This Week's Sneak Peek

Is anyone else out there experiencing the same sort of hurdles I've been running into when trying to upload stuff to web-based apps?

I still find that I can only upload cartoons to this Blogger site if I sign in on in incognito mode. In regular mode, I can sign in, type text, check for comments and stats, etc. Trying to upload any kind of file, however, I get a new window asking me to sign in to Google again, then the upload window — but nothing uploads. It doesn't matter whether I use the Chrome browser or the Edge browser.

In incognito mode, instead of the new sign-in window, I get a window asking permission to authorize cookies, and a second window asking me to be more specific. Then the upload window opens, and it has worked so far.

I haven't tried signing in on a different computer except in incognito mode (I don't want a strange computer saving my log-in info). I could see whether I could upload files here from my phone, except that I don't scan cartoons to it.

Blogger isn't the only site where I'm encountering this. At work, where I use Stripe, Wordpress, and a congregational management program called IconCMO, I've had to start using each one in incognito mode for full functionality. (In the case of Stripe, for any functionality at all.) There I have Foxfire and Safari browsers on an Apple IOS; I have had the same experience using Wordpress and IconCMO from home. 

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In case you've been jonesing for editorial cartoons from 1924 these last couple of weeks, D.D. Degg at Daily Cartoonist highlighted a series of cartoons printed in the San Francisco Bulletin. They called it a "Symposium by American Cartoonists," and it featured a few editorial cartoonists I've included in some of my Saturday Graphical History Tours — William Hanny of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Grover Page of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and Ted Brown of the Chicago Daily News — plus some others who have not yet joined the tour.

The Bulletin apparently intended for the feature to continue, but dropped it after the second week.

Perhaps they hadn't known when to expect their regular editorial page cartoonist, Douglas Rodger, back from vacation or sick leave?

In Memory of Dianne Feinstein

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) passed away last weekend at the age of 90.

Hillary Rodham Clinton began her remembrance of Feinstein with this anecdote:

One day, on the floor of the Senate in 1993, Idaho Republican Larry Craig condescended to Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic sponsor of a proposed ban on assault weapons. “The gentle lady from California needs to become a little bit more familiar with firearms and their deadly characteristics,” he said. Craig, a board member of the National Rifle Association, had picked the wrong target.

“I am quite familiar with firearms,” Dianne responded, with fire in her eyes. “I became mayor as a product of assassination. I found my assassinated colleague and put a finger through a bullet hole trying to get a pulse. I was trained in the shooting of a firearm when I had terrorist attacks, with a bomb in my house, when my husband was dying, when I had windows shot out. Senator, I know something about what firearms can do.”

Feinstein's bill would be passed by Congress and signed into law by Hillary's husband — unfortunately, with a sunset provision that allowed it to expire during the George W. Bush administration, facilitating horrible nationwide carnage in the decades since.

Feinstein was never quite as liberal as some people wanted her to be. Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On recounts early in her tenure as Mayor of San Francisco, she alienated many in the LGBTQ+ community (we only used half of that acronym back then) by not supporting municipal employee benefits for same-sex couples. In return, as AIDS began spreading like wildfire among gay men, that factored in the fierce resistance she faced against shutting down the city's bathhouses to address the crisis.

More recently, liberal Democrats excoriated her for not asking Brett Kavanaugh about allegations of  against him that she knew about when he appeared before the Senate confirmation panel to be elevated to the Supreme Court. So did Republicans, for completely different reasons, once those allegations were made public.

And of course, there were all the calls from her fellow Democrats for her to step down from her seat this year, given her health and perceptions of mental deterioration. Clearly, however, she had every intention of serving out the remaining months of her sixth term in the Senate. Well, old age ain't for sissies.

(On the topic of age: It would have been easier to have caricatured Feinstein as she appeared recently. I intentionally chose to make a caricature of her as she appeared decades ago.)

Whatever anyone thinks about her mayoral record, she has been an ally on LGBTQ+ and women's issues ever since being elected to the Senate in the "Year of the Woman" 31 years ago. On "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the "Defense of Marriage Act," women's reproductive health rights, and trans rights, her record has been virtually impeccable.

And now she has been succeeded by an out lesbian woman, Laphonza Butler, President of Emily's List and formerly an advisor to Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 You may be able to guess where I'm going with this one.

Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories

It will not come as a surprise to you, dear reader, as it did to newspaper readers across the United States, that President Warren Gamaliel Harding died on August 2, 1923 in San Francisco, California, while on an ambitious speaking tour.

Unsigned (O.C. Chopin?) in San Francisco Examiner, August 3, 1923

Editorial cartoonists around the country (but not all of them) rushed to their drawing boards in an effort to express the nation's grief. 

Your humble blogger has observed before that the cartoon character of Miss Columbia used to be the one drawn to mark a time of mourning, notably after the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. This was still the case in 1923...

"A Nation Bowed in Grief," unsigned, in San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1923

"One in Sorrow and Faith" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, 1923

No caption, by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, August 3, 1923

...but upon the death of President Harding, Uncle Sam appeared in several cartoonists' work.

No caption, by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, August 4, 1923

"One Touch of Sorrow Makes Us Kin" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 5, 1923

"On the shores of the Pacific," Unsigned (McCutcheon?) in Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1923

"He Has Found Eternal Peace" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 4, 1923

No caption, by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, August 4, 1923

"For Grief Is Proud and Makes His Owner Stoop" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, August 4, 1923

Uncle Sam had also appeared to pay his respects upon the death of Teddy Roosevelt in 1919, the distinction at that time being that Roosevelt was no longer in office, and the most memorable cartoons centered on the larger-than-life former president himself. No cartoon in this collection rivals "Ding" Darling's "The Long, Long Trail" eulogizing Roosevelt.

Harold Wahl, eschewing any national symbol, may have been trying to make a more universal statement. Or perhaps he just a bit more macabre than everybody else.

"In Death as in Life" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, August 4, 1923

I mentioned that not all cartoonists drew eulogy cartoons. Syndicated ones such as Dorman Smith would have found little market for a weepy cartoon that might not be published by some newspapers until several days later. Others, such as the Louisville Courier Journal's Grover Page and Daniel Fitzpatrick the St. Louis Post Dispatch simply decided to let Harding's death pass unremarked for their own reasons.

And then there is the approach of Frank Spangler, who packed a reference to Harding's passing (an arm band, and a train carrying the body of our 30th president) into a cartoon about a French general coming to town to Montgomery to honor local war veterans.

"Arms and the Men" by Frank "Spang" Spangler in Montgomery Advertiser, August 4, 1923

If Miss Columbia still held onto her job as Mourner-In-Chief, it was now Uncle Sam who greeted the new chief executive.

"The New Helmsman" by Oscar C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, August 6, 1923

"Carrying On" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, August 4, 1923

"Let Us Work Together" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, August 6, 1923

"To New Shoulders" by Lute Pease in Newark Daily News, August, 1923

Fasces would fall out of fashion as a symbol of "responsibility of great power" after the outbreak of World War II, although you will still find them in some of our most famous presidential monuments.

McCutcheon in Chicago Sunday Tribune, August 5, 1923

"May He Choose Well His Course" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1923

Okay, perhaps not quite everybody got the Uncle Sam memo.

Meanwhile, August 10 was declared the official day of mourning, but editorial cartoonists had to do what editorial cartoonists do in the days following the transition to a new administration.

"His Last Message..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, August 5, 1923

I imagine that Darling may have had this cartoon on his drawing board before news came of Harding's death, and that he decided to tweak the caption and send it along to his publishers anyway. Harding may have appreciated leaving the World Court as his lasting legacy — or bringing peace to the Pacific as cited in the unsigned Chicago Tribune cartoon above — but history has decided otherwise.

Kind of like remembering Richard Nixon for creating the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Close the Fatal Road" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 5, 1923

Nelson Harding's call to stop presidents from national speaking tours wouldn't get much traction, even though the new president had a reputation for not speaking out much.

"Nary a Word" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, August, 1923

Indeed, I don't believe I have run across a single cartoon about Coolidge by anyone between the 1920 Republican national convention and August 4, 1923.

So Where Was I?

In last Saturday's cavalcade of cartoons about kiddies in May 1922, I left off with this one, which I have assumed in spite of the lack of a signature, to be the work of Charles H. "Bill" Sykes, the daily editorial cartoonist at the Philadelphia Evening Ledger.

"Whoa, Bill" by Charles "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, May 24, 1922

So we start off today's thrilling episode with a discussion of whether or not the Harding administration would recognize the communist government of Russia five years after the Revolution. (Whether the Russian Civil War was over yet depends whom you ask.)

While it was a minority opinion, Senator William Borah (R-ID) wasn't the only one urging the U.S. to recognize Lenin's government in Moscow. Cartoonists who saw commercial opportunity in trade with Russia even before its trade agreement with Germany hammered out at Rapallo included Winsor McCay (which set him apart from the hardline isolationists at Hearst's Star Publishing) plus a smattering of leftists such as Callaghan.

"What If It Isn't a 'Vacuum'" by Michael Callaghan in Minneapolis Daily Star, May 5, 1922 

The Harding administration line, however, was that Soviet Russia was, in Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes's words in a letter to Samuel Gompers, "an economic vacuum."

"He'll Have to Quiet Down" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, May 19, 1922

Most Americans wanted nothing to do with communists, anarchists, or any of the other hot-headed bombers of recent memory, economic vacuum or not. As illustrated by Callaghan, however, Europeans had other considerations to weigh.

"The End of the Rainbow" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, by May 23, 1922

Prime Minister David Lloyd George was very interested in reintegrating Russia into the European community. Four commissions were set up at Genoa to figure out how to lend Russia money to aid its recovery from the German invasion, the communist revolution, and its Civil War.

But Russia was deep in debt to other European countries, primarily France and Belgium, which demanded restitution for properties confiscated by the Bolsheviks. Ted Brown's cartoon sums up the communiqué spelling out the Genoa Convention's terms for Russian aid, which was rejected by Lenin's government as insulting and "stupid."

"Adding Fuel to the Fire" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 1922

Further complicating matters, the issue of Russian oil loomed as large in European consideration then as it has in light of Putin's invasion of Ukraine 100 years later. 

"Traces of Oil" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 18, 1922

I get tired of editorial cartoons that portray some issue as a question mark; it's like journalism's hackneyed cliché (is there any other kind?) of concluding, "Time will tell." But I'll give Nelson Harding's cartoon a pass, because the oil slick reference works better than most.

"The Spree Befire the Headache" by Winsor McCay for Star Company, ca. May 13, 1922

The Genoa Conference continued to unravel. At France's insistence, Germany was booted out of the Genoa negotiations on account of Germany's separate peace deal with Russia. By mid-May, the French delegates announced, seconded by Poland and Romania, that there was no point in continuing negotiations at all.

"Not to Be Entrapped Again" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. May 15, 1922

So France withdrew from the conference, followed by Belgium. The conference collapsed on May 19.

And the stage was set for the next big war.

Kid Stuff

I have no particular reason for the subject of today's Graphical History Tour other than I happened to find a few editorial cartoons from May, 1922, that featured children. That, and it has been a terribly serious May of 2022, and I'm just not in the mood for anything terribly serious on a Saturday. 

"No Place to Go" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, May 5, 1922

Once upon a time, if you were a city kid with time to go play outside, your only real option might be to play in the street. (I've noted before the phenomenon of fenced properties to keep the children out of the yard.) But the streets, once public spaces, had been taken over as the exclusive property of the automobile; and street baseball and Great Gatsby driving did not mix well.

Apparently, Pierre Charles l'Enfant had not provided for playgrounds when he designed Washington DC. By 1907, The need for spaces for children to play was recognized by President Theodore Roosevelt:

"City streets are unsatisfactory playgrounds for children because of the danger, because most good games are against the law, because they are too hot in summer, and because in crowded sections of the city they are apt to be schools of crime. Neither do small back yards nor ornamental grass plots meet the needs of any but the very small children. Older children who would play vigorous games must have places especially set aside for them; and, since play is a fundamental need, playgrounds should be provided for every child as much as schools. This means that they must be distributed over the cities in such a way as to be within walking distance of every boy and girl, as most children can not afford to pay carfare."

Yet, here we were, 15 years later, and Clifford Berryman still accused the City Fathers of ignoring the children.

"According to Gamaliel" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, May 7, 1922

Roy James accuses President Harding of ignoring the children on an entirely different issue. (And proves that this misinterpretation of Matthew 19:14 is older than any cartoonist alive today. At least he recognized the need to add punctuation to change the meaning.)

Wives and children of prisoners convicted of wartime offenses — primarily pacifists, Wobblies, and socialists arrested under the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 — picketed the White House, Senate, and Justice Department in May, 2022. The children "crusaders," as they were called, carried signs reading "I never saw my daddy," "Free all political prisoners," and "Is free speech a crime?"

The Harding administration responded that while the President might sympathize with children deprived of their fathers, no "program of picketing or parading [should] ever influence the opinion of the executive." 

"A Strategically Located Remnant" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, May 17, 1922

Another cartoon from Roy James illustrates the difficulty in passing legislation to ban child labor — like reckless driving, at issue for several years at this point — through the Congress and courts. Another parallel issue here is that of "states rights," the refuge of scoundrels defending child labor, later segregation, and now control over women's reproductive rights.

Whenever someone brings up "states rights," you can rest assured that they come at the expense of the individual.

"Whoa, Bill" by Charles H. "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, May 24, 1922

Here we see California's Republican Senator William Borah proposing that the U.S. formally recognize the Soviet Union as the legitimate —

Er, hold on a minute.

That's not a cartoon about children. It just depicts a grown man as one.

I guess it doesn't actually belong in this post.

Never mind.

"Is Your Child Normal?" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 1922

Hormel, Hormel, Hormel, Eggs, Bacon and Hormel

Why another post about Ambassador James Catherwood Hormel?

He wasn't the first public figure to ask for an original of one of my cartoons about him, but he is the first one to publish that cartoon in a book, so he holds a special place in my career. The book is his memoir, Fit to Serve, much of which relates what it took for him to get himself appointed by President Bill Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg — America's first openly gay ambassador to a foreign country (not counting James Buchanan).

Hormel and the Clinton State Department initially expected trouble from vociferous homophobe Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), but were surprised when Helms was satisfied with Hormel's promise that his boyfriend would not live with him in the ambassador's residence. There being no possible legal relationship between Hormel and his boyfriend in 1998, any sort of spousal benefits involved was completely out of the question to begin with.

Q Syndicate, May, 1998

Instead, it was Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) who put holds on Hormel's nomination, joined after the holds became public by Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH). Their holds came in response to a right-wing smear campaign; someone had dug up video from KOFY-TV's coverage of the 1996 Pride Parade in San Francisco in which Hormel was chatting with the television hosts as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence passed by. 

As Hormel described the incident in Fit to Serve,

"We can't miss these girls!" [reporter] Ginger [Casey] said. From background notes, Ginger read: "They acquired those genuine habits from a convent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Legend has it that they told the Mother Superior that they needed them because they were putting on The Sound of Music."

I laughed, as did [station owner] Jim [Gabbert].

She followed up, spontaneously: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

I continued laughing, heartily. That's what I did. Not a single word, just a few laughs. It all seemed like good fun.

The vast right-wing conspiracy, the Family Research Council, and their Republican cohorts painted the episode as proof that Hormel was anti-Catholic, bound to offend the sensibilities of the devoutly Catholic Luxembourgoisie (Luxembourg governmental assurances that Hormel would be welcome notwithstanding).

Q Syndicate, January, 1999

This is the cartoon in Hormel's book, drawn when the Senate returned from its December recess to find that Hormel's appointment was still on the docket. I'm somewhat curious why the book describes the cartoon as having appeared in the Seattle Gay News when Mr. Hormel might have been more likely to have seen it in the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter or Washington D.C. Metro Weekly, both of which ran my cartoons in those days.

It may have been a good thing that Hormel (or whatever staffer contacted me through Q Syndicate) hadn't asked for the original of the cartoon at the top of this post; instead of the usual bristol board, I had drawn it on a less firm type of artists paper. At some point, it got crumpled and torn by a rubber band I was using to hold that year's cartoons together. On the other hand, if I had received the request before the cartoon was damaged, it was on paper that, unlike bristol board, would have rolled up easily into a mail tube.

Q Syndicate, June, 1999

So anyway, James Hormel made it to Luxembourg by virtue of a recess appointment when the Senate adjourned for the summer, and I drew a third cartoon about the new ambassador. The embassy did not request the original of this cartoon.

Ambassador Hormel served out the remaining months of the Clinton administration representing American interests in Luxembourg. 

Q Syndicate, January, 2001

Surprisingly, even after that short tenure, one of the next administration's cabinet appointees, former Senator John Ashcroft, had to defend his opposition to Hormel's appointment on his way to becoming Attorney General.

Q Syndicate, January, 2013 (drawn in December)

By the time President Barack Obama nominated Republican another former Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, to be Secretary of Defense in his second term, keeping Luxembourg safe for heterosexual privilege was no longer quite the guaranteed safe issue in Washington, D.C. that it was in Nebraska in 1998.

Hagel's 1998 comments weren't enough to derail his nomination in 2013; they presented only a minor hiccup on his way to the Pentagon. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had been repealed in December of 2010, allowing LGBTQ+ military personnel to serve openly, and was by 2013 a settled issue.

And Hagel did apologize to Mr. Hormel during the course of Hagel's confirmation process, an apology Mr. Hormel accepted.

Q Toon: In Memory of Olympia Dukakis

Much as I dislike drawing architecture, this is how I wanted to take note of Olympia Dukakis's role as the landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.

Without drawing a teardrop falling from it.

Toons for World AIDS Day

Seroback Saturday observes World AIDS Day with a look back at a rather limited selection of cartoons about HIV/AIDS drawn for the LGBTQ press.

This is by no means a comprehensive look at the complete selection of LGBTQ cartoonists. I'm not including the work of any of the character-driven comic strips, many of whom have introduced HIV+ characters either on a regular, occasional, or cameo appearance basis. Nor do I have any idea what was the first published cartoon about AIDS (although that might be interesting to find out someday).

I believe this cartoon from September, 1985 is the first one I ever drew about the AIDS epidemic*; it's at a point when I felt it necessary to spell it out in the first panel and to put quotation marks around the acronym afterward. This was well before I began drawing for the LGBT press, however; this appeared in the student newspaper at UW-Parkside.

(Had the Homosexual Agenda added the "T" yet in 1985? I forget. I think folks were still squabbling about what order the first three letters should be in.)

There were other cartoonists contributing to LGBTQetc. media in the early 1980's, although few were tackling political subjects. But the advent of the AIDS crisis galvanized our community like nothing before. That is not to dismiss the Mattachine Society or Stonewall, or the fundamental first step of decriminalizing our relationships. But the issues up to the 1980's were predominantly lifestyle matters; the AIDS crisis presented us with a literal life-or-death issue.

And even the gag cartoonists couldn't avoid the subject.

"The Gay Side" by Tom Rezza in Wisconsin In Step, Milwaukee WI, January 23, 1986

Within the LGBT community, there was great resentment of President Ronald Reagan for not speaking about the AIDS crisis; he was not the only one guilty of silence (=death).

"Life at the Closet Door" by David Brady (freelance), ca. February. 1987

Even though consistent condom use has been proven as the best method for sexually active persons to avoid contracting the AIDS virus, network and cable television wasted years refusing to air condom advertising on the grounds that it would offend what they call "more sensitive viewers." But when Viagra and Cialis came along, the pharmaceutical companies' deep pockets helped the networks overcome whatever squeamishness they had about discussing sex during their commercial breaks.

"I'll Only Have to Rob Small Banks" by Angela Bocage in Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco CA, February 26, 1993

Speaking of the pharmaceutical companies: once treatments were discovered for HIV and AIDS, the issue became one of cost, as expressed in this Angela Bocage cartoon featuring Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Senator David Pryor (D-AR). Pryor's interest in controlling the escalating cost of prescription drugs came as chair of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Waxman's district included West Hollywood and parts of Los Angeles, so he had constituents vocal on the issue; his legacy includes the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 ("Hatch-Waxman Act"), and the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990.

"AIDS: Bearing Angry Witness" by Jennifer Camper (freelance), August/September, 1993

The death toll from AIDS devastated a generation in our community — as Camper's 1993 cartoon observes, in ways large and small. LGBTQ newspapers across the country, from the serious news outlets to the "bar rags," found that they needed to add obituary notices to report the loss of so many in their 50's, 40's, 30's and 20's. These obituaries often included pertinent details omitted from obituaries in mainstream newspapers: their life partners, their chosen families, or preferred or performance names by which they might be better known.

Uncaptioned cartoon by Ben Carlson in Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco CA, August 13, 1998

Ben Carlson's cartoon above appeared in the Bay Area Reporter's "No Obits" edition of August 13, 1998. A brightly colored banner headline on page one heralded the fact that for the first time in years, the San Francisco weekly newspaper did not have a single obituary in it.

"That doesn't mean that there were no AIDS deaths in the past week; next week's issue may have more obits than usual... After more than 17 years of struggle and death, and some weeks with as many as 31 obituaries printed in the B.A.R., it seems a new reality may be taking hold, and the community may be on the verge of a new era of the epidemic ... Perhaps."

By 1998, my cartoons were syndicated to the LGBTQ press, I'll close with a couple of my own scribblings from the past 20 years. The sketch above was commissioned in October, 1998 for AIDS Action's project AIDSWatch.

I didn't draw a World AIDS Day cartoon this year. It used to be that with newsmakers often on Thanksgiving holiday immediately beforehand, there frequently would be no distraction from the topic when I sat down at my drawing board. Thanks to presidential twitterrhea, that hasn't been the case lately.

Given the Corrupt Trump Administration's record on HIV/AIDS, I could simply have reissued this cartoon from January.

__________

* Ed. note: Wrong. I drew at least one AIDS cartoon earlier than the one at the top of this post.