Q Toon: Tuberville at 20,000 Feet

I loathe headlines that give away the punch line, but I wonder how many people half my age would catch the reference in the first place.

Ah, well. If you didn't catch the reference in the headline, you didn't catch the reference in the cartoon, either. Ask a Boomer.

And if you didn’t get the reference to Senator Tommy Bubbaville (R-AL) and his goofy speech decrying the Federal Aviation Administration’s lax attitude toward furry airline employees, well, what are you doing here? 

I mean, it was in all the topical late-night shows and cable news programs desperate for a break from war, inflation, and a reckless regime running roughshod over democracy. There's an election coming up, and it's high time to do your homework for it.

When this idea first came to me, I didn’t remember that the gremlin on the wing of William Shatner’s airplane was itself quite furry. Somehow, I had something more Salt Vampire-like in my memory. Checking images from the original Twilight Zone episode meant having to tweak the dialogue slightly; I think it still works, though.

Flights of Frozen Fancy

This week's Graphical History Tour celebrates the 100th anniversary of the first flights over the North Pole by people who weren't puffins.

"Over the Top" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, May 11, 1926

U.S. newspapers excitedly reported that Admiral Richard E. Byrd became the first explorer to fly over the North Pole on May 9, 1926. Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett announced that they had flown their tri-motor monoplane, the Josephine Ford (named after Edsel Ford's daughter) from Spitsbergen, Norway, circling the pole in a nearly 16-hour flight.

According to Byrd's account written for the New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"I took my calculations and found that we were at the Pole. We reached it at 9:04 Greenwich time, just about the hour we had hoped to get there. Bennett and I shook hands simply, and went back to the cabin, stood at attention and saluted for Admiral Peary. The Navy had reached the pole again, the blessed old Navy. I did not drop an American flag. Peary had done that.

"The ice and snow were similar to that which Peary had described, but the ice was not the same as in the polar sea. There it is in constant motion. It was slightly rougher here than it had been when I first described it, but criss crossed in the same way.

"We flew several miles further, circled and then took some still and motion pictures. As we flew there at the top of the world, circumnavigating it in a few minutes' of flight, I regretted that we had not found land, and that our leaky oil tank would prevent our returning by way of Cape Morris-Jessup."

"The Eagle Over the Pole" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, May 11, 1926

Byrd was an instant American Hero in the press, and editorial cartoonists rushed to crank out jingoistic cartoons, most of them very similar to each other.

"Our Private Flag Pole" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, May 11, 1926

Aside from the flags and eagles, a commonality that strikes me in these cartoons is that nearly all of them show North Pole as a huge inverted icicle, rather than the barber pole that I think of as cartoon cliché. This is only a guess, but the striped pole with the ball on top must have been popularized later.

"The First Over the Top" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1926

John McCutcheon celebrated the news of Byrd's flight as a relief from all the dismal news he was typically faced with — although by bringing up political scandals, wars in Morocco and Syria, labor strife in London, a riot in Paris, and a rum-running ring in New York, McCutcheon was being the wet blanket at the party himself.

"The Hurdle Race" by Dean O'Dell in Dayton Daily News, May 13, 1926

Meanwhile, Norwegian aviator Roald Amundsen was also heading for the North Pole in a semi-rigid airship christened the Norge. The Italian-made airship was delayed by weather on each leg of its journey from Rome, but eventually headed north from Vadsø, Norway on May 11 with a crew of 18 men and one dog.

"Fremdenverkehr" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 30, 1926

The Norge crossed the North Pole at 1:25 a.m. GMT on May 12, dropping U.S., Norwegian, and Italian flags onto the ice. In Amundsen's account published by the New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"[W]e went down to a low height, slowed the engines, and [engineer/financier Lincoln] Ellsworth, [pilot Umberto] Nobile and myself dipped our countries' flags. We mounted banners on steel-pointed rods. These rods we steered vertically into the ice as we dropped them, and they remained standing. The crew took their caps off during the ceremony, and it was a beautiful sight to see the flags standing against the glittering snow."

I have colorized the flags in Arthur Johnson's cover cartoon; the copy scanned by the University of Heidelberg appears to have faded considerably. His version of the Norwegian flag somewhat resembles the obsolete Norway-Sweden union flag, except that the faded blue broken bar that I have darkened ought to be yellow, and a black cross in that quadrant of the flag is missing altogether. 

The airship, its propellers damaged by shards of ice during its flight, suffered further damage as it landed at Teller, Alaska. It was dismantled there, short of its announced goal of Nome, and shipped back to Italy; it was never repaired.

"Die 'Norge' Zurück" by Wilhelm Schulz in Simplicissimus, Munich, June 7, 1926

Wilhelm Schulz lampoons Italy's involvement in the flight of the Norge, and perhaps the fate of the airplane itself, depicting an expedition member presenting Benito Mussolini with a helmetful of melted ice. 

Italian hubris over its part in the journey was a valid target for satire. Somewhat contrary to his newspaper account, Amundsen was peeved that the Italian flag dropped at the pole by Nobile was larger than the Norwegian and American flags, and that Nobile continued to drop so many other flags that Amundsen later complained of Nobile turning the Norge "a circus wagon of the skies." Mussolini sent Nobile on a speaking tour of the United States to tout the genius of Italian engineering, putting Amundsen's nose further out of joint.

"Amundsen am Nordpol" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, May 30, 1926

In German cartoons, at any rate, Amundsen was the star of the show. Berlin cartoonist Garvens gave us something other than an inverted icicle at the north pole: some sort of pepper-, nut-, or coffee-grinder.

As for the caption, it must be a play on the name of Admiral Byrd. My best, albeit wild guess is that un-byrdlich might be a pun on unberührt, untouched; while that might explain the open tin and the eaten sardines, that cactus remains a mystery.

"Another of the Great Silent Places Opens to the Tourist" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, May 11, 1926

"Ding" Darling's cartoon makes a similar point for us English-speaking readers. The aviators in the cartoon have left behind not just empty sardine tins, but also empty Uneeda Biscuit boxes, a spent campfire, and graffiti on the pole itself, while planning to "bring the folks up here some day for a picnic."

"Men Must Be Men to Wrestle with Me" by Ernest R. McTaggart in Vancouver Daily Province, British Columbia, May 15, 1926

I am duty-bound to point out that the general consensus since Admiral Byrd's death in 1957 is that he could not possibly have flown his trimotor monoplane, with its maximum speed of 85 mph, from Spitsbergen to the North Pole and back in sixteen hours. 

There is evidence that his flight records were erased and modified. Yet even though doubts of Byrd's claims were raised not long after he landed, he was still awarded the National Medal of Honor and celebrated with a New York ticker tape parade.

Clean-up in Aisle Beback

Today's Graphical History Tour catches up on a few news items from a century ago that we left unresolved last Saturday, and had overlooked in previous episodes.

We'll start with the inconclusive federal election in Canada, in which the coalition government of Liberals and Progressives suffered significant losses, but without giving the Conservatives a majority in Parliament.

"Tit for Tat" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Nov. 2, 1925

A major issue in the 1925 campaign particularly a propos today was tariffs against United States imports: the Conservatives wanted them raised, while the Liberals and Progressives were opposed. I posted some Canadian cartoonists' arguments for and against higher tariffs last week; Ed LeCocq, filling in for "Ding" Darling at the Des Moines Register, is the only cartoonist from across the line I've found addressing the issue.

"After the Assault" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Nov. 3, 1925

Cartoons by "Passepoil" in last week's installment showed Baptiste Ladébauche, the characterization of French Canada, mocking Québécois Conservative Esioff-Léon Patenaude. This cartoon by Sam Hunter in Toronto, with his own version of M. Ladébauche, cheered Patenaude's election loss as a rebuff to "Montreal big interest dictation" and "Montreal Star dictation." The "Noble Lord" in the cartoon is the founder of the Montreal Star, Sir Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan, who had sold the newspaper earlier that year but still had a hand in its management.

By the way, it seems that at least for now the identity of "Passepoil" will have to remain a mystery. His cartoons on the front page of Le Canada stopped abruptly after the 1925 election. Since his version of Baptiste Ladébauche was virtually identical to that of Albéric Bourgeois, I have to wonder whether those two cartoonists were one and the same.

"And the Cat Came Back" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Star, Nov. 5, 1925

Over at the Montreal Star, A.G. Racey was hugely disappointed that Prime Minister William Mackenzie King was back at Canada's doorstep in spite of his party having lost 18 seats in Parliament — including his own.

King managed to stay in Parliament by getting one of the other members of his party to resign so that King could run in his place. Somehow that's perfectly acceptable in a parliamentary system, even though King had represented a Toronto, Ontario neighborhood, and the guy who gave up his seat for him represented Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

In my country, we call that carpetbagging.

"When the Western Train Comes In" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Nov. 17, 1925

Sam Hunter used a different baggage reference to depict the Conservative and Liberal leaders wooing Progressive leader Robert Forke. The Progressives' 22 seats would be more than Conservative leader Arthur Meighen needed for a majority, but not enough to do the same for King's Liberals. Ideologically, however, they had little in common with Meighen's party.

"Still Going Strong" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4, 1925

I have overlooked some of the other elections taking place in the fall of 1925, the most prominent of which in the U.S. was for mayor of New York. I presume that since William Randolph Hearst supported the incumbent, John Hylan, cartoonists for his New York newspapers were obliged to do the same; I unfortunately do not have any examples of them. Brooklyn Daily Eagle cartoonist Nelson Harding, on the other hand, attacked him relentlessly throughout his term in office.

"Trimming His War Bonnet" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 9, 1925

Hylan, a somewhat dull-witted fellow who was not a particularly good public speaker, lost the Democratic Party primary in September to flashy man-about-town Jimmy Walker, a protegé of Governor Al Smith. Charismatic and benefiting from a smear campaign out of Tammany Hall, Walker easily bested the Republican candidate, pen magnate Frank Waterman, by 35 percentage points, and would go on to be one of the city's most colorful, albeit not ethical, mayors.

"Washington Bedtime Story" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Nov. 1, 1925

Updating this page's cartoons of Wisconsin's special election of Robert M. La Follette, Jr., to succeed his late father in the U.S. Senate, we have a belated Hallowe'en cartoon by Ed LeCocq. "Young Bob" was elected as a Republican, but with the active opposition of the national GOP. Republicans grudgingly accepted his landslide win as at least adding to their numerical majority in the Senate, trusting that, as the Senate's most junior member, he wouldn't be as much of a problem to them as La Follette Sr. had been.

"Nathan Hale—Mitchell" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 2, 1925

Wisconsin has a tie to one other news item that I've overlooked: Army Brigadier General Billy Mitchell was demoted to colonel, then court-martialed for insubordination in November of 1925. A commander of all American air combat units in France during World War I, he advocated after war publicly and strongly that the next war would be fought in the air, necessitating the creation of a separate Air Force.

"Chief Witness for the Defense" by W.A. Rogers in Washington Post, Nov. 3, 1925

This antagonized Army and Navy brass, who were more interested in beefing up the nation's fleet of battleships, particularly because he accused them of "an almost treasonable administration of the national defense."

"Did I Get Him" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, ca. Nov. 14, 1925

Convicted of insubordination in December, Mitchell resigned his military commission the following February. Later events would vindicate Mitchell's views, although the Army refused to reverse Mitchell's court-martial conviction on the grounds that, right or wrong, he had still been insubordinate. World War II led to establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

By then, Mitchell had been dead for eleven years. He is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city whose international airport has borne his name since 1941.

Further Flights of Fancy

"You May Live to See It" by Bill Hanny in St. Joseph (MO) News-Press, May 29, 1919

Last week, Seaplaneback Saturday celebrated the centennial of the first successful manned transoceanic flight, completed by U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Albert C. Read in fits and starts over the course of three weeks in May, 1919.

"My Boy Read—He Did It" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, June, 1919

As I indicated at the close of the post, however, Lt. Commander Read's accomplishment was soon overshadowed by the British team of Captain John Alcock and Lt. Col. Arthur Whitten Brown, who completed the journey in one hop.

But their trip was no less harrowing. Alcock and Brown took off in their modified Vickers-Vimy biplane from Lester's Field near St. John's, Newfoundland, on the afternoon of Saturday, June 14 (they had wanted to start on Friday the thirteenth, but were delayed trying to find a smoother runway than the uneven one at Lester's) in cloudy conditions. They barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway, but once over the Atlantic they climbed to 1,300 feet.

"A Little Uncertain, But We're On Our Way" by Edward "Tige" Reynolds in Portland Oregonian, June, 1919

About three hours into the trip, they encountered fog and descended to only 300 feet. After an hour without being able to see where they were going, Alcock and Brown tried to ascend above the fog bank while the sun might still show what direction they were headed, but they found only a higher bank of clouds.

"The Rubberneck Conveyance of the Future" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, June, 1919

From Alcock's account shortly after landing:

"We had a terrible journey. The wonder is we are here at all. We scarcely saw the sun or moon or stars. For hours we saw none of them. ... For four hours, our machine was covered in a sheet of ice caused by frozen sleet. At another time, the fog was so dense that my speed indicator did no work and for a few minutes it was very alarming.
"We looped the loop, I do believe, and did a very steep spiral. We did some very comic stunts, for I have had no sense of horizon."

"Society Item, June 3, 1990..." by Elmer A. Bushnell for Central Press Association, June 3, 1919

Unlike Albert Read's team, Alcock and Brown did not have a fleet of ships shining lights to point their way. With their navigational guides malfunctioning and their radio dead three hours into the flight, they had no way of knowing how far off course they might be. The batteries in their heated leather flight jackets ran out of juice, but they were at risk of burning as well as freezing. Not included in the initial newspaper reports was that at one point, an exhaust pipe from their starboard engine split and began spewing flames into the slip-stream and spitting white-hot globules of molten metal at the controls.

"Looking Forward" by William Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, June, 1919

Around 3:00 a.m., they ran into more rain, hail and snow, and their airspeed indicator jammed; they went into that deep spiral dive at this point. Press reports quoted Alcock as saying, "I did not know once whether we were upside-down or not. Once, we ascended hurriedly when we saw the green Atlantic only 30 feet below." The Associated Press claimed that the plane came as low as ten feet above the ocean; Alcock said they could taste the sea foam. With ice forming on the wings and snow filling their cockpit, Brown had to venture out onto the wings to chip away at ice clogging the carburetor air intake — four times.

On the positive side, they had the wind at their back the whole journey; it would be nine more years before anyone succeeded in flying across the Atlantic from east to west.

"I'd Like to See Them Take Those Liberties with Me" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, June/July, 1919

At last, they made it through the storm and day broke. The pilots took their plane to a lower altitude so that the snow and ice could melt, even though that took them back into the clouds. Finally, some sixteen hours after take-off, they spotted land ahead and were able to determine that they had reached Clifden, Ireland, about 75 miles shy of their intended destination, Galway. The green space they chose for a landing site turned out to be a bog, however, and their plane plowed into the muck. But responders from a nearby radio tower were able to pull them out unhurt.

Detail from "Cartoons of the Day" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 17, 1919

The two were feted as heroes, received the Daily Mail's ￡10,000 ($50,000) prize from Secretary of State for Air Winston Churchill, and were knighted by King George. Alcock would perish in an airplane crash six months later; Brown served for a time during World War II in the Royal Air Force, but retired due to ill health.

"Arrival of the 6:15 Express from Europe" by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, June 1, 1919

So anyway, as you can see, the new possibilities of transatlantic flight gave editorial cartoonists a host of new gags to draw — occasionally affording them new ideas for commenting on the looming deadline for Prohibition (above) or the 2020 presidential race (below).

"All Ready for the Big Hop" by John H. Cassel in New York World, May 20, 1919 

In conclusion, since I really ought to include at least one British cartoon in this post:

"Can You?" by G. Browning (?) in The World, London, ca. June, 1919

Flights of Fancy and Fleeting Fame

Okay, so the Great War is over, and all those guys your army and navy trained to be airplane pilots are returning home. Sopwithback Saturday hearkens once again to 1919 and the question of how are you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've looked at clouds from both sides now?

Detail from "The Rectangle" by Frank O. King in Chicago Tribune, January 26, 1919

Back in 1913, the London Daily Mail offered a reward of £10,000 to the first person or team to complete a transatlantic flight from the U.S. or Canada to the British Isles. The contest was suspended for the duration of the Great War; but with the cessation of hostilities, American and British aviators resumed the contest, capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of cartoonists on both sides of the pond.

"A Fair Sky and May the Best Bird Win" by Homer Stinson in Dayton Daily News, May, 1919

Transatlantic travel being relatively routine these days, it's worth pointing out the challenges faced by those aviation pioneers in their rickety flying machines and their open-air cockpits. Consider this description from Cartoons Magazine of

"...the hazards of travel in a machine that for weeks must wait at its hangar for fair weather, and then when it sets out travel so fast that it overtakes the last spell of bad weather on its way eastward. ... [I]t is not to be wondered at that the less daring souls, who make out their wills before attempting a passage by forty-thousand ton steamers should not book a passage by Sopwith until the pilot can carry on his machine an automatic storm control." 

"Over the Top" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, May 19, 1919

John Cassel's cartoon accurately describes the preferred route for transatlantic flights in the northern hemisphere, but it's not the route chosen by the first American team to mount a successful attempt. A team led by U.S. Navy fliers Commander John H. Towers, Commander Patrick Bellinger, and Lt. Commander Albert C. Read, Sr., chose a route hopscotching from New York to Newfoundland, and thence across the Atlantic with a stop in the Azores.

 

The team took off from Long Island on May 8, 1919 in three NC Curtiss "flying boats." At Trepassey, they were met by the U.S.S. Aroostook, sent there ahead of time to refuel and relubricate the three planes for the longest leg of the journey.

"This Quite Gets Over Me" by Wood in Manchester Chronicle, England, May, 1919

The 15-hour flight from Newfoundland to the Azores would require flying overnight, so 22 navy ships were stationed along the route, shining searchlights into the sky to mark the flight path. Two of the planes, the NC-1 and NC-3, were forced to ditch at sea when the planes encountered a fog bank. Happily, all aboard were rescued, and while the NC-1 unfortunately sank, the NC-3 eventually rode the waves to port.

"First Sitting of the Big Four to Discuss the Atlantic Flight" by Strum in London Daily Express, May, 1919

That left only Read's NC-4 to complete the journey (the NC-2 having been cannibalized for parts at the outset of the trip). After losing over a week due to mechanical problems, the NC-4 took off for Lisbon on May 27.

"Th' Nerve of 'Em" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, May 20, 1919

Read's plane made the flight from São Miguel Island to Lisbon in under ten hours, thus becoming the first plane to complete a transoceanic flight. Great fanfare greeted Read when his plane finally landed in Plymouth, England on May 31.

"Mercury!" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World, May 28, 1919

But he didn't win the £10,000 prize.

Terms of the Daily Mail contest stipulated that the award would be given to "the aviator who shall first cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane in flight from any point in the United States, Canada, or Newfoundland to any point in Great Britain or Ireland, in 72 consecutive hours." Read's total actual flight time from Trespassey to Plymouth was 26 hours, 46 minutes, but spread out over eleven days.

Instead, the prize was won by the British team of Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Col. Arthur Whitten Brown, who completed a non-stop flight from Newfoundland to Ireland in a Vickers Vimy biplane in 16 hours, 27 minutes on June 15-16.

"The Dawn of a New Era" by Grover Page in Louisville Courier-Journal, May, 1919

But I suppose that's a whole 'nother story.

About That Paint Job

Presenting the big, beautiful, brand new, unbelievably amazing Air Force One.

Meet Mr. Mnuchin

It's time for another installment of Meet Your Cabinet!

Sixth in line in the presidential order of succession is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Mnuchin, 54, followed his father in the mortgage department at Goldman Sachs, becoming a partner there in 1994. He left in 2002, managing hedge funds and heading the residential lender OneWest, as well as founding a film production company, RatPac-Dune Entertainment.

An early supporter of Donald Joffrey Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Mnuchin accepted Trump's offer to be the national finance chairman of his campaign last April, after Trump had won the New York Republican primary. Up to that point, the Trump campaign had not set up a large-scale fund raising drive; Mnuchin set to work creating and managing one.

In spite of Trump's campaign attacks on the banking industry (an ad charged Goldman Sachs of having "robbed the working class"), Mnuchin joined the Trump administration, along with fellow Goldman Sachs alums Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Eric Ueland, and appointees up and down the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In August, Mnuchin came under scrutiny for his use of government aircraft after his wife, Louise Linton, posted a selfie on Instagram showing her deplaning a government jet in Kentucky in time to see the solar eclipse. Mnuchin denied that the solar eclipse had anything to do with the trip, saying "People in Kentucky took it [the solar eclipse] very seriously. Being a New Yorker, I don't have any interest in watching the eclipse."

An investigation by the Treasury Department's Office of the Inspector General subsequently found that Mnuchin had requested a military jet for his honeymoon travel to Europe in June. The OIG investigation also showed Mnuchin had taken a USAF C-37A to return from New York to Washington on August 15 after flying to New York commercially. Mnuchin's return flight lasted less than an hour and had an operating cost of at least $25,000.

Mnuchin has reimbursed the government for the definitely-non-eclipse-viewing flight, and has defended the honeymoon flight on the grounds that he needed access to secure communications during that trip. But a pattern is emerging of Trump cabinet officials who seem unable to accomplish anything without a five-figure government plane trip involved.

Postwar Eye in the Sky

Here are two more helicopter cartoons from A Bird's-Eye View of the Postwar World (R. M. Barrows and Margaret Foster, eds.; Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago, 1945). And then I'm almost done with the subject.

Vic Herman's cartoon at left -- and here's a cartoonist who provides a nice, big, very legible signature on his work so I don't have to strain my eyes reading the small print on the back page -- gives us one of those simple gags about how Sexual Harassment Is Funny. No need to click on this cartoon to embiggen, even though you can if you want.

Vic Herman also drew the cartoon below right. It's on the inside of the cover of the book, my copy of which is considerably worse for wear, which explains the water stain and the tear.

I do get this cartoon, insofar as a helicopter showing up at a garden party would naturally attract a lot of attention. But I worry that Gloria's admirers are in danger of losing their heads over her, and not in a good way.

But at least this cartoon isn't as sexist as the first, since Gloria clearly is as able to fly her helicopter as any slick-haired guy with binoculars. Why, Mr. Perv Pilot merely opens his window to leer at --say, isn't that Gloria? -- whereas Gloria flies an open-air convertible helicopter and is able to hover mere inches off the ground while engaging in ever so scintillating conversation.

Either way, besides helicopter manufacturers, everyone apparently saw a bright future in the postwar world for the pomade market. Even with all these helicopters hovering over sunbathers, crashing garden parties, dropping kids off from school, buzzing mountain climbers, spying on hillbillies, and delivering door-to-door salesmen, there is not a single hair out of place anywhere to be seen.

A Is For Avionics

While we're waiting for this week's cartoon, let's check in again with A Bird's Eye Look at the Postwar World and see who's parachuting in now.

In this cartoon (you can embiggen it before going on to read the rest of this sentence if you like) by Marvin Townsend, it's Junior coming home from school.

This is a long shot, but perhaps if baby boomers had indeed gotten to and from school in B-52s, there wouldn't have been such a fuss about busing back in the 1960s and 70s. Part of the argument against it, as I recall, hinged on what inordinate amounts of time kids ended up spending riding the bus across town and back again. Air bus flights would have drastically cut those travel times.

Of course, nowadays, the kids would have to arrive at the air bus station at least two hours before their scheduled flight in order to check their bookbags, be prescreened against no-fly lists, and line up to empty their pockets into the gray plastic tray and go through the body scanner.

By the way, check out the urban sprawl in this cartoon!

What Color Is Your Parachute?

It has been a while since I posted anything from A Bird's-Eye View of the Postwar World (Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago, 1945).

The conceit of several of the cartoons was that air travel would be an everyday way for the average citizen to get around, even just across town. Here's an example by Will Johnson which fails to anticipate how this Acme salesman is supposed to get home.

Perhaps he has to wait at the airbus stop with all the other commuters, but he still has to lug that parachute with him around the neighborhood.

The cartoonists also assume, rather quaintly, that all those Rosies the Riveters would return to their housekeeping -- which, after all, was the Ozzie & Harriet model for the 1950's. The only working women in the entire book are one secretary and one hat saleslady.

Air Travel in the Postwar World

A United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver was diverted to Chicago this week in order to eject a pair of passengers who got into a fight over the two inches of space that are the difference between sitting upright and "reclining."

From the Associated Press story:

"The source of the problem: a Knee Defender, the $26.30 device that clamps onto an airline tray table, preventing the passenger in front of you from reclining their seat. ... On Monday's Flight 1462, the woman seated in front took offence and the man behind refused to remove the device, even when asked to do so by cabin crew. That's when she threw a cup of water in his face."

One school of thought says (from the same story),

"When you pay to ride in a plane, you're paying to use the seat - and if that means the seat reclines, well bad luck for the person behind. Of course, we should all be reasonable and, if the passenger behind asks nicely, most folk will put their seats forward. Nobody hops on to a plane planning to be an a**hole. Except maybe him."

On the other hand, 

"Just when you’ve resigned yourself to the tiny bit of air space you’ve been allotted for a trip that will take hours, the person in front of you blithely flips back the seat and takes away another six to eight inches. Just try to get out of your seat and go to the restroom now.... Why do people push their seat back when they know it’s going to inconvenience the person behind them? Can’t we appeal to everyone’s better nature and say, for the good of all, that it would be better if we didn’t do that?"

Which brings me to A Bird's Eye View of the Postwar World," a 1945 collection of cartoons and short humor pieces about what people expected life to be like when World War II came to an end. (Consolidated Book Publishers, 153 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago.) I have a tattered copy of this paperback that originally belonged to one of my parents or grandparents. And by "paperback," I mean that even the cover is newsprint.

Here's an example of what people 70 years ago thought air travel was going to be like:

(Cartoon by Martin E. Garrity.)

So that's what's in front of the curtain screening first class passengers from the rest of us in steerage.

Q Toon: The Plane in Ukraine

Since the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 over eastern Ukraine, apparently by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile fired by pro-Russian separatists, the Russian government and media and their minions have been working hard to supply alternative theories for the tragedy.

One of the more outlandish stories circulating on the Russian side is that MH 370, the Malaysian jet that disappeared somewhere in the Indian Ocean, was actually captured by the United States, and all its passengers and crew killed and drained of their blood, so that the U.S. could secretly have the plane full of corpses and explosives take off from the Netherlands with a crew that parachuted to safety while the plane continued on autopilot to be detonated over Donetsk. (Reported by Julia Ioffe of the New Republic.) This apparently springs from the claims of a separatist leader, Igor Girkin, quoted by the website Russkaya Vesna.

So far, Putin has tried to deflect blame onto the Ukrainian government, not teh gayz. But it's not such a stretch to imagine that he could cast aspersions our way if it suited his purposes. He previously claimed that the protesters who brought down the previous Ukraine regime are "gay nazis," and his government has done much over that past few years to criminalize gays.

✒

On another point in this cartoon, the fog of war made it difficult to nail down a number of what I chose to call "health experts" who died on their way to the HIV/AIDS conference in Austrailia. I hoped that "health experts" was general enough to include medical professionals, activists, and reporters who may only have intended to observe the conference. The initial number I heard reported was 100-- over a third of MH 17's passengers.

Subsequent reports used the vague term "dozens"; after I had sent the cartoon to my editors, I saw a report that said there were six. So I apologize for my part in perpetuating what is almost certainly an example of hyperbole borne of the heat of the moment.