Toon: Circle Joke

If you spend a lot of time watching cable TV news, first of all, do yourself a favor and stop; and second of all, you will have heard a variety of pundits, academics, and people of the mistaken belief that they should run for president someday, who are weighing in on Why Kamala Harris Lost The Election.

One of the leading theories is that President Joe Biden and those closest to him handicapped her by running for reelection in spite of mounting evidence that his mental acuity had begun to decline. Many of us, myself included, had voted for him in 2020 on the presumption that at 77, he planned to serve one term to repair the damage left behind by The Corrupt Trump administration, then hand leadership of the party over to someone younger.

Instead, he decided to run for reelection, as he put it, "to finish the job."

Which is ridiculous.

The presidency is not a job you're supposed to "finish." Each president does what he or (someday) she can, and turns it over to the next person. The job is never finished until the Republic is.

Donald Berzelius Trump, I fear, may "finish the job."

Anyway, my worry back when Biden announced his 2024 candidacy was that he didn't have confidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was up to taking over the job from him. Or that a Democratic Party primary battle would leave its victor hobbled by constituencies feeling that they were denied their due, or ignored, or unwelcome. Or, in the absence of a primary battle, ditto.

As things have turned out, plenty of Democratic constituencies are complaining about being denied their due, ignored, or unwelcome anyway. The Left complains that Harris tacked to the center instead of wholeheartedly campaigning on their agenda. The Centrists complain that Harris embraced "wokism" and transgender rights and people who say "Latinx."

I saw a scholar on The Daily Show this week promoting his election post-mortem book, arguing to Jon Stewart that Democrats were doomed by their embrace of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). He wasn't saying that Democrats should join Republicans in promoting Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion; just that they should call DEI something else — as if the right-wing propaganda machine wouldn't devote itself to turning the new name into a dirty word.

Now, I suppose that had Harris listened to the Palestinian rights crowd and condemned Netanyahu's genocidal war in Gaza, it might have been enough to get her over the finish line in Michigan. But it wouldn't have made the difference in any of the other "blue wall" swing states. Vowing to send undocumented alien drug dealers to Guantanamo might have gained her Arizona.

On the other hand, those moves might have helped about as much as affecting a southern drawl helped her in Georgia and North Carolina.

Q Toon: In a Customer Service Room

Last Monday, Audrey Hale, 28, shot his way into Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, and fatally shot three staff members and three 9-year-old students. Hale, a former student at the private Presbyterian school, was armed with a semi-automatic pistol, an AR-style rifle, and a handgun.

Initial calls for sensible gun controls after this, the 130th mass shooting in 2023, were quickly drowned out when police let everybody know that Hale identified as transgender on social media. Aha! Something besides guns that Republicans could blame this one on! And they were already trying to ban transgender therapy! Oh, goody!

Several conservative political figures, including Sen. J.D. Vance, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Donald Trump Jr., were among the personalities on social media who implicated the role of the shooter's transgender identity in the shooting. The motive for the shooting remains unknown, according to authorities.

Statistically, transgender Americans are much more likely to be the target of violence than its perpetrator. Yet right-wing propagandist Benny Johnson cited three other presumed transgender or non-binary mass murderers to argue that "the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists."

To which someone with more authority to speak on the issue replied:

"4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary. That's just 1.3 percent of all shooters," Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer in social work at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. "You just proved our point: 99 percent of mass shooters in the United States are cis gendered."

Tennessee politicians have called for publication of a manifesto that Hale left behind, but many in the LGBTQ+ community worry that while his manifesto might help police understand his motives, publishing it only serves to inflame right-wingers' passion for trans-bashing, while perversely glorifying the murderers' twisted thoughts and potentially inspiring some future killer.

We didn't need to read what the Las Vegas shooter thought about casinos, or how the Tree of Life shooter justified slaughtering worshipers in a synagogue, or why the Monterey Park shooter objected to Lunar New Year celebrations, or the ruminations of the guy who killed the journalists at the Capital Gazette regarding freedom of the press.

To list but one cisgender mass murderer for each of the transgender killers Benny Johnson named. 

All we need to know about them is that their minds were filled with hate and rage. Of which, like military-grade weaponry, we seem to have no shortage of peddlers on social media and right-wing "news" channels.

Tales from the Crypto.com Stadium

 

Dulce Sloan threw off this idea during the ad-libbed banter with Trevor Noah on the Daily Show the other night, and I thought the image was too good not to put together visually.

But, since it's not my own idea, not good enough to spend a couple hours at the drawing board for.

Hard Heart of Dixie

The fight against marriage equality goes on:

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey is expected to sign a bill this week ensuring that adoption agencies in her state can discriminate against same-sex couples. The rationale for HB24, according to its chief Senate sponsor, Sen. Bill Hightower (R-Mobile), is that if they're required to consider same-sex couples just like anyone else, adoption agencies would rather shut down. “The need for adoption is so high," Hightower explained. "We need to have every avenue available.”

Much better, as Alabama Republicans see it, to lock potential adoptive parents out of the system. The law doesn't specifically name LGBT parents as its target of discrimination, so one can easily imagine the possibility of a wider issue:

“It’s hard to see this as anything but animus toward LGBT families, but the bill could have a greater effect than that,” said Randall Marshall, the Legal Director for ACLU Alabama. “Agencies could turn away qualified families for countless other reasons that have no relevance to their ability to provide a safe loving home. A Catholic or Jewish agency could turn away Evangelical or Protestant families. A family could be turned away because they don’t attend church regularly.”

The Daily Show has been airing a series of reports in an effort to understand Alabama, which happens to have the lowest viewership of The Daily Show in the country; and in Monday's report, State Rep Patricia Todd, the state legislature's one and only openly gay member, noted that her state was the only one in Dixie not to have passed antigay legislation while she has been in office. She now has to sing a different tune.

“I’m tired of being in a country where I’m not welcome,” Rep. Patricia Todd, a Birmingham Democrat, told Rep. Rich Wingo, the Tuscaloosa Republican who sponsored the bill. “And to deal with institutions that know nothing about me but make a judgment that I’m a bad person because I am gay.”

Lest you think that Alabama is out in front on this issue, South Dakota, Michigan, North Dakota, and Virginia have all passed similar laws, and have been proposed in several other states as well. Discriminating against LGBT Americans has been and continues to be a legislative priority for Republicans everywhere.

Q Toon: Imagine!

This week's cartoon is one of those that probably need footnotes to work. Unless you've been reading the same blogs and newspapers I have, or watched the same news and late night shows, you may not realize that I'm making fun of specific things people have said.

Well, that's what this blog is for, I guess.

Buster Wilson of the American Family Association argued against letting gay scouts and scoutmasters into the Boy Scouts of America, painting a scary word picture of scouts in peril:

Imagine with me a troop of young boys, ranging in ages from 12-16. These young boys are going to be out in the woods, away from their parents. Not just away from their parents but away from any contact with their parents. Back in my day, there were no cell phones. And today, most camps sites are out cell range.
They would be out in the woods for 2-4 days, nights, depending on what time of the year it was. They will sleep in pairs or threes, in sleeping bags, in tents or out in the open. They will shower and wash in the creeks or lakes that outline their camp site. It would be nothing for boys to wonder about with their shirts off, or sometimes just in their underwear or swim suit because they had just been to the latrine or to the swimming hole. 

Yes, let's let our imaginations run wild with Buster and the boys...

Now, for that last frame, I shift over to a Wall Street Journal columnist's argument against allowing women to serve in combat. I'm not sure if that's the same guy who used the exact same phrasing on CNN (and shown on the Daily Show) or if that's one of the Talking Points Frank Luntz sent out to all the right wingers to parrot that day. I'm sure Buster would have happily incorporated Ryan Smith's argument into his own if he had gotten the memo in time.

Q Toon: That Wascally Weiner

Well, after all that talk last week about not jumping on the Weiner cartoon bandwagon, here I go anyway.

My syndicate editor responded in a strongly worded e-mail to my cartoon proposal by saying that it is the attacks on Anthony Weiner that are shameful. Perhaps this cartoon's protagonist (who is supposed to be another patient at the Picklethorp Institute, in case that isn't clear) isn't far off the mark for most gays' response to l'Affaire Weiner. Gay people nowadays tend to be more open about their sexuality than the purveyors of straight mores, which is, after all, what National Coming Out Day (October 11) and Gay Pride Month (you're soaking in it!) are all about.

I was a little surprised by the force of my editor's response, however, since she is a lesbian, and presumably even less impressed by photos of Weiner tenting his boxer shorts than the straight gals to whom the Congressman was tweeting them. By the way, I thought Kristen Schaal's Daily Show observation that women do not share men's fascination with what penises look like was spot on. Could it be that homophobia is a by-product of straight men's realization that what they always thought to be their best come-on approaches probably appeal more to gay men than to straight women?

So, this week's cartoon carries that thought a little further.

Now that I've drawn it, I'm glad I've got that Weiner business out of my system. It wasn't so bad after all. I only regret that I didn't populate the background with Schwarzenegger, Edwards, Vitter, Ensign, Woods, and the rest of the lot.