Sep-Two-Ber

Good heavens! It's almost October and I haven't hauled out a bunch of my old September cartoons yet! 

in UW-Parkside Ranger, September 9, 1982

Ronald Reagan's legacy rests upon his promises to cut taxes, but he raised them, too. In fact, if one measures tax changes as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, his 1982 tax hike was the largest in modern U.S. history — no matter what Republican attack ads have tried to tell you about Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, or will tell you about Joe Biden.

The 1980s tax increases are less well-known, in part because they didn't involve increases in individual income tax rates. The biggest, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, increased revenue mainly by tightening up rules on depreciation, leasing, contract accounting and investment tax credits. The Social Security Amendments of 1983 sped up planned increases in payroll tax rates, among other things. The Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 changed rules on interest exclusions, income averaging and such. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 closed a few loopholes and extended a telephone excise tax. And the Tax Reform Act of 1986, while it lowered the top individual income tax rate to 28 percent from 50 percent, contained enough offsetting changes that, for the first two years after enactment, it raised tax revenue. 

And he still ended up leaving what was, in 1989, by far the biggest federal deficit in history.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, September 28, 1992

Reagan came to office promising to tackle the much tamer deficit left by Jimmy Carter; billionaire H. Ross Perot made the same promises in 1992 about George H.W. Bush's deficit. And, also like Reagan, he was maddeningly evasive about how he was going to accomplish it.

in The Biz (Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee), October, 2002

But enough about fiscal policy. Here's a full-color cartoon I drew for The Biz, a flashy little quarterly insert published in The Business Journal for a few years in the 'aughts. The Biz was printed on a brighter, magazine-quality grade of paper than the standard newsprint of its parent journal. 

My regular editorial cartoons for them illustrated the staff editorial and were black-and-white TIFF files. The Biz was intended to attract and engage younger readers, so the editors wanted color. They would call on me when they had an article that didn't lend itself to color photography.

I didn't have software with CMYK color capability when I was drawing cartoons for The Biz; the RGB .jpeg files I sent them came out a bit more drab in print. Black, the color missing from RGB formatting, came out just fine; but you can notice that the bright magenta in the young employee's shirt became a mild lavender in print, and his neon green mohawk is a tamer shade.

The colors you see here on your screen do not necessarily appear the same in print. Screen colors are produced by light; print colors are produced by ink. Since I started putting out color cartoons in CMYK format in 2012, I've only ever had one opportunity to see how my color cartoons look in print.

for Q Syndicate, September, 2012

This was not that cartoon.

My opportunity would come three years later, when was in Columbus, Ohio, for the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. But like this cartoon, the cartoon I found in Outlook involved persons of color, and it was a relief to see how nicely their skin color appeared in print.

Drawing for LGBTQ+ media, I try from time to time to depict more beefcake than I might if I were still drawing for the Business Journal. (I've suspected that my setting one Business Journal cartoon about exclusively male boardrooms in a sauna is what got that cartoon spiked.) Sure, I could have set this cartoon on the sidelines or in the management guy's office rather than the locker room. Brendan Ayanbadejo rocks a bow tie and three piece suit every bit as well as he does a towel.

But while I'm sure the editors and publishers subscribing to my cartoons are Very Serious Journalists, I also know that this may have gotten some of their readers to pause on the editorial page just a little bit before flipping on to the feature interview of Hollywood's Hunk of the Month.

✍

I'll be in Columbus again next month for another AAEC convention — only the second one of these that I will have attended. Sadly, Outlook ceased publication in 2017, so that 2015 cartoon will remain the only one letting me know whether I cut it as a colorist.

Cheap Shots with a Ten-Foot Poll

In last Saturday's Graphical History Tour, I shared a few cartoons and illustrations I drew 40 years ago in April of 1982. I had almost included one from April of 1992, but I decided to give that month a post of its own today.

I'll start out with one that drew a couple of complaints.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., April 8, 1992

Religious fundamentalists were upset that the Racine Health Department had begun offering free condoms in response to the AIDS crisis. For years, health advocates had been urgently recommending that men who had sex with men must use condoms every time. Although some in the gay community reacted with the same attitude we've seen in the past two years toward face masks, the absence of any treatment for HIV/AIDS in 1992 made a lot of sense to the rest.

Antigay puritans, however, argued that condoms are less than 100% effective — and that was without guys wearing their condoms down around their nuts instead of up where they're of any use. As far as the Just Keep Saying No crowd were concerned, total abstinence was the only prophylactic that was 100% effective and therefore the only one worth considering.

Just like how abstaining from breathing is 100% effective against transmission of COVID-19.

A frequent denizen of the Journal Times's Letters to the Editor section (he had just had another letter, "Condoms Cause AIDS," in the paper two days earlier) recognized my caricature of the gentleman leading the opposition to the health department program.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., April 17, 1992

There was another letter, very much like Mr. Brook's, sent in by parents of a friend of a friend. 

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., April 13, 1992

When I was a kid, I had occasionally subbed for their son delivering the Sunday morning Milwaukee Journal, with which there always seemed to be one supply problem or another. The worst was when the delivery truck had left 75 extra copies of the classified ad sections instead of 75 copies of the news sections. This was in the days when cell phones were the thing of science fiction, so I had to schlep a third of a mile back to my house to call the circulation department, which never answered their phone at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday.

At any rate, I don't owe the Pfeiffers any favors.

✍

Nationally, the major story for the month (prior to the Rodney King riots 30 years ago yesterday) was the presidential primary election season grinding to a close.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., April 6, 1992

On the Democratic side, the contest had come down to two former governors: Jerry Brown of California and Bill Clinton of Arkansas. President George Bush had clinched the Republican nomination and polled ahead of either Democrat, even though fascist-wing Pat Buchanan was doggedly refusing to do the Republican thing and fall in line behind him.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., April 9, 1992

By the time the Wisconsin primary was over — well, I hesitate to say Bill Clinton was the "favorite" for the nomination, because there wasn't a great deal of enthusiasm around the former Arkansas governor. He had issues with marital infidelity (an issue that had dashed Gary Hart's presidential ambitions four years earlier) and collegiate marijuana use (still a disqualifying consideration for a sizeable chunk of the voting-age population). He had mighty lame excuses for both.

Furthermore, the central issue of his campaign, aside from personal ambition, was a mild repudiation of the Democratic Party liberal ideals. Its "third way" smörgåsbord of fiscal conservatism and social progressivism was meant to appeal to middle-of-the-road moderates — that ambiguous slice of the American electorate who famously don't really get enthusiastic about politics.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., April 27, 1992

Then, just as the news media began wondering what they were supposed to report on with the party conventions still a couple months away, along came billionaire H. Ross Perot, dropping loud hints that he might perhaps consider thinking about mulling whether to make himself available for a third-party run for the presidency.

Hercule Perot

in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 27, 1992

I had something else planned for this week's Sucking Soundback Saturday post; but with the passing this week of H. Ross Perot, it can wait.

in Racine Journal Times,  May 26, 1992

Diminutive in stature, billionaire Texan Perot burst upon the political scene in 1992 as a larger-than-life character. Both major party presidential nominations were pretty well decided (although Jerry Brown hadn't quite surrendered to Bill Clinton on the Democratic side) when Perot announced his intention to mount an independent campaign for the general election.

He shot to the top of national polls — in part because Republicans were associated with one set of interests and Democrats were associated with another, but potential voters could project onto Perot whatever priorities appealed to them.

in UW-M Post, September 28, 1992

Then in July, he abruptly pulled out of the race, only to change his mind again in October.

in UW-M Post, October 12, 1992

The Perot campaign concentrated primarily on buying half-hour blocks of television prime time for him to display graphs and charts illustrating his signature issues against the national debt and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He and his running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, had qualified to appear in the presidential debates; he also held a few rallies.

in UW-M Post, October 26, 1992

Come November, Perot failed to carry any states, but he did come in second in Utah and Maine. Most of his voters were male, overwhelmingly white, and just over half self-identified as moderates. With nearly 19% of the popular vote, Perot was guaranteed to be a factor in 1996, and some Republicans blame him for denying Bush 41 a second term.

in UW-M Post, November 8, 1993

He was no ally of the Democrats, however, and emerged as a primary spokesman against the Clinton administration (until he was overshadowed by Newt Gingrich). He debated NAFTA with Al Gore on the Larry King Show, on which he famously declared, "Now, when you've got a seven-to-one wage differential between the United States and Mexico, you will hear the giant sucking sound!"

in Gaze Magazine (Mpls.), January 7, 1994

Perot founded his Reform Party in 1995 and bore its standard in the 1996 election. He won only 8% of the vote the second time around, but that was still enough to guarantee the Reform Party federal matching funds next time around. He opened his party's nomination to others in 2000 (Donald Trump was one of the candidates who put his name forward) and ended up forsaking the Reform Party and endorsing George W. Bush. Pat Buchanan would be the party's presidential nominee that year and go all America First as he plunged it into obscurity, while still managing to avenge Bush 41 by denying Al Gore Florida's electoral votes.

in UW-M Post, March 28, 1996

Given the hyperpartisanship that has been the hallmark of the 21st Century, I often wonder how different the political landscape would be today if Perot's Reform Party had not gone off the rails into ugly nativism, but had instead continued as a centrist alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. Imagine how things might be different if there were a Reform Party to welcome the likes of John McCain, Jeff Flake, Joe Manchin, and Mikie Sherrill.

But the truth is that Perot's forceful opposition to NAFTA opened his party's doors to the xenophobes who have lately been taking over the Republican party under Trump. Recent experience has shown that hard-core extremists outshout and outlast moderates and pragmatists, and if you don't think so, explain to me how Susan Collins is a leader rather than a follower.

The Reform Party certainly was not immune. If it were still around today, we might well have the Reform Party for Know-Nothings, the Republican Party for Corporate Theocrats, and the Democratic Party for Urban Sophisticates.

Gaze of Future Past

I'm only rewinding the calendar 25 years or so for this installment of Selfback Saturday. We're wrapping up LGBTQ Pride Month, which will serve to touch off this recollection of some cartoons I drew for the Minnesota LGBTQ press in 1993.

This is not one of them.

The previous summer, my dear friend Jeff Crump asked me to parody a syndicated editorial cartoon by Chris Britt that had appeared in the Fargo Forum July 25, 1992. The original had made fun of the LGBTQ community using various crude stereotypes; Jeff described to me the cartoon he wanted me to draw, replacing Britt's crude stereotypes with equally crude stereotypical features of Minnesota festival-goers.

My parody ran in Gaze Magazine, a predecessor to the current Lavender Magazine of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Running about 64 pages to the typical issue, it was printed on newsprint in black-and-white, save for some purple on the front and back cover.

I followed that cartoon up with a series of editorial cartoons. I didn't have a computer at the time, and I didn't have the relationship with Gaze's editors that I had had with other distant newspapers such as the NorthCountry Journal. Not being au courant with Minnesota LGBTQ news, my cartoons tended to deal with national topics.

The above cartoon from May of 1993 hints that maybe the country hasn't moved forward very much in the quarter century since. No, military brass were not being turned away from restaurants a la Sarah Huckabee Sanders; I concocted the scenario to spoof Pentagon worries that openly gay or lesbian personel in the military would be bad for troop morale.

Then as now, a five-to-four conservative majority on the Supreme Court caused no end of stress to liberals hoping to protect Civil Rights gains from the 1960s and 70s. What passed for the "liberal" wing of the Court were justices appointed by Nixon and Ford; the lone Justice to have been appointed by a Democratic president, "Whizzer" White, usually voted with the conservatives. He resigned on June 28, 1993, and would be replaced by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the fall.

The above cartoon from July referred to a ruling that merely showing that a business or government had demonstrated a pattern of racial or gender discrimination was not enough to prove a specific instance of discrimination. No, said the Court, the aggrieved party must uncover a written policy or some other public confession that he or she was discriminated against.

What else is familiar from 1993? Well, we had a billionaire who told us he had all the answers...

...(just not necessarily with him right now)...

...And a sex offender as president.

Is it progress, then, that 25 years later, we've got the same guy fulfilling both roles?

Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for gays in the military sparked many of the cartoons that I drew for Gaze, and for In Step and Q Syndicate after that. For all the dire warnings of the danger gays and lesbians would pose to troop morale, it's amazing how little troop morale is in the news ever since President Obama ended the policy.

We may yet discover how troop morale is affected when Donald Trump gets around to reversing that Obama action.

In spite of having next to no interaction with Gaze's editors, I did manage to send them at least one cartoon touching on a Minnesota topic. The spring of 1993 brought spectacular flooding of the Mississippi River and its upper tributaries. Traveling from Minneapolis to St. Peter, a bus I was taking to a convention was forced to take several detours to avoid flooded bridges that were no longer over the Minnesota River but under it.

We've come almost full circle from offensive stereotypes to offensive puns, so that will wrap it up for another thrilling episode of Selfback Saturday. Tune in again next Saturday to see what else I can find to distract myself from the Eve of DisTrumption!

All This And 1992

As my Scrunchieback Saturday review of the climax of the 1992 election campaigns in Wisconsin and the U.S. continues, things are looking very good for the Democratic Party candidates.

Only a year earlier, President George H.W. Bush seemed a shoo-in for reelection. His popularity immediately after defeating Saddam Hussein's army in Gulf War I was off the charts; leading Democrats had demurred from the race; and Republicans had developed a lock on the southern states. But as the war euphoria wore off, popular anxiety over the economy lingered well after the recession of 1990-91, and the Democrats had named two southerners to their ticket. With Texan H. Ross Perot also in the race, southerners had plenty of their own to choose from. Bush found himself running second — occasionally third — in the polls.

The Bush team attempted to contrast Bush's heroic record as a pilot in World War II with Bill Clinton's student deferment and protests against the Vietnam War, but found that U.S. voters were less than eager to re-litigate the Vietnam era.

Here in Wisconsin, Republican Senator Bob Kasten found himself running behind his Democratic challenger, Russ Feingold. Democrats in the state benefited from having fresh faces on the ballot in a year favorable to fresh faces, and Feingold's sunny, upbeat, populist campaign contrasted with the nasty one Kasten had survived against Ed Garvey six years before.

In a move that no Republican would dare make today, Kasten aired TV and radio ads likening his own positions to those of Democrats Bill Clinton and Wisconsin's other Senator, Herb Kohl, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. Coming from a Republican who had come into office with the Reagan sweep of 1980, the comparison just didn't ring true.

(Evie is Kasten's wife's name.)

Returning to the presidential race, this next cartoon comments on an argument President Bush made at a three-way debate on October 19. (With three candidates at each of the debates that month, the result was that the challengers were able to gang up on the incumbent.) I also tried to emulate Mr. Bush's speaking style.

As it turned out, President Clinton would enjoy having the power of a line item veto in 1996 and 1997, only for it to be ruled unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York.

Millionaire H. Ross Perot, meanwhile, conducted his campaign exclusively on television, guesting on Larry King Live, and purchasing air time for 30- and 60-minute infomercials as well as more traditional 30-second spots. He nevertheless maintained that he was the leader of a populist revolt against the two major parties.

Returning to the Wisconsin senatorial campaign: Russ Feingold aired several folksy ads of himself campaigning around the state, ending with him showing the back of his left hand to the camera as if it were a map of Wisconsin and pointing out wherever it was he planned to visit next. In one of these ads, he visited The Joke Shop in reliably Republican Waukesha County just west of Milwaukee. The ad included a brief exchange with store owner Jeffrey Campbell, who signed a release allowing the Feingold campaign to use him in the commercial, but later complained that the ad gave the false impression that Campbell, a Republican, supported Feingold.

The Kasten campaign responded with its own ad with the tag line, "If we can't trust Russ Feingold's ads, can we trust Russ Feingold on crime, welfare reform or taxes?"

Election Quadranscentennial

Return with us this Solaceback Saturday to that halcyon moment only a quarter century ago when America stood at a crossroads and elected not to go with the egotistical millionaire claiming to have all the answers.

These are some of my cartoons from October, 1992. With only a month to go before the election, the representatives of the two major party nominees had finally agreed to a debate schedule and formats, only to have H. Ross Perot, who had quit his independent campaign in the summer, announce that he was back in the race.

Wisconsin's First Congressional District was represented by eleven-term Democrat Les Aspin. 1992 would be the last election for that seat in which a Democratic victory was virtually assured. As Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Aspin had only token opposition from Janesville realtor Mark Neumann in 1992, and attacks on him by Republican interest groups and a national newspaper barely dented his popularity in southeast Wisconsin.

President Clinton would choose Aspin to be his Secretary of Defense in 1993, necessitating a special election. And while that election would be won by Democrat Peter Barca, it was only by 675 votes, and Barca would lose to Republican Mark Neumann in the rematch the following year. After 1996, the Democratic Party all but stopped contesting the seat entirely. Redistricting in 2001 and 2011, the decline of the auto industry, and widening exurban sprawl out of Chicago have made Wisconsin's CD1 safely Republican.

H. Ross Perot had originally entered the presidential race by promising on Larry King's CNN program to run if enough people committed to support his campaign. His withdrawal from the presidential race in July — making unsubstantiated claims that Republicans and the CIA had doctored photographs to portray his daughter as a lesbian and thus ruin her wedding — came as a stunning betrayal to those who had done the legwork to get his name on their state ballots, since polls had been showing him running ahead of both President George H.W. Bush and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

This next cartoon spoofs a Bush campaign ad which blurred Bill Clinton's face while accusing him of flip-flopping on the issues.

Tune in again next week for the exciting conclusion of Decision 92!

Merry Christmas to All, and to All According to Their Needs

For the heck of it, here's a cartoon I drew for the old Minneapolis Gaze Magazine for Christmas 1993, the day after all the presents have been delivered.