Q Toon: Nudge, Nudge

I am one of those people who can't remember where my husband always puts things, or how much flour to use when making crepes, or whether I shut the garage door before driving away, because all those synapses in my brain have been permanently wired to remembering each and every Monty Python sketch ever filmed.

So naturally, when Tucker Carlson fantasized about getting Pete Buttigieg on his podcast so that he could grill him on whether he's really gay, my mind immediately leapt to the "Nudge, Nudge" sketch of Eric Idle and the late Terry Jones.

In a recent interview on his namesake podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, the former Fox News prime-time host raised some concerns about former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Carlson was speaking with Michael Knowles, another conservative political commentator, about a litany of issues including Trump's dustup with Harvard.

“The fake gay guy?” Carlson asks when Buttigieg’s name is mentioned. “My gay producer is always like, ‘He’s not gay.’ He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago and like he wants to be the Democratic nominee. It’s like: ‘Time for a gay guy!’” ...

“I’ve always wanted to interview him,” Carlson continued, later. “He’s never agreed to an interview but I’m going to ask him like some very specific questions about gay sex and see if he can even answer. I doubt he even knows. You’re not gay, dude, stop.”

In the interest of space, I had to condense the dialogue considerably for this cartoon, especially the part of Jones/Buttigieg. Regrettable, but necessary. I also wish that I didn't have to include the ultimate punch line; but I recognize that some readers out there might not have the exhaustive knowledge of 55-year-old British television comedy sketches that I do.

I suspect that Secretary Buttigieg doesn't need me to tell him that he should not take Carlson's bait. Buttigieg has demonstrated a talent for going on Fox Noise, MAGA podcasts, etc., and holding his own against their right-wing point talkers. He was arguably the Biden administration's best spokesperson: cogent, logical, and unrattled by their hyperbole, whataboutism, and mischaracterization.

Carlson's aim, therefore, is to destroy whatever gravitas Buttigieg has accrued through his service in the military and elected office by getting him to talk about who does what in his bedroom, how often, and what is his favorite lube, so that the right-wing echo chamber can repeat it ad infinitum any time he tries to talk about urban renewal, international alliances, tax policy, or airplane safety.

Which could come in handy when ReTrumplicans need to distract the rest of us from the moral and sexual depravity of the thrice-married, 34-times-convicted, pussy-grabbing Epstein pal currently making the White House over into a gilded bordello fit for Louis XIV's favorite concubines.

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Q Toon: Tuckerview with a Vladimir

Useful idiot Tucker Carlson went to Russia to fawn over the clean subway and the Aldi-style shopping carts, and to interview President for Life Vladimir Putin last week. 

In the days after the interview was posted on X, an Egyptian journalist asked Carlson why he hadn't asked Putin about the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, unjustly imprisoned in a Siberian concentration camp, or about the murder of dissident journalists, politicians, business leaders, and Putin's own military generals. Tucker whinged, “Every leader kills people, some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people, sorry, that’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.”

Then Navalny turned up dead at the age of 47, three years into his 19-year prison sentence.

Even the National Review and Wall Street Journal were embarrassed for Tucker Carlson. 

By the way, I added the name of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to this cartoon at the last minute while inking it, and I should have fact-checked first. I have since learned that toward the end of the interview, Carlson did in fact ask Putin to release Gershkovich "as a sign of your decency." Putin, after complaining of a lack of "decency" from the West, suggested the possibility of trading Gershkovitz for some unspecified "reciprocal steps." 

My bad. I won't argue if editors choose to omit Gershkovich from the cartoon (or to replace him with ballerina Ksenia Karelina, arrested for treason after Tucker left Russia).

On the other hand, I think it's important to keep all these names in the public mind. Editors who leave mention of Gershkovich in the cartoon can just pretend that later, Tucker noticed that he had a couple minutes left for his interview and decided to risk bringing the Gershkovich case up as long as his getaway car was warming up outside anyway.

Getting back to the part that makes this cartoon relevant to the worldwide LGBTQ+ community, Russian courts have begun convicting citizens arrested under new laws criminalizing so-called "extremist" LGBTQ activity.

Russian courts have issued the first known extremism convictions arising from the 2023 Supreme Court ruling designating the “international LGBT movement” as extremist, Human Rights Watch said today. The Supreme Court ruling, which was handed down on November 30 but became public only in mid-January 2024, indicates that many more convictions may follow.

The Supreme Court ruling also declared the rainbow flag a forbidden symbol of the “LGBT movement.” Displaying the flag is the basis for administrative penalties in at least three cases that courts have tried in recent weeks. In late January, a court in Nizhny Novgorod sentenced a woman to five days detention for wearing rainbow-colored earrings after an individual accosted her and her friend in a cafe. Also in late January, a judge in Volgograd region handed down a fine over a rainbow flag published on a social media page. In early February, a court in Saratov fined a woman for posting a rainbow flag on social media.

A police investigation of supposedly extremist LGBTQ propaganda at a "My Little Pony" fan convention in Moscow forced organizers to shut down their event this week. Police apparently were unable to find any My Little Ponies with rainbow manes, or whatever was allegedly perverting the morals of impressionable little Russians.

Russia's LGBTQ+ community is, of course, not the only target of the Putin regime's eradication campaign against whomever it slaps an "extremist" label on.

Since a court banned three organizations affiliated with political opposition leader Aleksey Navalny as “extremist” in 2021, Navalny and five of his supporters have been sentenced to prison on a range of extremism charges for legitimate activism, while dozens more have received fines and short-term jail sentences. Six members of Vesna, a democratic youth movement, have been in pretrial custody since June 2023 on various spurious charges, including extremism. Hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been jailed since the organization was banned as “extremist” in 2017.

And now, of course, the ballerina who raised funds for a charity aiding bombed-out citizens of Ukraine.

But at least Putin makes the trains run on time. And so clean besides!

Q Toons: Resolutions

I had been concerned that perhaps this news story, a kerfuffle picked up by a right-wing blog, might be too obscure. 

A gay staffer for U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate, his office told the Washington Blade in a statement on Saturday morning, which followed reports that he had filmed amateur pornography in the workplace.

“We will have no further comment on this personnel matter,” Cardin’s office said.

The Daily Caller, a right-wing site founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, uploaded video and still images on Friday that purported to show leaked cell phone video of the staffer engaged in gay sex in a Senate hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building, which is not in the U.S. Capitol building.

I needn't have worried. The story has already been lampooned by a few cartoonists who I suspect get plenty of topics from Daily Caller, but also by the late-night TV shows. After all, sex is always Breaking News!

Let this be a lesson to all you hunky dudes who turn to a little frisky business to supplement your day jobs.

The brand may be Only Fans, but nothing on the internet stays put in a lockbox in a private room of a secluded home behind a paywall for long. The internet is more like a Wuhan wet market: once something gets out, there's no getting it back.

I'm not making a judgment here. If you're okay with Tucker Carlson sharing your sexcapades to your boss, your priest, and your mother, fine, go ahead. More power to ya.

Clearly you've got the balls.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I considered drawing something I imagined candidates might say at the Republican also-rans' debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday. But I decided to wait to find out what they actually do say.

Unless I tune in to Tucker's Trumpterview instead to find out whether Carlson swallows or spits.

Q Toon: Tedious

It seems like eons ago that we coined the term "Obama Derangement Syndrome" to describe Republicans' irrational, virulent response to anything and everything about Barack Obama: from their embrace of birtherism even in the face of overwhelming evidence that our 44th President was indeed born in Hawaii, to their revulsion against his wife planting a vegetable garden, to their howls of shock and horror that time he wore a tan suit.

When the electoral college elected as president Donald Berzelius Trump, the most prominent flogger of birtherism's dead horse, right-wingers quickly purloined the idea of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" — as if there were something pathological about Americans being upset over having our country run by a solipsistic, self-serving, lying, cheating, boorish grifter who was using the presidency as a Keep Out Of Jail Free card while billing taxpayers to put up the Secret Service in his own personal hotel chain.

So, now that the party that was just fine and dandy with all that is now falling all over itself proclaiming transgender folks to be the biggest danger to the republic since affordable health care, I'm stealing "Derangement Syndrome" back.

Q Toon: Dear Leader's Cheerleader

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) predicted — or perhaps threatened— that if Donald Joffrey Trump is ever brought to trial for absconding with a couple dozen boxes of tippy-top secret White House documents and stashing them at his Florida hotel, hordes of his MAGA minions will riot. Again.

During his time in office, Trump found the presidency to be an effective shield against being held legally accountable in any court of law. Once he was kicked out of office, not content to let old crimes and lawsuits catch up with him, he immediately started purloining papers and flouting the very law he signed in February, 2018. 

Trump's conceit that he is permanently immune from prosecution is simply the way he has conducted business since, well, prep school. Now Requblicans argue that he has precedent on his side: no president or former president has had to serve jail time. True: Nixon got that pardon, and Harding died before the corruption of his administration burst forth.

If the prospect of Trump sitting in a jail cell is too much for the Constitution to bear, perhaps — if the case ever makes it past his legal maneuvers (and the judges he got to appoint) to trial in the first place — some other punishment can fit the crime.

Trump thinks he's entitled to swipe the nation's secrets? Okay, let's publicize his.

What did he really promise Putin at Helsinki? 

Or is that still a matter of national security?

Those tax returns he promised to release someday after he got elected, then.

We at least deserve to know Mr. Stable Genius's school records.
 

Q Toon: Definition of Character

Yes, folks: even the dictionary is suspect in Florida schools.

A school district in Florida could not accept a donation of dictionaries amid a new state law aimed at combating "wokeness" in classrooms.

The Venice Suncoast Rotary Club was prepared to give its annual donation of dictionaries to the Sarasota County Schools ahead of the new school year. But the district stopped all donations and purchases of books for school libraries until at least next year.

This came after HB 1467 took effect in July. The law requires school districts to have all reading and instructional materials reviewed by a district employee with a "valid educational media specialist certificate." ...

The Venice Suncoast Rotary Club told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that they have donated about 300 dictionaries a year. After donating a total of 4,000 dictionaries to date, this is the first time they were denied.

I'm sure that Gubbner DeSantis will call this an overreaction; but since this anti-wokeness purge is an overreaction in the first place, surely an abundance of caution is called for.

After all, Florida and Texas have rejected math textbooks for not adhering to right-wing orthodoxy. If Johnny has seven apples and gives Susie two, that sounds too much like socialism.

Meanwhile, North Carolina's ignoramus Lieutenant Governor thinks that teaching history and science in elementary schools is dangerous, so they're verboten, too. 

(Don't even let's get started on foreign language education...)

And in Oklahoma, an English teacher was disciplined for displaying a QR code for the Brooklyn Library to their class – not assigning any subversive literature or putting actual books on the shelf, just letting their class know how to find books for themselves. Initial reports said they were fired, although the school district later said it was expecting them to return to class the next day pending a review of the incident. Instead, they quit.

For all the right-wing blather about leftist thought police demanding "political correctness" and coddling liberal snowflakes, it turns out that it's those right-wing thought police imposing their own political correctness by force of law.

Who's the snowflakes now?

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Although my original intention had always been to draw the stars of this week's cartoon in puritan outfits, I toyed with the idea of continuing a reference from a couple weeks ago by drawing Ron DeSantis in Spanish Inquisition garb.

I rejected that idea for two reasons. First, I didn't think that a cardinal's hat and cassock would be recognizable in grayscale. There is only one newspaper that I know of that still prints my cartoons that way, but it's worth taking it into account.

Second, it would mean having to clothe the third speaker in the uniform of a third rigidly intolerant stereotype. The most obvious would be an Iranian mullah or Afghan Taliban; but as Patrick Chappatte and others have found, some people interpret such depictions as a slam against Islam as a whole.

As a gay man and a feminist, I find antigay, misogynist Islamic fundamentalism reprehensible. And certainly, the targets of my cartoon would be more annoyed by being compared to the Taliban than to the Pilgrims. Yet anti-Asian hate is a real thing, and one does have to take care not to feed into that. 

Editorial cartooning often involves drawing how This is like That, even though This and That are completely separate things. In the end, however, I decided that there was no need to draw our home-grown christofascisti as non-Christians. I may well revisit the DeSantis Inquisition someday. But for now, I think I'll stick to drawing imams and the Taliban when I'm actually criticizing imams and the Taliban.

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Oh, by the way, dear reader, since you've read this far, I won't make you look it up:

Q Toon: A Shot of Preposterone

 

Remember when the Baby Boomers hit middle age, and suddenly newsmagazines were running cover stories about menopause (it's not just for women any more!) and 50 being the new 39?

Well, now it's Gen X's turn.

Having discovered erectile dysfunction, Fox Noise host Tucker Carlson has decided to devote a week of his program to his fears that American men are losing their testosterone. The montage of manly images in the ad promoting his series included this bizarre image:

It turns out that this wasn't some idiot plugging into a hilltop Tesla recharging station. Instead, it has something to do with some self-appointed expert whose Rx for iron-poor testosterone is to bathe one's testicles in red light. I assume he was inspired by the folks who claim to have found health benefits from exposing their anuses to ultra-violet light to explore arousing his sperm by exposing his testes to the other end of the visible spectrum.

Look, I'm sure the dude has published dozens of peer-reviewed studies. 

I mean, click-bait dick pics.

The peers interviewed by Newsweek, on the other hand, were not amused.

Urologist Petar Bajic, MD, at the Cleveland Clinic's Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute, in Ohio, ... told Newsweek that men considering red light therapy to enhance their testosterone levels would be wasting their money.

Dr. Bajic said: "The bottom line about red light therapy for low testosterone is that there is no evidence to support its use and no psychological basis for how it might even work because light wouldn't penetrate the skin to enter the testicles. ... "

Mr. Crotchy McSunbather, the guy prescribing submerging into ice baths, and whatever the deal is with the shirtless fellow milking cows without a bucket — they all fit into the melting together of New Age Holistic Anti-medicine and anti-vaxxer eagerness to try anything from horse dewormer to injecting bleach, as long as the doctor didn't order it.

Sometimes it feels as though that particular crowd are just testing us all to find out just what weirdness and ridiculousness they can foist on their followers before even those gullible disciples crack up laughing at the utter inanity of it all.

Kind of like fashion designers.

It's stylish, and, what the hell, it promotes fertility!

Anyway, getting back to Tucker's War on Flaccidity, it's hard (no pun intended) to believe that his fearmongering isn't meant to frighten his viewers into believing that transgender persons and gender dysphoria are brand new phenomena, a novel threat never seen before in the history of Manlinesskind.

But just as every generation is the very first to discover sex, every generation eventually, inexorably becomes the first to discover diminished sex drive.

Ms & Ms

The Mars candy company decided to redesign the outfits of their two female animated M&M characters this month. No longer does the brown M strut about in stiletto heels. The green M has swapped out go-go boots for sneakers.

All this was too much for Fox "News" host Tucker Carlson, who lit into Mars Incorporated on his show for going all woke and ruining his hard-shelled chocolaty sexual fantasies.

Now, for all I know, the scenario I have presented this week would really turn Tucker on. As long as the gals didn't start wearing flannel, khaki and facial piercings. They've already got the shaved head look.

After several week's of nothing but wordy four-panel cartoons, I was ready for something in a single panel. So thank you, Tucker Carlson, for devoting some of your umbrage to a couple of candy mascots changing their footwear.

Just wait until he finds out that the blue M was assigned pink at birth.

Q Toon: From Here to Paternity

Fox Noise talking head Tucker Carlson recently got his panties all in a wad because Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was taking some time off from work to join husband Chasten raising their newborn twins.

“Paternity leave, they call it," Carlson sniffed, "trying to figure out how to breastfeed. No word on how that went.”

Buttigieg took Carlson's crap in stride.

“Well, look, in his case, I guess he just doesn’t understand the concept of bottle feeding, let alone the concept of paternity leave,” he said.

“But what is really strange is that, you know, this is from a side of the aisle that used to claim the mantle of being pro-family,” Buttigieg added. “What we have right now is an administration that’s actually pro-family. And I’m blessed to be able to experience that as an employee, being able to have the flexibility to take care of our newborn children, which is, by the way, work. It’s a joyful work. It’s wonderful work, but it’s ― it’s definitely work.”

Buttigieg further explained that there is this thing called the internet, which allows him to keep abreast of any developments at the Transportation Department, including supply chain bottlenecks and the Build Back Better But With Coal So Joe Manchin Might Vote For It Bill. He only took six weeks off, so he has since returned to work (and to the Sunday Morning Talk Shows).

Carlson's swipe at the Buttiegieg family, echoed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Noisemax, and others of their right-wing ilk, is just another example of the stuck-in-the-1950's thinking we've come to expect from the Republican Party these days.

Carlson's sad implication "breastfeeding" is the only significant task for people who have children ― an especially depressing take from a father of four ― does a disservice to all parents, of all genders and sexualities.

When men do take parental leave, research shows they see it as an overwhelmingly positive experience, reducing the professional risk for both them and their partner, increasing their bond with their child, and strengthening their relationship. As part of a gay couple, Buttigieg's example in taking leave is particularly significant.

And, as many others have pointed out, Fox Noise itself offers paid paternity leave to its employees, and they greatly appreciate it in spite of the diaper changes and nose fridas.

 I cannot thank Fox enough for providing all fathers who work here with such a generous paternity leave. This experience has changed me in a profound way and in ways I won’t fully comprehend until my daughter is older. But for now – that smile coming from the crib each morning, immediately followed by morning snuggles – is what I will cherish the most. There is nothing better. 

Toon: Cooler Heads Must Prevail

It is nearly impossible to satirize the level of desperation at Fox News.

This week, they got caught lying about President Biden's putting America on a vegan diet, and about every immigrant child receiving Vice President Harris's book as a welcome gift. 

Then, perpetually perplexed Tucker Carlson actually urged his viewers to report to the police any children wearing protective masks in public. Because, I guess, the police don't get in enough trouble responding to non-emergency calls.

No, it's because COVID-19 is safe and effective, and has been since Easter of last year, just like our Trump and Savior promised it would be. Or something like that. Anyway, as any parent knows, you can't catch diseases from children. 

It's masks that are dangerous. Them and vaccines.

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In my inked version of this cartoon, I had Larry Kudlow offering Tucker Carlson a "bacon-based beer," but I decided I had better change it in Photoshop.

I've watched enough episodes of "Chopped" to know that someone has undoubtedly produced and sold a beer made with bacon. 

And some Connor Sewer undoubtedly buys it.

Q Toon: Cis Transit Gloria

Christine Hallquist won the four-way Democratic primary for governor of Vermont last week, making her the first transgender gubernatorial nominee of a major party. Hallquist, the CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative, received 48% of the vote; her nearest rival received 22%. She will face incumbent Republican Phil Scott in November.

Discussing the race with a on Tucker Carlson's program on Fox News the next day, gay conservative journalist Chadwick Moore attributed Hallquist’s victory to “transgender privilege.”

[Another panelist on the program, Former Barack Obama campaign official Robin] Biro said that as a transgender woman, Hallquist has received a lot of criticism, to which Carlson responded with the claim that Hallquist is celebrated, which she is, among her supporters. Moore said that due to Hallquist's "transgender privilege," she can get away with more than a cisgender gubernatorial candidate can.
"While the entire country is fixated on the fact that she's transgender, nobody knows anything about her policies," Moore said. "You know that she's for Medicaid for all, she's a climate alarmist, she believes in $15 minimum wage, and that's kind of it."

If Carlson's panel had been comprised of journalists from, oh, I don't know, how about Vermont, perhaps there would have been someone on hand to discuss whether or not citizens of the Green Mountain State went into the voting booth knowing anything about the candidates' positions on issues. We had primary elections here in Wisconsin the same day, and while finding out all the candidates' positions on every issue took some internet sleuthing, there were plenty of ads on TV and Facebook, flyers in the mail, and blankety-blank pre-recorded phone calls to give us a fairly good idea about most of them. And I'm sure it's the same in Vermont.

But since Carlson's guests were all from New York or D.C., it has been left to the former mayor of Houston, Texas to counter Moore's "that's kind of it" assessment.

“Christine was the chief executive of a well-respected energy utility company for more than 12 years and traveled the entire state sharing with voters her progressive vision for Vermont,” said Annise Parker, former mayor of Houston and now President of the LGBTQ Victory Fund. “They claimed Vermont primary voters know nothing beyond her gender identity while in fact the opposite is true – voters chose Christine because of her experience and positions, not because of her gender identity, and it is an insult to Vermont voters to say otherwise.” ...
“For two cisgender white men on Fox News to bemoan ‘transgender privilege’ in a conversation about one of the few openly trans candidates in the entire nation requires extraordinary ignorance, at best,” said Parker. “Vicious attacks on the qualifications and appearance of a gubernatorial candidate solely because she is transgender is intolerable and must be addressed by Fox News leadership.”

Meanwhile, transgender twitterers have been wondering loudly where to go to apply for some of the sort of "transgender privilege"  Moore and Carlson were talking about.

#TransgenderPrivilege is being told "pronouns are too hard" by the same people who think anyone who can't speak English should "get out".

 #transgenderprivilege is speaking up in defense of your right to exist in public, the same as everyone else, only to be told that it's "your pet project" and you really shouldn't discriminate against those who don't want you in public places. 

#TransgenderPrivilege is a Black trans woman celebrating if she makes it past age 35 #BlackTransLivesMatter

 #TransgenderPrivilege is when men look at you and you can't tell if they want to f💣 you, murder you , or both.