The Dog Days of Cartooning

Or, You Cannot Be Sirius.

1986

in Iconoplastic, Poughkeepsie NY, August 1986

Our Graphical History Tour today delves deep into the Bergetoons vaults for its carefully ripened and aged cartoonistry.

Iconoplastic ("The Magazine for the Self-Interested") was published by a college classmate of mine, Mark Hopkins. The photocopied zine was a way for a bunch of us who had attended St. Olaf together to share our artwork and creative writing with each other. Most of the cartoons I sent to Mark had appeared previously in the UW-Parkside Ranger, but this was one I had drawn expressly for Iconoplastic.

Every one of the five issues of Iconoplastic was dated August, 1986; this cartoon appeared in the second of them. There was supposed to be a sixth and final issue in June of 1987, but if it was ever printed, I never got to see it.

I had begun writing the date in the margin of my cartoons, so I know that I actually drew the above cartoon in August of 1986. I'm sure that it had to do with Ronald Reagan's Missile Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

1996

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Sept. 3, 1996

Why am I including this September cartoon in a collection of my August cartoons? Well, according to my margin notes, I drew it in August. Its topic was the 1996 Republican Party platform, a laundry list of religious right priorities, which the party's nominee, Sen. Bob Dole, told reporters he hadn't read.

The composition of this cartoon is a lot like one I had drawn two months earlier, but with a slightly different cast of Republicans standing behind Dole. Appearing between him and Newt Gingrich is probably the best caricature of Pat Buchanan that I ever produced, which is a pity, since I drew plenty of other cartoons in which he was the main focus rather than an extra in the background.

I had drawn the earlier cartoon for a summer semester issue of the Post that was never published, so I wasn't concerned that some reader might have thought they had seen this cartoon before. 

2006

for Q Syndicate, August 2006

There is nothing wrong with your set.

At some point during the sketching out of this cartoon, I realized that for the dialogue to read properly — for your eyes to read the straight line before the punch line — I either needed the second dialogue balloon to cover Mildred, or to flip the drawing horizontally 180 degrees.

I decided that rather than starting the whole cartoon over, I would just write the dialogue, my signature, and the date in mirror image, then flip the whole cartoon 180 degrees in Photoshop. Being left-handed, I ink my cartoons from right to left anyway, so as to avoid smearing wet ink with the side of my hand.

Here's how the published cartoon looked.

Visually, I think the composition of the cartoon worked better this way, too. The eye sees Luke and Brian first, then Mildred, and finally the two men talking behind Luke and Brian's back.

According to my marginalia, I drew this cartoon in August as a cartoon to be held in reserve, to be released sometime when I didn't send in a cartoon on deadline, so I can't be sure when it was actually published. I think my Better Half and I went on vacation that November, although that would have been an odd time for Mildred to be watering her garden and everyone else to be wearing shorts.

Unless they lived in Florida or southern California.

2016

for Q Syndicate, August 2016

Running for President in 2016, Donald Trump responded to the Pulse Night Club massacre by claiming that his anti-immigrant policies would protect LGBTQ+ Americans.

He didn't mention that the heavily Latino clientele of the Pulse Night Club was just the sort of people who would be targeted for exile to concentration camps in shithole countries by the Corrupt Trump Regime™'s ethnic cleansing program. 

And he apparently had no clue that the T stands for Transgender, people whose persecution would join that of Latinos and Moslems as Corrupt Trump Regime™ priorities.

That, and erecting monuments to himself all over Washington, D.C.

Drawing them discomfited by what I had Trump say in this cartoon, I gave a hefty benefit of the doubt to three of his ardent supporters: Kellyanne Conway, Rudy Giuliani, and his running mate, Mike Pence. That benefit proved entirely undeserved. The three proved ready, willing, and eager to debase themselves in service of Dear Leader's alternative facts, phantom election fraud, and commitment to not just one, but two Corinthians.

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.

August Assembly Required

Back when I was drawing cartoons for University of Wisconsin student newspapers, there would be one cartoon I drew every August in order to make the deadline of the first edition of the new fall semester.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Sept. 5, 1985

As it happens, the UW-Parkside Ranger did publish Volume 14, Issue 1 on August 29, 1985; but this cartoon I drew that August only made it into Volume 14, Issue 2. I don't remember whether I hadn't known there would be an August 29 issue, or whether there wasn't space for this cartoon. It was probably the former, though.

Anyway, there was a white minority government ruling South Africa in those days. Apartheid meant a strict segregation of the races; native Blacks were kept subjugated in impoverished villages, forbidden the vote, and generally treated like trespassers in their own land. In response, corporations and universities were responding to demands to divest from South African companies.

Amid violent suppression of Black South African protests against a new constitution, President Ronald Reagan resisted congressional and citizen calls to impose sanctions on the South African government. Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, Congress would pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 over Reagan's veto, banning new U.S. investment in South Africa and sales to the country's police and military, while cutting off South African imports.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Sept. 5, 1995

The UWM Post published three issues during the summer semester in those days; I would contribute cartoons to the summer editions in 1996.

As for this cartoon, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) was a prominent fiscal conservative, and the lead namesake of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act on 1985. The bill promised to balance the federal budget by 1990 by mandating across-the-board cuts in government programs if Congress failed to pass budgets beneath a prescribed deficit level.

It didn't work. The federal deficit would be eliminated, temporarily, under President Bill Clinton, but thanks to tax increases that were anathema to Gramm and the rest of his party — which were reversed as soon as the supposed deficit hawks were back in total charge of things.

The line in the third panel of my cartoon is a direct quote of his rationale for simultaneously cutting benefits for the poor and taxes for the rich — still Republican dogma to this day. They got their way in spades with the Big Abomnibus Budget Bill of 2025, which proved that Republicans never really cared about running up the deficit in the first place — in case anybody thought that George W. Bush's deficits were a fluke.

Gramm was running for president in the summer of 1995, and made a good showing in an Iowa straw poll in August; but his campaign didn't make it past the Iowa caucuses in January. The one positive thing I can say about him is that he was a hoot to draw.

✍

I've got one other cartoon from August, 1995 that I'd like to include here, because it never got published. I'll leave it up to you to decide why that was.

It's about a local news item, and drawn for the Racine Journal Times. The Ku Klux Klan announced plans to hold a rally on August 19 in front of the courthouse in Elkhorn, population then around 5,000, in Walworth County. In response, the county's Republican and Democratic parties issued a joint statement denouncing the Klan while affirming their First Amendment right "to have and declare" their beliefs. 

"We do not support the belief that hatred solves problems," their joint letter read. "We believe hate crimes and hate group activities negatively affect everyone in the community."

When the Walworth County board took up a resolution in support of "peaceful counteractions against hate groups," someone objected to the term "hate groups." So the board amended the resolution so that it lent its support to "peaceful counteractions against unhappy groups."

Unpublished, August, 1995

Lake Geneva Supervisor Dan Janowak explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Meg Jones that he suggested the alternative phrasing because the KKK "is not a hate program. It's more or less people that are unhappy with what's going on and they don't necessarily hate."

Board Chairman Lawrence Scharine weaseled, "'Hate' or 'unhappy,' it doesn't make much of a difference. The point is still there."

"Lied" or "weaseled," it doesn't make much of a difference. The point is still there.

The Klan rally took place as planned, separated from counter-protesters by "a small army of police in riot gear." The Journal Times didn't offer an estimate of the number of Klansmen involved (and Imperial spokesWizard David Neumann wouldn't say how many members the local Klan had), but implied that they were outnumbered by the 400-500 counter-protesters and curious on-lookers. "Klansmen spoke against affirmative action and hiring quotas," the JT''s Joseph Scolaro reported. "They continually called protesters 'scum' and decried homosexuals and minorities."

The only arrests made at the rally were of two anti-Klan protesters from Milwaukee, released on signature bonds.

Speaking of affirmative action...

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, August 5, 2005

As difficult as it may be to remember only twenty short years ago, a little corporate diversity was thought to be a good thing. I drew this cartoon to accompany a Business Journal editorial in favor of favoring "disadvantaged" businesses.

The idea was that businesses owned by racial minorities, women, and/or physically challenged persons should be given favorable consideration in bidding for government contracts; in practice, just having one or two such persons serving on the corporate board would qualify a company as labeled disadvantaged.

Under the present regime, of course, these companies would have to fire any racial minorities, women, and physically challenged persons on their corporate board just to have a glimmer of hope to compete with and out-bribe all-white, all-male, all-cis family and golfing partners of La Cosa di Trump.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2015

And finally today, marriage equality vs. religious liberty.

An Oliphant Gallery

If you happen to be in Washington D.C. looking for something worthwhile to do, "A Savage Art" The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant" premieres today at the DC/DOX'25 film festival. Bill Banowsky's documentary examines Oliphant's career through interviews with the cartoonist himself, his family, and colleagues. We are told that the documentary also features several of his cartoons.

Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca., Feb. 12, 1966

I can't be there (and if the AAEC convention organizers get permission to screen it at our convention in Baltimore in September, I'm afraid it appears unlikely that I'll be able to be there, either), so instead, today's Graphical History Tour highlights some of Oliphant's amazing work. 

A collection of my favorite Oliphant cartoons would require a sequel post or seven, so I have limited my choices to cartoons that do not include caricatures of actual persons. I would like to focus on the artistry that inspired so many cartoonists of my generation to mimic his style.

by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, March 3, 1970

Compare his 1966 depiction of Vietnam, atop this post, with this one four years later. The sarcasm is the same, but the tone is entirely different.

Not only is the setting much darker, the clean-shaven kids in the first cartoon have been replaced by grizzled, war-weary adults, even though the soldiers would be about the same age in either cartoon. (The best and brightest guys in the white shirts and skinny ties are gone entirely in the 1970 cartoon.)

by Pat Oliphant  in Denver Post, April 18, 1972

Here Oliphant demonstrates an adeptness in portraying the ravages of age on his cartoon character as a parallel with the ravages of war on her country. The forty years between France reclaiming Indochina from its (brief) Japanese occupation after World War II to North Vietnam's conquest of the South three years after Oliphant drew this cartoon wear heavily on her, successive liberators notwithstanding.

By Pat Oliphant in Washington Star, Nov. 6, 1980

Here’s a theme Oliphant revisited more than once, but this is his most impressive depiction of the American Electoral Machine as something massive, complex, and somewhat antiquated. Its engines, gears, fly wheels, pistons, and furnace occupy almost every square millimeter of the frame, save for the exhausted Uncle Sam dwarfed by it in the lower right corner. You can almost feel the heat and smell the coal, soot, and metal in the air.

By Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, March 22, 1982

Ronald Reagan, complaining about TV news reporting of the recession early in his presidency, griped, "Is it news that some fellow out in South Succotash who has just been laid off should be interviewed nationwide?" Pat Oliphant took that dismissive, elitist remark and created this excellent cartoon. 

Neatly divided by the railroad, we have dirty, downtrodden, and darkly satanic South Succotash on the wrong side of the tracks. Layoffs and welfare frauds (a longtime Republican byword) combine to outnumber the population. You wouldn't want to live there.

The White House sits perched high on the hills of North Succotash, home to a pleasant golf course, and lovely trees. Its 500 residents pull down millions yet somehow pay no taxes.

And it all fits in one 3-by-5 panel. No animated panorama. Not even color.

By Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, Feb. 24, 1983

Upwind of South Succotash, Oliphant’s Burfordville, named for one of Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency administrators (incidentally also the mother of a current Supreme Court Justice), cannot possibly exist in the real world. But Oliphant has rendered it in such rich detail that you would swear that it must be real. 

By Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, June 6, 1983

A horse cannot roll around on the ground convulsed with laughter, but if it could, this is exactly what it would look like.

Credit the portion of Oliphant's career living out West perhaps. He is a master at drawing — and sculpting — horses, and you can tell how much more loving care he puts into drawing horses than, say, cats. For years, I struggled to depict horses that appeared to be capable of motion; I credit Pat Oliphant as a reference point for every horse I have drawn successfully.

Now, I would have liked to include some more recent cartoons in this discussion, but I had a problem finding examples of superior draftsmanship that didn't include caricatures. So compare this cartoon from 2001...

by Pat Oliphant for Universal Press Syndicate, Feb. 6, 2001

...with a similarly themed cartoon from 1980:

by Pat Oliphant in Washington Star, Oct. 30, 1980

Both cartoons convey the wind and chill, dampness and dreariness outside their respective pawn shops. The earlier one, however, is meticulously rendered, whereas the later one appears rushed and cursory. The elevated perspective of "Lee Iacocca Sent Us" is visually arresting in a way that the Presidential Seal cartoon isn't.

Of course, there's no point in drawing the same cartoon twice, right?

Oliphant's eyesight has betrayed him these days, and there could be some of that showing up by 2001. His having rejected the use of duoshade since 1980 also makes a difference; yet I would point out that the South Succotash, Burfordville, and Western character cartoons are all drawn without it.

With that, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. 

Hold My Hand And I'll Take You There

Welcome aboard today's Graphical History Tour, offering a self-serving selection of my own cartoons from Mays in years ending in -five.

Since Grifter-in-Chief Donald Frequent Flyer Trump has just returned from the Arabian peninsula with his very own private pleasure dome in the sky, our first stop is deep in the heart of Texas, twenty years ago:

for Q Syndicate, May, 2005

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah visited President George W. Bush at his Crawford Ranch (in April, actually), and Americans were taken aback seeing our president holding the crown prince's hand as they walked to Casa de Dubya.

This was less than four years after 9/11, and it was well known that several of the terrorists who took over the planes were Saudi nationals. But the Bush administration had committed to overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and needed acquiescence of the other powers in the region.

It Abdullah, who reigned as the Saudi King from August, 2005 until his death in January of 2015, is an uncle of the present Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., May 2, 1985

Skipping back another twenty years: West Wing staffers regard meetings with foreign heads of state as an opportunity to burnish a president's stature as a world leader. But even carefully planned events can misfire.

President Ronald Reagan had come under criticism after a meeting of the G-7 in West Germany. To mark the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Chancellor Helmut Kohl persuaded Reagan aides to schedule a side trip to a cemetery in Bitburg where some 2,000 German soldiers were buried. Reagan's Deputy Chief of Staff made a preliminary visit to the cemetery in February, where he failed to notice 49 grave markers for members of the Waffen-SS.

Politicians and Jewish leaders in Europe and the U.S. urged Reagan to cancel the Bitburg trip; instead the White House added a stop at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Reagan's itinerary. A spokesman for children of Holocaust survivors, Menachem Rosensaft, spoke for those not mollified: “By entering Bitburg, [Reagan and Kohl] desecrate the memory of all those who were murdered by the SS, and of all those whom they pretended to commemorate here at Belsen.”

By the way, the "584" marker by my signature was my mistake. May is kind of late to still be writing the previous year on cartoons, checks, and other documents — especially since I didn't have old age as an excuse forty years ago.

Let's come forward to 1995 and some domestic issues:

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, May 4, 1995

Politicians have been telling us for more than thirty years that Medicare and Social Security are heading to hell in a handbasket. The Republican plan has been to get rid of them entirely without getting rid of them at all — basically by making the benefits from them smaller and smaller and more difficult to get.

At the same time, they stoke seniors' resentment of paying taxes for schools well after their own children have walked away with diplomas funded by senior citizens of earlier generations.

for bergetoons.blogspot.com, the internet, May, 2015

Jumping ahead to May of 2015, we return to the Lone Star State, where conspiracy fabulists were all hot and bothered about a U.S. Army training exercise called "Jade Helm" — which apparently enlisted Walmart basements in a secret government plot to overthrow the government of Texas. Accordingly, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor and report the nefarious activities of them darn Yankees.

At the same time, the Texas legislature passed a law preventing localities from regulating fracking, but what is really at issue here is this: Governor Abbott has had ten fracking years to get to the bottom of this "Jade Helm" conspiracy, most of them with the full backing and support of Republicans and Qanoncompoops in charge of the federal government.

And somehow he has failed to reveal anything about the Jade Helm Conspiracy.

Which can only mean one thing: Texas Governor Greg Abbott is himself part of the Jade Helm Conspiracy to overthrow the government of Texas!

More on this story as it continues failing to develop.

Space. The Final Vomitorium.

When I slap together these Graphical History Tours featuring my own cartoons, I usually dredge up one cartoon from each decade marker for the month. But when I started looking through the cartoons from April of 1985, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to write about.

So here are a whole bunch of them.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Apr. 25, 1985

With the current maladministration punishing any media that don't kowtow to Trumpspeak, here's a reminder of an earlier president's efforts to get reporters to echo the Official Line.

Unlike the Gulf of Mexico, which has bore that name for centuries, the Reagan administration's space-based "Strategic Defense Initiative" was brand new. But it was popularly called "Star Wars" after the film series. Reagan and spokesflack Larry Speakes were up against late-night comedians and editorial cartoonists. "Star Wars" was shorter than "Strategic Defense Initiative" and pithier than "SDI."

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 4, 1985

This cartoon starred local Congressman Les Aspin (D-WI) in a triple role. The inset copies a cartoon I had drawn for the Ranger the previous November, after Aspin had debated Republican challenger Pete Janssen on the Parkside campus, cruising on his way to an eighth term. First elected in 1970 as a critic of the Vietnam War who had served as a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam and a Pentagon systems analyst under Robert MacNamara.

With some serious seniority under his belt in 1985, the Defense Department gadfly was named Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and his more conservative positions soon came to the fore. I drew this cartoon after he voted in favor of Reagan's Star Wars program and the controversial MX missile system.

He would also support Reagan administration aid to the Contras fighting against the socialist government of Nicaragua, and later, George H.W. Bush's build-up to the Gulf War I. It got him deposed as Armed Services Committee Chair, but only briefly; it also got him named Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense.

In the meantime, his House position in those days got us Blue Angel fly-overs on Fourths of July hereabouts.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 11, 1985

Wharton School of Business D-student Donald Trump has been wreaking havoc recklessly imposing and revoking draconian tariffs, eviscerating your 401k and college savings fund. It's all part of his cunning plan to undo decades of global free trade.

Forty years ago, the postwar American dominance of world markets was suddenly challenged by Japan. In the 1960's, Americans considered Japanese products cheap and of inferior quality; but after the energy crisis of the 1970's made gas-guzzlers unfashionable, Japanese automakers produced fuel-efficient cars while U.S. automakers were slow to retool.

The U.S. complaint was that Japan was not letting American goods into their country while underselling our domestic manufacturers. (And then buying our domestic manufacturers.) At the end of March, both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of resolutions calling for retaliation against Japan unless it reduced its trade imbalance with the U.S. Over the course of the year, 300 protectionist bills were introduced in Congress by members of both political parties. 

So the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations hammered out free trade agreements wherever they could; and thus Coke was able to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. And domestic manufacturers moved all the jobs to Mexico, China, and wherever the median wage was a bushel of beans per month.

✍

I drew an alternating pair of comic strips for the Ranger that year. "Reductio and Absurdam" starred a man and a woman — I never established which was Reductio and which was Absurdam — who appeared in a variety of situations. They might be a couple, or co-workers, or teller and customer, as the gag warranted.

"Reductio and Absurdam" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., April 11, 1985

The only consistent conceit was that, except for any text, I drew the cartoon in charcoal. The problem with charcoal as opposed to india ink is that I couldn't go back and erase pencil marks showing around the charcoal. 

I called the other cartoon "Post Nasal Strip." That I drew with india ink, the medium I've relied on for most of my cartoons for not quite 60 years. 

"Post Nasal Strip" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 11, 1985

"Post Nasal Strip" tended to be more topical than "Reductio and Absurdam," here highlighting a quote by Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT) upon his return from a jaunt into outer space on the space shuttle Discovery. NASA had publicly mused about sending a artist, journalist, or teacher as the first civilian into space, but gave the seat to the Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies instead.

Garn had flown as a pilot with the U.S. Navy and the Utah National Guard before winning election to Congress in 1974. Designated "payload specialist" for the Discovery flight, he was the guinea pig for experiments on Space Adaptation Syndrome. So basically, he was there to throw up.

And so he did. And the rest is History.

"Jake Garn was sick, was pretty sick. I don't know whether we should tell stories like that. But anyway, Jake Garn, he has made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain, and so the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most guys will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high. And within the Astronaut Corps, he forever will be remembered by that."

Two side notes about my cartoon: I snuck in the Ranger Features Editor, Jim Niebuhr, as the fellow delivering the punch line in the final panel. And yes, having performed on a thrust stage, I know what a vomitorium really is.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., May 2, 1985

Last week's Graphical History Tour was all about the fall of South Vietnam, so I'll close with this cartoon drawn for its tenth anniversary.

The cartoon was supposed to accompany an article about the anniversary. The article didn't run, but the Ranger ran my cartoon anyway, just below the cartoon I had drawn for the editorial page.

You'll notice that there is one president missing from my cartoon. There was a war in Vietnam (this time with China) during Jimmy Carter during his presidency, but the U.S. stayed out of if. Nor did Carter commit American troops to a shooting war anywhere else, so there was no particular reason for me to include Carter in this cartoon.

Q Toon: Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

In case any of my publications were coming out this week, here’s my memorial tribute to President Jimmy Carter. 

There have actually been a few good ones from my colleagues whose work appears in daily newspapers — thoughtful pieces and, in some cases, apologies for misjudging him way back when it mattered.

You can count on one hand the editorial cartoonists publishing now who were getting paid to draw during Carter’s presidency. I was drawing for my college newspaper ( for exposure, before we called it that); my cartoons about Carter for the Manitou Messenger were few and far between, but generally critical.

But at least I was harsher on Teddy Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Those of us old enough to remember Carter’s presidency from start to finish also remember how the constant drumbeat of criticism directed at Carter resulted in eight years of Ronald Reagan. It enabled Reagan to cruise to reelection simply by making “Carter” into Walter Mondale’s first name.

This may be why some of us were too hesitant to criticize Joe Biden, who, like Carter, will probably be ranked by history in the middle of U.S. presidents (assuming he escapes the fate of James Buchanan). We saw Donald Trump, a mean-spirited liar, cheat, grifter, fascist, and overgrown brat— not in the Gen Alpha sense — plotting his comeback aided and abetted by his lickspittles in Congress, the courts, and right-wing media. (You too, Wall Street Journal.)

We did not want any responsibility for clearing the path for Trump, next to whom Ronald Reagan looks like FDR.

Well, maybe not FDR. LBJ, perhaps.

Carter had to cope with suddenly rising energy prices, inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis— that last one worsened by a rescue helicopter crash and Reagan’s lackeys colluding with Iran to keep the crisis going through the 1980 election. 

On the positive side of the ledger, he negotiated a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that still stands, strove to run an administration that looked like America, and set policies which lessened our reliance on petrocracies that resented us then and despise us still. And even his harshest critics concede that his post-presidency was nothing short of exemplary.

May angels sing him to his well-deserved rest.

Try to Remember

Some content in today's Graphical History Tour may be unsuitable for younger and more sensitive viewers. Reader discretion is advised.

University of Wisconsin-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Sept. 27, 1984

I had originally intended to start today's GHT with a different cartoon; but the passing this week of James Earl Jones behooved me to rerun this one instead. Jones played many roles in which he got to act with his face, but for most people of a certain generation, he will always be remembered as the voice of Darth Vader.

(Another generation will always remember him as the voice of Mufasa. And news junkies who never watch movies will always remember him as the voice of "This — is CNN.")

By the way, for those of you in the Mufasa generation, the lady winning tic-tac-toe in my cartoon was Anne Gorsuch Burford, who served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during Ronald Reagan's first term as President. In that post, she slashed the EPA's budget by 22%, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and put industry insiders in charge of regulating their own businesses. She resigned in 1983 over allegations of illegally withholding EPA Superfund disbursements to benefit a Republican running for office in California.

Her son now sits on the Supreme Court.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Sept. 26, 1994

Jumping ahead ten Septembers, this cartoon addresses the damage to our cities promoted by people whose flight to the suburbs was facilitated by the advent of freeways in the 1950's and '60's. Having fled to those suburbs, they keep wanting more freeways bulldozed through the cities, the easier to drive back and forth. Or through.

By 1994, the drain from cities like Milwaukee was exacerbated by businesses moving their headquarters out to those suburbs, attracted by "Tax Incremental Financing" subsidies and encouraged by Republicans like Governor Tommy Thompson (holding the clipboard in my cartoon). There they could build bright shiny buildings and expansive parking lots far from the low-income workers who couldn't afford to live near or travel to them.

That's an issue that has been playing out practically in my back yard lately. The city of Racine and the village of Mount Pleasant cooperated in attracting first Foxconn's Potemkin factory and now a Microsoft data center to several square miles of mostly farmland in the village. As part of the deal between the two municipalities, Racine extended large-capacity fresh water and sewage lines to the plants, either one of which uses or will require millions of gallons of water every day. 

Foxconn turned out to have vastly overpromised how many jobs it would provide for the community. Microsoft anticipates hiring even fewer employees: about 300, a great many of whom will be involved in security, lawn care, janitorial work, and HVAC. 

So what is Racine getting out of the deal? The plants are over eight miles from the city, and over three miles from the nearest bus stops: at the Amtrak station and the Department of Motor Vehicles. (Two more things inconveniently located for the urban poor and lower middle class.)

Sept., 2004

Anyone who remembers the George W. Bush administration is probably okay with that former president taking a pass on joining the other former presidents who have endorsed the election of Kamala Harris.

Somewhere along the line, I taped a Q Syndicate credit to the original of this cartoon, but I doubt that I drew it for them. It has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ issues, after all, and I almost always draw a frame around their cartoons. I probably put the credit line on there in case I wanted to send it to Best Cartoons of the Year or submit it for an award consideration. 

The cartoon wasn't in color, either. But I figured that as long as I was going to scan it again for this blog post, wottheheckanwhynot.

Speaking of the moon: I promised unsuitable content; and since that's why some of you are still reading, here it comes.

for Q Syndicate, September, 2014

I definitely drew this cartoon for syndication. I don't recall how many client papers I had at that time, but I took the gamble that only a few of them would shy away from printing a cartoon with this much lunar display.

Decades before Michael Sam's very brief career as the first out gay player in the NFL, female sports reporters had won the right to cover the postgame in the teams' locker rooms. Perhaps the first was New York Times reporter Robin Herman, after Major League Baseball's 1975 All-Star game.

Of course, some of the players responded exactly as you would expect pro athletes to. As Herman interviewed player Denis Potvin, another player yanked Potvin’s towel off, leaving him completely exposed.
 Still, Herman said later “My post-locker room quotations showed patience and good cheer. I was 23-years old and fairly new to my job, and not yet beaten down by the abuse and slamming of doors that would follow this one-time opening.” Herman went on to say that wasn’t the end of the story. Owners and coaches in other cities continued to block locker room access to women, sometimes physically, sometimes using police. But once the barrier was broken, things started to change for women in sports.

Ashley Fox wrote for ESPN expressing her gratitude to her forebears who fought for access to those hot, stinky, and cramped locker rooms so that they could get the same stories that her male colleagues had covered for generations.

She shared one early experience:

One of my first days in [the Philadelphia Eagles locker room], a rookie offensive lineman walked in with a few teammates, saw me and said: "Bet you like seeing all of these swinging dicks in here, don't you?"

The guys laughed. I didn't. I had a choice: Say something, or say nothing.

The lockers to the right nearest me belonged to the defensive backs, including Brian Dawkins, Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor, all established players. The lockers to the left nearest me belonged to the quarterbacks, including Donovan McNabb and A.J. Feeley.

In a raised voice, I said to the lineman: "If I wanted to see swinging dicks, I'd still be covering the Sixers."

Boom.

I wasn't trying to be crude. I was trying to stand my ground. The comment prompted laughter that was louder and no longer directed at me. Players were laughing at the lineman. Vincent stood up, walked over and told the rookie that he got what he deserved, that I was welcome in the locker room and that I was to be treated with respect and dignity. And that, mercifully, was that.

Which is not to say that every athlete is hunky-dory with reporters of the opposite sex in their locker rooms, but it's part of the game now. If you're man enough to take the field, you have to be man enough not to shriek when Michele Tafoya asks you what happened out there.

There is reason to expect that players can have the same professional attitude when asked to share a locker room with an LGBTQ+ colleague. Michael Sam faced some resistance, sure; but I haven't heard a disparaging word from any of Carl Nassib's former teammates.

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But what about women's sports? The WNBA would lose many of its star players if the straight ones could not abide sharing locker rooms with LGBTQ+ athletes; but as of April, 2023, the league does not allow reporters of any gender into their locker rooms.

So when the WNBA announced a change in the media policies on Monday, that locker rooms would be closed, and that players would be made available outside by request in addition to postgame press conferences, I had a visceral, emotional reaction. That a women’s league would deny access to a place that had been for so long a way to segregate women reporters, to single them out, to hold them back, feels incongruous. It also feels inevitable...

But closing the door to the locker room closes the door on things that can’t be replaced by a hallway interview. It closes the door on relationship-building, the ability to capture the color of pregame preparations or a postgame celebration. The ability to experience their collective joy or disappointment or frustration. The ability to experience their experience and then share it. —Michele Smith

August Four the People

You've been waiting all month to find out what cartoons I drew in Augusts past, I can tell. So let's rummage around in the old storage bin and see what we can find, shall we?

Back in May, I posted a cartoon I'd posted of Ronald Reagan preparing to tell jokes at the funeral of U.S.-Soviet détente. When I had selected it for that week's Graphical History Tour, I thought I had drawn it after Reagan's "We begin the bombing in five minutes" joke. Looking the quotation up, however, I found that I must have drawn the cartoon about something else he said.

August, 1984

This was the cartoon I drew shortly after the actual bombing joke.

In case you're not familiar with the story, Reagan was in the habit of making pretend announcements during the sound checks before his television and radio speeches. The sound checks were not confined to the studio, but went out to all the stations that would carry the speech live. Usually, the media overlooked those flippant pseudo-announcements except for the technicians checking for feedback, hiss, and warble.

This time, ears perked up at Reagan's joke: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." In spite of a standing agreement with the media that Reagan's mic check jests would be their little secret, this one leaked out, was reported by Gannett newspapers, and became world news.

The Soviet government (should I have explained that this was when Constantin Chernenko was spending the last few months in his mortal coil being President of the U.S.S.R.?) was officially mum about the incident, but their state media condemned Reagan's joke as "unprecedently hostile," and proof that he wasn't interested in improving U.S.-Russia relations. Some unknown Soviet officer in Vladivostok returned the joke by sending a coded message that "We now embark on military action against the U.S. forces," knowing the message would be intercepted by U.S. intelligence. U.S. and Japanese militaries were briefly on high alert, but afterward, everybody had a good laugh over it.

Just kidding.

I still haven't figured out what incident prompted my earlier cartoon, but it was the better one; and that's why it was the one printed in the first UW-Parkside Ranger of the fall semester rather than this one.

Any cartoon that depicts bullets flying at a president of the United States (or any other real person for that matter) runs the risk of becoming in bad taste if that person does in fact get shot. Which, as you surely know, Ronald Reagan had been three months into his first term. Even though Reagan was known for his roles in B-grade western movies, Americans don't like watching their leaders get shot at.

Could've been why no TV network would broadcast Reagan's film The Killers (1964) while he was president. 

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., August 22, 1994

In June of 1994, I confidently drew a cartoon assuming that the Republican Party would have a tough time finding a candidate to run against my district's Democratic Congressman, Peter Barca. Barca had won a special election one year earlier to succeed eleven-term Rep. Les Aspin after the latter was appointed Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Defense.

As it turned out, the 1994 election would see a rematch between Kenoshan Barca and Mark Neumann, a real estate developer from Janesville. And Neumann would coast to victory in the Gingrich-led Republican "Contract with America" wave in November, putting an end to the longest stretch of having Democrats in the First Congressional District seat.

Neumann was (and presumably still is) a hard-line right-winger, solidly anti-abortion and against President Bill Clinton's attempt to reform the U.S. health care system. The GOP talking point against the Clinton reforms was that Americans would be denied the right to make their own health care choices — ignoring that their Contract with America also called for denying women the right to make their own reproductive health care choices.

Which was a fine and dandy campaign slogan for Republicans until their Supreme Court justices granted their wish and Republicans had to deal with women upset by government control over their uteri.

Wisconsin's First Congressional District has had two Congressmen, both Republicans, since Mark Neumann's failed run for Russ Feingold's Senate seat in 1998. In the meantime, Peter Barca served as Bill Clinton's Midwest Regional Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, then went back to representing Kenosha in the Madison legislature, and later headed the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.

And now, thirty years later, he's running for his old congressional seat against incumbent Republican Bryan Steil. My better half and I talked with him at an open-air party in downtown Racine last month; he liked my Kamala Harris For The People button.

I neglected to mention that I had been drawing cartoons about him for the Journal Times thirty years earlier.

Hearkening back to 2004, here are a couple of people you did not see at the Republican National Convention last month:

for Q Syndicate, August, 2004

Come to think of it, I don't think we saw any former Republican nominees for President or Vice President on the Republican National Convention dais except for the current ones. Although to be fair, if Al Gore, John Kerry, or John Edwards spoke at the DNC this week, I missed it.

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I couldn't think of a good segue to any of the cartoons I drew in August of 2014, so here's some eye candy.

for Q Syndicate, August 2014

"That's So Gay" was the motto of the 2014 Gay Games, held in Akron and Cleveland, Ohio, that August.

By the way, given the kerfuffle over two female Olympians who had aspersions cast upon their gender, you might be interested to know how the Gay Games address transgender and non-binary-identifying athletes.

The Sydney Gay Games in 2002 defined gender by social identity: In the game of netball at those Games, the solution was for women’s, men’s, mixed and transgender competitions, with negotiations of rules and membership according to the gender that participants lived. These measures included removing the burden of proof from athletes to provide documentation, and instead assuming that all are genuine in their gender category selection. This was the most inclusive gender policy developed at that time, and it remains in place today.

The Gay Games were scheduled to be held in Hong Kong in 2022. They were pushed back a year due to COVID-19. New Chinese laws criminalizing "effeminate men," as well as concerns by Taiwanese athletes that they risked arrest, plus pandemic-related travel restrictions, led to a decision to split the 2023 games between Hong Kong and Guadalajara, Mexico. 

If you missed (or miss) the Paris Olympic Games this summer, the Gay Games in Valencia, Spain, are just two years away.

 

Toon: Commitment Issues

My cartoon today is a parody of Kristen Welker's interview with GOP vice presidential hopeful Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota. And some dozen or so other attempts by mainstream media to get veep wannabes to call the election already. It's a kabuki show put on by mainstream media and Trumplican politicians now that acceptance of election results is anathema to the leader of their party.

Once upon a time not so very long ago, the interviewer's question would have been a simple, "Yes, of course," spun around to "we expect to win" and all the policy reasons why.

But Trump expected to lose in 2016, which he could never square with having grown up believing that he deserves always to win. So he started blaming his anticipated loss on elections being unfair. He has continued that ever since, and considers it treasonous if anyone suggests that elections might be fair.

It's not a stretch for Republicans to accept the Trumpian position. The GOP has long accused Democrats of election shenanigans for letting urban people of color vote without having to pass a citizenship test. (Yes, that was the Dixiecrat tactic for decades after the Civil War. But those Dixiecrats have been Republicans ever since Reagan was president.)

Ironically, it's Republicans who have the baked-in advantage in presidential elections. Since the founding of the Republican Party, its candidate has been the winner four times in spite of coming in second in the popular vote. In that time, the Democrats' candidate never has. A majority of Americans now live in urban areas, but the electoral college skews rural.

But that's not good enough for the Trumplicans any more. Mr. Trump has demanded that only paper ballots cast in person at a polling place between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on the first Tuesday in November after the first day of November be counted, and that anybody still waiting in line at 8:00 p.m. be sent home so that election workers can report their complete tally by the time the TV news reports its exit polling. Or 8:05, whichever comes first.