Now Is the October of Our Recycled Content

It's a gorgeous fall weekend outside, so today's Graphical History Tour will be spent rummaging around the files in my basement, leafing through cartoons I drew ten, twenty, thirty, and forty Octobers ago.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2015

I'll start with a cartoon of Senator Rand Paul that parodies a character in the 1999 film Office Space. 

A cultural reference in a political cartoon is a hit or miss thing. If you're not familiar with the film, you're not going to get the cartoon. (The same is true if you hadn't heard about Sen. Paul opining that LGBTQ people wouldn't face workplace discrimination if we'd just stay in the closet on the job.)

Since Comedy Central showed the movie about a gazillion times in the ‘aughts, give or take a few myriads, I figured this character would be recognizable enough. Besides, I think “That would be great” was a meme once upon a time.

By the way, there's a very obscure Easter egg in the final panel: the graph on the bulletin board forms the shape of a winged ox, the symbol for St. Luke.

All it means is that I was drawing the cartoon on his feast day, October 18.

Moving from movies to television (and back again), we now time travel back to 2005.

Reacting to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto of marriage equality legislation, Star Trek actor George Takei gave an interview to Frontiers magazine of Los Angeles, publicly announcing that he is gay and in a long-term relationship with his now husband, Brad Altman. The interview also coincided with National Coming Out Day, but Takei had been out to friends and family for some time, and made no secret of his membership in various LGBTQ+ organizations.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2005

I took the opportunity to draw a silly cartoon of Takei as Sulu charging into a bunch of beefcake aliens. Lt. Hikaru Sulu didn't get much opportunity to battle aliens from Planet Thirst Trap — I don't think he beamed down to the planet where Apollo was cavorting around in a skimpy toga — although he did get to charge shirtless through the corridors of the Enterprise in search of a fencing partner.

2005 was before I started sending colorized cartoons for syndication, but for today's post, I thought it would be fun to color Ensign Expendable's shirt red.

Of course, then I had to colorize Kirk, Sulu, and Spock. And having done that, it didn't make sense for the aliens to be ghostly white... The hard part was knowing where to stop.

Eleven years later, John Cho portrayed Ensign Sulu in the third of the reboot series of Star Trek movies as openly gay, with a husband and daughter. While applauding writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung  for including LGBTQ+ characters in Star Trek Beyond, George Takei objected to his character getting a gay make-over.

The new post-Shatner movies having started out as a prequel to the original TV show, while involving the complete destruction of Spock's home planet despite it being visited in the original series, I drew another Trek cartoon.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2016

Rather than get one's mind utterly bogged down trying to make sense of Star Trek's multiverses and time travel and warp drives through hyperspace, wouldn't it be easier to accept that in the 23rd Century, humanoid citizens of the United Federation of Planets will not have a problem with a Star Fleet officer being bisexual, ambisexual, pansexual, or gender fluid?

Heck, even in Roddenberry's universe, hardly anyone batted an eye, visor, or antenna at interspecies couples.

In the real world, of course, dozens of stations would have jumped ship if Lt. Uhuru had gotten into a serious relationship with anyone else on the Enterprise bridge.

Moving on to October of 1995:

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., October 26, 1995

Charles Snollygoster III was my stock Republican congresscretin character back in the 1990's: a right-of-center conservative who went along with whatever party orthodoxy was at the moment. The nursing home provision in the budget bill on which Rep. Snollygoster was about to vote passed the House but was rejected in the Senate, both controlled by Republicans that year.

Snollygoster originally had a left-of-center Democrat counterpart, Luke Warmish, who was hesitant to support Bill Clinton's health care plan and got tossed out of office in the 1994 Republican sweep. I never had reason to bring Warmish back, except as one name among many in a cartoon about political attack ads.

I never drew any Snollygoster cartoons after the Clinton presidency; if I had, I believe Snollygoster would have been primaried in the Tea Party elections of 2010 or shortly thereafter.

Jumping back ten more years:

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., October, 1985

I've posted in this here blog almost every one of my cartoons from October of 1985, so here's this one again.

It's the first cartoon I drew for NorthCountry Journal, a monthly newspaper out of northern Wisconsin with an emphasis on environmental issues. The editor and publisher, Susie Isaksen, would send me the gist of the next issue’s editorial, and I would mail her a cartoon to fit it.

“Sorry, Charlie" was an advertising campaign for StarKist featuring a tuna longing to be caught and eaten, only to be rejected by the StarKist folks. We don't have tuna in Wisconsin lakes and rivers, but nobody had come up with a catchy, recognizable walleye character in 1985.

Recognizing my allusions was can be a problem from time to time: I based one NorthCountry Journal cartoon on the character Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, a hugely popular comic strip from the very first strip in November of 1985. Ms. Isaksen, however, had never seen it. To her, my cartoon made no sense.

In the past couple of years, I've drawn cartoons directly parodying a Monty Python sketch, a Saturday Night Live character, an Aesop fable, The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret, one of Sir David Low's most famous cartoons, and two or three internet memes. I guarantee you that not every person who has come across my cartoons has been familiar with each and every one of those references.

Such is the nature of our increasingly fractured culture these days. Once upon a time, it was commonplace for editorial cartoonists to quote Shakespeare, and expected every reader to catch the reference. Not so much any more. I'm not saying I would never base a cartoon on Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, but there aren't many readers nowadays for whom a reference to King Lear or Twelfth Night would instantly ring a bell.

And that's it for today's Graphical History Tour... until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow!

Speaking of Lynching

I was going to save this cartoon, published 100 years ago today, for Saturday's Graphical History Tour; but it doesn't quite fit tomorrow's theme. But it affords a nice segue from Clarence Thomas's "high-tech lynching" complaint in yesterday's cartoon to tomorrow's thrilling episode.

"Voice of the Negro" by Russell in New York Age, July 1, 1922

Rep. Leonidas C. Dyer was a Progressive Republican Congressman from St. Louis, Missouri. He first proposed his bill to make lynching a federal crime in 1918 in response to the race rioting in East St. Louis the previous year. Casualty estimates because of the attacks by White mobs vary wildly from 39 to 150 Black Americans; some 6,000 more were left homeless. Local police were reportedly ordered not to fire on the White rioters, allowing the violence to run unchecked for over a month.

Recognizing the fecklessness of local authorities, Dyer's bill called for the federal government “to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States.” But it failed to pass the Democratic-led House. Dyer reintroduced his bill in 1920 after the "Red Summer" of 1919, and again it failed.

Republicans took the House, Senate and Presidency in the elections of 1920, and Dyer's third try passed the House of Representatives on January 26, 1922, encouraging Black Americans' hopes. Southern Democrats, joined by Idaho Republican William Borah, successfully filibustered against the Dyer bill however, arguing that lynchings were an issue that should be left for states to deal with. They even excused lynching by claiming that the practice was a reasonable strategy to protect White women from supposed amorous advances by Colored Folk.

They were, in the words I put in Ginni Thomas's mouth yesterday, "okay with it."

Dyer would never see his bill become law. He was defeated for reelection in the Democratic sweep of 1932, and died in 1957. All the while, Southern Democrats repeatedly filibustered anti-lynching bills.

Republicans found a way "to win the lily white South," but not in a way Congressman Dyer or cartoonist Russell would have appreciated. Over the rest of the 20th Century, as the rest of the Democratic Party became increasingly committed to civil rights for Black Americans, the progeny of those Southern Democrats left the party: first as Dixiecrats, and eventually taking over the Republican Party.

Only after overcoming a threatened filibuster by Kentucky Republican Rand Paul would any federal anti-lynching legislation become law. President Joe Biden finally signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act on March 29, 2022.

Nearly a century after this cartoon was drawn.

Q Toon: I'll Get You, My Pretty

By now, you are probably well aware that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Idiocracy) last week responded to a colleague's transgender rights flag across the hall from her office by posting a sign reading "There are two genders: male and female. Respect the science."

If you really want to respect the science, you have to acknowledge that reality is not as simple as that. I'm no biologist; but someone who is attempted to explain the possible and existing complications in a Twitter thread a couple years ago. For example,

Turns out there is only ONE GENE on the Y chromosome that really matters to sex. It’s called the SRY gene. During human embryonic development the SRY protein turns on male-associated genes. Having an SRY gene makes you “genetically male”. But is this “biological sex”?

Sometimes that SRY gene pops off the Y chromosome and over to an X chromosome. Surprise! So now you’ve got an X with an SRY and a Y without an SRY. What does this mean?
A Y with no SRY means physically you’re female, chromosomally you’re male (XY) and genetically you’re female (no SRY). An X with an SRY means you’re physically male, chromsomally female (XX) and genetically male (SRY). But biological sex is simple! There must be another answer...

Most of what I know about biology comes from BBC nature programs, so genes and chromosomes are beyond what I could ever hope to explain. I also have no idea what it's like to feel that your gender doesn't match your genitalia. 

Heck, I couldn't tell you why I write and draw with my left hand yet shave and use silverware with my right. Maybe some L2R protein leapt from one chromosome to another somewhere along the line. It is what it is and thank God I don't need surgery or hormones to make me fit someone else's ideas of who or what I am.

So Biologist Tweeter Rebecca Helm can have the last word today.

[P]lease be kind, respect people’s right to tell you who they are, and remember that you don’t have all the answers. Again: biology is complicated. Kindness and respect don’t have to be.

Miss Characterization!

In the interest of dialogue, here's a note I received today about this week's cartoon from a reader named Ron in Lincoln, Nebraska:

Tomorrow, I'm going to pull up your cartoon on my laptop to start a discussion in my political science class on media bias. Discuss why today the media's approval rating is below even Congress. I'm not even a Republican and I find your cartoon a willful miss characterization, propaganda and simply astroturfing. It's going to be interesting to see how the students look at your bias creditability. Also, if your cartoon would have been just about Trump, it will be interesting to hear the students' reaction and opinions. My take, the reason the main stream media is going to be so vicious this year is because both you and I know that our candidate Hillary Clinton is extremely weak, and the polar opposite of her smooth husband. Because of Twitter, Facebook, and Internet news sources, I personally question if people are swayed by this type of mudslinging anymore. Today's college students are perceptive enough and understand that you can't put all the Republicans in one pot anymore. At least in my class they recognize the huge political and philosophical differences between Trump vs Carson, Paul vs Christie, Clinton vs Sanders, etc. Democrats better wake up to the digital era because voters, especially college age, are far more sophisticated and informed than they were just four years ago. Or, come November next year we're going to have another Kentucky where the Democrats ran an aggressive negative mudslinging campaign.   

Well, I'm hurt and offended. I've never astroturfed in my life! On the other hand, thank you for inducting me into the main stream media.

I wish you a lively discussion in class, Ron. I suspect that few, if any, of your students are old enough to remember what the Republican Party was like before it was taken over by Tea Partisans, Truthers, Birthers, and Libertarianarchists, but if you have any students from a blue state who have been as dismayed by what the Republican Party has become in the 2010s as I have, I hope they feel as free to speak up as your fellow Nebraskans.

Q Toon: Office Space Cadet

Campaigning at Drake University last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was asked whether it was right for someone to be fired from their job because he/she is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Paul responded by lamenting that LGBT people these days have the audacity to be open and honest about their families and relationships:

“I think, really, the things you do in your house, just leave those in your house and they wouldn’t have to be a part of the workplace, to tell you the truth.”

Given the extent to which today's employers think they have a right to know everything about every job applicant and employee (and certainly Mr. LibertariAyn Rand Paul wouldn't want to prohibit employers from requiring you to give them the password to your Facebook account), Paul certainly hasn't given any thought to what it would take to "leave those in your house."

Face it, Senator, LGBT citizens just want the same rights every other American has to surrender their privacy.

Paul has since attempted to walk back his comments by saying that, sure, it's wrong to fire someone for being LGBT, but it's even wronger for the fired person to take the ex-employer to court, and wrongest for the federal government to protect LGBT rights in the first place. He thinks these things ought to be left to state legislatures -- where some people want your boss to be able to require you to friend him on social media.

If Paul still sees nothing wrong with that, all I have to say is: Ophthalmologist, heal thyself!

Rand Paul Caricature

The 2016 campaign season is well underway now, so here's the first of my stand-alone caricatures of the presidential candidates:

Peacenik Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky

QToon: Tommy v. Tammy

National media attention this week has been on tonight's debate between President Barack Obama and Bain Capitalist Mitt Romney. Less attention gets paid to the congressional and senatorial debates around the country, by and large, although the Elizabeth Warren v. Scott Brown debate over the weekend did get some tongues wagging.

(As an aside: I don't buy the media spin that it was a gaffe when Warren started to answer a question about which Republican now in the Senate she could work with on major issues by citing Dick Lugar. Dick Lugar is "now in the Senate," as David Gregory phrased the question, even if Lugar won't be there once the next Congress is sworn in. And while a Democrat might be able to work with, say, Marco Rubio on immigration reform, or Rand Paul on limiting government surveillance of private citizens, on "major issues," the Republicans who will be calling the shots if Scott Brown is reelected have no interest whatsoever in working with any Democrats.)

Last Friday in the race to succeed retiring Senator Herb Kohl, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and Madison area Congressman Tammy Baldwin met in what was billed as a debate. It was no such thing; the format consisted them taking turns answering questions from four TV/radio people. They each got to give one answer to each question, and there was no opportunity for rebuttal or response to each other. The one time a questioner asked what he called a follow-up question, he changed the subject from abortion to marriage equality. Well, that's not a follow-up question; that's a question asked out of turn.

Having breezed through several debates in his races for governor, Thompson was at ease with the format, repeating his favorite talking points frequently but as if they were fresh new thoughts each time -- so that any given one of those sound bites could be used in news reports or his own campaign commercials. Baldwin faltered a bit more at the outset, with enough umms and uhhs that I began to wonder if she had only crammed for the event on the drive to the studio. But she addressed the questions directly, with detailed facts, and without harping on a select few talking points all night; and she seemed more comfortable by the end of the hour.

And, unlike Thompson, Baldwin did not come off as downright scornful of her opponent. It rang strange when, after Baldwin had given her answer to a late-in-the-debate question asking what could be done to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, Thompson blurted out with mock astonishment, "I'm absolutely surprised! That's the first time I haven't been blamed for something or George W. Bush!"

Thompson brought up his wife three times during the debate, although, curiously, he never said her name. Now, admittedly, that's fewer times than he said that he'd cut taxes 91 times, but one wonders what kind of point he was trying to make. There was nothing all evening that he said that he hadn't planned beforehand to say. I have to suspect that this was a "dog whistle" to the people whom he wanted to remind that Ms. Baldwin is one of those scary lesbians.

What else went on during the evening?

We learned that somehow, when nobody was looking, Tommy Thompson built a hospital in Afghanistan. The morning-after research finds that not all is well with that particular project:

A contractor's assessment of the hospital found that Afghan physicians at the hospital often did not have basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology and lacked skills needed to resuscitate women and infants. In addition, the hospital routinely lacked basic supplies, including surgical gloves and antibiotics.

More impressively, he also built Wisconsin. He even claimed to have brought Wisconsin unemployment down below 2%. (Politifact disagreed with an earlier claim of 2.1%.) But don't blame him for any of today's problems. He's not in Congress, he's a private sector.