Toon: Circle Joke

If you spend a lot of time watching cable TV news, first of all, do yourself a favor and stop; and second of all, you will have heard a variety of pundits, academics, and people of the mistaken belief that they should run for president someday, who are weighing in on Why Kamala Harris Lost The Election.

One of the leading theories is that President Joe Biden and those closest to him handicapped her by running for reelection in spite of mounting evidence that his mental acuity had begun to decline. Many of us, myself included, had voted for him in 2020 on the presumption that at 77, he planned to serve one term to repair the damage left behind by The Corrupt Trump administration, then hand leadership of the party over to someone younger.

Instead, he decided to run for reelection, as he put it, "to finish the job."

Which is ridiculous.

The presidency is not a job you're supposed to "finish." Each president does what he or (someday) she can, and turns it over to the next person. The job is never finished until the Republic is.

Donald Berzelius Trump, I fear, may "finish the job."

Anyway, my worry back when Biden announced his 2024 candidacy was that he didn't have confidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was up to taking over the job from him. Or that a Democratic Party primary battle would leave its victor hobbled by constituencies feeling that they were denied their due, or ignored, or unwelcome. Or, in the absence of a primary battle, ditto.

As things have turned out, plenty of Democratic constituencies are complaining about being denied their due, ignored, or unwelcome anyway. The Left complains that Harris tacked to the center instead of wholeheartedly campaigning on their agenda. The Centrists complain that Harris embraced "wokism" and transgender rights and people who say "Latinx."

I saw a scholar on The Daily Show this week promoting his election post-mortem book, arguing to Jon Stewart that Democrats were doomed by their embrace of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). He wasn't saying that Democrats should join Republicans in promoting Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion; just that they should call DEI something else — as if the right-wing propaganda machine wouldn't devote itself to turning the new name into a dirty word.

Now, I suppose that had Harris listened to the Palestinian rights crowd and condemned Netanyahu's genocidal war in Gaza, it might have been enough to get her over the finish line in Michigan. But it wouldn't have made the difference in any of the other "blue wall" swing states. Vowing to send undocumented alien drug dealers to Guantanamo might have gained her Arizona.

On the other hand, those moves might have helped about as much as affecting a southern drawl helped her in Georgia and North Carolina.

Q Toon: Stefon Gets Political

Republiqans' gerrymandering since 2010 has emboldened their most radical elements to believe that they can successfully run their most extremist, oddball, weird candidates for statewide office as easily as they can in their hermetically sealed congressional and state legislative districts.

That they certainly can in states that are bent that way, and there are several from Alabama to Wyoming. It works elsewhere for offices voters pay little attention to, such as Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor — especially where Democrats have left way-downballot, county level races woefully uncontested. But when it comes to the marquee races for Senator and Governor, the electorate actually sits up and pays attention. (Flooded with campaign commercials on every electronic device, how could we not?)

Republiqans thought they had a sure winner for one of Georgia's Senate seats two years ago in football star Herschel Walker, only to be stunned when a solid majority of voters discovered what a loony, intellectual lightweight he was. 

They seem destined for another shock if North Carolina voters fail to overlook gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's antebellum ideas on women's suffrage and slavery. CNN has added to the mix, exposing posts by the self-described "Black Nazi" on a pornography website over a decade ago.

Walker was an unknown quantity as a candidate in Georgia beyond being a celebrity, so maybe one can cut Republiqan voters there some slack. But GOP voters in North Carolina have no excuse for not knowing what kind of person their Lieutenant Governor is. He has not been some Alexander P. Throttlebottom waiting quietly out of sight and out of mind. 

Robinson's inflammatory rhetoric caught more attention than your typical Lieutenant Governor ever gets. Heck, this is the fourth cartoon I've drawn about him, and I don't even live in North Carolina.

And I haven’t even mentioned that he is a Holocaust denier yet . 

Of course, time is short; but Tar Heel Republiqans could try stealing the national Democrats' playbook, and pressure their deeply flawed candidate to drop out so that they can replace him with someone else who is so much more appealing by comparison.

It's 2024. Anything can happen.

Q Toon: The Roidsemblance Is Striking

This is Mark Robinson's second appearance in my cartoons.

The Republican Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina has a long track record of hatred toward LGBTQ+ citizens, women, and civil rights. He has announced that homosexuals are "filth," "maggots," and "what the cows leave behind." He called transgender people are "demonic," and threatened trans women with arrest or "whatever we go to do to you" if they dare to use a women's rest room. Houses of worship that display the LGBTQ+ Pride flag "make me sick every time."

And echoing Trump's spurious birtherism and secret Muslim accusations against Barack Obama, Robinson claims that Michele Obama, despite having given birth to two children, is somehow transgender.

This has clearly endeared him to the Tangerine Scream, who pointed him out at a Trump kundgebung in North Carolina last week:

"This is Martin Luther King on steroids. Now, I told that to Mark, I said, I think you're better than Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King times two. And he looked at me, and I wasn't sure, was he angry because that's a terrible thing to say? Or was he complimented? I have never figured it out. But I'm telling you, he's one of — right? — when I said that to you, you looked like, I don't know if I like that comment! You should like it."

Given that Robinson has defended his own Facebook posts dismissing Rev. Dr. King as an "ersatz pastor" and "communist," it's no wonder he appeared put off by Donald Trump comparing him to the only Black person he could think of by name whom he didn't suspect of being a rapist and murderer.

Trump's low opinion of Blacks, whether American or from "shit-hole countries," appears to be shared by Mr. Robinson. Seven years ago, Robinson posted on Facebook the following screed:

Someone asked me if I considered myself part of the "African-American" community.
I told them NO!
They asked me why and I said;
"Why would I want to be part of a "community" that devalues it's fathers, overburdens it's mothers, and murders its children by the millions? Why would I want to be part of a "community" that sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk? Why would I want to be part of a "community" that allowed itself in the 1960s to walk right back to the very plantations it was freed from in the 1860s? And why would I want to be part of a "community" that celebrates the very lawlessness and violence that is killing it's future right in front of them?
Why would I want to be part that?
WHY?

If you think Robinson was just having an off day or two, don't be so sure.

In 2014, Robinson quoted Hitler on Facebook, and in 2018 he compared protesters tearing down a Confederate statue to Kristallnacht, a night of Nazi destruction that proceeded the Holocaust. That same year he also speculated Marvel's Black Panther was created by an "agnostic Jew" to profit off of Black people (he actually used a Yiddish slur instead of Black people).

But wait, there's more!

There was the time he called school shooting survivors “media prosti-tots” for advocating for gun-control policies. The meme mocking a Harvey Weinstein accuser, and the other meme mocking actresses for wearing “whore dresses to protest sexual harassment.” ...

Robinson asserted on a 2018 podcast that the political left is going after “the Harvey Weinsteins and the Bill Cosbys” to replicate Soviet-era intimidation.

[Commercials by a GOP primary rival highlighted] Robinson’s 2022 suggestion at a church that men, not women, are meant to be leaders. Acknowledging that he was “getting ready to get in trouble,” Robinson exclaimed to the congregation: “Called to be led by men!”

When “it was time to face down Goliath,” he added, God “sent David, not Davita.”

Lately, Robinson's campaign has tried to place more emphasis on traditional bread-and-butter issues while castigating the media for reminding voters of the peppery red-meat language that endeared him to Trump's MAGA minions in the first place. Make no mistake, however: Robinson is in no way apologizing for or disavowing any of his past. (Except for that one time he paid for a girlfriend's abortion.)

Will North Carolinians be fooled by the new toned-down Mark Robinson?

Trump's comparing Robinson to Rev. Dr. King might very well have been a cleverly disguised insult Trump can refer back to if Robinson loses the election in November. 

Banned on the Internets

 By the way, I finally found out which of my blog posts got flagged for violation of Community Guidelines. It was this one from seven years ago, and the complaint is utterly ridiculous.

There is a link in the post to an article in the Charlotte Observer about a porn site, not a link to the porn site itself; that's the most risqué thing I can find there.

__________________________

Update:

All's swell that ends swell.

Q Toon: Kind of a Drag

Some presumably disgruntled ex-staffer of Requblican Congresssbro Madison Cawthorn (Q-NC) leaked a couple of party photos of Cawthorn to Politico last week. The photos show Cawthorn wearing women's lingerie as some laughing ladies look on.

I can't blame a kid for wanting to explore his feminine side, even if he has gone on record (just last week, as it happens) tweeting that "There is only one God and two genders."

Not much is known about the context of the photos; it them, Cawthorn is in a wheelchair, so they must have been taken after the 2014 car accident that left him partly paralyzed. He has explained that the photos were taken on a cruise sometime before he ran for Congress in 2020, so I guess we have to chalk this up to "youthful indiscretion."

Cawthorn is only 26, so any youthful indiscretions of his are still pretty recent. He wasn't responsible for that car crash, but he is responsible for his lie that his friend who was driving the car left him to die in the fiery wreck, and for using that lie in a campaign ad. (In fact, the friend dragged him to safety.)

Or his lie that he was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Or his brief college career distinguished only for his track record of sexually predatory behavior toward numerous coeds.

Or attacking a reporter for "quit[ting] his academia job in Boston to work for non-white males, like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office." Cawthorn subsequently apologized that "the syntax of our language was unclear and unfairly implied I was criticizing Cory Booker" — but not for the unmistakably clear message that working for a non-white male was somehow a dastardly thing for the reporter to have done.

It's hard to keep up with Master Cawthorn's youthful indiscretions. Since I drew this cartoon, he got himself in trouble trying to board an airplane with a loaded gun in his carry-on bag — such an understandable oversight, given that the law about carrying loaded guns onto commercial planes is older than he is.

And just last week, he was a no-show at his court date for speeding and driving after his license had been revoked.

You might not have heard about any of those youthful indiscretions; but you probably had heard that only last month, Cawthorn boasted on a podcast that other Republican Congresslewdies had invited him to a "sexual get-together" — an invitation he apparently accepted...

"The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington ... being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 — [you] look at all these people, a lot of them that I've looked up to through my life, I've always paid attention to politics. ... Then all of a sudden you get invited — 'We're going to have a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come.' ... What did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they're asking you to come to an orgy. ... Some of the people leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it's like, this is wild."

...unless the bump of cocaine was at some other Republican get-together. 

Being a lying, racist, sexist frat boy, and a reckless illegal driver to boot, was one thing. Shooting his mouth off on the internets was a youthful indiscretion too far even for spineless Kevin McCarthy, who called Mad Caw in on the carpet for a good finger-wagging. 

Didn't the kid realize that Matt Gaetz and Don Jr. are in enough trouble as it is?

Q Toon: Filth!

Jon Gruden may be gone, but Mark Robinson, the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, is not backing down from incendiary remarks against the LGBTQ+ community. Last Tuesday, People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch Project posted video of a political sermon Robinson had delivered at Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove back in June:

“There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” Robinson says. “Yes, I called it filth. And if you don’t like it that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you.”

Continuing his tirade at Upper Room COGIC in Raleigh in August, Robinson called transgender rights "demonic," and that any discussion of it in schools is "dragging our kids down into the pit of Hell."

If anti-LGBTQ bigotry were Robinson's only fault, the Charlotte Observer might not have described his views as "cringeworthy" and "an embarrassment." On other subjects, he has claimed that the movie Black Panther was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic Marxist" that was "only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets"; called former President Obama "a worthless, anti-American atheist"; and charged that COVID-19 was a "globalist" conspiracy to defeat Donald Trump.

Robinson is a Republican, which, if you've read this far, should hardly come as a surprise. The Governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, which would make for some strained relations between their offices even if Robinson weren't such a crazed demagogue. Republicans criticized Cooper earlier this year for not mentioning newly elected Robinson, the state's first African-American Lt. Governor, in his State of the State address.

The recent shenanigans in Idaho demonstrate why our country's founding fathers quickly switched to having President and Vice President run together on the same ticket (originally, the presidential candidate who came in second got to be Veep as a consolation prize). Having the top two executive officers working at cross purposes is a recipe for mischief and instability.

According to the state website, North Carolina's Lt. Governor does get to take over the Governor's duties in the event of the Governor's "absence, death or incapacitation."

One hopes that Governor Cooper keeps his executive order stationery locked up, and a very secure computer password set up, whenever he ventures across state lines.

Q Toon: Left Unsaid

Nearly all LGBTQ Pride festivals were canceled in June because of the COVID-19 pandemic; but in the wake of George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests, many local LGBTQ groups reorganized their pride parades into protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Black Trans Lives Matter" protesters have figured prominently among the LGBTQ contingent. Many LGBTQ communities have been shaken by murders of transgender persons — 18 so far this year — and those victims are disproportionately Black.

Transgender and gender non-conforming people face a heightened risk of fatal violence, and Black transgender women are especially vulnerable because of a "a toxic mix of transphobia, racism and misogyny," according to the Human Rights Campaign. Most transgender people who are killed are victims of gun violence, according to an analysis by research and advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Black transgender persons who wind up in the criminal justice system face discrimination, harsh treatment and worse, often being incarcerated according to their dead gender or else put in solitary confinement. They complain of not having their complaints taken seriously, either when they report a crime, or when they are behind bars.

In spite of this, Black transgender persons have long been overlooked by the White LGBTQ community and shunned by Black justice advocates. But things seem to be different this year.

Take, for example, a recent protest march in Raleigh, North Carolina:

“In many ways, for the LGBTQ community, this is going back to our roots,” said Kendra Johnson, executive director of Equality North Carolina, which has pushed for decades for rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. ...
Johnson sees it as only natural to join forces, because of the overlap of issues but also the layering of identities that lead to multiple forms of discrimination. Johnson is a Black lesbian and says she has experienced prejudice based on her race, her gender and her sexual orientation.
“We’ve been creating space where we try to look at how multiple oppressions affect our lives, and the LGBTQ community is a part of every community,” she said. “And we can’t do our work without also considering how race plays a role in the lives of people in our community.”
...
[Kerwin] Pittman, who helped organize the Raleigh Demands Justice coalition to help push for police reform, said he has learned recently that LGBTQ people of all races continue to be victims of police harassment.
“As a straight Black male, I wanted other straight Black males to see that it’s OK to support these individuals fighting against police brutality,” he said.
Pittman, who plans to attend UNC Greensboro in the fall, said he helped organize the first protest in Raleigh that followed Floyd’s killing. While his group is not affiliated with the national Black Lives Matter organization, he said he wanted to give everyone — Blacks, LGBTQ people and allies of all races and ethnicity — a chance to show they agree with the sentiment that Black lives matter.
“When it comes to brutality, and especially police brutality, we are all the same,” Pittman said. “If you are LGBTQ and injustice is being done to you, I’m going to be there to push as hard for you as if you are someone who is straight. Because at the end of the day, I’m a part of your community and you’re a part of mine.
“When we say Black lives matter, we’re not saying only straight Black lives matter. We’re saying Black lives matter.”

Weekly Sneakily Peeking

Dad, whose monthly Environmental Stewardship column should be showing up in my inbox any day, asked yesterday about my habit in this blog of giving Donald Trump the middle name "Berzelius." He was puzzled that I would make reference to some Eighteenth Century Swedish chemist.

Well, chemistry is Dad's field. I'd never heard of the guy.

But since it's been a good long while since I've explained where I got the name, I might as well do it again.

Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip is a character in Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, a fascist who gets elected President of the United States on a populist platform in 1936. He's part Hitler, part Huey Long, and is eventually overthrown by even more horrible members of his administration who end up declaring an unjustifiable war on Mexico.

A lot of people have not read It Can't Happen Here, so I sometimes give Trump the middle name "Joffrey" instead, after the spoiled rotten boy king in George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series. Joffrey is a vain, egotistical, cruel, cowardly bully; his name shares the same initial as Trump's middle name; and he's a more contemporary cultural reference than Sinclair Lewis's villain. But, as hard as this may be to believe, there are people who won't get Game of Thrones references, either.

I'm married to one.

✍

Meanwhile, I'm still in the process of replacing all this blog's embedded links to the old editorialcartoonists.com site, just because dead links are annoying. I came across one post that had now dead links to several North Carolina cartoonists' caricatures of then-Governor Pat McGrory on the AAEC site; it could be a real challenge re-linking them all.

Q Toon: Repeal and Replace

The North Carolina legislature finally passed, and Governor Roy Cooper signed, a repeal of its odious HB2, better known as the Bathroom Bill, last week.

But before we all celebrate the triumph of reason over hysteria, there are one or two details lurking in the replacement bill, HB142.

The deal removes the requirement that transgender people must use the restroom that matches the sex on their birth certificate but leaves state legislators in charge of policy on public restrooms. The proposal also bans local governments from passing nondiscrimination ordinances affecting private employers until December 2020. 

Governor Cooper lamely explained that justice delayed was better than justice "permanently denied." Of more importance to him and to the millions of basketball fans in the state, however, was the NCAA's threat to permanently deny hosting championship basketball games to the Tarheel State if the law wasn't repealed by March 30. With the passage of HB142 just before the buzzer, the NCAA gave its half-hearted support to the less-than-half-hearted repeal.

While the new law meets the minimal NCAA requirements, the board remains concerned that some may perceive North Carolina’s moratorium against affording opportunities for communities to extend basic civil rights as a signal that discriminatory behavior is permitted and acceptable, which is inconsistent with the NCAA Bylaws.
However, we recognize the quality championships hosted by the people of North Carolina in years before HB2. And this new law restores the state to that legal landscape: a landscape similar to other jurisdictions presently hosting NCAA championships.
We are actively determining site selections, and this new law has minimally achieved a situation where we believe NCAA championships may be conducted in a nondiscriminatory environment.

The NBA has yet to weigh in on HB142; more important will be whether it will be enough to change the minds of companies who had been convinced not to invest, locate or expand in North Carolina. The loss of such firms as PayPal, CoStar Realty, Deutsche Bank, and Google Ventures, added to the lost sports events and concert performances has cost North Carolina over $630 million.

I wouldn't blame them if they decided to put off any further decisions until, oh, say, December, 2020.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Just to clarify one item from my April 1 post: while some of the post is stuff I made up, the name of "Crybaby" Boobie (and of all the other Peanuts characters, for that matter) were not.

I had to look Boobie and her doubles partner, "Bad Call" Bennie, up on GoComics.com; I only knew of them from a Peanuts book I bought in Italy last year for brushing up on my very limited Italian during bus rides. In the book, their names are "Piangina" Boobie and "Bugia" Benny, and Google Translate doesn't quite take one all the way to the names Charles Schulz gave them.

Buona dolore!

Sookie Spice

With a new administration comes a host of new Saturday Night Live characters, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's combative daily briefings have quickly shown him to be ripe for parody. It may be a one-joke sketch, but then, isn't that special? So are nearly all memorable SNL characters.

Because they're good enough, they're smart enough, and doggone it, people like them!

I had to draw this one quickly. HB2 clones are currently moving through the digestive tract of legislatures in Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming; several of those states are immune to the threat of never hosting another Superbowl.

Q Toon: Certainly Not GOP Shy

This cartoon was drawn last Saturday and Sunday, and sent to my editors on Monday morning, well before a certain story leaked out about a particular president-elect of the United States.

So what is it about Republicans and their obsession with excretory functions?

North Carolina Republicans passed their notorious HB2 last year, and even faced with the loss of business, coveted sports events, and the governorship, decided that regulating transgender persons' use of public lavatories was more important than any of that. Charlotte rescinded the equal rights ordinance at the center of the HB2 controversy as part of a deal with Republicans to repeal the state law; but when it came time for Republicans to hold up their end of the deal, they refused.

This year, Republicans in several state legislatures have rushed to the side of their Tarheel brethren, introducing a slew of bathroom bills of their own. In a few, such as Virginia and Minnesota, the bills stand little chance of getting past a Democratic governor. But in others, such as Texas, there is no such check on the legislature, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick there is a vocal proponent. Here in Wisconsin, we have plenty of experience of Gov. Scott Walker quickly signing Republican legislation that he earlier claimed was "not a priority."

So Republicans are all in to confront the non-existent threat of transgender persons launching a wave of sexual assaults in public rest rooms. What can we do about it?

Tell them to piss off.

2016 in Headlines

Since ’16back Saturday coincides with New Year's Eve this year, I'm going to post my annual photo of newspaper and magazine front pages here.

I offer my usual caveats: with only newspapers from the midwestern United States to choose from, I can't include many big international stories, such as the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The slow crushing of the rebellion in Syria lends itself more to photojournalism than a banner headline. And I might have included the death of Fidel Castro if he hadn't already turned the reins of power over to his brother years ago.

Meanwhile, I don't have a home paper publishing my stuff that would put together a 2016 in cartoons spread, so here are my own favorites from this crappy year:

Q Toon: Throwing in the Towel

After nearly a month of resisting, North Carolina Governor Pat "Bathroom Bill" McCrory has finally conceded defeat in his reelection bid.

I was seriously considering drawing last week's cartoon about his refusal to recognize that the Tarheel State had voted to replace him with Democrat Roy Cooper, and I'm relieved that I didn't; McCrory conceded the morning after, and promptly trotted up to Trump Tower to apply for work with The Donald's administration.

It was a bright spot in an otherwise utterly crapulent election season. McCrory's defeat holds out the hope, however faint, that in spite of the GOP's best efforts to disenfranchise all but their most devoted voters, the electorate may still hold an incompetent Republican responsible at the ballot box.

As long as Vladimir Putin isn't Wikileaking the other side's emails.

Q Toon: Head for the Border

With all the focus on the presidential race this year, it's easy to overlook the state and local races that directly affect many people (for example, when they use a public rest room).

The Roanoke Times gave its endorsement to the North Carolina governor for doing so much to drive business into Virginia. His precious Bathroom Bill was one factor, they wrote, explaining that "In response, various companies and even sports leagues pulled events from the state. Three of those have wound up in Salem — the NCAA Division III men’s and women’s soccer championships, as well as the Division II Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association football championship. That’s money in the bank for us."

But wait, there's more:

McCrory has given Virginia a competitive advantage in economic development, as well. When the University Economic Development Association recently held its national conference in Roanoke, the keynote speaker highlighted a North Carolina program to encourage partnerships between colleges and companies, as a way help recruit technology companies interested in research and development. The speaker hailed it as a model for other states to follow as they try to build a “knowledge economy.” Then the speaker noted that McCrory had cancelled it. The pro-business audience groaned.

Meanwhile, McCrory's hometown newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, headlined its editorial "Why We’re Not Endorsing Pat McCrory for the First Time in 25 Years."

McCrory’s term as North Carolina governor is the ultimate illustration of the Peter Principle: that people are promoted based on their past performance and not the abilities needed for the new role and thus rise to the level of their incompetence. McCrory has certainly done that. ...
While the state’s and nation’s attention has rightfully been focused on HB2 since spring, McCrory’s lack of leadership and wrong-headed policies have been on display since his first year in Raleigh.

By the way, if you're in the Raleigh area, the HB2 Bathroom Humor show is opening in your town tomorrow.

Q Toon: Diary of a Wimpy Gov

After the North Carolina-based Atlantic Coast Conference joined the NBA and NCAA in pulling their championship games out of the state over HB2 (the so-called "Bathroom Bill" passed to overturn Charlotte's LGBT rights ordinance), Governor Pat McCrory and Republicans in the state legislature made Charlotte a desperate offer:

Repeal your ordinance, Charlotte, and we'll repeal our law repealing your ordinance.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts is having none of it, telling the Charlotte Observer, "There's no legal reason for Charlotte to do anything."

City Attorney Bob Hagemann agreed. In the memo to Roberts and the council, he said the council’s failure to repeal the ordinance “is in no way a legal obstacle or impediment to the General Assembly’s ability to modify or repeal House Bill 2 as it deems appropriate.”

With North Carolina LGBT Pride underway in Raleigh-Durham this weekend, Charlotte should see plenty of support for its position.

✒

I hope it's not too much of a stretch to depict Gov. McCrory as Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons. The two have very different facial types; McCrory's face is tall with a prominent nose and a crooked mouth; Wimpy has a round face with a round nose and a mouth that only shows up when he's eating. Wimpy's eyes leave plenty of room for his ample forehead; to caricature McCrory, the eyes have to be high on his face, and he has a full head of hair. On the other hand, both seem to squint a lot.

North Carolina cartoonist V.C. Rogers complimented me on a caricature of McCrory I'd sent for the display of HB2 cartoons up at the AAEC's Political Cartoon and Satire Festival this week. He took note of how I drew his nose; Rogers doesn't take the same approach, but produces an instantly recognizable likeness nevertheless. When I had drawn McCrory with a smaller nose earlier this year, I hadn't been quite satisfied with the result.

Most of the other cartoonists in the Tarheel State exaggerate their governor's schnozz, if not generally quite as much as I have this week. Kevin Siers has cast him in a Punch 'n' Judy show. Dwayne Powell often draws McCrory as a parrot. John Cole doesn't make the nose quite so prominent, but he keeps it tall.

The chef of the Charlotte Cafe, on the other hand, does not, and is not intended to resemble Mayor Roberts in any way. (The reference is to the character Roughhouse. And I hasten to add that this cartoon was drawn well before the protests over the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by Charlotte police yesterday. Most of this blog post was, as well.)

Labor Day, 1916

Strikeback Saturday makes up for last week's quickie glance at 1916 to celebrate Labor Day Weekend by taking a long, hard look at U.S. labor relations 100 years ago.

"Capital, Labor, and War Prosperity" by John McCutcheon for Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1916

The two issues in the doorway of this first Winsor McCay cartoon are the Workman's Compensation Act and the Keating Owen Child Labor Bill.

"Save the Children First, Senators!" by Winsor McCay in New York American, July, 1916

Congress went on its vacation anyway, so both issues were still waiting for them when they got back.

"Training Our Next Generation!" by Winsor McCay in New York American, July, 1916

The Child Labor Bill sponsored by Congressman Edward Keating (D-CO) and Senator Robert L. Owen (D-OK) sought to prohibit the sale in interstate commerce of goods produced by factories that employed children under 14, mines that employed children younger than 16, and any facility where children under 14 worked after 7:00 p.m., before 6:00 a.m., or more than eight hours per day. The bill had almost unanimous support from Republican senators, as well as the strong backing of the Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson.

"Getting Admission, but No Welcome" by John Knott in Dallas News, 1916

It faced strong opposition, however, from advocates of "states' rights," particularly southern senators. With slave labor a thing of the past and migrant labor a thing of the future (at least in the American Southeast), southern textile mills relied more heavily than other regions and industries on cheap, poorly educated child labor. Democrat Lee Slater Overman was Senator from North Carolina from 1903 to 1930, and literally made this argument in defense of child labor:

"See, It Keeps Them Out of Mischief" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, 1916

The only two Republican Senators opposing the bill were Boies Penrose and George T. Oliver, both of Pennsylvania, which may have endeared them to the coal mining interests, but earned them plenty of condemnation from home state newspapers. "Is it any wonder," editorialized the Philadelphia Public Ledger, "that hundreds and thousands of Pennsylvanians hang their heads in shame when Pennsylvania's representation in the Senate of the United States is brought to their attention?"

"Their Parting Shot" by Frederick T. Richards in Philadelphia North American, 1916

After an initial defeat prompted some changes to the bill, Congress, including 11 of the Southern Democratic Senators, passed the Keating Owen Child Labor Act on September 1, 1916 with a provision that it go into effect a year later. Siding with a North Carolina textile mill owner, however, the Supreme Court would rule it an unconstitutional regulation of interstate commerce in Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918.

Labor conditions for adults were at issue in 1916 as well. The Kern-McGillicuddy Federal Employees' Compensation Act mentioned in the first McCay cartoon above passed Congress on September 7, creating compensation for federal employees who lost income due to on-the-job injury.

"The Goat" by Clarence Batchelor in Topeka State Journal, August, 1916

New York street railway workers began an extended strike in August seeking the right to unionize and a five-cent increase in pay. Streetcar management refused to deal with the union, insisting that they would only deal with workers as individuals — certainly not with some "alien organization" with offices out of town. The dispute continued throughout August and September, with management trying to scuttle agreements hammered out through arbitration with Mayor J.P. Mitchel, and New York trade unions nearly instituting a general strike.

"If They All Strike It Will Be Like This," by Sidney J. Greene for New York Telegram, August 4, 1916

Meanwhile, a national railroad strike by the 360,000 engineers, brakemen, firemen, conductors and other workers on the nation's 225 railways threatened to grind America's economy to a standstill.

"The Big Fellow Pays the Freight" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Evening Dispatch, August, 1916

The central issue was the unions' demand for an eight-hour day, with overtime pay beyond that.

"The Millstone" by Alford in Baltimore Star, September, 1916

Wilson called unions and railroad management to a White House summit in August for two days of arbitration. Failing to bring the parties to an agreement, Wilson pressured the Congress to take up the "Adamson Bill," named for Congressman William C. Adamson (D-GA), promising a 16% pay raise for railroad workers and, on a trial basis, the 8-hour day.

"Making the Straw Fly" by Ole May in Cleveland Leader, August/September, 1916

Over Republican objections, including those voiced by presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes, the Adamson Bill was introduced and passed by the House on September 1, passed by the Senate on September 2, signed into law on September 3, and went into effect on September 5. If ever a bill was "railroaded" through Congress, this was it.

"Mediation" by T.E. Powers in Hearst Newspapers, September, 1916

At any rate, the strike was thus averted, leaving implementation of the details up to the rail barons. Federal regulation of private companies' working hours was unprecedented; but in this instance, the Supreme Court would uphold the Adamson Act (Wilson v. New,1917).

If You Must Visit North Carolina

Photo by Jape Trostle

If you happen to be in Durham, North Carolina this summer, do stop in at the Horse & Buggy Press Bull City Arts Collaborative to see the exhibit of cartoons and installations about the Tarheel State's HB2 (the "Bathroom Bill"). I see one of my own cartoons over the shoulder of the guy in the checked shirt in J.P.'s photo above.

The show will be up in the gallery on Foster St. in Durham through the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists' convention in September.

Q Toon: All Star Heel

The National Basketball Association announced last week that it is moving the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, over the HB2, the state's "bathroom bill" requiring transgender persons to use the bathroom of the opposite sex, as well as granting Christians special rights to discriminate against LGBT citizens and visitors to the state.

“While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.”

Governor McCrory is sticking by his law, complaining that a "selective corporate elite" is "bypassing the democratic process."

HB2, you may recall, was passed this past March in a hastily called special one-day legislative session and quickly signed by McCrory that night. There was no opportunity for anybody but a selective Republican elite to engage in the democratic process beforehand.

Q Toon: The Ayes Had It

This past week, we were treated to the sausage-making spectacle that is the United States House of Representatives. Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) offered an amendment to a defense spending bill to require that defense contractors not discriminate against LGBT employees — writing into law an already existing executive order of the Obama administration.

In light of the healthy number of major corporations already having come out in defense of their LGBT employees (and prospective hires) after legislatures in Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and elsewhere pushed bills to legalize antigay discrimination, you would think the Maloney amendment would be a no-brainer. In fact, a majority in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives seemed to think so, too.

When time for the vote had run out, the Maloney amendment had the votes to pass. But then Republican leaders, horrified by the prospect that some antigay wedding cake baker somewhere might lose his defense contract, kept the vote open so that they could pressure enough Republican "aye" votes to switch to "nay" to defeat the amendment.

The identities of the seven vote-switchers were not publicly recorded on the House floor. The amendment failed 212-213. Democrats in the House were in an uproar, shouting "Shame, Shame, Shame," and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer protested because the presiding officer did not require that the members record the changes.
Later, Hoyer's press office tweeted the names of seven Republicans who he believes switched their votes.
They include California Reps. Darrell Issa, Jeff Denham, David Valadao, and Mimi Walters; Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, Iowa Rep. David Young and Maine Rep. Bruce Poliquin.

Hoyer's beef is with a breach of the rules of the House:

Once the time period allotted to a vote has expired and the voting is closed, the results and individual positions cannot be changed. In the House, it’s customary for Representatives to file “Personal Explanations” explaining missed votes, or votes they entered incorrectly. These don’t permit lawmakers to actually change a vote or record one after the fact. They are statements of intent that lawmakers can point to and say, “Here’s how I would have voted.”

Members can change their vote before time expires by presenting a card to the tally clerk. That wasn't done in this case.

Republican House leadership has responded to Rep. Hoyer's complaints by promising to require that amendments be "pre-printed." The new rules give Ryan and pals time to pre-instruct their members how to vote.