The Recycling Bin of History

Every once in a while, I come across editorial cartoons for these Graphical History Tours that I like, but which don't make the cut for one reason or another.

Which is just to say that there ain't much by way of an overall theme to today's post. And here we go!

"The Grist of War" by Winsor McCay in New York Herald, ca. June 18, 1926

I was all set to include this Winsor McCay cartoon in a recent post about Abd El-Krim's surrender to  colonial French and Spain troops in Morocco, but something just seemed off about it.

Given the timing of its publication, it seems that the cartoon ought to be about the Rif War, but it's curious why the "Militarist" character is drawn with ridiculously exaggerated white lips, in the manner that White cartoonists and minstrel shows of the day portrayed Black people.

German cartoonists in the aftermath of World War I frequently drew African soldiers carrying out French military actions as a way of highlighting African soldiers' presence in France's occupation of the Ruhr region; the cartooning practice was meant to inflame German resentment at being policed by untermenschen.

Was McCay echoing that same racist propaganda here? If so, the cartoon was more likely about French policy against Germany, not France's adventures in Morocco.

"Well, Anyway, a Good Time Was Had By All" by James North in Washington Post, June 4, 1926

Meanwhile, a much-ballyhooed disarmament conference was underway. The French poppinjay in the foreground of James North's cartoon is more representative of how U.S. cartoonists represented France: stiffly waxed goatee and upturned mustache.

"But Isn't It Kind of Dangerous" by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, June 1, 1926

Here’s a “Ding” Darling cartoon I liked about New York Governor Al Smith’s position on Prohibition. It didn’t quite fit in with my post on spring primary results — Smith was not in a reelection race — and I already had two other Darling cartoons having to do with Iowa’s GOP Senate primary.

I do like to keep an eye out for cartoons featuring the men who were destined to run for president and vice president later on. I shouldn’t need to warn of a spoiler alert when I explain that Smith would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, and it’s not as if the "Happy Warrior" were an obscure pol in 1926. Nor is he largely forgotten today.

Unlike his 1928 running mate.

By the way, I came across this campaign button at a resale store recently. I wonder whether whoever wrote the price sticker was unaware that Franklin Roosevelt was not at the top of the ticket, but was the vice presidential nominee in that 1920 campaign.

"Kompromissflaggen" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, June 6, 1926

This cartoon suggesting designs various German political parties and interests might have had for the Weimar Republic's flag didn't fit in with recent posts on European affairs. This is an unretouched image from the Heidelberg's on-line archive; besides adding English translations, I would have tried to eliminate the yellowing of the page and to emphasize the black lines.

Perhaps Herr Garvens would have appreciated my coloring in some red on his flags, too, assuming I would be coloring the correct rectangles. My guess is that the red isn't missing because it has faded over time, but rather that it was never there — because Kladderadatsch could only afford black and yellow ink for the cartoons on its inside pages that week.

Finally, it would have been timely, in this week when the Supreme Court floods the zone with a blizzard of rulings like a college student cranking out all his term papers at once, to have put together a post about historic Supreme Court decisions. Sadly, editorial cartoons about the Court are somewhat rare in the 1920's.

"Memories of Dred Scott" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1926

Cartoons about the Court do show up in newspapers appealing to a Black audience, however. This Wilbert Holloway cartoon concerns the Supreme Court's decision that it had no jurisdiction to rule in Curtis & Corrigan v. Buckley et al., a case contesting the legality of private contracts restricting the sale of homes to Black persons.

The case made by the bill is this: the parties are citizens of the United States, residing in the District [of Columbia]. The plaintiff and the defendant Corrigan are white persons, and the defendant Curtis is a person of the negro race. In 1921, thirty white persons, including the plaintiff and the defendant Corrigan, owning twenty-five parcels of land, improved by dwelling houses, situated on S Street, between 18th and New Hampshire Avenue, in the City of Washington, executed an indenture, duly recorded, in which they recited that, for their mutual benefit and the best interests of the neighborhood comprising these properties, they mutually covenanted and agreed that no part of these properties should ever be used or occupied by, or sold, leased or given to, any person of the negro race or blood, and that this covenant should run with the land and bind their respective heirs and assigns for twenty-one years from and after its date.

Justice Edward T. Sanford delivered the Court's decision that the 5th, 13th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution did not apply to private contracts. Sanford, a Harding appointee from Tennessee, was a friend and protegé of Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Like Taft a conservative jurist, his earlier majority opinion in Gitlow v. New York ironically established precedent for the liberal Warren Court's decisions expanding civil rights. 

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water

Or, What's It All About, Algae?

Toon: You Can't Miss It

In their continuing mission to feed Donald Commodus Trump's bottomless ego, the bootlicking sycophants of the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™ announced this week that U.S. passports (required by the SAVE Act if you want to exercise your right to vote) will now be adorned with Dear Leader's scowling face.

This is on top of adding his scraggly signature to paper currency, minting gold coins bearing his likeness, tacking his name above John F. Kennedy's at the Kennedy Center, proposing a fleet of so-called Trump class battleships, and unfurling ginormous banners of his puss (when you're a star they let you do that) outside every government building in D.C.

Not to mention the Arc de Trump and that goddamn Gaudy Ballroom, intended as permanent monuments to the nation's shame for having elected such a preening peacock, not once, but twice.

Even Hitler, Mussolini, and Kim Jong Un never put their faces on German, Italian, or North Korean  passports.

I'm so glad I renewed my passport last year.

Q Toon: Exit Stage Left

Here's Part Two of Mama's visit to Max and Leo's humble abode.

I've made an effort to by coy about where Max and Leo live — in what city, town, or village (someplace with a couples therapist and a coffee shop, however), what part of the country, and whether in a house or apartment. Hence the introduction of Max's mother, who, it can now be revealed is on or works for the board of directors for the so-called Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

It can also be revealed that I was away on vacation when the deadlines for last week's and this week's cartoons arrived, so these two cartoons were drawn well ahead of time. In fact, they were drawn before the Washington D.C. Opera withdrew from the DJTJFKMC4PA last month. (The Center's President Ric Grenell claims they were fired; perhaps the company wanted to present Emmett Till: the Opera by Clare Coss and Mary D. Watkins. Or had commissioned an opera about Jeffrey Epstein.)

So anyway, I've spent the last few weeks hoping that none of the real entertainers mentioned in this cartoon kick the bucket, or get arrested by ICE for protesting in Minneapolis, or denounce the renaming of the DJTJFKMC4PA. 

But then our pouty mercurial president went and brayed on Trump Social that now he is shutting the DJTJFKMC4PA down for two years in order to redesign it into the gilded Louis XIV whorehouse he’s always dreamed of.

The center’s staff learned of the imminent closure through Trump’s Truth Social post, which proposed “temporarily” closing the “Trump Kennedy Center” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” starting July 4. Trump added the move is subject to approval by the center’s board, which he chairs. — https://wapo.st/3NRd901

Phuoc that gagh damask whole.

Ground Hog Day's Sneak Peek

January, 2025

Part 2 of the visit from Max's mom is coming up this week; and at this point it might be relevant to remind loyal readers that she perhaps lives in or around Washington, D.C.

P.S. FDT.

Q Toon; A War of Words

One would think that having his partner caught up for months in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime's lawless concentration camp program would have soured MAGA Max's enthusiasm for anything associated with the Felon-In-Chief.

But then how would I be able to address the very destruction of the Republic in an editorial cartoon feature that is supposed to be about LGBTQ+ issues?

I created these two as a device to discuss the sharp political divisions in this country, which the present regime has worked diligently to widen.

Strike that. What the present administration is working overtime to achieve is not to widen political divisions, but to crush dissent. Pardoning the January 6 rioters who sought to overthrow the duly elected government in Trump's name, purging everyone in the Justice Department and law enforcement who worked to bring them to justice; strong-arming any media into obsequious servility that might challenge their distortion of the truth; hauling those who have ever stood up to him into court on trumped up charges; the mawkish spectacle of cabinet officials assembled before cameras for the express purpose of heaping flattery upon the boss — the Trump regime models itself not on our Founding Fathers, but on the worst tyrants history has to offer.

One need look no further than that mandatory assembly of all the nation's admirals and generals in one auditorium to be harangued by Trump and his martini martinet at the Department Formerly Known As Defense. Much attention has been paid to the military brass refusing to whoop and holler the way ensigns and privates will at these events, the applause lines that fell flat, and the meandering blather of a president who never has an unspoken notion.

But what was chillingly important about Trump and Pete Hegseth's diatribe duet was their central message: this regime is declaring open war on anyone, anywhere, who stand in their way.

Hegseth declared that this regime will "untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

Trump made it clear that those "enemies" include all American citizens with the temerity to dissent from his rule: "We have war zones on both coasts — blue areas. The real enemy is more dangerous than China, Russia… [it is] the enemy from within.”

"These people don’t have uniforms," Trump bellowed. "At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out... We can’t let these people live.”

Calling this fascism is not exaggeration, hyperbole, fear-mongering, or stoking division. And it's definitely not fake news.

It's recognizing a clear and present danger.

Like shouting "fire" in a burning theater.

Q Toon: Catching Up

It is finally time to extricate Leo the Liberal from Trumplinka Concentration Camp and extrajudicial expulsion to Shitholistan, so I've decided that his partner, MAGA Max, finally checked his phone messages and discovered that Leo was waiting for him at the Ottawa airport.

How they will explain returning to the United States without any luggage I leave to your own imagination.

Having recently traveled by car through southern Ontario, I can report that passing into Canada at Niagara Falls was a breeze, whereas coming back into the U.S. at Port Huron entailed a twenty-minute traffic jam at customs. The questioning at either border was friendly and non-problematic; we did see one car directed aside for further examination, but of course, we have no idea why.

But while a real human being who was returned from unjust banishment to a Salvadorian concentration camp is now being threatened with expulsion to Uganda, I'm going to let Leo fall between the cracks of Trump's lawless deportation purges. Probably.

The stumbling block I had to surmount for this cartoon (besides the Canadian flight attendants union strike) was Max's dialogue in the second and third panels. It doesn't quite sound like something a MAGAzoid would say.

But for the past several months, Trumpian fascism has affected Max directly. Now that it no longer does, Max, like the rest of the MAGA flock who used to see threats to democracy and the Constitution everywhere, will go back to blind Trump l'oeilty.

In 2020, Trump's blustering, blundering response to the COVID-19 pandemic was something that affected all of us directly, and helped convince a majority of the U.S. electorate that he had to go. 

Four years later, few of us were still directly affected by COVID-19; the pandemic seemed manageable. So a majority of the U.S. electorate decided, hey, what the heck, better to elect a manifestly corrupt, lying, self-absorbed, dim-witted, venal, seditious convicted felon who nearly got us all killed, than that Black woman.

Remembering the Revrunt Pat

I had another Graphical History post all set to publish today; but if those cartoons could wait 100 years, they can wait another week. For all the material he has provided me over the years, Pat Robertson deserves his cartoon obituary here.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., August, 1986

By the way, Mike Peterson noted approvingly that the angel in the cartoon I posted yesterday was Black. Now, whatever his other sins, I have no reason to believe that Robertson was racist. As the above cartoon may remind some of you, when he was publicly praying to God in 1986 whether he should run for president, his co-host Ben Kinchlow was Black.

By the same token (if you'll pardon the expression), my point in the above cartoon was not so much about the idea of Robertson running as Second Banana to a Black man, as it was that Robertson and Jackson were two men of the cloth who agreed on absolutely nothing other than the name of their Lord and Savior.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Feb. 4, 1988

Well, that and wanting to run for President. (With or without God's blessing.)

Jackson was able to hang on in the 1988 presidential race longer than Robertson, but I would suggest that both had a greater influence on their respective political party than most of the other politicians in my cartoon.

Besides, Jackson had his Rainbow Coalition to keep himself busy, and Robertson his 700 Club.

Q Syndicate, Sept. 2001

Then came 9/11, and a dastardly, unforgivable exchange between Robertson and fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell on Robertson's TV show two days later.

It was Falwell who blamed the deadly terrorist attack on "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians," but it was Robertson who answered, "I totally concur."

Q Syndicate, 2010

Robertson's flock kept sending in their fleece no matter how inflammatory the rest of us found his repeated attributing every disaster that befell anyone in the country to God being pissed at lesbians and gays. Thus Robertson's Club marked its 50th anniversary in 2010, and so did I.  

Q Syndicate, August 2011

As his own editor, Robertson perhaps realized that he was saying a lot of silly things on his show. Not all of them were as hurtful as the 9/11 diatribe:

"Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge."

Or perhaps the Washington Monument was over 150 years old. You decide. 

Q Syndicate, Sept., 2013

Others were less benign.

Prior to yesterday, my last Robertson cartoon was about him fulminating against gays' and lesbians' influence on American academia.

Q Syndicate, April 2017

“We have given the ground to a small minority,” he said. “You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population. That’s all. That’s statistically all. But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities. It’s just unbelievable what’s being done. A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference. The majority — it’s time it wakes up.”

Robertson may be gone, but we still have DeSantis, Abbott, Pence, and the rest of the lot who have declared war on intellectuals, science, philosophy, art, literature, history, and compassion.

Not to mention the lesbians and gays and, of course, the transgender menace.

The Knickerbocker Theater Tragedy

To anyone who was disappointed that last week's Saturday History Tour featured only one editorial cartoon, I apologize. This week, I'll bring you twice as many.

On the weekend of January 26-27, 1922, a heavy blizzard made its way slowly up the east coast, dumping 20" or more of snow from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania, including atop the Knickerbocker Theater in our nation's capital.

ad in Washington Times, Jan. 22, 1922

On Saturday, January 28, the weight of all that snow collapsed the theatre's roof onto upwards of 300 people there shortly after the silent comedy "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" had begun. The roof fell onto the balcony, which in turn collapsed onto the orchestra level. Many witnesses reported that the crash came suddenly and without warning — no prior creaking or groaning of the timbers supporting the structure. 

On the other hand, one survivor, Washington Post film reviewer John Jay Daly, said that he was alerted to a problem as the few first crumbs of plaster fell. He exited to the lobby moments before the ceiling fell inside the theater, and found himself thus the Post's reporter at the scene, fending off other survivors who wanted him to get off the phone across the street so they could call for help.

There were several newspapers publishing in Washington D.C. at the time, but to the best of my knowledge, only one of them employed its own editorial cartoonist. So while the front page of Monday's Washington Evening Star sported this cartoon by Clifford Berryman... 

"Columbia's Anguish" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Jan. 30, 1922

...the other newspapers in town ran cartoons about the Harding administration selling the navy up the river, or reminiscing about school days, etc. There is, however, a generic quality to Berryman's cartoon: absent any reference to the theatre, the snow, or anything else peculiar to this particular disaster, the cartoon could just as easily have been something sitting in Berryman's desk waiting for death to strike anywhere.

All the other newspapers in town covered the story, of course:

Sunday Star and Washington Herald of Jan. 29, 1922; Washington Times of Jan. 30, 1922

The disaster occurred after the Sunday Washington Times went to press, but it caught up with the other newspapers in town on Monday. Its death count turned out to be slightly exaggerated; the official toll would be 98 dead, 133 injured. The disaster was, at the time, the second most deadly structural engineering failure in the United States, after the Pemberton Mill collapse in Lawrenceville, Massachusetts in 1860. (The collapse of Kansas City, Missouri's Hyatt Regency walkway in 1981 would kill 114; last year's collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida last year currently ties the Knickerbocker disaster in third place.)

The dead at the theater included former Congressman Andrew J. Barchfeld of Pennsylvania and the wife of his son Elmer, members of the orchestra including director Ernest Nattiello, a sister of the Guatemalan minister, capitol reporters from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Pittsburgh Dispatch, as well as students, businessmen, military officials, attorneys, and men, women and children from many walks of life.

Flags at the nation's capital were ordered flown at half-staff for ten days.

Photo in Washington Herald, Jan. 29, 1922

At the time, the Knickerbocker had been the newest and largest movie theater in D.C. Building inspector John G. Healy initially told reporters that he saw no-one to blame for the collapse. "In my opinion, it was nothing more than the hand of God. It was one of those things that cannot be explained. However, the facts are such that it would suggest that although the construction of the roof met all the necessary requirements, the point which first gave way under the strain was not strong enough to hold the great weight of the snow."

Photo in Washington Evening Star, Jan. 30

Although there were reports that theater staff had considered shoveling the snow off the roof but decided not to, the focus of investigations quickly centered on the building's construction — Inspector Healy's attempts to blame God for the disaster notwithstanding. 

Harry Crandall commissioned architect Reginald Geare to design the theater in 1917. Investigations by the city government and coroner's office, and both houses of Congress, would conclude that the disaster was the result of Geare's use of arch girders instead of stone pillars to support the roof

"The Life Taker" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 31, 1922

Their careers in ruins, Geare died by suicide in 1927, and Crandall killed himself ten years after that. You might consider their suicides to bring the disaster's total death toll up to an even 100.

Foreshadowing

 
Just a reminder that it's still 1922 here on Saturdays.

Tune in for more tomorrow — especially if the weather outside is frightful.

Q Toon: It Was On His To-do List for the Second Term

Even though I've already drawn two cartoons about LGBTQ+ Pride this year, acknowledgement had to be made of Vice President Kamala Harris marching in Washington D.C.'s parade over the weekend. Participating in a Pride parade adds to Harris's ever-growing list of vice presidential Firsts.

It had to be orders of magnitude more fun than meeting with Presidents of Guatemala and Mexico to discuss our problem with Latin American immigration, then being harangued on right-wing media for not having tossed in a photo op with Trump's Ugly Border Wall.

As we know from Veep and The West Wing, Vice Presidents get stuck doing all the sh¡tty jobs that the guy behind the Oval Office desk would rather not handle himself. Biden has been there and knows the drill. So, too, has Mike Pence, who had to suffer the added indignity of dodging a lynch mob sent by his president.

Pence probably wouldn't have wanted to walk in an LGBTQ+ Pride parade, but he would have gone if Trumplgruber had told him to. As it was, the most enjoyable thing he ever got to do as vice president for four years was attend a Colts-49ers game just so he could stalk out before the coin toss.

Q Toon: Righteousness, But Heard A Cry

Donald Berzilius Trump likes to castigate the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives as "do-nothing"; but even with investigations and impeachment stuff, the House has in fact sent a lot of popular legislation to the Senate.

There the legislation languishes. The Senate, it seems, is too busy packing the courts with Trump-appointed right-wing ideologues whom the American Bar Association finds "not qualified."

The latest such appointee is Lawrence VanDyke, a former Solicitor General in Montana and Nevada, and Assistant Solicitor General in Texas. In those posts he has challenged against federal gun control laws, wrote a brief in support of anti-abortion legislation in Arizona, and fought federal environmental regulations. Trump has nominated VanDyke to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, just one level below the Supreme Court.

Colleagues interviewed by the ABA described VanDyke as "arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice" of law. The ABA found that "There was a theme that the nominee lacks humility, has an 'entitlement temperament,' does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful."

At VanDyke's Senate confirmation hearing October 30, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) asked him about the concern that, in the ABA's words, "Mr. VanDyke would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community."

After fifteen seconds of silence, during which he must have been picturing dead puppies, remembering being picked last for team sports, and playing Randy VanWarmer songs in his head, VanDyke tearfully sobbed, “No, I did not say that. I do not believe that. It is a fundamental belief of mine that all people are created in the image of God. They should all be treated with dignity and respect.”

VanDyke, 46, has been accused of attacking LGBTQ rights as far back as 2004, when in an op-ed for The Harvard Law Record he said that there was “ample reason for concern that same-sex marriage will hurt families, and consequentially children and society.” In 2010, he argued that college student groups had a First Amendment right to exclude LGBTQ students from membership. Two years later, while serving as Montana solicitor general, VanDyke argued against same-sex marriage in two cases, and in a third argued that photographers should be entitled to deny their services at wedding ceremonies of same-sex couples.

VanDyke has also represented and worked as a legal intern for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is described by the Human Rights Campaign as the “largest anti-LGBTQ legal group in the U.S.” and has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, views VanDyke’s connection to a group that has defended proposed laws to require sterilization of transgender people and criminalize same-sex relationships as evidence of “his acceptance of its radical agenda.”

As McConnell boasted at Trump's campaign rally in Kentucky on Monday, Republicans are “changing the federal courts forever” by rubber-stamping Trump's right-wing judges — 150 of them so far — to lifetime seats. “And Mr. President, we’re going to keep on doing it. My motto is: Leave no vacancy behind.”

This week, Senate Republicans are working to confirm several more right-wing judges, including White House lawyer Steven Menashi to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and Halil Suleyman Ozerden to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

And the only threat to these nominations is that some Republicans worry that someone might sneak through who isn't quite doctrinaire enough.

Remember

Korean War Memorial, Washington D.C.

Q Toon: Rebranding the Tool

Q Syndicate✒Dec 11, 2014

This week's cartoon applies only in the states of California and New Jersey, plus the District of Columbia, where laws banning "reparative therapy" to change a minor’s sexual orientation “including efforts to change behaviors, gender identity or expression, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same sex or gender” have been signed into law. (Language from the D.C. bill.)

Court challenges by conversion therapy advocates to the California and New Jersey laws on the grounds that their exercise of religion was being infringed were both rejected. A court challenge to the D.C. law may be unnecessary, should the Republican Congress decide to step in. (Republicans talk a good game about "local control," but put them in charge of state and federal government, and they will not hesitate to make decisions about how big cities they don't live in ought to be run.)

Meanwhile, a similar laws failed to pass in New York, Maryland, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington in the latest biennium.

Toon: Asylum of the Tea Party

Yeah, negotiate. That's all they want.

I started watching Dr. Who during the Tom Baker years when WTTW out of Chicago showed the programme on Sunday nights. At some point, WTTW ran out of new episodes and aired several episodes from the Jon Pertwee years instead. After they started running new episodes, I kept watching until sometime in the Peter Davidson years when I got a second shift job that included a lot of Sunday nights, and I lost track of the show.

In those days, Daleks were all slate gray, so that's how I colorized them here. On Google Images, I see that they now come in a rainbow of colors, which just seems wrong. I just can't imagine there being a sensitive Dalek with a flair for design. Next thing you know, the Borg will start snazzing up their wardrobe.

Q Toon: Green ENDA and Ham

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) will reintroduce the Employment Non-Discrimination Act into the current Congress, although he concedes that it has virtually no chance of passage in the current Republican-majority House.

I wanted to draw the Capitol dome in the style of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, author of Green Eggs and Ham. His editorial cartoons for PM during World War II were drawn with the same whimsy and fantastic imagery that he used in his children's books. His GOP elephants look like Horton (of Who-hearing fame); his eagles more closely resemble sneetches than any eagle you've ever seen. Improbable machines and strange landscapes are common.

But the one and only drawing I found of the Capitol building was in the background of a November 18, 1941 cartoon, and is squarely representational:
Here I had visions of the dome topped with a lazily drooping attic and Wendy Who holding a torch aloft. In my minds eye, it looked so Seussian. On paper, I'm afraid it just looks like I don't know a thing about perspective. (Sketching and resketching the cartoon, I gradually shoved the figure atop the attic up and out of the cartoon frame.)

This Week's Q Syndicate cartoon

Window Media LLC / Unite Media suddenly shuttered its LGBT newspapers last week, including the 40-year-old Washington Blade, our newspaper of record in the nation's capital.

The good news is that the staff of the affected publications have busted their buns to put out new product under new flags.

This week's Q Syndicate cartoon

The archdiocese of Washington D.C. is threatening to shut down its social service agencies if the city council passes a marriage equality ordinance. Homeless shelters, food banks, and other services to the poor would be halted so that the church can fullfil its true mission: battling homosexuals.

At the risk of rushing the Christmas season, here's my take on the issue.