The Telltale Tapes

Today's Graphical History Tour is going to be extra heavy on the cartoonistry and light on the commentary; so if you're the kind of reader who skips to the editorial cartoons, you've come to the right place.

"Speak Frankly into the Olive" by Jeff Darcy in Newsday, Long Island NY, ca. July 23, 1973

Fifty years ago this month, on Friday, July 13, Donald Sanders, a junior staff Republican counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Watergate affair, asked Alexander Butterfield, a former White House aide to Nixon Chief of Staff Harry R. Haldeman whether "conversations in the President's office are recorded."

It was a throw-away question asked at the end of an up-to-then unremarkable interview, with no Senators or top counsel present.

"Oh god, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that," Butterfield answered. Richard Nixon had been tape recording conversations and phone calls in the Oval Office since the spring of 1971.

"Testing, Testing" by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Today, ca. July 21, 1973

Editorial cartoonists reacted immediately with a lot of cartoons mocking Nixon for the recording system — seeming not to realize that the tapes would support or refute the testimony before the committee given that month by those closest to the President: former Attorney General John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, and former presidential counsels John Ehrlichman and John Dean III.

"You Can Say That Again" by Herb Block in Washington (DC) Post, July 17, 1973

Instead, we had a lot of cartoons about people with much less to be worried about in those recordings than Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, or Nixon.

"Go Ahead, Kissinger" by David Simpson in Tulsa Tribune, ca. July 21, 1973

"About That Conversation We Had" by Leonard Borozinski in Wisconsin State Journal, Madison WI, July 18, 1973

Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev had just returned home from a state visit to the U.S.

"Good Lord, That's My Voice" by Bill Crawford for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. July 27, 1973

Nixon wasn't the first president to record White House conversations; Lyndon Johnson had done the same. It seems Nixon tossed out the best legacies of the Johnson administration and kept the worst.

No caption, by Louis "Tim" Mitelberg in Paris Match, 1973 (?)

(Having not putting a date on the above clipping, I could be off on whether Tim's cartoon was drawn in July with the rest of these; but it was one of my earliest favorites, so I'm including it anyway.)

No caption, by Fritz Behrendt in Het Parool, Amsterdam Netherlands, ca. July 19, 1973

At this same time, Nixon was briefly sidelined with a bout of pneumonia.

No caption, by Don Wright in Miami News, July 26, 1973

The Senate Committee, chaired by folksy "old country lawyer" Sam Ervin (D-NC), subpoenaed the administration to turn over to them tapes which might have recorded conversations about the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

"This Jus' Might Unravel the Mummy's Secret" by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, July 18, 1973

Claiming "executive privilege," Nixon refused, and a constitutional crisis was thus in the making.

"The Collectors" by Gene Basset for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, ca. July 20, 1973

It's at this point that most cartoonists quit using bugs as a symbol of the scandal, in favor of reel-to-reel tapes.

"And Stay on Your Own Side" by Leonard D. Warren in Cincinnati Enquirer, ca. July 30, 1973

"Constitutional Crisis in the Oval Office" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, July 25, 1973

It's only fair that I include a couple of cartoons by defenders of the President:

"You Guys Are Way Off the Trail" by D. Edward Holland in Chicago Tribune, July 30, 1973

I have a difficult time imagining where Nixon apologist Ed Holland thought the Watergate investigation ought to have been leading. It was too early to be worried about Hillary's emails (although she was actually an aide to the committee) or Hunter Biden's laptop (he was three years old). Teenager Barack Obama's birth certificate, perhaps?

"We'd Be Delighted for Him to Prove His Innocence" by Don Hesse in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, ca. July 24, 1973

Don Hesse's reaction is more typical of the Nixon Defense League. "If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell." —Carl Sandberg

No caption, by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca. July 31, 1973

As tempting as it is to go on, I have to stop somewhere. So I'll wrap up with Pat Oliphant's pointed reference to the Nixon plumbers' earlier break-in of the offices of the psychiatrist of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

✍

Say what you will about Richard M. Nixon, but his Watergate scandal (and the war in Vietnam) brought out a golden age of editorial cartooning. I was just beginning to appreciate and eagerly read the work of these guys above and many more: Paul Conrad, Jacob Burck, Bill Mauldin, Bill Sanders, Jeff MacNelly, Dick Locher, John Fischetti, Tom Curtis, Jim Berry, Ed Valtman, Draper Hill, "Corky" Trinidad, Lou Grant, Dennis Renault, Guernsey LePelley, Ranan Lurie, Jules Feiffer, Edward Sorel, Robert Gray Smith, Mike Peters, Mike Konopacki, Ed Huck — there were literally hundreds of them. You could find their work daily in just about any newspaper with a modicum of self-respect, and every major newsmagazine around the world.

The hedge fund managers pretending they know how to run today's newsmedia don't know what they're killing off. Or perhaps they just don't care.

D'öh!

Homer Simpson in a 1921 Swedish cartoon:

"Adamson and the Bachelor's Button" in Söndags-Nisse, Stockholm, 1921

February on the Ones

I've used some of these Saturday posts to rehash my own cartoons from 30 years ago, which at this point in the calendar, has led up to Gulf War I. My problem this month is that I've already posted most of my February, 1991 cartoons for one reason or another. The cartoon below may very well be the only one previously unrehashed.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, February 12, 1991

So for a theme this week, here are some of my Wisconsin-themed cartoons from 2001 and 2011.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, February 23, 2001

This cartoon, drawn to accompany an editorial in the Business Journal, has a date written on it of February 16, but so does another Beej cartoon. I don't see a cartoon dated February 23, and I think this one is the one with the wrong date.

At any rate, Chuck Chvala (D-Madison) was the on-and-off Majority Leader in the Wisconsin State Senate from 1995 to 2002 — on at this point in time — and the Business Journal thought that a prescription drug bill in the state legislature was doomed and little more than a partisan ploy. Chvala ended up not looking so heroic when he was found guilty of violating campaign finance laws by having Democratic caucus staff do electioneering work on the state dime.

Quaint, aina?

Now Chvala podcasts political punditry with former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen (R-Waukesha), who had his own run-in with ethics laws.

2011 was a tumultuous year in Wisconsin politics; Scott Walker took office as Governor with a Republican majority in both houses of the state legislature. Backed by an ad blitz from anti-union oligarchs, they launched an all-out assault against public employees (notably excepting the police and fire unions, the only unions to have backed Walker's campaign).

Wisconsin Club for [Cancerous] Growth took the lead in TV and radio advertising. One of their ads highlighted the wage and benefit cuts that unions at various private firms had been forced to swallow during the 2008-2009 economic crash, thanks to management's contempt for their own communities. Mercury Marine, for example, could threaten to close down its Fond du Lac plant and open shop in Bumm Fork, Alabama, instead; but the same can't be done with schools and snowplows, prisons and parole officers. So the voice-over announcer complained that public employee unions were not sharing in privately employed workers' pain:

 "All across Wisconsin, people are making sacrifices to save their jobs: frozen wages, pay cuts and paying more for health care. But state workers haven't had to sacrifice; they pay next to nothing for their pensions and a fraction of their health care. It's not fair. Call your state legislators and tell them to vote for Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill. It's time state employees paid their fair share, just like the rest of us."

It was cute that the folks at Wisconsin Club for [Cancerous] Growth included themselves in "the rest of us."

Act 10, as Walker's "budget repair bill" was officially called, gutted public employee unions' ability to negotiate salaries and benefits, banned those unions from collecting dues from public employees who chose not to belong to the union (but would continue to be included in whatever union contracts would follow). Having made union membership pointless, Act 10 also made mandatory annual recertification votes, further encouraging employees to bust their unions.

All in the name of fixing Republicans' "hole in the state budget."

Well, folks, as appreciation for your indulgence while I wallow down memory lane today, here's a February, 2021 cartoon featuring three members of Wisconsin's illustrious delegation to Washington, D.C.: Congressmen Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald, and Senator Ron "This Didn't Seem Like an Armed Insurrection to Me" Johnson.

Q Toon: Name That Toon

So here's the cartoon I sent to Q Syndicate about Donald Joffrey Trump dismissing Pete Buttigieg as Mad Magazine cover boy "Alfred E. Neuman" during an interview with Politico last week.

In case you were somehow distracted by the Corrupt Trump Administration's trade war with China, its teetering on the verge of actual war with Iran, its determination to provoke a constitutional crisis with Congress, or Republican legislatures decreeing women's uteruses to be government property, here's what you missed. When asked for his opinion of Buttigieg, Trump told Politico that "Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States," and Mayor Pete responded

"I’ll be honest. I had to Google that. I guess it’s just a generational thing. I didn’t get the reference. It's kind of funny, I guess. But he’s also the president of the United States and I’m surprised he’s not spending more time trying to salvage this China deal."

I don't understand how anyone can make through high school without learning who Alfred E. Neuman is, but, as Stephen Colbert explained to The Kids These Days, "If you're too young to know the reference, magazines were these thick stacks of paper with pictures and words on 'em."

So if Mr. Buttigieg doesn't recognize octogenarian Alfred E. Neuman, perhaps thirty-something Nelson Muntz is more in tune with his generation.

Personally, I found it easier to draw a convincing Muntz-Trump hybrid than a Neuman-Buttigieg one.

Q Toon: J. Edgar

And the winners in the expletive derby are "Gadzooks" and "Dang."

For all I know, J. Edgar Hoover was as foul-mouthed in private as Richard Nixon. Hoover came across as a hard-as-nails crime fighter, all business, who made it his business to know all the dirt on everyone in the country. That was before Susan Rosenstiel told Anthony Summers that Hoover got dressed up in drag to go out to Roy Cohn's private parties, where he was introduced to her as "Mary."

A little bit more back story to the cartooning here: I wanted to draw Hoover in drag in this cartoon, but after David Simpson's latest plagiarism scandal, I had to be careful not to copy Pat Oliphant's cartoon of J. Mary Hoover -- especially now that I gave This Land permission to cite me as having spotted three previously unnoticed examples of his down-to-the-crosshatch copying of other people's cartoons. (I would note that other cartoonists have spotted the same cartoons; The Oregonian's Jack Ohman also left a comment on This Land's previous article.)

To keep Hoover's garb contemporaneous with Hoover himself, the dress in the cartoon is patterned more after Marilyn Monroe's famous updraft dress or something out of the Folies Bergères. Not that it wouldn't have been fun to have shown him dressed like Snooki or Lady Gaga.

The David Simpson Plagiarism Scandal

Yet another case of plagiarism by fellow cartoonist David Simpson has been exposed. Simpson lost his job at the Tulsa World in 2005 after he was caught copying a 1981 cartoon by Bob Englehardt of the Hartford Courant. Lately, Simpson had been drawing for Urban Tulsa. A week or so ago, alert cartoonists recognized a cartoon about giving a jump start to a bomber in a junk yard as having been copied from a cartoon drawn by the late Jeff MacNelly during the Carter administration -- even the other junk in the cartoon was in exactly the same place. Rival publication This Land then unearthed three more copied cartoons. The resulting calumny has forced Simpson into early retirement.

Since the Urban Tulsa doesn't keep an on-line archive of its cartoons (and I guess Simpson is the only cartoonist in the world who doesn't post his stuff on the internet), This Land posted pictures of Simpson's UT cartoons requesting help spotting any more plagiarized work. I spotted three right away: #3 is straight out of an August, 1972 cartoon by Pat Oliphant; #12 rips off another Oliphant cartoon from December, 1975. #35 copies a Jim Borgman cartoon from August, 1985.

Then there's #16. It's not the entire cartoon that is copied from a September, 1975 Jeff MacNelly cartoon, it's just the garbage truck. I remember that garbage truck well.

Because I used it as a model for a garbage truck in a May, 1987 cartoon.

The garbage truck was the sole focus of the original MacNelly cartoon, which blamed New York City's sanitation workers for their contribution to the Big Apple's financial mess. The cartoon showed the Manhattan skyline inside the back of the truck.

Back in the Reagan administration, we didn't have the Google like the kids of today have. If I needed to draw a garbage truck in a cartoon, my options were a.) draw one from memory, b.) see if the dictionary has a picture of one, c.) drive around town until I found a parked garbage truck and draw it, or d.) Don't I have a cartoon of a garbage truck in my scrapbook somewhere?

So I'm reluctant to include Simpson cartoon #16 in the list of plagiarized cartoons, because it would mean I plagiarized, too. Besides MacNelly's garbage truck, I've referenced horses drawn by Pat Oliphant, whose drawings of horses in motion are some of the most alive and vibrant you will ever see in black and white. I certainly don't copy them, and I also reference Animals: 1419 Copyright-Free Illustrations of Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insects, etc., A Pictorial Archive from Nineteenth-Century Sources selected by Jim Harter (Dover Publications, Inc.You can probably find it in the art section of your local bookstore) .

We cartoonists copy images all the time. Just think of all the cartoons riffing on Shepard Fairey's poster of Barack Obama over the word "HOPE." (The poster image itself was swiped from an April, 2006 photograph by freelance photographer Mannie Garcia for the Associated Press.)

When Moammar Khadaffy was killed, several cartoonists whipped out cartoons showing the remnants of Pan Am flight 103 at Lockerbie, Scotland. Some didn't even bother to draw the image, but rather scanned the photograph and used that image as the basis of their cartoons.

(click here to view)

Bob Gorrell Creators Syndicate Inc. Oct 20, 2011 EditorialCartoonists.com

None of them credited the photograph or the photographer. Was that plagiarism, then? The copyright notice at Wikipedia would seem to say yes. The "Fair Use" doctrine gives us cartoonists the wiggle room to say no.

By the way, just to be clear: I do not in any way think there is any possibility that David Simpson ever saw my 1987 cartoon about Ronald Reagan and the Contras. I'm very certain that he referred to Jeff MacNelly's cartoon when drawing his garbage truck. But since I remember the 36-year-old cartoon I used as a model for a cartoon I drew 24 years ago, I find it utterly incredible that Mr. Simpson claims he can't remember where he found his sources.