Q Toon: The Sun Will Come Out, Ed Murrow

I had to draw this week's cartoon Sunday night, without knowing what the CBS Evening News set behind Tony Dokoupil took was going to look like, or what clothing choices he was going to make. But I did have this mission statement from the successor to Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley, Norah O'Donnell, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois:

“On too many stories, the press has missed the story,” he said. “And it’s not just us. It’s all of legacy media. Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates, and not the average American. Or, we put too much weight in the analysis of academics, or elites, and not enough on you.”

It seems to be the consensus of media consultant types that news viewers are fed up with what people who know what they are talking about have to say about news events. Rather, viewers want to hear what Average Joe Schmoes think. The local NBC affiliate where I live has been promoting itself with the same promise to eschew expertise in favor of whatever some random person who just heard about something five seconds ago has to say about it.

Dokoupil moved to the evening news anchor post from CBS's morning news program, where he had shared hosting duties with Gayle King and retired football player Nate Burleson. As Katie Couric could have told him, the switch from soft and happy morning news to the let's-get-serious evening desk is gonna be greeted with a lot of wariness and skepticism.

Swinging into your corn flakes, from CBS Mornings promo

So how's it going at Dokoupil's new job? He started his evening anchor stint two days ahead of time on Saturday to interview Pete Hegseth, who identifies as Secretary of War, about the U.S. military strike on Venezuela and kidnapping of President & Mrs. Nicolás Maduro. He lobbed a bunch of softball questions at Hegseth, allowing him to repeat his assigned talking points over and over unchallenged.

Although I'm still waiting to hear someone ask anyone from the Lawless Trump Regime why, if Congress was kept in the dark over our Venezuelan adventure out of concern that there might be a leak, Pete "Open Signal" Hegseth was included in the planning.

(Trump, by the way, has told reporters that oil company executives were kept informed of our invasion before and after the fact. I suspect that could have had something to do with the $436,000 bet somebody won on the Polymarket on-line gambling site by predicting that Maduro would be ousted by January 31. Or maybe that was just some Average Joe Schmoe included in Secy. Hegseth's group chat by mistake.)

Getting back to Dokoupil, there have been one or two technical glitches this week. But more importantly, viewers are waiting to see whether he will participate in Paramount's Bari Weisswashing of Trump regime news coverage by the network.

His leading off a segment on the fifth anniversary of Trump's attempted January 6 coup (the one at the U.S. Capitol, not the one in Venezuela) with cowardly both-sidesism and following up with weird cuddling up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio the other day are not exactly encouraging.

Good night, and good luck.

This Week's Sneak Peek

From the pencil rough that eventually became this week's cartoon:

It bothered me that most of the editorial cartoons about the My Lai massacre that I had selected for last Saturday's Graphical History Tour seemed to excuse Lt. William Calley's role in it; so yesterday, I dug up one more cartoon taking a contrary position and added it to the others. It goes against the rules of blogging, but apparently rules don't mean anything any more.

Q Toon: It's About Time

Say what you will about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA). Republicans came to Congress with a majority pledging openness and transparency, and Johnson has been very open and transparent about not having taken the time to find out what's going on in the country.

You can ask him about the Trump regime's graft and corruption, Trump's granting pardons to people the President has never heard of, Trump posting scatological videos on Ministry of Truth Social, Trump bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela seemingly at random, Trump bailing out the Milei regime in Argentina and taking in shiploads of Argentinian beef while our own government is shut down and our farmers are losing markets to China thanks to Trump's misguided tariff policies. 

Johnson's answer is pretty much the same.

“I’m not trying to dodge the question,” the top lawmaker said. “I haven’t had time to get the details, OK? That’s still on my list, things-to-do list.”

We know that whatever is keeping Speaker Johnson so busy he can't get around to his things-to-do list, it isn't running the House of Representatives. When Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open, he sent the members home. When Arizona voters sent Adelita Grijalva to succeed her late father in Congress, Johnson told them, "All representatives are currently out of the office, but your call is very important to us. Please hang up and your vote will be ignored in the order you get redistricted."

Why, then, is Speaker Johnson unable to find the time to get anything done, to catch up on the news, to notice that a 34-time-convicted felon is running roughshod over the U.S. Constitution?

You may be holding it in your hands right now.

Every app on your phone is designed to be a bigger timesuck than the others.

I don't know much about that app Mr. Johnson and Mr. Johnsonson use to keep tabs on each other's sexual activity, but you have to know that it sucks its users in and keeps them engaged with the promise that if they just keep reading on, pushing its buttons, racking up higher scores, clicking on those video reels of attractive people abstaining from sex, something really worthwhile is bound to come up on the screen any minute.

By the way, if you liked this cartoon about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, here are some others you might enjoy.

Last Christmas

Rather than resurrect yuletide editorial cartoons from 1922 today, I thought I'd reach back 20 years further for the Christmas cartoons that would be Minneapolis Tribune cartoonist R.C. Bowman's last for the holiday.

Of course, Bowman couldn't have known it would be his last Christmas. His death the following June at age 32 would be an accident; he would be overcome by gas in his home.

Bowman's Christmas Eve cartoon concerns the chief foreign affairs news of the day. Seeking to force the Venezuelan government of Cipriano Castro to repay debts incurred prior to his country's 1892 civil war, Germany and Great Britain (joined by Italy) placed a naval blockade against Venezuela. Castro responded by arresting 200 German and British citizens in Caracas. Seeking to avoid having the U.S. navy come to Venezuela's defense, Britain invited the U.S. to arbitrate the dispute.

Bowman's Christmas Day cartoon refers to Rudyard Kipling's poetic screed against Great Britain allying its interests with Germany, "The Rowers," published in London Times Dec. 22. The actual poem is longer than I care to repeat here, but these stanzas show that Bowman's paraphrase didn't exaggerate its sentiment much:

"Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold,
  Our wounds are bleeding yet—
And you tell us now that our strength is sold
 To help them press for a debt!

"'Neath all the flags of all mankind
 That use upon the seas,
Was there no other fleet to find
 That you strike bands with these?"

🎄

Since Bowman's Christmas Day cartoon wasn't particularly Christmasy, let's check over at the Minneapolis Journal, where Charles "Bart" Bartholomew was taking a more festive approach to the holiday.

"An Old Fashioned Christmas" by Charles "Bart" Bartholomew in Minneapolis Journal, Dec. 24, 1902

Alert readers may recall that the Wright brothers had not yet flown their air-ship at Kitty Hawk as of Christmas Eve, 1902. Lighter-than-air balloons had been in use for half a century, however, and by this time had incorporated engines and steering mechanisms (and been involved in a fatal aeronautic accident). 

Like air-ships, automobiles were principally a plaything of the rich and indolent, although they were beginning to catch on with the general public. You'll find the more common modes of transportation referenced in Bartholomew's cartoon for Christmas Day:

"Papa's Christmas" by Charles "Bart" Bartholomew in Minneapolis Journal, Dec. 25, 1902

A third daily newspaper in town, the Daily Times, ran this front page cartoon beneath an editorial promising to publish "the names and addresses of any suffering poor in Minneapolis and St. Paul whose destitution is unknown to the general public."

"The Poor Ye Have Always with You," unsigned, in Minneapolis Daily Times, Dec. 24, 1902

By the way, I don't know what was meant by the "Don't Let This Happen to You" cut line. Surely the Daily Times wasn't advising its readers to pull the shades.

Anyway, the Daily Times, true to its word, printed the names and addresses of some two dozen destitute Minneapolitans (plus one from Minnetonka) "described by acquaintances or observers as needful of aid on this Christmas Day, it having been impossible to separately investigate the accuracy of the description in each case." I can't say how those people reacted to having their situation above the fold on page one, but the Times itself noted that only 5% of the total number of reports to them of destitution (in addition to those 25 there were others to whom the Times brought food and fuel) came from the destitute persons themselves.

"What Has He in the Pouch" by P.J. Carter in Minneapolis Daily Times,  December 25, 1902

P.J. Carter's Christmas Day cartoon for the Times again references the situation in Venezuela, while still keeping a Christmasy theme to his commentary. Carter favored pen and ink for his editorial cartoons, so I'm not prepared to conclude that the previous day's cartoon was his work.

"Sad News for the Trusts" by Tom Thurlby in St. Paul Globe, Dec. 24, 1902

Across the river in St. Paul, I had expected to find more cartoons by Frank Wing. Instead, I found these by a Tom Thurlby and O.C. Holt in the St. Paul Globe. Thurlby's Christmas Eve cartoon jumps past the present holiday to suggest to Mr. Consumer some new year's resolutions.

"When Yet a Farmer Boy" by O.C. Holt in St. Paul Globe, December 24, 1902

By the way, all four newspapers in today's post published on Christmas Day, 1902, a Thursday, although the December 25 Globe didn't happen to have any cartoons in it.

But there were two cartoons in the Christmas Eve edition; this poem and illustration hailing the true bringers of Christmas presents was on an inside page. You know it's hard work when you're sweating like that outdoors in St. Paul, Minnesota, on December the twenty-fourth.

At least someone was kind enough to gift the man a toy whatever-that-critter-is beneath his sack of goodies.

And with that, I wish you a merry little Christmas, eighth night of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Eve, and any other holiday of your choice. 

Qapla'!