn't Want to Get Weird

Pat Robertson "doesn't want to get weird," but he just can't help it.

"Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge."

As Pat Robertson pronouncements go, this one hardly raises an eyebrow. At least he wasn't blaming the earthquake on abortion, gay rights, or liberalism. Abortionists, gays, and liberals are not exactly running the show in Virginia politics.

On the other hand, I haven't heard what P.R. has had to say about Hurricane Irene's swath of destruction through New York and Vermont.

Last week's Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene spawned not just floods and tornadoes, but a whole lot of oral diarrhea and mental constipation. Take Michele Bachmann (please):

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?'"

Her campaign later said that this comment was meant to be a joke. Many people failed to see the humor in it, including people who think that Michele Bachmann herself is a joke.

Fellow presidential candidate Ron Paul thinks that we should leave disaster relief to the Job Creators:

"[FEMA's] system of bureaucratic centralized economic planning... is a policy that is deeply flawed... I want to transition us out of this dependency... The whole idea of FEMA is a gross distortion of insurance. It's so far removed from the market and what insurance should be about... There is no magic about FEMA."

Not to be outdone, Glenn Beck observed that this year's disasters are further proof that the Lord wants us to hoard:

"How many warnings do you think you're going to get, and how many warnings do you deserve? ... If you've waited [to prepare and stockpile food], this hurricane is a blessing. It is a blessing. It is God reminding you — as was the earthquake last week — it's God reminding you you're not in control. Things can happen."

And what round-up of right-wing stupidity would be complete without a word from Rump Blimpaugh:

"I'll guarantee you Obama was hoping this was going to be a disaster as another excuse for his failing economy... If he's out there blaming tsunamis, if he's blaming earthquakes, and whatever natural disasters there are, this one was made to order, but it just didn't measure up."

All of which is to say that the quake and hurricane pretty much obliterated coverage of any actual LGBT news last week. (Even of Puerto Rico Senator Roberto Arango, R-NSFW, and the on-line Grindr photos of him showing off his rectal weight loss.)

Another Toon: Michele Bachmann Brings It to the Party

Opening a rally in Iowa on Tuesday, Michele Bachmann told the crowd, "Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today!"

As any true Elvis fan knows, Elvis was born on January 8, 1935. August 16 was the 34th anniversary of his death at age 42.

I'm still searching for my Bachmann caricature, as you can see. Drawing her fairly small in this cartoon -- her head is a little more than an inch tall in the original drawing -- I just couldn't get those crazy eyes right.

This Week's Toon: Bachsh!t Crazy

Last week, Michele Bachmann (R-Wonderland) hurried to sign an antigay pledge from Mr. Bob Vander Plaatz's FAMiLY LEADER group before the ink was dry, resulting in no end of approaches I could possibly have taken with this cartoon.

At the top of the document was a preamble positing that an African-American child was more likely to live in a two-parent home under slavery than "than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president." (As Stephen Colbert pointed out last night, the slave child was more likely to be the property of his biological father as well.) That preamble was dropped over the weekend, although not before another antigay presidential candidate, Rick Santorum (R-Google) signed and defended the pledge.

Two presidential candidates, Jon Huntsman (R-Utah) and Gary Johnson (R-Ukidding) announced their refusal to sign the pledge before removal of the slavery plank; Mitt Romney (R-Obot) waited until the pledge was thoroughly discredited before deciding not to sign it.

Further on down the pledge, candidates vowed to protect the sanctity of marriage against the assault by homosexuality, bigamy, polygamy, and sharia law. The antiexgay group Truth Wins Out seized on this moment to go public with their undercover sting of the clinic of Michele's husband Marcus Bachmann, where "reparative therapy" is offered to patients who come in seeking to become straight.

The mainstream media have reported this story -- properly, I should add -- as an example of Republican right-wing extremism. But to the religious right, there is nothing about the pledge, even with the preamble, that raises any eyebrows. The sting uncovered nothing particularly shocking: no electroshock therapy, no sensory deprivation, no waterboarding, no naked pyramids.

"The undeniable goal of the sessions was transforming [undercover TWO agent John] Becker from homosexual to heterosexual. To his credit, the counselor [Timothy Wiertzema] did not claim that change would be instantaneous or even complete. However, he did explicitly promise that sexual conversion could occur as a result of prayer and therapy at the clinic."

The power of prayer is at the heart of Christian faith; it is also a given that human nature is sinful and one should repent of whatever infractions of the Mosaic code one has committed. (God revealed to St. Peter that it was okay to go ahead and eat shellfish and pork, but the rest of Leviticus remains on the books.) Thus I'm afraid that a lot of "middle America" is going to hear about this story and wonder what the fuss is about.

The third aspect of the story is Dr. Bachmann's acceptance of patients on federal assistance at his clinic, contrary to the Bachmanns' belief that gummint helping citizens get health care is pure evil, and even worse, socialist. We'll see how that part of the story plays out, although I suspect that the media won't have any lasting interest in going after a candidate's spouse. At least, I don't expect the sort of hunger that the right wing media displayed in going after Hilary Clinton ante Monica.

Where Marcus starts to get weird, however, is his equating gays and lesbians with "barbarians" and that we "need to be disciplined."

There's a cartoon in that statement, to be sure, but you've already drawn it in your head.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This week, I attempt yet again to draw Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann. Does anyone else see her as having a strong jaw coming out beneath an overbite, and wide, crazy eyes?

Once I get her caricature down, the next step will be to come up with a shorter nickname for her. Eight letters is too many to fit on a lapel button nicely without resorting to hyphenation. Mickey B? MB? BM?