Q Toon: Ric Rolls with the Punches

Since I had introduced Max's mother Karen during my vacation as someone working at the Donald J. Trump John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (hereinafter referred to as the DJTJFKMC4PA), who better to interact with newly former President of the DJTJFKMC4PA, Ric Grenell?

Gay Republican Grenell has a track record of stirring up opposition wherever he goes. Republican Theocrats were up in arms when presidential candidate Mitt Romney took him on as a foreign policy surrogate; he later repeatedly offended his hosts as Ambassador to Germany in Donald Trump's First Corrupt Presidency.

With the recrudescence of Trump, Grenell came on board to oversee the bastardization of the JFK Center, sending artists and audiences streaming toward the exits. He and a new board of Trump lickspittles and right-wing ideologues rubber stamped Trump’s impetuous response to shut the DJTJFKMC4PA down for so-called renovations for the next two years.

Now, we don't know whether Grenell quit or was fired. Nor do we know what his plans for the future are; New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson attempted to ask him that quite reasonable question, only for him to throw a hissy fit back at her, huffing that she is a "left wing hack” manipulating the news.

Not the response of someone who left of her own accord, girl!

I drew my cartoon before Williamson and Grenell’s exchange became public. I suppose I would have had to draw a completely different cartoon otherwise, but Karen is not a New York Times reporter or a left wing hack. I wrote her as a rock-solid Republican. Whether she's a lickspittle or an ideologue — well, you'll have to wait and see.

At any rate, to have Grenell snap at Karen would require him to be even more of an unhinged sissy than I think he is.

But what do I know? I'm just a left-wing hack interested in attacking Republicans and manipulating the news for my own far left agenda.

Q Toon: X Stranged

Elon Musk, the eccentric South African billionaire who bought Tesla and Twitter and founded SpaceX, used to be considered a cool, innovative mastermind. But he has lurched rightward in recent years. Money, and a nostalgia for apartheid is apt to do that to one. 

You just can't keep these masterminds from becoming the evil kind, I guess.

Musk's right-wing politics has included animus toward transgender persons, and for him, it's personal.

He is estranged from his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson; they haven't gotten along for years. Musk discussed their broken relationship psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, streaming the conversation on X for the world to see. As one does when one is an evil mastermind.

He didn't support Wilson's gender identity, he told Peterson and the Xitterverse, repeatedly deadnaming her during the livestream. “I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said, adding that she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”

Wilson, very much alive, responded to her father in a phone conversation with NBC: 

Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.

Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.

Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said.

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”

Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present. “He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”

I don't know Vivian Wilson, but her case seems fairly credible. Musk is the sort of person who crows that he's a fighter for Free Speech, and then suspends the X account of  White Dudes for Harris for no apparent reason. (Were they somehow "violating [X's] rules against evading suspension" without violating some other rule to begin with?) Reports of his volatile temper and intolerance are legion.

There is perhaps some risk in posting a link to this cartoon to X, that someone at Elon's evil lair will take notice and I'll end up having violated some codicil in the Muskovite TOS or other. 

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It would have set up the final panel of my cartoon if I had had Musk use Vivian Wilson's birth name in panels two or three, but I chose not to. Deadnaming a transgender person is considered very rude, on a par with addressing a divorced woman as Mrs. Ex-Husband's Full Name.

Similarly, I had given thought to drawing a cartoon of J.D. Vance, another vocal opponent of transgender persons, objecting to being deadnamed himself. I have not, however, come up with any novel approach to the well-worn on social media topic of his having twice changed his birth name.

Not that I'm precluding such a future cartoon about it. It is just a little bit — you know— weird.

Alphabetter or Worse

The Trevor Project has joined a long list of LGBTQ+ organizations quitting Elon Musk's social medium site, X, citing its refusal to do anything about the increasing pestilence of hate speech infesting the former Twitter.

It makes perfect sense that an organization dedicated to preventing youth suicide wouldn't want their posts polluted with garbage from fascist trolls who are dedicated to pushing the suicidal over the edge just for clicks and kicks.

Back in April, about the time that he ditched the Twitter moniker in favor of "X," Musk quietly removed certain Twitter protections against misgendering and deadnaming transgender users, adding to an already hostile, hate-speech filled environment. "Twitter has become increasingly unsafe in recent months for LGBTQ and BIPOC people with anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans, anti-Black, and antisemitic tweets on the rise. The removal of this policy was the last straw," Denise Spivak, CEO of CenterLink, told Mashable as several of its 325 member LGBTQ organizations worldwide quit the platform en masse.

Complaints about what a run-down, shady neighborhood X has become since Musk took over have fallen on deaf ears. Musk, apparently, has unmasked himself as the platform's fascist troll-in-chief.

Your humble scribbler came late to Twitter (see, I can deadname, too!) and I haven't yet experienced a great deal of abuse there. Were that situation to change, I can't imagine why I would ever want to pay the Muskovite platform eight bucks a month for the privilege.

I suppose I should have saved today's title in case I ever draw a cartoon about Google. But chances are its parent company might have changed (at least its name) by then, so what the heck.

Q Toon: So Long, Elon

Reversing a fiver-year-old policy at Twitter, hate speech champion Elon Musk has reopened his platform to right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ users and users of color. In response, LGBTQ non-profit organizations across the country are deactivating their Twitter accounts.

Dozens of regional LGBTQ community centers are deactivating their Twitter accounts today, decrying recent policy changes despite the rise of hate speech and calling on the app to do more to protect its users. 

The announcement came from CenterLink, an international nonprofit network of more than 325 LGBTQ organizations, many of which will also be leaving the platform.

"Twitter has become increasingly unsafe in recent months for LGBTQ and BIPOC people with anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans, anti-Black, and antisemitic tweets on the rise. The removal of this policy was the last straw," Denise Spivak, CEO of CenterLink, told Mashable. 

Earlier this month, Twitter, led by CEO Elon Musk, quietly removed a portion of its hateful conduct policy that specified protections against misgendering and deadnaming transgender users, adding to an already hostile, hate-speech filled environment. 

In response to the conduct changes, CenterLink and its members have decided to forgo the app entirely, formally deactivating their Twitter accounts today. Some participants have already left the app, announced they will no longer be active, or pinned statements opposing the app's changes.

I was late signing onto Twitter myself, getting on board shortly before Musk took over the joint. The headline on today's post notwithstanding, I don't have plans to deactivate my account there at this point, even though our value to each other is really quite marginal. (I've also tried Counter Social and Mastodon, but the experience is kind of like finding yourself in a huge stadium filled with people each of whom is talking to him/herself.)

Just the same, if my Twitter feed were to become intolerably toxic, I would probably hang it up.

And neither of us would miss the other much.

Q Toon: Apology Intercepted

Anyone who lives with a cat, or has visited someone who does, will know where I'm coming from.

It seems that ex-NFL coach, current NBC Sports commentator Tony Dungy tweeted and deleted a wisecrack repeating the popular right-wing fiction that there is are school districts somewhere in the U.S. that have installed litter boxes in school restrooms for the benefit of students who identify as cats.

It's a dog whistle slur against transgender and queer youth, so activists pounced on Dungy as if he were a laser pointer dot on the floor.

Dungy's apology must have gotten deleted along with his original tweet, but he had a screengrab of it to post in a later tweet explaining that the people continuing attacks against him must not have seen it.

This past week I posted a tweet that I subsequently deleted. I issued an apology but not everyone saw it. So I am reposting my apology here. As a Christian I want to be a force for love to everyone. A force for healing and reconciliation-not for animosity. pic.twitter.com/esew5wjUyD

We can debate whether or not this is another example of transpeople who can't take a joke; given the rise in murders and legislative assaults against transgender people in the past several years, one can understand how that community might have a diminished sense of humor.

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Sitting down to prepare for this week's cartoons, I whipped off a hasty caricature of Mr. Dungy in my sketchbook that I was rather pleased with.

The meme cat took a few more tries.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Meanwhile, over on Twitter, I'm seeing most of the sensible people rushing for the exits, and I'm wondering whether I should grab my coat.

Oh, sure, if Twitter is just going to become another Truthiness Social, there won't be much point in hanging around. But are we all just supposed to retreat to our own corners, with a liberal internet over on this cloud and a fascist internet over on that one?

And where do the sensible people run to when another bastard with more billions than he knows what to do with buys up Mastodon and Bargain Counter Social?

I'll bet Al Gore is sorry he even invented the thing now.

Q Toon: It's Also Her Verb

Congressloon Lauren Boebert (R-CO), whom you may have seen screeching at the President during last week's State of the Union Address, followed up that performance by tweeting "My pronoun is patriot."

As one of the more prominent members of the fascist wing of the Republican Party, Boebert's claim to be a patriot can only be respected while recalling Samuel Johnson's observation that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Others have pointed out that "patriot" is not a pronoun; but once one acquiesces to the practice of using "they/them/their" as singular pronouns, or argues that language is historically flexible, one has to concede that any word can be a pronoun if people decide that it is one. As soon as other people start actually using "patriot" and "Lauren Boebert" interchangeably in conversation, well, quod erat demonstratum.

Last year, Boebert publicly scorned Mr. Potato Head for coming out as non-binary. Does one dare to hope that "My pronoun is patriot" is meant to signal that Boebert has suddenly developed an understanding of the transgender, non-binary, and accepting community?

I do hope she — oh, I'm sorry, I meant patriot — doesn't have difficulty finding a public bathroom when patriot has to empty patriots bladder. Some places are fussy about folks using a bathroom that doesn't align with the gender on patriots birth certificate.

Q Toon: He/Him/Hissy Fit

Newly elected Republican darling Glenn Youngkin hasn't even been sworn in as Governor of Virginia yet, and already the Trumpist-CrazyAss wing of the party is pissed at him.

To begin with, Youngkin is promising not to overrule local COVID-19 protective measures. Republicans who believe in small government except when they are in charge of it are upset that he won't dictate that local municipalities must allow COVID-19 to spread like wildfire.

They also have their panties in a wad over Joshua Marin-Mora, a 2021 Georgetown University graduate whom Youngkin brought over from his campaign staff to work under his Press Secretary. It seems that young Mr. Marin-Mora is openly  LGBTQ+ and openly Latinx, and — horrors! — lists "he/him" as his preferred pronouns in his Twitter bio.

“So, Youngkin chose a guy with pronouns in his bio to do his comms who also served on the Georgetown Latinx Leadership Forum and supports virtually everything Youngkin's voters voted against,” blared Pedro L. Gonzalez, a writer for the influential conservative think tank Claremont Institute, in a series of tweets. When other Twitter users unearthed pictures of Marin-Mora wearing LGBTQ Pride clothing, Gonzalez snarled, “The new GOP is actually worse than the old GOP.”

The lengthy thread attacking Marin-Mora was elevated by the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy [fabulist] Jack Posobiec and far-right activist Lauren Witzke.

Not every conservative shares the umbrage of the right-wing wackosphere. Some of them can actually conceive of the possibility that attracting LGBTQ+ Latinxes might help Republicans hold onto Arizona or Texas someday. (I can hear the campaign rally music already: "All My Latinxes Live In Texas.")

I have no doubt that Gonzalez, Posibiec, Witzke and their ilk will soon forget all about the underlings in Youngkin's press office anyway. Before you know it, they'll be back attacking Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Larry Hogan, and whatever other counterrevolutionary criminals they root out of  the Republican ranks.

Q Toon: LGBTQIAA2SGOP+

 

I've quoted GQP Chair Ronna McDonald's Pride Month tweet directly in the first panel of this week's cartoon. She concluded her tweet by explaining that "we will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs."

There has been plenty of pushback to McDonald's tweet, starting with Chasten Buttigieg challenging her to read her own party's platform on LGBTQ rights. The GQP didn't produce a national platform in 2020, but its 2016 platform and its various state party platforms came out resoundingly against LGBTQ rights.

The Transportation Secretary's husband, a Chicago area teacher, also noted that "Those with 'deeply held religious beliefs' are often the parents who force their LGBTQ children out of the home and onto the street. I've met with those kids. 40% of homeless youth in this country are LGBTQ."

Other tweeters have scoffed that doubling LGBTQ support comes from having such low number to start with; but let's be honest. We can be found in every walk of life. Even this guy:

There are more Ric Grenells, Caitlyn Jenners, Tammy Bruces and Milo Yiannopouloi out there than more mainstream LGBTQ+ folk might care to admit. Not enough to have any great influence in their party's platforms, surely, but they exist.

Right-wingers have their own problems with McDaniel's tweet. 

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins tweeted: "Sounds good in a tweet, but the reality is religious freedom is being endangered by those demanding forced acceptance of the LGBTQ agenda from the elementary classroom to the corporate board room and everything in between. There can be no compromise on our First Freedom."

"Stop," said Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican. "We don't want men to play on girls' sports teams and castration of children. Ronna needs to adjust this horrible wrong-headed messaging or resign."

Who is the real Requblican Party any more? McDaniel and Grinell, or Perkins and Rogers? Those new Requblican converts deserve to know what they're getting into. Check out another tweet in response to the GQP Chair:

One small perk of being a white gay guy who can blend-in with Republicans:

When Republicans think they’re in friendly company, I get to hear *precisely* what they think of people who aren’t straight/white/Christian/etc.

It isn’t pretty – and you aren’t fooling anyone.

— Calamity-Era Tom (@HylianTom) June 3, 2021

Say, Tom, that wouldn't have been you blending in at the Capitol, was it?

Q Toon: No More Mr. Nice Guy

Donald Trump — or whoever took charge of his Twitter account Friday afternoon — posted the first acknowledgement of LGBTQ Pride Month of his presidency last week.

Was that really Donald Trump, or did Ric Grenell hack the presidential Twitter account? There are no misspelled words, sentence fragments, or gratuitous digs at President Obama. And there are only two words that were capitalized unnecessarily.

Whoever it was, I have to wonder if he or she knows what the "T" stands for. Or that LGBT does not stand for "Lesbians & Gays Backing Trump."

The "T" stands for Transgender, a group that has endured sustained hostility from the Corrupt Trump Administration. I've drawn before about their determination to remove protections for transgender prisoners and to boot transgender soldiers out of the military; now they have moved to block transgender civilians from medical care under the Affordable Care Act.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday it plans to remove gender identity from the class of people protected from discrimination in health care.
The agency said it is revising a section of Obamacare that provides protection against discrimination in health care on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability and age. A rule published under the Obama administration in 2016 confirmed that transgender people were protected under the law’s provisions that prohibit discrimination from providers and insurers.

Earlier in the week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development put forth a ruling allowing homeless shelters to discriminate against transgender persons.

Nearly one-third of transgender Americans who responded to a 2015 survey have experienced homelessness in their lifetime. Requiring transgender people to stay in shelters that don't match their gender identity can put them at further risk of violence and harassment, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. 

Last year, I was willing to consider the possibility that the anti-transgender policies of the Corrupt Trump Administration were due to a select cabal of underlings pushing an agenda of Special Rights for Evangelicals, but I have become increasingly convinced that there's a porn star out there somewhere whom Trump found to be somewhat other than advertised. And who didn't settle for a measly $130 grand to keep quiet.

Trump has, so far, pushed one anti-transgender policy after another upon the Departments of Defense, Health & Human Services, Housing & Urban Development. Labor, Homeland Security and the Justice Department can't be far behind.

Before he gets driven from office, look for similar edicts protecting anti-transgender discrimination by energy companies, national parks, and the IRS.

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.

Toon: The Eyes Have It

I considered two possible cartoons for syndication this week, and this one is the one I didn't go with.

I like it better, but I'm worried that only comic enthusiasts will get it. But if you have to ask...

Q Toon: Shelved

It's time for the obligatory Merry Christmas cartoon!

Carolyn Aebersold popularized her family tradition of Elf on the Shelf in a 2005 children's picture book, telling the chilling story of how elves would steal into households around the world to spy on children and report their behavior back to Santa Claus.

Little did Ms. Aebersold realize that Mark Zuckerberg had already released his Facebook into the world, harnessing people's eagerness to talk about themselves in order for him to harvest information on the behavior of kids from one to 92. It's not only the stuff you post on Facebook, but anything else you do on your computer when you foolishly think Facebook isn't looking. The data is then sold to the highest bidder, the lowest bidder, and all the myriad bidders inbetween.

Then Google and Twitter came along to fill in whatever blanks in our on-line behavior Facebook might have overlooked, but at least they only captured what we were doing on our computer, tablet, phone, or FitBit.

So, to make the spy network of things complete, every room in the house now has Siri, Alexa, Hey Google, and whatever dumbed-down gadget Cricket Wireless is going to come up with for us old fogeys, reporting to the Valley of the Shadow of Silicon what's in our refrigerators, how long we leave the lights on, who rang our doorbells, and whatever the Roomba found on the floor. They're willing to testify in court against us, and we've already signed away our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights somewhere in volume 87 of the Terms of Service Agreement.

So you better look out; you better not cry; you better not pout. I'm telling you why:

Watson's taking everything down.

Merry Christmas!

Q Toon: There's Bound to Be Talk Tomorrow

The Ghost of Twitter Past has been haunting the celebrity set again.

Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray apologized for using the word "queer" in a derogatory way in tweets when he was 14 and 15, saying "I used a poor choice of word that doesn't reflect who I am or what I believe."

Kevin Hart pulled out of hosting next year's Oscars ceremony after demands that he repent of old tweets and stand-up routines disparaging gays. At first, he refused to apologize, only to give in, grudgingly, after having quit the MC job.

In young Mr. Murray's case, it hardly seems fair to hold him responsible for every irresponsible thing he blurted onto the internets in his teenage years, but it does demonstrate to those still in that age group that yes, Virginia, there is a permanent record. Twitter never forgets.

As someone who fancies himself somewhat of a humorist, I find I have some sympathy for Mr. Hart as well. All humor is transgressive to some degree, and may become moreso over time. For example, in researching 100-year-old cartoons, I find many involving African-Americans and other ethnicities that I wouldn't dare repost today. Some people thought last Saturday's post of old Bush 41 cartoons was out of line; well, you should see the stuff I didn't include.

On the other hand, Mr. Hart's tweets and jokes didn't come from another century. President Barack Obama was ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Ellen DeGeneres had won over two dozen Emmys for her talk show. Same-sex couples could marry in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia.

Moreover, a leading cause of suicide among LGBTQ youth, and a substantial factor in the higher rate of suicide among LGBTQ youth over their peers, is the fear of rejection by one's parents. Accordingly, the LGBTQ community just doesn't find jokes about how horrible it might be to have a gay son particularly funny.

✍

It is a steep challenge in cartooning to get these song parodies to both scan and rhyme. In audio, one can get away with eliding a couple syllables or fudging a consonant or two; but in print, we cartoonists are at the mercy of how the reader happens to hear the words inside his/her/their head.

Even steeper is the challenge of reducing a five-minute song to thirty seconds, so I apologize for jumping ahead to the end of the song in panel four.

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.

Words Cannot, Part CXLVII

Q Toon: The Kids Are Alright

Right-wing gun nuts are finding that their ad hominem attacks against the survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Parkland High School are just not selling.

Efforts to claim that one young man, David Hogg, was a "crisis actor" and wasn't really a student from Parkland, based on his family's recent vacation to California, were shown to be laughable: a yearbook screenshot purporting to prove that Hogg had been graduated from a California high school shows the student above him wearing a Stoneman Douglas High School Eagles jersey.

A image of another prominent student photoshopped to make it appear that she was tearing up the U.S. Constitution fooled many eager believers, but a tweet from a Republican candidate in Maine about her backfired badly last month:

A week ago, [Leslie Gibson] was the only declared candidate to represent the 57th District in Maine's House of Representatives. On Friday, his fortunes vastly changed as he quit the race to represent the towns of Greene and Sabattus, according to the Associated Press.
Gibson had become known outside his little corner of Maine for what many say was his rage-tweet against the vocal survivors of the shooting that killed 17 in Parkland, Fla.
"There is nothing about this skinhead lesbian that impresses me and there is nothing that she has to say unless you're a frothing at the mouth moonbat," the now-deleted tweet read.
The 17-year-old girl he was referring to is Emma González, who has emerged as one of the most outspoken activists in the Parkland group.

Last week, Fox squawking head Laura Ingraham had to apologize when advertisers pulled their support of her show over a tweet from her taunting Mr. Hogg for not getting accepted into four of the colleges to which he had applied; she promptly went on vacation. Washed-up rocker Ted Nugent quickly stepped into the breach, calling the students mushy-brained soulless liars. Parkland student Cameron Kasky fired back, tweeting, "If only he saw all the tears. If only he had to look into the eyes I’ve looked into. If only he saw what this did to all of us. And here the NRA is, receiving more fear-based donations than ever. Talk about ‘no soul.’"

The NRA and its minions had likewise savaged the bereaved parents of Sandy Hook; but this time, they're trying to beat a bunch of social media-savvy teenagers who show every sign of being better at this game than any middle-aged or gray-haired troll on the internet, TV, or the campaign trail.

God willing, they'll prove better than the Russian bot army, too.

Because Words Fail

There really is nothing to say about this lout any more.

Donald Jan Trump

When mercurial American President Donald Jan Trump posts ludicrous lies on Twitter, he's just jealous of the attention other news stories are getting.

Q Toon: So Help Us God

I, Donald Berzilius Trump, don't need to solemnly swear anything, believe me. My presidency will be the most goodly, amazing, amazing presidency you have ever seen, I'm telling you. I have terrific ideas for upholding the Constitution, especially the part about my secret plan to replace Obamacare, which was a terrible disaster, everybody says so. But I can promise that I will, to the best of my ability, which is the best ability, I can assure you, preserve, protect and defend the most exclusive private school system you have ever seen and I'm gonna make the public school system pay for it. You're gonna be so tired of me bringing back jobs from those lying rapists in Mexico that you won't mind losing Medicare and Social Security, or clean air and water, or a free press, or whatever it is that I put Ben Carson in charge of.