Back in the U.S.S.R.

I was looking through the cartoons I drew 30 Septembers ago to see if there were any that were worth a Saturday History Tour for today. There was so much in the news just then: 

• the U.S. Senate was considering Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court; 
• the George H.W. Bush administration continued granting China "most favored nation" trading status in spite of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June; 
• the possibility arose that our war with Iraq might not be over after all; 
• and the U.S.S.R. was dealing with the aftermath of the attempted coup in August by Soviet hardliners against President Mikhail Gorbachev.

But I've already re-posted in This Humble Blog just about every cartoon I drew that month — in most cases, just five years ago. It hardly seems right to dredge them up again, unless I can find something new to say about any of them.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee WI, Sept. 9, 1991

 

This 30-year anniversary, however, the attempted coup in the Soviet Union can be considered in light of the attempted coup here in the States last January 6.

Perestroika and glasnost notwithstanding, the U.S.S.R. was still a single-party dictatorship — albeit only for the next few months — so President Gorbachev (and more to the point, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Soviet Federalist Socialist Republic) was still able quickly to purge the politburo of coup supporters. We're not talking about a Stalinesque purge here, but the likes of Josh Hawley or Lauren Boebert would certainly not have continued in office.

And nobody, by the way, mistook the coup conspirators for a bunch of tourists.

By the time I drew my cartoon, Gorbachev had resigned from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. had suspended all party activities.

But by the end of the decade, Yeltsin handed power over to a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin, who has since then adopted a style and ironfistedness of power of which the 1991 coup plotters would certainly have approved.

You might want to keep that in mind if you thought that January 6 will remain a thing of the past.

Faces in the Crowd

The cartoon I posted on Sunday employed caricatures of a number of House Republicans, when I could more easily have drawn a single GOP elephant at a microphone. So why didn't I do that and knock off an hour earlier?

June, 1996 for the UWM Post.

Pardon me if I step back a few years in order to answer that. In 1996, I drew a crowd of (hopefully) recognizable Republicans, grinning smugly, because that made more sense than drawing a single elephant, and was more effective than a bunch of smugly grinning elephants. Behind Bob Dole in this cartoon, mocking GOP claims of having a "big tent" on the abortion issue in spite of the hardline plank in the party platform, stand, from left to right: Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

(Since the UWM Post didn't put out any editions that summer, the above cartoon was never published, but I ended up drawing another one a lot like it for them in September.)

in UW-M Post, March 5, 1991

My cartoon of sheepish Democrats at the peak of George H.W. Bush's popularity would have been less pointed if I had drawn a donkey or donkeys among the sheep. (From left to right: Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt, Tom Foley, Al Gore, Mario Cuomo, Lloyd Bentsen, and George Mitchell.)

in UWM Post, September 28, 1989

Which is not to say that every editorial cartoon has to include caricatures of actual politicians. I liked the idea for my cartoon about multiple ethics investigations going on in the nation's capital in 1989, but there weren't enough politicians actually leading one investigation while being the target of another for me to have drawn a bunch of real people.

This idea is not far removed from Thomas Nast's "Who Stole the People's Money? Do Tell. 'Twas Him" cartoon showing easily recognizable members of the Tammany Ring standing in a circle, each pointing fingers at the man to his right. It's a great cartoon that had great impact when it was published and has stood the test of time, even though the real Richard Connolly was not accusing Peter Sweeney, who was not accusing Boss Tweed, who was not accusing James Ingersoll, etc.

for Q Syndicate, June 21, 2004

Here again, I could have drawn specific Republican senators pulling a prank in 2004, but I think this particular cartoon works better this way artistically.

Still, I believe it is useful for cartoonists to hold actual politicians accountable for their stands on issues. Thomas Nast's cartoons would have had little impact if he had tamely drawn generic "City Hall" characters — or comical Tammany Tigers — every week. Likewise, it's all well and good to draw a cartoon highlighting Lindsey Graham's or Matt Gaetz's craptasm du jour; but if one doesn't hold their feet to the fire, the effect is likely to be ephemeral.


We can't all be Thomas Nast, but we can still try.

The War on Drugs

For Sensimillaback Saturday today, I've rummaged through my cartoons from thirty years ago on the topic of the War on Drugs.

in the Racine Journal Times, September 24, 1989

The Woodstock generation had joined the over-30 establishment by this point, settling down, holding down steady jobs, buying "entertainment centers," and becoming parents. My own classmates were following quickly on the heels of those Children of the Sixties, laughing along with their risqué drug references on Saturday Night Live and Cheech and Chong albums.

Earlier this month, I posted this cartoon from September, 1989, when the Journal Times solicited reader feedback on the question of legalizing or decriminalizing drug use.

in the Racine Journal Times, September 3, 1989

Not surprisingly, the great majority of responses were in the negative.

The George H.W. Bush administration was committed to combatting recreational drugs in the U.S. Brandishing on television a plastic bag of crack cocaine he claimed was found being sold right across the street from the White House, Bush proposed spending $7.9 billion on the war on narcotics. In addition to dramatically hiking military aid to Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru, Bush called for measures to clamp down on the demand side domestically. Casual drug users would lose their driving privileges under the proposal, and/or be sentenced to military-style boot camps.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, September 26, 1989

Bush claimed that this new war could be paid for without raising taxes; he recommended diverting $751 million (less than 10% of that $7.9 million) from juvenile justice, housing, immigration and economic development. Democrats, for their part, voiced few if any objections to the War on Drugs. Senate Judiciary Chair Joe Biden (D-You May Remember Him) sniffed that the budget for the war ought to be four times what Bush wanted.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, September 14, 1989

I scanned this one in color as a cautionary tale: never store newsprint next to your original drawings. The original of a cartoon I drew for the UW-Parkside Ranger somehow got lost in the newspaper office (it being the beginning of a new school year, I imagine some first-time staffer might have thrown it away), so I had stuck the newspaper in which the cartoon had run into my files instead. Before long, the newsprint had stained the front of the Angelo Grumley cartoon and the back of another.

And speaking of drugs and cartoon originals I never got back, I'll close with another cartoon missing from my files. Since the new-school-year thing doesn't apply at the daily newspaper, perhaps it got mislaid, discarded, or purloined by someone at the Journal Times who foolishly thought a Berge Original would be worth Big Money someday. After this, I started sticking return address labels on the back of my cartoons for a while.

in the Racine Journal Times, September 6, 1989

(A different sort of drug abuse.)

Dog Day After Toon

Siriusback Saturday rummages through my boxes of old cartoons and plucks out some random stuff from August, 1989.

Except that this first one's actually from June.

In Young at Heart, June, 1989

This trifle ran in the Vol. 3, No. 6 issue of Young At Heart, a local newsprint magazine targeted at the AARP demographic. I drew cartoons for them for a year or so. I don't have the original of the cartoon in my files, so perhaps the office closed before any Vol. 3, No. 7. (In those primitive days before the internet came along, I delivered and picked up my cartoons in person.)

I hadn't celebrated my 30th birthday yet (as hadn't most of the Young at Heart staff), so it was a stretch for me to figure out what people twice my age would consider funny. I guessed that they probably caught a fair amount of daytime television.

"Win, Lose, or Draw" was a TV game show hosted by Bert Convy, in which contestants were teamed with celebrity guests. One team member would have to illustrate some phrase on a flip chart while the others tried to guess what the phrase was.

In Racine Wis. Journal Times, August 11, 1989

Attorney General William Barr has put capital punishment into the news again. Capital punishment was controversial even before the Supreme Court ruled it "cruel and unusual" in Furman v. Georgia (1972). But civil libertarians have never been able to drive a stake through the heart of capital punishment; the Supremes reversed themselves only four years later in Gregg v. Georgia.

In Journal Times, September 3, 1989

The Journal Times solicited reader opinions on legalizing marijuana for its September 3 editorial page, even though anything approaching legalization was still decades in the future. The Bush administration Attorney General, Richard Thornburgh, in fact advocated sending U.S. troops to Colombia to fight the Medellin drug cartel. JT responders opposed legalization by a ratio of 4 to 1.

Unpublished?

Spike Jones's film, "Do the Right Thing," was released in the U.S. on July 21, 1989 to stellar reviews, but some people worried that the riot scene at the film's climax would incite Black audiences to riot. It was slow to arrive to Racine's movie theatres, both owned by Marcus Theatres, but "Do the Right Thing" was eventually shown in the fall at the Rapids Plaza Cinema, across a busy street from Horlick High School, without incident.

The theatre was not so fortunate after a cancelled screening of "Boys 'n the Hood" two years later and was shuttered months after that. The public explanation for the closing was that the Rapids Cinema had only two screens, whereas the Westgate Cinema had six; both are gone now, replaced by the 13-screen Marcus Renaissance Cinema four miles outside city limits.

Let's close on a lighter note.

Judging from the absence of a date on it, I must have drawn this cartoon for Young at Heart. My usual notation of the date in the margin of the paper is also missing, but the cartoon was filed between the August and September cartoons. If Young at Heart ever published a Vol. 3 No. 7 or 8, I don't have a hard copy of it.

Hercule Perot

in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 27, 1992

I had something else planned for this week's Sucking Soundback Saturday post; but with the passing this week of H. Ross Perot, it can wait.

in Racine Journal Times,  May 26, 1992

Diminutive in stature, billionaire Texan Perot burst upon the political scene in 1992 as a larger-than-life character. Both major party presidential nominations were pretty well decided (although Jerry Brown hadn't quite surrendered to Bill Clinton on the Democratic side) when Perot announced his intention to mount an independent campaign for the general election.

He shot to the top of national polls — in part because Republicans were associated with one set of interests and Democrats were associated with another, but potential voters could project onto Perot whatever priorities appealed to them.

in UW-M Post, September 28, 1992

Then in July, he abruptly pulled out of the race, only to change his mind again in October.

in UW-M Post, October 12, 1992

The Perot campaign concentrated primarily on buying half-hour blocks of television prime time for him to display graphs and charts illustrating his signature issues against the national debt and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He and his running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, had qualified to appear in the presidential debates; he also held a few rallies.

in UW-M Post, October 26, 1992

Come November, Perot failed to carry any states, but he did come in second in Utah and Maine. Most of his voters were male, overwhelmingly white, and just over half self-identified as moderates. With nearly 19% of the popular vote, Perot was guaranteed to be a factor in 1996, and some Republicans blame him for denying Bush 41 a second term.

in UW-M Post, November 8, 1993

He was no ally of the Democrats, however, and emerged as a primary spokesman against the Clinton administration (until he was overshadowed by Newt Gingrich). He debated NAFTA with Al Gore on the Larry King Show, on which he famously declared, "Now, when you've got a seven-to-one wage differential between the United States and Mexico, you will hear the giant sucking sound!"

in Gaze Magazine (Mpls.), January 7, 1994

Perot founded his Reform Party in 1995 and bore its standard in the 1996 election. He won only 8% of the vote the second time around, but that was still enough to guarantee the Reform Party federal matching funds next time around. He opened his party's nomination to others in 2000 (Donald Trump was one of the candidates who put his name forward) and ended up forsaking the Reform Party and endorsing George W. Bush. Pat Buchanan would be the party's presidential nominee that year and go all America First as he plunged it into obscurity, while still managing to avenge Bush 41 by denying Al Gore Florida's electoral votes.

in UW-M Post, March 28, 1996

Given the hyperpartisanship that has been the hallmark of the 21st Century, I often wonder how different the political landscape would be today if Perot's Reform Party had not gone off the rails into ugly nativism, but had instead continued as a centrist alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. Imagine how things might be different if there were a Reform Party to welcome the likes of John McCain, Jeff Flake, Joe Manchin, and Mikie Sherrill.

But the truth is that Perot's forceful opposition to NAFTA opened his party's doors to the xenophobes who have lately been taking over the Republican party under Trump. Recent experience has shown that hard-core extremists outshout and outlast moderates and pragmatists, and if you don't think so, explain to me how Susan Collins is a leader rather than a follower.

The Reform Party certainly was not immune. If it were still around today, we might well have the Reform Party for Know-Nothings, the Republican Party for Corporate Theocrats, and the Democratic Party for Urban Sophisticates.

Five Toons in Search of a Theme

Having dealt with Stonewall, the end of World War I, and the start of Prohibition over the past couple weeks, this edition of Surveyback Saturday rummages through my own cartoons from 1989 for the Racine, Wisconsin Journal Times.

in Racine (WI) Journal Times, February, 1989

Most of my cartoons for the JT were about transient local issues and local persons, but here are a handful for which I guess you didn't have to have been there. I don't remember how the furor over Health: Choosing Wellness turned out, but you can probably easily imagine how the story shaped up: educrats select a sex ed textbook that accomplishes teaching kids important information about sex, vs. religious conservatives who don't want their kids learning about sex until their wedding night.

There was sex ed in Racine before 1989; I remember my dad taking me to what was called "Sixth Grade Boys' Hygeine" one evening, where the school showed us a film strip about (among other things) how babies are made. I also remember that I came away from that evening with a completely erroneous understanding of how babies are made.

in Racine Journal Times, April 7, 1989

1989 was the year Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds was accused of gambling on games in which he played or managed. For those of you younger than us baby boomers, my cartoon riffs on a series of TV commercials for a brokerage firm.

in Racine Journal Times, June 2, 1989

I drew these last three cartoons to accompany editorials the Journal Times announced ahead of time and invited readers send in their comments to be printed on the same day as the editorials. "Training wage" was one of those Republican counter-proposals to raising the minimum wage, the idea being that employers could offer new employees a less-than-minimum wage for some set period of time.

The Democratic proposal at the time was to raise the minimum wage, then at $3.25/hour since January, 1981, to $4.35 per hour; the 60-day "training wage" was supported by President George H.W. Bush and Governor Tommy Thompson. But as one letter-writer pointed out, why wouldn't "unscrupulous employers hire unskilled people at the lower training wage, retain them for a few weeks and then fire them when they are eligible for an increased wage and fringe benefits. Then these employers hire another group of unskilled workers at the lower, training wage"?

Bush and Congress agreed to raise the minimum wage to $4.25 in stages over the next two years, with a training wage of $3.35 in 1990 and $3.61 in 1991, restricted to laborers aged 16 to 19.

in Racine Journal Times, July 20, 1989

In July, the Journal Times invited readers' opinions of Wisconsin's child support law determining what non-custodial parents are expected to provide to custodial parents in cases of divorce. Responses were numerous and strong; the JT quoted one non-custodial father who showed up at the newspaper office in person but who didn't want his name used: "All I need to do is say how I feel about it and my ex-wife will haul me back into court faster than you can imagine."

in Racine Journal Times, July 4, 1989

Since it's a long Independence Day Weekend for many of you, how better to close today's installment than by resurrecting the 1989 controversy over flag burning. The Supreme Court had ruled that burning the flag in protest was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, so Bush and the GOP proposed adding another amendment to criminalize that form of protest.

That amendment never got very far; it was far more effective as an issue to whip up the Republican base than as actual legislative policy. And they soon found railing against gay people was more effective still.

Which is why you would be free to burn your Betsy Ross Flag shoes from Nike, but tossing them at Colin Kaepernick can get you charged with assault and battery.

And wearing them might also be illegal.

Tripping Over Tropes

There's not much of a theme to today's Scatterback Saturday post, other than to pick up on the threads of disparate conversations about recent cartoons, both mine and others'.

Sean Martin (cartoonist of Doc and Raider) confessed on a post earlier this week to being puzzled by the furor over the Portuguese cartoon that proved to be the final straw in the New York Times's decision never to run editorial cartoons again. Others can and have explained the issue better than I can; the argument boils down to the insistence that because of historic antisemitism, some images and criticisms that might be perfectly acceptable about any other country ought to be out of bounds if the topic is Israel.

This brings us to Howard Wasserman's recent post on PrawfsBlawg, in which he suggests that the cartoon of Netanyahu is no more offensive than would be a similar cartoon of Vladimir Putin leading a blind Trump. ... [T]he cartoon in question engaged an ancient anti-Jewish trope — the tricky Jew who secretly controls the government of unwitting Gentiles — which differentiated it from any similar cartoon about other world leaders. The Putin analogy would have meaning only if there had ever been such a thing as the Protocols of the Elders of the Kremlin. It does not take much effort to imagine images of other world leaders that would be readily acknowledged as racist or sexist, but would be okay if applied to Putin.

Imagine a cartoon of Putin-as-Dracula, sucking blood the people of Ukraine. That would be gory, but not racist. Now imagine a cartoon of Netanyahu doing the same thing. Is there any question that the image of a Jewish bloodsucker, preying on a Gentile body (during Passover, no less) would evoke classic anti-Semitism?

The question of what is permissible in visual criticisms of the Israeli state reminds me of a controversy that arose back when I was drawing for the UW-Milwaukee Post in the '80's. UW-Milwaukee has long had politically active Jewish and Palestinian student groups that were ever at odds.

In 1988, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) posted a large banner over the lobby of the student union, depicting a prone Palestinian child impaled in the back by a large blue Star of David. The pro-Zionist student group TAGAR protested that the banner was antisemitic and demanded it be taken down. GUPS's response was that the Star of David is the one identifiable emblem on the Israeli flag and thus represented the Israeli state rather than the Jewish religion.

It does both, of course. I waded toe-deep into the controversy with this cartoon:

In UWM Post, December 13, 1988

Toward the end of my service at the Post, GUPS posted an intentionally offensive banner in response to a cartoon I'd drawn mourning the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzakh Rabin as a "martyr for peace." I think that TAGAR may have blown the cartoon up to banner size to hang in the union, but I'm not positive about that.

In UWM Post, November 6, 1995

In any case, GUPS made a banner out of the cartoon, but added a military helmet and replaced "martyr" with "murderer." TAGAR, naturally, called for GUPS to remove its poster. I drew a reply of my own.

In UWM Post, November 16, 1995

No doubt, the children and grandchildren of those GUPS and TAGAR students continue to antagonize each other from the rafters of the student union.

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Moving on to another topic entirely: a fan wrote me about my recent cartoon of Trump proposing a tariff against transgender people. The fan particularly liked the portrait of Warren G. Harding in the background and asked, "Is this a reference to the most corrupt Presidential Administration 'before Trump' and a recognition that the realization of the corruption came out after Harding had died which implies there is so much more to worry about with Trump."

Of course it was. And it isn't the first time I've hung Harding's portrait in the Oval Office.

Presidents can hang portraits of Andrew Jackson or whatever dead president they like in the Oval Office; I will still feel free to choose a more appropriate wall hanging in my cartoons. I haven't picked out the decor for any of the 386 candidates seeking to unseat the Corrupt Trump Administration, however.

In UW-Parkside Ranger, March 5, 1987

Not just yet.

Silence of the Sams

I had planned to save these cartoons for this summer, but after Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson's stunning performance in front of Congress this week, now seems to be a good time for Scamback Saturday to remember one of his predecessors at the department.

Samuel Pierce was Secretary of HUD from 1981 to 1989.  Pierce had the distinction of being the only African-American in Ronald Reagan's cabinet, and the only cabinet official to serve in the same post for all eight years of Reagan's presidency.

Several HUD Secretaries have been former mayors or otherwise professionally involved in urban renewal. But like Ben Carson, Pierce had no such experience before Reagan named him to the job. Also like Ben Carson, Pierce was African-American, the Republican euphemism for which is "urban," an area the increasingly exurban and rural Republican Party could hardly care less about. If a Republican president has to have one Black person in the cabinet just for appearances sake, he might as well be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, even if his field of expertise is brain surgery and he's totally unfamiliar with real estate jargon.

Unlike Carson, however, Sam Pierce at least had ample subcabinet-level experience, starting out in Eisenhower's Department of Labor and later as general counsel to Nixon's Treasury Department. But the tenure of "Silent Sam" at HUD was so low-key that when he and the president who appointed him attended a U.S. Conference of Mayors luncheon, Reagan thought Pierce was one of the mayors.

I'm not kidding.

Chuck Stone, a black editor at the Philadelphia Daily News and longtime acquaintance of Pierce, says the Secretary “has the three B’s Republicans like—brilliance, blackness and blandness. Republicans don’t like audacious blacks.”

It was only after Pierce was gone that an investigation by the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel uncovered mismanagement and political favoritism in HUD dating from his first days on the job.

UW-Milwaukee Post, July 25, 1989

Despite a pledge during his Senate confirmation hearings to ''sever'' his ties to his former New York law firm, Samuel R. Pierce Jr. regularly did personal favors for his former colleagues and interceded with subordinates in the Department of Housing and Urban Development on their behalf, documents from his office files show.

While there is no indication that the former Secretary broke any law barring conflicts of interest or directed subordinates to act improperly, Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, said the documents raised ''additional questions about Secretary Pierce's management at H.U.D.''  ...

Ethics lawyers at H.U.D. said Mr. Pierce's agreement to sever ties with the firm did not bar him from all dealings with it. And lawyers at the Office of Government Ethics said that to prove a criminal violation against an official like Mr. Pierce, a prosecutor would have to demonstrate that he personally and substantially took part in a matter affecting his former firm. 

Investigators also uncovered several cases in which outside agents managing the foreclosure of properties on behalf of HUD, instead of subtracting their management fees and turning the rest of the proceeds over to HUD, were pocketing the entire proceeds and never filing the paperwork. Contracts went to politically connected landlords and developers, funneling money to the campaigns of a number of politicians.

Drawn for an edition of the Post that wasn't published

As the scandals came to light, Pierce claimed that HUD was too big for him to follow individual programs, and he threw his chief aide, Deborah Gore Dean under the bus. She and others on Pierce's staff would be convicted on various felony charges, but Pierce himself was never charged with any criminal activity.

UW-Parkside Ranger, September 28, 1989

Now, I have to caution that there was never any connection between the shenanigans at HUD and the Iran-Contra scandal.

But one familiar name from the Corrupt Trump Administration pops up in those 30-year-old reports.

As one particular scam involving conversion of some abandoned World War II era internment facilities for Japanese-Americans into apartment dwellings was reported in Newsweek in 1989:

The moving force in the project was Paul Manafort, a Reagan campaign consultant in 1980 who later diversified into lobbying and power brokering. When a friend told him the ancient housing project was for sale, Manafort sounded out Deborah Gore Dean, Pierce's chief aide, and got informal encouragement that he could get a rehabilitation contract. Through another crony, he persuaded New Jersey officials to apply for a grant; with two associates, he formed CFM Development Corp. and bought the project for $4.4 million. HUD promptly approved the project, providing $5 million in construction funds and guaranteeing rent subsidies totaling $31.1 million over 15 years. CFM hired Manafort's firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly [okay, more than one familiar name there!] to keep the wheels greased at HUD, paying it a consultant's fee of $326,000. The rent subsidies guaranteed an operating profit, but the program offered a second bonanza in the form of $11 million worth of tax credits. ...
Mayor Bruce Peterson of Upper Deerfield Township, N.J., called the project "a horrible waste of the taxpayers' money." It was imposed on the community as a fait accompli, he testified; the housing wasn't needed, the buildings were too old and shabby, the work being done was shoddy and the subsidized rents were way above local standards.

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These four cartoons about Samuel Pierce are the most I've ever drawn about any Secretary of HUD. The only other HUD Secretary I've ever cartooned was Jack Kemp, who comes in second place, and only because he's in that second cartoon about Pierce. Which never got published until now, so it shouldn't even count.

UW-Parkside Ranger, November 2, 1989

On the other hand, Kemp did appear in at least one of my cartoons when he was Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 1996. For that matter, I've drawn Carson in at least three cartoons, but as a 2016 presidential candidate.

Since the ratio of verbiage to cartoons in this post is weighted too heavily to the former, here's one of those Carson cartoons.

Matters of Life and Death

ShowMeBack Saturday returns again to a handful of my cartoons from the momentous year of 1989 (and one from 1999).

Abortion was a hot topic in the spring of 1989. The arguments haven't changed much on either side since then, so I needn't rehash them here. While there were passionate single-issue voters for and against abortion rights, for most people, it was only one issue among many. In the words of the Hasting Center's Daniel Callahan, "The debate is dominated by the activists. I don't think the activists' views reflect those of the large, muddled middle."

"Lost in Translation," UW-Parkside Ranger, March 30, 1989

Thirty years ago this month, the United States Supreme Court revisited the issue of abortion rights in the case Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. Only four of the justices who had voted in the 7-2 majority in Roe v. Wade remained on the court, and anti-abortion advocates believed they had a golden opportunity to overturn the 1973 decision.

"The Moral High Ground" in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 6, 1989

At issue in Webster was a Missouri law positing that "life begins at conception" and forbidding use of state money or facilities for abortion procedures. Missouri's law had been crafted by anti-abortion activists Lee and Andrew Puzder in hopes of taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court. The two dissenters in Roe, Justices William Rehnquist and Byron White, were still on the court, now joined by Reagan-nominated Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

Although the general concern over a right to privacy had been part of Democratic opposition to Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Bork to the Supreme Court (more media attention was given to his role in Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre), believers that the right of privacy extended to a woman's right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term registered hardly any protest against Reagan's other court picks.

"Uh...Charlene..." in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 27, 1989

If the pro-choice crowd and much of the Great American Middle had been lulled into thinking that Roe v. Wade was settled law, the anti-abortion movement had been hard at work to unsettle it. They protested in Washington every year, blockaded health clinics, waved bloody photos, and got their cause into the Republican party platform. And now they had the full force of the Bush Justice Department behind the Missouri law.

"Wishful Thinking" in UW-Milwaukee Post, May 4, 1989

In July, the two Justices who had dissented in Roe plus the three Reagan had placed on the court ruled that Missouri's anti-abortion law was entirely constitutional. Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion for the majority pretended that the ruling in no way chipped away at Roe. It opened the door, however, for anti-abortion legislatures to regulate abortion rights out of existence, which they have pursued with a vengeance ever since.

Any believers in marriage equality who think that Obergefell v. Hodges is settled law just because it's the law and it got settled once, please take note.

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My "Charlene, Could I Have a Word With You" cartoon above referenced another divisive issue in 1989 (when is it not?), gun control.

The murder of five children in a Stockton, California schoolyard in January prompted passage of a series of gun control laws California and elsewhere, mostly trying to ban or limit the sale of semi-automatic weapons. This was followed in turn by a surge in "get 'em before you can't" gun sales fueled by NRA fear-mongering.

"I Think We've Located the Problem" in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 11, 1989

The gun used in the Stockton shooting had been purchased legally in Oregon. In response, Oregon bill HR 3470 lengthened the waiting period for the purchase of a gun from five days to fifteen. To win NRA support, the bill also provided for concealed carry statewide. The waiting period has since been replaced by instant on-line background checking; the concealed carry provision remains.

Today, of course, is the twentieth anniversary of the Columbine school shooting, which cannot pass without comment here — particularly in light of the attraction it holds for those sick individuals interested in not letting it pass without a sequel.

Exxon Valdez 30 Years On

Spillback Saturday takes a break from the century-old stuff this week to note the 30-year anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, so I can steal my own cartoons instead of those of a bunch of dead guys.

UW-Parkside Ranger, April 6, 1989

On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound after leaving Valdez, Alaska. The resulting oil spill was, at the time, the second worst in U.S. history (the 1910 Lakeview Gusher, the subsequent 2010 Deepwater Horizon blow-out, and continuing Taylor Oil spill were/are several times worse).

It was also only the second time gas prices rose above the $1.009/gallon mark in my area — this time to stay. Even accounting for inflation, the gas prices in my cartoon are quaint by today's standard: that $1.059/gallon price for regular would be the equivalent of about $2.16 today. The price up the street from my house hit $2.949/gallon earlier this week.

The price of gas, however, is only a superficial measure of the disaster. Well over 10 million gallons of oil spread over 2,600 square miles in the first couple of weeks, ultimately coating 1,300 miles of coastline. In terms of damage to wildlife, the Exxon Valdez spill is estimated to have killed 250,000 seabirds, 3,000 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 orcas, and countless salmon, herring, and other fish.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 13, 1989

Alyeska Pipeline Service Company had promised Alaskans that their expert seamen would find smooth sailing with "an absence of substantial navigation hazards." Even in the "highly unlikely" event of a major spill, Alyeska predicted that it could be brought under control in a few hours.

In fact, the ship's captain, reportedly less than sober, steered the Exxon Valdez a mile and a half off course, then put the ship on autopilot and left the bridge. The ship's underwater radar system was malfunctioning. By the time a third mate saw the ship heading for well-marked shoals, it was too late to steer away.

It took Exxon three days to ready equipment to spray chemical dispersant on the spill (and for the state of Alaska to okay its use). By day five, a thick gooey coating had congealed on the surface of the slick, rendering the dispersant nearly useless and gumming up equipment trying to skim the oil off the water. The company, and citizen volunteers, spent months cleaning the water, the beaches, the wildlife and even the trees of oil. Even so, only 10% of the spill was cleaned up, leaving the other 90% for Mother Nature to handle.

If there was one bright moment when fortune smiled, it was that Captain Hazelwood's initial efforts to budge the Exxon Valdez off the shoals failed. Had he been successful, the ship probably would have sunk with all hands.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 25, 1989

Of course, Donald Joffrey Trump's executive order this week allowing oil companies to completely disregard any and all environmental considerations and pipe-baby-pipe with impunity is "highly unlikely" to be any cause for concern whatsoever.