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was the NCAA's threat to permanently deny hosting championship basketball games to the Tarheel State if the law wasn't repealed by March 30.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.

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.

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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.)

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: Finding the Perfect Tone

I ran across somebody's complaint recently about focusing so much LGBT attention on the bathroom clauses of these bathroom bills in North Carolina, Mississippi, and elsewhere. We're not paying enough heed, the argument went, to the "religious liberty" clauses creating the right of wedding photographers, bakers and florists, not to mention therapists, pharmacists paramedics, and tow truck operators to discriminate against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

To which oversight, I suppose, transgender persons must sympathize. Through the years they've been quietly dropped from various efforts to win LGB folks rights to equal employment, military service, marriage, and so on.

So, anyway, I've managed to include the bakers and florists in panel one.

In my home state of Wisconsin, state representative Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, has reintroduced his bathroom bill, claiming that it's purely needed to criminalize the heretofore legal activity of sexually assaulting children in public bathrooms, and that it isn't aimed at transgender lavatory customers at all.

"There have been individuals in society for hundreds of years that believe they are a different gender. That's not the problem here," Kremer said. "The problem is that there are going to be people that are going to take advantage of the situation."

His protestations might carry more weight if we hadn't been equally assured that Republicans' voter ID laws had nothing to do with thwarting Democratic voters, and that Act 10 had nothing to do with breaking unions. We've become inured to the repeated spectacle of Governor Snotwalker telling us some right-wing agenda item is "not a priority" only to have him sign it into law within the week. I just can't believe you guys. Ever.

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Nationally, Kremer and his ilk are the same people who complain that their rights are being trampled upon if someone wishes them Happy Holidays or offers them the choice of whether or not to marcar dos para español. Keep that in mind whenever they pretend that their efforts to write discrimination into the law have nothing to do with the people they want to discriminate against.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Now that I don't have to draw the governor to resemble Peter Parker, he's got much more of a beak.

Which will come in handy if I want to draw him as Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot someday.

Q Toon: Along Came a Spider

Last week, the North Carolina legislature met in a hastily called emergency session — the first in 35 years — to rush through HB2, a bill scuttling Charlotte's LGBT rights ordinance (and blocking any other local attempts to deviate from conservative dictates). Equally hastily, Governor Pat McCrory signed the bill before the civil rights and business communities could raise their objections. 

The 2016 convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists is scheduled to meet in Durham, North Carolina this fall. It's a good thing that I can't attend anyway, because I would be hard pressed to justify spending my LGBT money in the Tar Heel state at this point.

But if it helps The Cause, very well then: let's say I am boycotting the AAEC's North Carolina convention this year at great personal sacrifice in protest of North Carolina's Transgender Bladder and Employee Wage Suppression Law. I extend my deepest apologies to V. Cullum and Jape, but there might as well be a principled stance behind my absence.

I'm sure you two will understand.

Q Toon: Tolerating That Crap

We take a break from the presidential campaign to check what's going on in statehouses around the country:

"We're currently tracking 192 bills, the vast majority of which are anti-LGBT with major themes being trans bathrooms and rfras (religious freedom restoration acts) focused on marriage," Mark Daniel Snyder, spokesman for the Equality Federation, a gay rights group, told ABC News.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard (R-Of Course) is poised to sign the first of a wave of bills to keep transgender persons out of public rest rooms. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R-Need You Ask?) wants his state to void the recent anti-discrimination ordinance passed in Charlotte on the grounds that no place in North Carolina should be allowed to be any more progressive than the most backwards backwoods hamlet.

Where established LGBT organizations have dropped the ball, it becomes necessary for tax-paying businesses to pitch in. Tech giants Facebook, Google, Apple and Yahoo have come down solidly in favor of LGBT rights; the pushback from firms such as PayPal and Salesforce were instrumental in getting Indiana to reconsider its "religious liberty" law last year.

Business leaders in Georgia are worried about a loss of film and convention business if the state's so-called "First Amendment Defense Act" protecting antigay discrimination is signed into law. Decatur, Georgia telecom firm 373K recently announced that it would pull up stakes and leave the state over the issue:

“I’m gay, our CFO is gay, we have people from every walk of life working here,” co-founder Kelvin Williams told [New Civil Rights Movement] on Saturday. “I’ve got Muslims, Buddhists, atheists here. We’ve got great Christians working for us. They’ve never thought of not serving anyone – that’s not the message of Christ.”
“We don’t tolerate that crap,” he added definitively.

Toon: Republican Health Care

The Koch Brothers have an anti-health care ad which shows a young woman arriving at her gynecologist's office and telling her doctor that she has enrolled in "Obamacare." When she gets on the examining table and puts her legs up in the stirrups, the doctor leaves, and a really, really creepy big-headed Uncle Sam brandishing a speculum rises up between her legs.

The Kochs' creepy Uncle Sam tells us three things.

1. that the Koch Brothers haven't been paying attention to what Republican-run states have been doing vis-à-vis women's reproductive rights, 
2. that the Koch Brothers therefore don't particularly care about women's reproductive rights, and
3. that the Koch Brothers really, really, hate America.

I mean, really. Where did they get that Uncle Sam head, anyway? Was it a souvenir from when they were protesting against the Great Satan in the streets of Teheran in the 1980s?