Maggie Thatcher

In memory of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, here's a bit of my juvenalia that I've dug out of my files. When the Falklands War broke out in the spring of 1982, many of my fellow cartoonists went for "Evita" references. I reached for a much older musical:

If I were to draw this cartoon today, I would probably have drawn Thatcher in one of Mitzi Gaynor's outfits or some such. Whether there would be any comedic point in drawing General Galtieri and Al Haig as Ray Walston and John Kerr is debatable.

I didn't draw a whole lot of cartoons about Thatcher; she appeared as a supporting cast member in a few cartoons about America's allies, such as this one when Ronald Reagan was attacking Muamar Qaddafi in 1986:

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."

Q Toon: Tony Perkins

I was almost done drawing this cartoon Sunday night when I turned on the TV for the local news and instead found George Stephanopoulos, Christiane Amanpour and Mike Boetcher eagerly awaiting an announcement from the White House. They had already spilled the beans that Osama bin Laden was dead, and were filling the time by getting reactions from New York firefighters and 9/11 widows.

Clearly, terrorists this week were not going to give a rat's ass that the president of the Family Research Council said on April 29 that terrorists are just like LGBT activists.

The actual quotation isn't exactly as brief as one would like for a cartoon. He's talking here about gay and lesbian activists, boycotts against corporations that support antigay constitutional amendments and candidates, and publicizing the names of those who sign antigay petitions:

"This has moved from cultural terrorism to corporate terrorism. That's what this is. Now, back in the '80's and early '90's, I worked with the state department in anti-terrorism and we trained about fifty different countries in defending against terrorism, and it's, at its base, what terrorism is: it's a strike against the general populace simply to spread fear and intimidation so that they can disrupt and destabilize the system of government. That's what the homosexuals are doing here to the legal system."

At the risk of mockery from Editorial Explanations, I went ahead and finished the cartoon (I had nothing left to do but ink the background). By morning, I hadn't thought of any way to tweak the cartoon to take the previous night's news into account, so I sent it in to my syndicate for distribution. Q Syndicate, after all, is interested in providing LGBT content to LGBT publications, and would be less interested in the cartoon that I posted here yesterday.

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And since I've brought up yesterday's cartoon, a few words about it.

A number of my friends posted that misquoted quotation of Martin Luther King yesterday, so I have to ask myself whether it was unseemly to crow about the death of an enemy. Looking back, I did not exult in the death of Saddam Hussein; and even though I would hold him responsible for the deaths of innocent Americans, Britons and Canadians, I probably wouldn't feel any elation over the death of Muammar Khaddafy were that to come to pass. How I would have felt about bin Laden's death if the U.S. had succeeded in bombing him to smithereens in 1998 I can no longer remember, although I would probably have forgotten his name by now. (Like that blind cleric who fomented the first bombing of the World Trade Center.)

Maybe it was the sheer scale of Al Qaeda's appetite for death and destruction. Maybe it is the lingering memory of Al Qaeda sympathizers exulting in the carnage of 9/11. Maybe it's the nagging feeling that we'd better celebrate while we may, because somebody somewhere is eventually going to do something horrible in retaliation.

Jesus' admonition to love one's enemies notwithstanding, I'm happy that bin Laden is dead and that it was Americans who dispatched him. And I just can't apologize for that.

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And then there is Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody, who not only let his heart rejoice over bin Laden's death, he actually criticized President Obama for not gloating, too:

"I know President Obama understands that getting Bin Laden doesn't mean an end to the war on terrorism but how about a smile? How about showing a little joy? How about a word or two saying something about how this is no doubt a happy or joyous occasion for Americans? We got nothing like that at all... Any hint of gloating or happiness might be rubbing it in the face of some of the crazies in the Arab World and heaven forbid we get them upset! How dare we Americans look like we’re celebrating his death! The travesty of it all! Give me a break. Isn’t it time to stop catering to thugs?"

Apparently, Brody forgot about President Obama cracking a great big smile over Osama bin Laden the night before: