Q Toon: Stefon Gets Political

Republiqans' gerrymandering since 2010 has emboldened their most radical elements to believe that they can successfully run their most extremist, oddball, weird candidates for statewide office as easily as they can in their hermetically sealed congressional and state legislative districts.

That they certainly can in states that are bent that way, and there are several from Alabama to Wyoming. It works elsewhere for offices voters pay little attention to, such as Secretary of State and Lieutenant Governor — especially where Democrats have left way-downballot, county level races woefully uncontested. But when it comes to the marquee races for Senator and Governor, the electorate actually sits up and pays attention. (Flooded with campaign commercials on every electronic device, how could we not?)

Republiqans thought they had a sure winner for one of Georgia's Senate seats two years ago in football star Herschel Walker, only to be stunned when a solid majority of voters discovered what a loony, intellectual lightweight he was. 

They seem destined for another shock if North Carolina voters fail to overlook gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson's antebellum ideas on women's suffrage and slavery. CNN has added to the mix, exposing posts by the self-described "Black Nazi" on a pornography website over a decade ago.

Walker was an unknown quantity as a candidate in Georgia beyond being a celebrity, so maybe one can cut Republiqan voters there some slack. But GOP voters in North Carolina have no excuse for not knowing what kind of person their Lieutenant Governor is. He has not been some Alexander P. Throttlebottom waiting quietly out of sight and out of mind. 

Robinson's inflammatory rhetoric caught more attention than your typical Lieutenant Governor ever gets. Heck, this is the fourth cartoon I've drawn about him, and I don't even live in North Carolina.

And I haven’t even mentioned that he is a Holocaust denier yet . 

Of course, time is short; but Tar Heel Republiqans could try stealing the national Democrats' playbook, and pressure their deeply flawed candidate to drop out so that they can replace him with someone else who is so much more appealing by comparison.

It's 2024. Anything can happen.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Looking through American, British, and Canadian editorial cartoons of the Nineteenth Century and up to cartoons from the Nixon era, one frequently runs across references from Shakespeare and Keats. Old German cartoons often quoted Schiller and Goethe. French cartoonists used to allude to Voltaire and Hugo.

Today's readership expects something with a somewhat lower brow.
 

It's Always Something

Every once in a while when I'm cyberleafing through old newspapers in search of a topic for these Saturday posts, I run across a cartoon that makes me stop and wonder what could possibly have been in the cartoonist's mind.

"Jimmy Earl Carter's Camp David Quiz Show" by Pat Oliphant in Denver (D.C.) Star, April 1, 1978 

Well, this is not a post about that. (It's April Fools' Day. What did you expect?)

This is, instead, a book report on the latest addition to my library.

I found this 2020 book in the U.S. History section of my local Barnes & Noble. Liberally illustrated with Bill Mauldin's original artwork, pencil edits and all, from the Pritzger Military Museum and Library, the first half of the book consists of separate essays about Mauldin's life and work.

There is some overlap in subject matter in these essays, although each approaches the subject from a different angle.

Taken together, the essays take you from Mauldin's hard-scrabble youth in a classically dysfunctional family and his early attempts to sell his cartoons, through parlaying his fame and fortune drawing for Stars and Stripes into a storied career in St. Louis and Chicago. 

Many of the cartoons in this book are taken from the original drawings rather than the published product, so you get to see the edits and compositors' markings along the way. Some captions got tweaked here and there; at least one was changed completely from the original concept.

Awarded the Pulitzer at the age of 23 for his cartoons of infantry men in World War II (the youngest Pulitzer winner ever), Mauldin risked peaking early and fizzling out. Retooling his Willie and Joe grunts for a postwar gag panel lacked the qualities that made the characters so special. But he rediscovered his passion in politics, returning to cartooning after an unsuccessful run for Congress.

His cartoons argued forcibly for the rights of Japanese-Americans, Black Americans, and women (also gay rights, although that is missing from this book), earning him his second Pulitzer in 1958. The Chicago Sun-Times gave the cartoon he drew immediately after Kennedy's assassination the entire back page of the Extra edition, and many outlets sold that paper with the back page up instead of the front page.

His later years are more tragic; an essay by Charles Schulz's widow, Jean, describes how his fellow cartoonists stepped forward when, as featured speaker at the 2003 National Cartoonist Society convention, he was too drunk to take the podium. Hers is a sympathetic account; colleagues I've spoken to who were there recall the episode with some sadness.

(Many of us at last year's convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists were brought to tears watching the 2021 documentary about Bill Mauldin's life and work, If It's Big, Hit It. Alcoholism and Alzheimer's Disease in his last years should have been awful enough, but having a jeep fall on his drawing hand and his later suffering third degree burns from his habit of relaxing in a hot bath left him withdrawn and uncommunicative. The film doesn't end with that, so neither will I.)

One chapter that stands out from the typical book of any given cartoonist's work is Christina Knopf's "Bill Mauldin's Legacy in Military Cartooning," which profiles soldier/sailor cartoonists from the Vietnam War to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Some of the cartoonists in this chapter were inspired by Mauldin; one admitted never having heard of him. The works illustrating the chapter include one direct reference to one of Mauldin's Willie and Joe cartoons.

Mauldin's classic cartoon shows a cavalry sergeant about to shoot his own jeep to put it out of its misery because it has a flat tire. The tribute cartoon by Steve Opet depicts a soldier about to do the same to a computer because it's showing an "access denied" screen.

by Mill Bauldin in St. Louis Sun-Times, Sept., 2002

The same cartoon inspired one of mine occasioned by the financial controversies that terminated Palotta Works "AIDS Ride" fund raising bicycle marathon. I kind of screwed up, however, by drawing Mr. Palotta on the left side of the cartoon and his bike on the right — and the western garb took the whole idea back to the practice Mauldin was riffing on of shooting a wounded horse.

The other two times that I've referenced Mauldin's cartoons, I made more of an effort to mimic the source material.

by Dan Liliblum in Chicago Highways Stripes, November, 2016

So when the 2016 election inexplicably went to Donald Berzelius Trump, my cartoon based on the one Mauldin drew after JFK's assassination was in grayscale except for the barf bag and my signature, two items that didn't belong in the original. My medium was india ink rather than charcoal and grease pencil, but I deliberately tried to draw every line just the way Mauldin had.

The only other major difference was that his cartoon was portrait oriented whereas mine had to be landscape oriented.

by Ludmilla Nib in Arizona Post-Dispatch, March, 2021 

I decided to go ahead and add color to this 2021 cartoon. The Mauldin cartoon I based this one on is not in Drawing Fire; the original had the crow perched atop the flagpole and the eagle demanding his "seat back."

Using landscape orientation afforded me plenty of room to add the elephant to the scene. It did, however, force me to draw the eagle smaller than I would have liked.

Well, it wouldn't be fair of me to tease you with my own cartoons and not include any of Mauldin's, so I want to leave you with this one from toward the end of his career. He drew it at the outset of Bush the Elder's Iraq War, and although the book doesn't say so one way or the other, I think this is how Mauldin imagined Willie and Joe would look 45 years after returning stateside.

"Inside It Says the Pentagon Doesn't Want a Lot of Fuss" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, January, 1991

One More Holiday Wish

 

In the spirit of the season.

Praising Arizona

The results are in, and Trumpster Kari Lake has been defeated in the race for Governor of the state of Arizona.

It's too bad that Saturday Night Live is on hiatus for the next couple of weeks.

I had been looking forward to a sketch in which Lake was played by Cecily Strong when filmed with a gauzy filter and by Amy Sedaris without it.

Or possibly by Andy Serkis.

Remembering Bob Dole

Former Senate Majority/Minority Leader Bob Dole, the Republicans' nominee for Vice President in 1976 and for President twenty years after that, died this last Sunday at the age of 98. Sunflower Stateback Saturday remembers the World War II veteran and longtime Senator from Kansas with a smattering of the editorial cartoons I've drawn of him over the decades.

A few trigger warnings here: I disagreed with Senator Dole on a very wide range of issues, so my cartoons of him are not particularly flattering of him. The following is more obituary than eulogy. For the most part, I have avoided the harshest of my cartoons. But Mr. Dole was known for his sense of humor and was not above a little self-deprecation — witness the subtitle of this book of his —so I hope I have chosen some that would have elicited, if not a chuckle, at least a wry smile from him.

Cover art by Barry Bliss

A second trigger warning: one of these cartoons includes some offensive language, including a term that got another cartoonist in trouble this week. None of those offensive words were put in Senator Dole's mouth, however. (Psst. If you think that using racism and homophobia to criticize racism and homophobia makes me racist and homophobic, just skip the cartoon shaded in red.)

Now then. To start off, here's the earliest cartoon of Senator Dole in my files:

Unpublished, March, 1978

This isn't the first cartoon I ever drew of Bob Dole; I'm quite certain that I drew one or two of him while he was President Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976. Any earlier cartoons I drew, however, were left behind during a trip to Minneapolis. In fact, I think this is a redrawing from memory of one of the lost cartoons.

General Omar Torrijos, by the way, was the military leader of Panama in the 1970's. Conservative Republicans and Democrats objected to the U.S. turning the Panama Canal over to Torrijos's leftist government, but the Senate approved the two treaties in March and April, 1978, 68 to 32.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, February 25, 1988

When he joined the Republican ticket in 1976, Dole gained a reputation as Gerald Ford's "hatchet man." The most memorable of his attack lines was during his debate with Walter Mondale, deflecting a question about President Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon by characterizing World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, and the war in Vietnam as "Democrat wars." Not a particularly funny line, I suppose, but on the other hand, nobody was discussing that pardon the next morning.

Dole was among the many Republican presidential also-rans in 1980, and threw his hat in the ring again to succeed Ronald Reagan in 1988. In those days, Republican presidential nominations tended to go to the man when the party faithful felt it was "his turn"; in 1988, the Vice Presidential nominee who had been on a successful ticket took priority over one on a ticket that fell short.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, September 11, 1995

It took another eight years for Dole's turn to come around, and in the twenty years since he was last on a presidential ticket, the Republican Party had begun some significant changes. It had taken in a bunch of States' Rights Southern Democrats; and after eight years of Ronald Reagan, there was no limit on how far to the right candidates could go and still be taken seriously.

in UW-M Post, February 26, 1996

As far some in the party were concerned, years in congressional leadership were not an asset but a liability; Pat Buchanan and other fresher faces derided Dole with the nickname "Beltway Bob" and accused him of being too old to become President. At 73, Dole was four years older than Ronald Reagan had been when elected — but five years younger than Joseph Robinette Biden would be in 2020.

in UW-M Post, September 19, 1996

More durable than the slings and arrows of Pat Buchanan, Lamar Alexander, and the rest of the lot was Norm MacDonald's impersonation of Dole on Saturday Night Live. Gruff, broken sentences. Referring to himself by name.

Dole was a good sport about it, however, appearing on the show and telling MacDonald, “Believe me, Norm. Running for president doesn’t always keep you in the front pages — unless you take a dive off the podium” — a reference to a campaign mishap parodied mercilessly on SNL.

in UW-M Post, October 17, 1996

And thus ends my Dole cartoons. He lost the 1996 election to Bill Clinton, and, although his wife made some attempt to make him the first First Gentleman, he retired to the life of an elder statesman and author.

In his book on presidential humor, Dole took as cautionary examples Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore, two presidents rejected by the American electorate, yet who attempted, and failed miserably at, political comebacks.

I try to keep their sobering examples in mind when asked about the possibility of again seeking the presidency. Then I repeat something attributed to W.C. Fields: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

Rest in peace, Senator Dole.

This Just In

 Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Speaking of Cuckoo's Nests

See if you can figure out what was in the script without watching/rewatching the sketch.

Lost Opportunity

For the Kavanaugh cartoon I drew a couple weeks ago, I struggled to find a distracting person to put in the background of the third frame, having drawn Kavanaugh's White Power Symbol Girl behind him in panel one and Plaid Shirt Guy in panel two. I eventually settled on some schmo who waves gigantic prints of his own face at University of Alabama basketball games, but I wasn't really pleased with the obscure non sequitur.

If only I had known to put Alyssa Milano there. Damn.

Keep Calm and E Mālie

Hawai'ian Civil Defense has unveiled a new automated message.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Where's Debbie Downer when you need your happiness punctured by somebody who can't keep a straight face?

Q Toon: Hans und Franz

It's high time that someone came up with some go-to characters for us cartoonists who have to draw something about Germany. The German parliament voted last week in favor of full marriage equality for same-sex and different-sex couples, which, of course, I applaud. But I can't credit the one German politician who would be recognizable in the U.S., Chancellor Angela Merkel, because she voted against it.

So whom could I cast as the principal characters in this week's cartoon? The most recognizable fictional German characters I can think of are Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schulz; but even though they are the closest thing in the American cultural vernacular to sympathetic Nazis, they are Nazis nevertheless. I just didn't want to freight this celebration of  Gleichstellung der Gleichgeschlechtlichen Ehe with the complicated relationship between the Third Reich and its homosexuals.

Saturday Night Live gave us Mike Myers's Dieter, the host of Sprockets, who, conveniently enough for this cartoon concept, turned out to be gay (Will Farrell played his lover Helmut in one sketch), and I kind of wish I had come up with an effective reference to this character.

Instead, I went with the more familiar pair of Hans & Franz, and opted to address their Austrian nationality head-on. Because, really, what real-life German pair comes to mind anyway?

Sigmund Freud and Erwin Schrödinger? Austrian.

Wolfgang Mozart and Franz Schubert? Austrian.

For that matter, Adolph Hitler? Also from Austria.

Where, by the way, same-sex couples still have only civil union rights.