Toon: Meet Mitchell Berman

I thought I'd try caricaturing the Democrat running for Congress in my home district this year, and here's what I came up with. 

Mitchell Berman is an emergency room nurse who won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination in August. The national Democratic Party sees potential for him to oust four-term Republican incumbent Bryan Steil, so Berman has gotten the benefit of some television advertising, unlike most Democratic candidates for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District in this century.

If Berman were to win election this November, he would be the first Democrat to represent this district since Rep. Peter Barca was defeated in the Red Wave of 1994. (Barca ran again and lost thirty years later.)

Berman's first TV ad showed him fishing from the banks of a small river somewhere with his dog, offering his bone fides as a regular guy. He wasn't wearing his nurse uniform in that ad; he was, however, wearing a holstered gun on his side — a quiet nod to the sportsmen hereabouts. In a subsequent social media video, he explained that he sometimes goes fishing in areas where one might encounter a bear or wolf. Hence the side arm.

In a preliminary sketch for this caricature, I had a holstered gun at Berman's side. I had to scratch that idea when I switched which hand his fishing rod was held in. 

Most of the mail pieces from Berman's campaign show him in his nurse's scrubs and flag-themed do-rag. His latest TV ad depicts him on the job, talking about health care reform.

Steil, and outside organizations supporting him, are attacking Berman with the same charges of being a radical activist that Republicans are flinging willy-nilly at every Democrat. Steil's ads tout his "Stop Insider Trading Act," prohibiting members of Congress (but not Supreme Court justices, Presidents, or their families) from trading stocks while in office. The bill passed the House with a rider requiring voters to show photo identification before voting, but has not passed the Senate.

Steil's bill has "more holes in it than Swiss cheese," according to Berman, because congressional representatives are not required to divest stocks they already own.

Steil is way ahead of Berman in campaign fund raising: the incumbent's war chest is over $5 million, while Berman's was only $713,000 as of mid-September. Outside interest group advertising is similarly lop-sided in Steil's favor.

Golden Dreams Were Shiny Days

 Today's Graphical History Tour rummages through my September cartoons from 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016. I'll bring up another September at the end of our tour.

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., September 1986

My cartoons for the NorthCountry Journal were drawn to accompany the month's editorial by Susie Isaksen, in this case warning that "Lake Charlevoix may be in Michigan, but what happened there could happen in Wisconsin."

Citing an editorial from Northwoods Call by Glen Sheppard describing Charlevoix as an ideal lake for swimming and fishing, with restaurants and "prissy gift shops" nearby, the alarm is raised: "But Charlevoix's shoreline has been scandalously polluted by some of the most god-awful ugly nightmares of the north — condos."

I've moaned here before how much I dislike drawing buildings. They are mostly impersonal and repetitive, and the perspective is unforgiving. That said, there was no choice here but to draw a lot of  late-20th-Century high-rises.

I did, however, like adding a swimming pool on the roof  of the condo in the upper right corner.

1996

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., September 22, 1996

One of the banes of electoral democracy has been the telephone push poll. Push polls have nothing to do with determining how candidates or issues rate with the public. I doubt that the alleged pollster at the other end of the line is recording your responses at all.

No, the caller first determines which candidate or issue you support, and if it's not the candidate or interest group that hired him/her, then moves on to a series of questions like: "Would you still support Your Candidate's Name Here if you knew that he drops little puppies into boiling water?"

I imagine there are still campaigns that employ push polling these days. Someone picking up the phone is unlikely to remember that the caller represents American Eagle Minuteman Opinion Research or whatever long enough to complain to anyone about it. Most people probably just hang up within the first minute.

Which is the same length of a political campaign or issues interest commercial on television; dishonest ads on social media are even cheaper, and get through to the vast majority who do not answer calls on their cell phones from unknown numbers.

2006

for Q Syndicate, September 2006

Twenty years ago, Gays were effectively banned from military service in the U.S. under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a worthless compromise from the Clinton administration with the prior complete and total ban.

The reasoning was that openly gay homosexuals were somehow "bad for unit cohesion and morale." Unit cohesion and morale failed utterly to suffer deleterious effects once the Obama administration lifted the ban on LGBTQ+ soldiers. Even the neo-Nazi and gangster recruits got used to it.

Well, except for one Minnesota National Guardsman who got put in charge of the Pentagon nowadays.

I have a note in the margin of this cartoon that I should have drawn the recruiter with an open collar and no tie. I can't think of any later cartoon I drew set in a recruitment office in which I could have corrected this costume error.

2016

for Q Syndicate, September 2016

I was away from drawing board for much of September, 2016, on a family vacation to Italy, so I left my editors a couple of non-political cartoons to release while I was gone. This one could still be run again today, save that now the President of the United States has weighed in against this kid.

We've just been through the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I thought about basing today's Graphical History Tour on my experience of that day, but I've done that before. I've also blogged about 9/10. And 9/13.

I just don't have any fresh new insight on 9/11, and my own experience was not as directly connected as was many others'. I considered, and rejected, posting some 9/12 cartoons by cartoonists who are no longer with us (Pat Oliphant, Stuart Carlson, Steve Benson, and Mike Ritter, for example).

We were chatting with the owner of a local restaurant Thursday night, and she said that it's hard to believe that 9/11 was a quarter century ago. She was in high school back then, to give you some idea of her frame of reference in saying that. I could have pointed out that on 9/11, hardly any of us had heard of Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, K-Pop, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aaron Rodgers, or Game of Thrones. 

Donald Trump wasn't even host of The Apprentice yet. 

Speaking of that egomaniacal fascist liar, he came up with a fresh new memory this week of having been hauled away from Ground Zero by two brawny firemen (who, no doubt, had tears in their eyes and called him "Sir"). The organizers of this week's commemoration decided not to give him a speaking role in it, and I'd just as soon do likewise here.

I'll let others who have more personal connections to the events of that day share their non-fabricated, non-embellished memories and, perhaps, some cartoons for those of you too young to have caught them the first time around. Counterpoint's Substack yesterday had anniversary cartoons by some of my progressive, Pulitzer-winning colleagues, if you're interested. 

But as for me, I'm sitting this one out.

Another Week's Sneak Peek

At a funeral last Friday, I happened to sit next to a local Democratic candidate for the State Senate, Trevor Jung. He has been running a commercial on Milwaukee television that gives a subtle nod to the LGBTQ+ community.

He starts the ad by citing his grandmother's bar, What About Me?, using its name as an opening to invite voters to question whose priorities Madison politicians are concerned with. Many viewers might not remember What About Me?, which was one of two LGBTQ+ bars in Racine back when the acronym was a bit shorter.

What About Me?, on the outskirts of Racine's commercial district, had a reputation as a mostly lesbian hang-out, and Jo-Dee's, in a low-income neighborhood just south of the city limits, had a mostly male clientele. Neither was exclusively one or the other. 

Both are gone now, as are the women who owned and operated them; the building where What About Me? was has since been a breakfast diner, a bar and grill, and currently a Mexican restaurant. 

Jung is too young to have ordered a beer at his grandmother's bar. We had a pleasant conversation after the funeral service. I had to tell him that my Better Half and I don't live in his district, which extends into Milwaukee's southwest suburbs; but my dad does and is a sure vote in his favor.

The 21st district was overwhelmingly Republican 2011-2021; judging strictly on geography, I'd say it still leans that way. Map from Ballotpedia.org

His Republican opponent, Jim Croft, has also been advertising on TV; based on the ads, you would never know he's a Republican, but he has plenty of MAGA billionaire funding. Jung and Croft are running to succeed Republican Van Wangaard, who is retiring after three consecutive terms representing the district in its various iterations.

Well, a propos of none of that, here's this week's sneak peek:

Revenge of the Sixths

This week's Graphical History Tour ventures once again into the Bergetoon vaults to haul up the stuff I was drawing about forty, thirty, twenty, and ten Mays ago.

1986

in Ranger, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, May 1, 1986

Today, Donald Joffrey Trump complains that our NATO allies are not stepping up to help him in his unilateral war excursion in Iran. Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan was similarly disappointed that only Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain lent any support to "Operation Eldorado Canyon," air attacks on purported terrorist centers in Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya.

The two military operations have some elements in common, Libyan involvement in significant terrorist attacks chief among them. Yet several distinctions must be made. Reagan consulted Congress before initiating this military action. The administration also kept our European allies up to date. Operation Eldorado Canyon was launched in express retaliation for a Libyan-sponsored bombing of a Berlin nightclub popular with U.S. servicemen (two were killed in the bombing and 79 injured).

And whatever other faults he had, at least Reagan didn't start bickering with the Pope.

1996 

The university newspapers for which I drew way back in the 20th Century always suspended publication in May for finals and graduation, so my cartoons in those months were mostly on local or special interest topics.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., May 3, 1996

The NIMBYism at the heart of this one is probably fairly universal, however.

Lutheran Social Services (LSS) provides housing, counseling, and child care services to underserved and at-risk communities. Its bid purchase a house on a semi-rural road in Mount Pleasant as an eight-bed halfway house for male parolees raised instant objections from neighbors. 

One neighbor complained that the parolees would get to "live in a $170,000 home because they committed a crime." Another told the Journal Times, "If it's not safe for these men to go home, it's not safe for them to be in my neighborhood. ... Some little child is going to be molested. Some woman is going to get raped. Someone is going to get beat up. Someone's house is going to get broken into."

LSS countered, "We will know exactly where every resident is every moment of every day." Their residents were to be carefully screened, and offered alcohol and drug abuse treatment, occupational and educational opportunities, and counseling.

But at a packed community meeting, LSS yielded to pressure from residents and state legislators, and announced that it would look for another site elsewhere.

No, it didn't end up being at the local shopping mall.

But these days, our local mall would welcome just about any tenant at all.

2006

May, 2006

To get really, really parochial, this is a cartoon I was asked to draw for the 25-year reunion of my college graduating class. It must have gone astray when I sent it in (perhaps because recipients of my e-mails see my husband's name as the sender, and we've both kept our maiden names). In any event, it didn't make it into the evening program.

It was a challenge trying to winnow down the collective experience of our four years; I was not the sort of undergrad who participated in every major occasion, and lived off campus one year. The snippets that I focused on included:

•  the time ABC Sports decided to cover a football game at our college and asked the music department to come up with a halftime show
• the college's intention to tear down an old dormitory, Ytterboe, and the construction of a new one that got its name after we left
• the streaker at our graduation (didn't every graduation have at least one in those days?)
• the time Vice President Walter Mondale came to campus to swear college president Sidney Rand (New Dorm would be named after him) in as Ambassador to Norway
• our campus ID "caf" card
• the record album of of student performers at the Lion's Pause (an old theater in Ytterboe's basement)
• and of course, the hair and clothing styles of the time.

The hardest part of the drawing? Definitely the grooves of the record album.

2016

for Q Syndicate, May 2016

Here's a cartoon that brings together local, national, and special interest topics.

My hometown congressional district was represented by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) ten years ago. In May of 2016, he employed the power of his gavel to prevent passage of a component of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed time and time again to afford workplace protections to LGBTQ+ employees.

In this case, it was an amendment by Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) to a Defense Department bill; his amendment would have mandated that defense contractors not discriminate against LGBTQ+ employees and applicants. With time expired for House members to cast their votes, Maloney's amendment appeared to have passed by a vote of 219 to 206.

But Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) held the vote open so that Republican party whips could pressure enough of their members to switch their votes to defeat the amendment. As soon as seven Republicans had changed their votes from Aye to Nay, the gavel finally came down.

Maloney's amendment was thus defeated by a single vote, and the defense contracts of antigay wedding cake bakers and florists were saved.

Sort of. An Obama administration executive order was already in place protecting LGBTQ+ defense contractor employees.

Until, of course, the Electoral College awarded the presidency to one Donald Bifftannen Trump four years later.

ENDA is likely to come up presently in another Graphical History Tour, so please keep it in mind.

I Guano Wish You a Merry Christmas

Hi there! You're just in time to join another Graphical History Tour through the archives of your humble scribbler's December cartoons, carefully aged in our ancient wine cellar, each evidencing floral legs with notes of winter stone leather and an earthy finish.

2015

First off, let's get into the spirit of the season with a couple of classic Christmas movies.

We watch a fair number of classic movies in this household, especially at this time of year. After a while, the plots do seem to get mixed up in my head. Did we just witness a miracle on 34th Street, or did it happen on Fifth Avenue?

One thing that I've always liked about parodying old movies like this is that I don't have to spend the usual time making separate grayscale and full-color versions for syndication. Nope, just save the grayscale version, convert it to CMYK, fill in the pink triangle, and voilá! The colorized version is already finished!

Which reminds me, I think tonight we're watching Dudley the Angel show up to help Charlie Brown find the true meaning of Christmas in Frosty, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

2005

Speaking of whom...

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Dec. 9, 2005

Do I remember the point of the editorial this cartoon was meant to illustrate? No way. It had something to do with corporations securing "air rights" above ground level for such things as skyways connecting buildings on opposite sides of a street. 

That was the fourth-to-last cartoon of mine in the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. At the end of the year, they decided that they didn't want to run cartoons on the editorial page any more, in favor of a weekly thumbs-up / thumbs-down listicle.

I got more appreciation from the Chicago Free Press that December, which used a cartoon of mine on the front page of their year-in-review edition.

in Chicago Free Press, December, 2005

The Chicago Free Press was a client of my cartoons for their entire run, from 1999 to 2010; this caricature of Dubya Bush was actually from a cartoon I had drawn in August, 2003.

1995

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., Dec. 21, 1995

Christmas week does generally not suit itself to cartoons about the beach hereabouts.  

The city had hired an expert from the National Water Research Institute to determine the source of  fecal coliform bacteria that had forced the city to close North Beach several times during the summer. Human feces were the prime suspect, but in December, the expert reported that preliminary studies pointed instead to gull droppings.

Dad was on the Racine Board of Health back then, and still is, so I get the inside poop on any matters related to public health here. And yes, gull droppings have been a factor in beach closings: they crap on the sand, and that stuff washes into Lake Michigan when it rains.

But human shit was also a major part of the problem. As a result, Racine extended its sewage outflow further out into the lake. The study cast much of the blame on Milwaukee's sewage system; during heavy rains, untreated sewage had to be released into the lake in order to minimize it backing up into everyone's basements.

Since then, Milwaukee's Big Tunnel project has largely addressed that particular problem. This past summer, Racine only had to close North Beach one time (but did have to issue advisories on two other occasions).

1985

I had drawn a couple Christmas issue cover cartoons for the University of Wisconsin at Parkside student newspaper by 1985, making oversized editorial cartoons for them. With the 1985 edition, I decided to make a simple, straightforward holiday greeting.

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., Dec. 12, 1985

I also departed from usual by drawing exclusively in charcoal. This meant I couldn't erase anything if I didn't like it, and having to be extremely careful not to smudge the drawing. The original drawing is too large for my scanner; if I could have posted the original drawing here, you would be able to see all the blue pencil underneath the charcoal.

The medium of charcoal did not afford the Ranger editors much opportunity to add color to the drawing. This was well before PhotoShop and other quick and easy artistic tools; to add color, someone would have had to lay a halftone transfer sheet over the drawing and cut with an Exacto knife the desired shapes for each area where the color should print.

I  had created the Ranger flag that year, and every shape you see in green, I made using that same halftone cutting process. (Ignore the yellow; that's just the discoloring of 40-year-old newsprint, or however old it was when the UW-P library scanned it. I Photoshopped out the yellowing from the Peace on Earth drawing for this post, but not from the flag.)

Well, heck, why don't we go back yet another ten Decembers just for gits and shiggles?

1975

in Park Beacon, Dec. 19, 1975

That takes us all the way back to my high school days. This cartoon was something I drew to illustrate someone else's (possibly Executive Editor Joel Krein's) Twelve Days of Christmas list.

The principal surrounded by garbage, and the school nurse, by the way, were caricatures of real persons. And I'm quite sure that none of my fellow students caught the reference to a running gag in "Fibber McGee & Molly," a radio comedy that was well before our time. Before Assistant Principal McKee's time, too.

Somehow, the school administration let us get away with this cartoon. If I remember correctly, the Park Beacon had to yield to administration censorship once in the two years that I was on staff. An installment of Kevin Cacciotti's "Being Cool in School" comic strip included advice to "destroy school property," and Principal Thompson made us black the cartoon out of every copy with magic markers.

Except for the copies we saved for ourselves.

✍

Well, that's the Graphical History Tour for this week. Thanks for coming along, and have a Merry St. Lucy's Day!

This Week's Sneak Peek

Our local County Executive died in office a few months ago, so we have a special election coming up on December 19. It's nominally a non-partisan post, so the election couldn't be lumped in with the November 5 national elections; why this election and its November 14 primary were scheduled on Thursdays is beyond me.

I haven't missed an election in four and a half decades, but I'm sorely tempted to skip this one.

Both candidates going into the general election are Republicans, which isn't terribly surprising. The office has been held for many years by men who have endorsed Republicans for other offices and have resisted actions of Democratic governors. There was at least one Democrat vying for the office in the primary, but local Democrats are still shellshocked by the November 5 results.

There had been at least one Democrat running in the primary: Lorenzo Santos, a Black Latino, currently an emergency manager for the county, who had declared candidacy for Congress this year only to withdraw in deference to former Congressman Peter Barca. (Barca lost the November 5 election to incumbent Republican Bryan Steil; our district hasn't elected a Democrat to Congress since unseating Barca — thirty years ago!)

The other losing County Exec candidate was Rev. Melvin Hargrove, Diversity Officer for the county and sometime school board member. He's Black, in case his job title didn't tip you off; I'm not personally aware if he has a party affiliation.

The candidates making it onto the December 19 ballot are both White. Wendy Christensen is County Clerk, in which office she declined to issue a marriage license to my husband and me. It's not as if she were as obstinate as Kim Davis of Kentucky; Christensen turned issuing our marriage license over to someone else in the office. In the years since, I have returned the favor by voting for someone else whenever she's been on the ballot — although that has meant writing in a name on the Democratic blank.

Judging from lawn signs we've seen driving across the county this weekend, I'd say the leading candidate is grocery store owner Ralph Malicki. I presume that he's a Republican, since in the areas I drive frequently, his lawn signs quickly sprouted up where Trump lawn signs used to be. 

The local newspaper and an on-line news aggregator have published, or will soon, the candidates' answers to a list of questions sent to both of them. Malicki hadn't answered RacineCountyEye.com's questionnaire before the primary; perhaps he doesn't feel he needs to let us know what he thinks about the .5% county sales tax, or incentivizing industrial development in current farmland.

What we won't see are any reports of which is the more Trumpy or Bible-Thumpy of the two candidates. (I have noticed that in yards where Trump lawn signs still stand and Trump flags fly, neither Malicki's nor Christensen's signs have joined them.) Absent that information, come December 19, I'm inclined to write in the name of the candidate I voted for in the primary.

Pride Cometh to North Pratt Falls

It's LGBTQet-al. Pride Month, so let's start today's Graphical History Tour with something in a lighter vein than Thursday's cartoon.

Q Syndicate, June, 2004

Here's a cartoon I drew in time for client publications' Pride Month issues in 2004 (meaning that I drew it in May, of course), observing that Gay Pride celebrations were no longer found exclusively in major metropolitan cities.

"Boy Meets Boy" was one of those "reality" TV shows — on Bravo if I remember correctly. A gay twist on "The Bachelor," the main contestant was presented with several potential male suitors to choose among — the catch being that some of them, unbeknownst to him, were straight.

I have no recollection who the geeky straight contestant was, whether he was the guy picked in the end, or whatever happened to him or anybody else connected with the show. And it's just as well.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 18, 1984

Let's keep talking about sex, but step back 20 more years to 1984.

That year, the Racine Unified School Board voted to reject five recommended textbooks, including two sex education books for teenage readers. Married and Single Life and Living Today offered frank discussion of the sorts of questions real adolescents have about relationships, loving, and, yes, sex. Beyond "When a man and a woman love each other very much they share a special kiss and have a baby."

The ban ignited controversy between Racinians who believed that teens deserve access to books that deal frankly and honestly with sex, and others who believed that frank and honest discussion of sex should wait until after teens grow up, get married, share a special kiss, and have children of their own.

The very night after my cartoon appeared in the local newspaper, the school board voted to reverse the ban on the two sex ed books. But the board upheld their vote on rejecting three American history textbooks for supposed liberal bias. The Journal Times reported that board member Barbara Scott said the textbook flap could have been avoided if the board had had time to review the books.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 14, 1994

Continuing with the local scene: Democrat Peter Barca was elected to Congress from Wisconsin's First Congressional District in 1993 to succeed Les Aspin, whom Bill Clinton had appointed Secretary of Defense. Aspin had represented the 1st CD since 1970, routinely trouncing his Republican challengers.

My crystal ball here proved faulty. Republican realtor Mark Neumann, who had narrowly lost the 1993 special election, won the rematch in the 1994 GOP wave. A series of Republicans have held the seat ever since, mostly with only token opposition whom the Democratic National Congressional Committee never lifted a finger to help.

In the meantime, Peter Barca went back to representing Kenosha in Madison, including six years as Assembly Minority Leader, before accepting Governor Tony Evers's appointment as Secretary of the Department of Revenue. This year, he's running for Congress again, hoping to unseat three-term incumbent Bryan Steil.

For the moment, the DNCC thinks that Steil might be vulnerable to a challenge. Unlike the other Democratic congressional candidates here since 1998, Barca has plenty of governmental experience — although heading the Department of Revenue is a point on his résumé that Republicans will be more eager to emphasize than he will.

June, 2014

And finally, I began sketching this cartoon ten Junes ago after Judge Barbara Crabb of the United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, ruled my state’s antigay “marriage amendment” unconstitutional. 

Before inking it, I saw that Wisconsin State Journal editorial cartoonist Phil Hands had published a similar cartoon of the sailor and miner shaking hands. He's syndicated throughout Wisconsin, whereas I haven't been published in my home state since InStep magazine folded in 2003. So I decided not to send this cartoon out to my editors at Q Syndicate, on the theory that few readers elsewhere would recognize the men on the Badger State flag.

But I inked, scanned, and colorized it anyway, and here it is again.

The Speaker in a Squeaker

News coverage of poor old Kevin McCarthy's present travails trying to convince his own caucus to elect him Speaker of the House has often mentioned that the last time such an election took more than one ballot was a century ago. So naturally, I started rummaging through newspapers from 1923 in search of editorial cartoons about their experience.

It turns out that their experience was somewhat different from Mr. McCarthy's. The election of Frederick Gillett (R-MA) as Speaker in 1923 took three days and nine ballots; but for one thing, Gillett was already Speaker of the House, and had been since 1919.

"The Only Cloud on the Horizon" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 3, 1923

But, as with the 2022 election, the 1922 election proved disappointing for Republicans. Going into the election with a congressional supermajority, the GOP lost a whopping 75 House seats. Republicans still had a majority, albeit a much narrower one; and a faction of the party — this time, the Progressives — wanted to see changes in party leadership. When the 68th Congress finally began its sessions in December — yes, December!—there were enough Progressives among Republicans to hold the Speaker's chair hostage.

"Wake Up" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Sunday Star, December 2, 1923

Why didn't the 68th Congress's convene until December? Back then, congressional terms began in March, not January. Furthermore, Gillett and the Old Guard, realizing their weakened position, delayed convening the 68th Congress until the fall, by which time President Harding had died and been succeeded by Calvin Coolidge. 

By December, Coolidge wanted to deliver an address on government funding to a joint session of Congress, and he couldn't do that until the House was in session. Gillett couldn't put the election of a Speaker off any longer.

"The Balance of Power" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, December 4, 1923

Progressives coalesced behind a Republican from Racine, Wisconsin, Henry Cooper. On the first ballot, Gillett received 197 votes, Cooper 17, Illinois Republican Martin Madden five, Tennessee Democrat Finis Garrett 195, and "present" four (Cooper, Garrett and Gillett themselves, plus Socialist Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin). Cooper's votes included those of 15 Republicans, plus two Farmer-Labor Congressmen from Minnesota, Ole Kvale and Knud Wefald.

"Trouble at the Club" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 5, 1923

No candidate having achieved the necessary 208 votes, the House proceeded to a second ballot. This time, Gillett held at 197 votes in spite of changing from voting "present" to voting for himself. Cooper's support also held steady at 17 votes, while Garrett picked up a vote. The House adjourned to try again the next day.

"Help, Somebody" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Dec., 1923

Democrat- and Progressive-leaning cartoonists such as Fitzgerald and Sykes took gleefully to their drawing boards.

"Bloc-ed" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1923

Republican-leaning cartoonists such as Bronstrup castigated the progressive "insurgents," also called "radicals," for thwarting the GOP agenda. In case you're trying to read his cartoon on a handheld device, the ties these insurgents are piling onto the train tracks are labeled "party treason," "party faithlessness," "political bloc," "party treachery," "political perfidy," and "deadlock."

"Anyhow Thy Can't Blame Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, December 3, 1923

This cartoon by Clifford Berryman stars a powerful former Speaker of the House, Joe Cannon (R-IL), who had retired from the House at the end of the 67th Congress.

"Quit Your Skidding" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 6, 1923

As a side note, other than Berryman's cartoon of Joe Cannon, none of these cartoons appear to me to feature caricatures of the principals involved. Gillett had thinning hair and sported a goatee; Cooper was wearing a white beard by this time.

"The Fruits of Victory" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, December 6, 1923

Finally, Cooper and the Progressive insurgents accepted promises of a seat on the House Rules Committee and a pledge of opportunity later to freely propose changes to House rules. Speaking on the House floor over another Congressman's objections, Cooper thanked the seventeen who voted for him in each of the previous eight ballots:

"[I]n view of the maledictions — I almost might have said curses — heaped upon the heads of the men who, without asking my consent, proposed me for Speaker — I have never asked anybody to cast a vote for me for the position — I thought I had a right, if not in justice to myself, then in justice to the men who have stood by me so loyally in the midst of this hurricane of slander and abuse, to say a word in extenuation of their offense..."

"Tying His Own Hands" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, December 5, 1923

Although two representatives stubbornly continued to vote for Illinois's Martin Madden (who had consistently voted for Gillett), Cooper and most of the other Progressives joined the rest of the Republican Party, and Gillett won the Speakership on the ninth ballot with 215 votes.

"The Elephant Tamer" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., Dec. 1923

A Summer NIMBY-cue

I've been stuck in 1921 for over a month now, so lest my Saturdays turn into the Dead Cartoonists Society, allow me to catch up on the stuff I drew thirty years ago.

The UW-M Post published only two issues that summer, and there wasn't an editorial page in either of them; so I'm pretty sure that this cartoon, drawn when President George H.W. Bush replaced the Supreme Court's African-American civil rights lion with an African-American civil rights dog-in-the-manger, was never published. I did, however, get a few cartoons published in the Racine Journal Times over the summer of 1991.

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

Wisconsin nearly lost a congressional seat in the 1990 census, threatening the end of the congressional career of one of the state's nine representatives: Les Aspin (D-WI1), Scott Klug (R-WI2), Steve Gunderson (R-WI3), Gerry Kleczka, (D-WI4), Jim Moody (D-WI5), Tom Petri (R-WI6), David Obey (D-WI7), Toby Roth (R-WI8), and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI9). 

Wisconsin narrowly escaped the cut in 1990, only to lose one of the the two Milwaukee seats after the 2000 census. Of these nine congressmen, only Kleczka, Petri, Obey, and Sensenbrenner were still in Congress by then. The last of the nine to leave Congress was Sensenbrenner, in January of this year.

There is nothing particularly original about my cartoon, although I do like how I incorporated the 1990 census's logo onto the record album.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., June 30, 1991

The rest of these cartoons were drawn about local issues and thus will require a bit of explaining. There was a proposal at the time to reroute and widen Wisconsin State Highway 38, a two-lane roadway between Racine and Milwaukee. For about three curvy miles, it dips in and out of creek valleys, so there are very few opportunities to pass if one should come up behind a slow driver. Joining up with County Trunk Highway G for an east-west mile, it passes through the unincorporated intersection of Husher, Wisconsin, notorious as little more than a speed trap. Tabor, on the other hand, doesn't even have a sign to mark where it is.

I put the distance to the 38-G exit in kilometers to indicate that the image was sometime in the future, but obviously I had no clue what cars of the future were going to look like...aside from that Smart Car at top center. (You may have noticed how far into the future they lasted.) No matter. Neither metric conversion nor the Highway 38 "Lake Arterial" have come to pass.

Yet.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., August 4, 1991

A proposed sludge drying site in Mount Pleasant also sparked a lot of opposition from its would-be neighbors, to nobody's surprise. It's a dirty job that has to be done; you can't just let sludge build up in the sewer system and wastewater treatment systems. After humankind discovered that just dumping the stuff in our rivers, lakes, and oceans was a terrible idea, we had to come up with something else. And no, shooting it all into outer space is not the solution.

Step one, apparently, is to rename sludge "biosolids."

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., August 12, 1991

When drawing cartoons critical of NIMBYism, I am mindful that one of the earlier Lake Arterial proposals had it running quite literally through my parents' back yard.

As illustrated by the Foxconn deal (their Potemkin factory now easily visible from my back yard), the lesson learned by the present leadership of Mount Pleasant has been to work in secret and only let the public know about a controversial project after it's too late to object to it.

The News or the Blues, Depending, of Course, on Your Perspective

Smokeback Saturday takes a break from the 1920 election campaign this week so that I can dredge up share a few of my cartoons from September, 1990.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, September 4, 1990

1990 was an election year, too — not for the presidency, but for Congress and several governorships including that of my home state, Wisconsin. The liberal student newspaper at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee asked me to draw a cover for their election feature section; I've stitched together four scans of the poster-sized (17.5" x 23.5") sheet.

I have no idea what's the deal with the blue guy in the foreground, or that bunch of people sitting under the traffic light. Whoever did the colorizing of the cartoon did just fine with some of the African-Americans in the crowd, while others could use a little yellow shading. 

I guess blue lives matter, too.

in UW-M Post, Sept. 13, 1990

Meanwhile, the George H.W. Bush administration was enlisting our NATO allies to go join us in declaring war over Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein's idea of diplomacy was to keep NATO citizens from leaving his country.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Sept. 20, 1990

By coincidence, Republicans had an opportunity to replace one of the Supreme Court's most liberal justices with a conservative thirty years ago this month. Justice William Brennan had resigned from the Court in the summer, and George H.W. Bush nominated David Souter to replace him. Despite Bush's claim not to know where Souter stood on abortion, affirmative action, or other divisive issues of the day, liberals suspected that Souter would prove to be a right-wing ideologue in the mold of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Robert Bork. But Souter made it through his Senate confirmation hearings without saying much of anything controversial, and handily won confirmation.

To Republicans' dismay, within the next decade, Souter tended to vote with the Court's liberals more often than its conservatives on closely decided cases. He voted in the minority in Bush v. Gore, and generally left precedents stand in the cases Republicans hoped to overturn. He left the Court in 2009 and was replaced by Obama nominee Sonya Sotomayor.

Souter now lives in New Hampshire, and celebrated his 81st birthday Thursday of last week.

in UW-M Post, September 25, 1990

With social pressure against smoking depressing domestic sales, Phillip Morris and RJR Nabisco, the two largest tobacco sellers in the U.S. in 1990, secured deals to export more than 34 billion cigarettes to the USSR. No such social pressure existed in the Soviet Union; in fact, demand for cigarettes exceeded supply.

It may have been a quickly forgotten news item, but gosh darn it, I spent a good long time with a straight-edge and ballpoint pen on all that tedious shading, and I liked how this cartoon looked in the end.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., October 3, 1990

A couple months ago, I included a cartoon about the local shopping mall refusing to allow the city bus system to have a bus stop at its doors. In September, 1990, the city of Racine had its way, getting the stops on route #7 moved in from the ring road around the parking lot's perimeter. (The Journal Times ran this cartoon in October, but my cataloguing notes indicate that this was the penultimate cartoon I drew in September.)

Someone at the JT must have decided that Mayor Owen Davies, speaking in the cartoon, needed a label. Maybe they thought that readers would confuse him with Christopher Columbus. Or Sir Francis Drake. I used white-out, ballpoint pen and felt-tip pen to add a medallion bearing his name around Davies's neck; everything else in the cartoon, including the shading, is drawn with India ink.

I dunno... I thought it was a reasonable caricature of Hizzoner.

✍

The headline for today's post, aside from referencing the blue men in today's color cartoon, pays homage to a Milwaukee radio institution, the late Ron Cuzner. His phrase led every one of his hourly news breaks.

But of course, you don't care. 

What Is So Rare As a Cartoon in June?

For Smatteringback Saturday today, I'm rehashing a handful of my own cartoons from Junes of ten, twenty, thirty, and omigod forty years ago.

June, 1980

Back in 1980, I didn't have cartoons published outside of the regular school year, so this cartoon never saw print; but I've run it twice on this here blog, so all its tedious shading hasn't been for naught. A college student's youthful idealism allowed me to imagine that independent presidential candidate John Anderson had any chance of being sworn into office on January 20.

In Racine, WI Journal Times, June 17, 1990

Ten years later, I was drawing local issue cartoons for the Racine Journal Times and cartoons on more general topics for a couple University of Wisconsin newspapers. The local issue above concerned Racine's major shopping center, Regency Mall, and its developers' insistence that there not be a bus stop at any of its doors. In their thinking, convenient bus stops would invite riff-raff from the inner city (oh but don't you dare think they were talking about persons of color); shoppers and employees complained of having to walk — especially in winter — from the roadway that circles the perimeter of the parking lot.

In those days, Regency Mall bustled year 'round, with shoe stores; specialty clothing shops for men, women, and children; half a dozen jewelry stores; a couple of bookstores and two music stores; and anchors J.C. Penney's, Sears, Boston Store, and Prange's.

Today, almost all of that is gone. The remaining jewelry stores, discount clothing shops, exercise gym, and fast food joints are widely separated by vacancies covered over with mural-sized historical photographs of Racine.

The failure of the mall had nothing to do with moving the bus stops to the inner ring drive.

In UW-M Post, Milwaukee, June 20, 1990

A huge issue for Republicans in 1990 was stopping protesters from burning the U.S. flag — which only made protesters want to do it more often. Upholding a similar decision the previous year, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in U.S. v. Eichmann on June 11, 1990 that flag-burning was protected by the First Amendment. "Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering," wrote archliberal Justice William Brennan in opinion, joined by archconservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans campaigned to amend the constitution to overturn the court's decision. Congress voted on the proposed amendment six times between 1995 and 2006, but it has always fallen short of the necessary 67 votes in the Senate.

Q Syndicate, June, 2000

Let us now jump ahead to 2000, by which time I had begun drawing LGBTQ-centric cartoons for Q Syndicate. I had a few particular members of the clergy in mind when I drew this June cartoon about the way certain liberal religious folk were trying to ride their camel through the eye of the needle between accepting same-sex marriage and being "welcoming." But this pastor does not physically resemble any of them.

Q Syndicate, June, 2000

Also in June, 2000, there was speculation that Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan might tap talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger to be his running mate. I'm not sure what "Dr. Laura," who called homosexuality "a biological error" and claimed that "a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys," would have added to the ticket when Buchanan's antigay animus was already firmly established. In the end, she wasn't interested in running for Vice President anyway, but I certainly enjoyed drawing this cartoon.

If you can name Pat Buchanan's 2000 running mate without looking it up, congratulations. You are either the world's wonkiest politics geek, or you've been dead for two years.

Meanwhile, one of the other candidates that year decided that the United States just doesn't have enough federal Christian holidays.

I can't remember whether I drew that cartoon for Q Syndicate, or if it only ever appeared on my old GeoCities page. At this point, it's difficult to check which; although, since there isn't any explicitly L, G, B, T, or Q subject matter, it's probably the latter. It certainly wasn't in the Milwaukee Business Journal.

Q Syndicate, June, 2010

Finally, here's a cartoon from June of 2010 just for schitzengigels and because it didn't make the cut for my look back at Pride cartoons a couple weeks ago.