Government v. Press

This week's Graphical History Tour bravely sallies forth against censorship of newsmedia in the United States.

As a political cartoonist who has just been among a few dozen other political cartoonists, Your Humble Scribbler has a vested interest against censorship of editorial cartoons in particular. 

During the First Golden Age of my profession, in the late 18th Century and into the next, newspaper publishers saw the popularity and influence of the Thomas Nasts and Johannes Kepplers drawing for the national weeklies, and hired some of the best editorial cartoonists to grace their newspapers' front pages. And not incidentally, to push the publishers' political agendas.

"No Honest Man Need Fear Cartoons" by Homer Davenport in New York Journal, Apr. 22, 1897

Local politicians did not take kindly to being lampooned on those front pages. Upset by Homer Davenport's cartoons of influential Republican Mark Hanna, New York political boss Senator Thomas Platt, pushed a bill in the state assembly to ban cartoon depictions of real persons without their consent.

Davenport drew the parallel with Platt's predecessor, William Tweed, who had famously complained that although his constituents didn't read the papers, they saw "them damn pictures." Platt's bill failed to pass, but that didn't stop similar bills from cropping up elsewhere.

"The Governor Has His Revenge" by Robert Edgren in San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 25, 1899

A copycat bill by California Republicans failed to pass on its first go-around, but was passed during the next legislative session and signed by newly elected Republican Governor Henry Tifft Gage. As in New York, the partisan Democratic cartoons in Hearst newspapers were a major impetus for the bill; specifically, a cartoon of Gage being led on a leash by railroad magnate C.P. Huntington.

Having been signed into law, California's anti-cartoon bill was laughed — and ignored — into obscurity. Hearst cartoonist Robert Edgren offered an unusual motive for Governor Gage to sign the anti-cartoon bill: that the cartoonists were not drawing him any more.

Frankly, the man was a caricaturist's dream. Too bad he was voted out of office after one term.

by Walter McDougall in North American, Philadelphia, Jan. 30, 1903

Responding to daily cartoons in Philadelphia's North American by Charles Nelan depicting gubernatorial candidate Samuel Pennypacker as the pet parrot of Republican Party boss Senator Matthew Quay, Pennypacker's inaugural address demanded censorship of the "disreputable" North American. Obligingly, State Representative Frederick Pusey introduced a bill outlawing publication of any cartoon 

"portraying, describing, or representing any person, either by distortion, innuendo, or otherwise, in the form or likeness of beast, bird, fish, insect, or other unhuman animal, thereby tending to expose such person to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule."

The North American's other editorial cartoonist, Walt McDougall, responded with a cartoon stretched across the top of the front page depicting Quay, Pusey, and Pennypacker as a series of inanimate objects. (I have folded his cartoon to fit into a square format.) In an accompanying editorial, McDougall exhorted his fellow cartoonists, "Every cartoonist has a Noah's Ark full of worn, broken, and decrepit animals, bugs, and such, but the fresh vegetable field is untouched."

Pusey's bill nevertheless passed the Pennsylvania legislature and Pennypacker signed it into law. It was promptly repealed after Pennypacker was defeated in the next election.

by Frank Spangler in Montgomery [Ala.] Advertiser, Feb. 3, 1915 

As part of a package of election regulation laws, the Alabama legislature entertained a bill sponsored by Samuel D. Weakly prohibiting the caricature of any "prominent" man or politician. "It will make the average newspaper reader smile," the Advertiser editorialized, 

"that a sacred class is to be made of officeholders and office seekers, for they are the bulk of prominent people whom newspapers cartoon. A cartoon is a semi-editorial expression, and a powerful method of reaching public opinion, because ridicule and sarcasm are vividly presented to the eye. Both weapons are enormously effective on the stump, and there is no reason why the press should be deprived of their use. In fact, such a bill is a distinct effort to muzzle the press, and is an infringement of its constitutional powers."

As far as I have been able to determine, Weakly's proposal did not make it into the final bill. The Act (#171, § 11) did require cartoons expressing an opinion on any candidate or election issue to include "upon its face" the name of the newspaper's owner or the chief executive of its corporation.

"The Light that Must Not Fail" by Harry Murphy ca. May 5, 1917

U.S. entry into World War I opened the doors for government censorship of newspapers, and not just for their cartoons.

The Espionage Act of 1917 made it a crime to publish with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies during wartime; to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States; or to willfully obstruct military recruiting or enlistment.  The Act also gave the Postmaster General authority to impound publications that he determined to be in violation of the Act.

"That Wooden One" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 5, 1917

The U.S. was drawn into Europe's war due in part to the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania by a German U-boat. Nelson Harding, in a single-column cartoon on the Brooklyn Eagle's front page, turned the incident back against advocates for press censorship.

"Is This Somewhere in Germany or Somewhere in America" by Beaumont Fairbank in Brooklyn Sunday Eagle, May 5, 1918

In the same newspaper on the same day, Beaumont Fairbank drew his cartoon in support of an amendment to the 1917 Espionage Act by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) stating, 

"The use of the mails should not be permitted to any newspaper, magazine, periodical, circulars or pamphlets which are printed in whole or in part in the German language." 

Fairbank was by no means alone in advocating governmental censorship of the foreign language press. While that amendment had failed to be included in the final bill, local officials outlawed German-language newspapers in several cities in New Jersey and Long Island.

"Wenn Uns Jetzt Unsere Vorväter Sehen Könnten" by John Lenz in Vorbote, Chicago, Oct. 31, 1917

Protest against this censorship was almost exclusively limited to the foreign language newspapers themselves. The banner behind Congress in John Lenz's cartoon translates to "Freedom of Speech, Press Freedom, Right of Assembly." The rolled parchments beneath George Washington represent the Constitution and First Amendment.

"O Sorry Plight" by Arthur Young in Masses, New York, September, 1917

The Creel Commission also employed the U.S. Post Office to censor publication of material counter to the official line. Art Young's cartoon above appeared in the September issue of  the marxist, antiwar Masses after Burleson's USPS had declared the August issue "unmailable under the Act of June 15, 1917."

"A Convenient Perch" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, May, 1918

If Art Young expected other publications to rally in solidarity with Masses, he would be sadly mistaken. The Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel created a Bureau of Cartoons, which produced a weekly bulletin for cartoonists to direct their attention to matters the Wilson administration wanted them to draw about. By and large, cartoonists and their publishers fell right in line.

Masses ceased publication after its November/December issue.

"It's Nothing Important" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, Dec. 20, 1972

Jumping ahead over half a century, President Richard Nixon tried very hard to force newsmedia to slant the news the way he wanted it reported. His administration enlisted the Federal Communications Commission to pressure television networks, cut funding to public broadcasting, and took newspapers to court. He was stymied, however, without a cooperative Congress or courts.

Instead, his communications team went on to found Fox News.

"Ask Me Anything" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, Nov. 15, 1973

In the meantime, we learned that President Richard Nixon kept an "enemies list" of critics of his administration, including many journalists. Nixon had always had a testy relationship with the media well before being elected president. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, it was revealed that he used the Justice Department, FBI, and Internal Revenue Service to open investigations against individuals on that list — although at least he never barred Jack Anderson, Daniel Schorr, or Mary McGrory from White House press briefings. 

for Bergetoons blog, August, 2018

There has been no assault on the media and the facts to rival the Absolutely Corrupt Donald Trump Regime's campaign to quash any reportage that doesn't fawn upon Dear Misleader. The two terms of his presidency have seen government websites erased, responsible reporters banned first from the Pentagon and now the White House, and weaponization against the media of both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, this time with general compliance on the part of Congress and the Supreme Court.

for Q Syndicate, February, 2025

Unless approved by Trump himself, it's all just fake news.

"They give me only bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away, ... That’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said. But when you go back, take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They're giving me all this bad press, and they're getting a license. When you have a network and they have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that's all they do — that license, they're not allowed to do that!" — Donald Joffrey Trump, September 16, 2025

This Week's Sneak Peek

The more I think about it, I wish I had used "You're fired" as the punch line for last week's cartoon.

The "indefinite suspension" of Jimmy Kimmel after direct and explicit demands from Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr that ABC cancel Kimmel's late night television show – and after Reichsfuhrer Donald Berzelius Trump promised after Colbert's cancelation that Kimmel would be next – was the real story of the week, not social media's wild speculation as to the motives of Charlie Kirk's assassin.

Somebody must get Carr to answer what exactly, was Kimmel's offense. Did he quote the nasty things Kirk has said over the years after George Floyd was killed, or Paul Pelosi was attacked? Did he mock him for saying that school shootings and the other thousands of gun deaths every year were worth it to keep Second Amendment rights? Did he say that Kirk deserved what he got?

No, no, and no.

You don't have to judge Kimmel by the no-context chyrons on the evening news, or the ten-second clip shared by Colbert, Fallon, Meyers, Oliver, et al. Here is how Kimmel's final monologue actually went:

"We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

"In between the finger pointing there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level you can see how hard the President is taking this."

The late-night host then played a clip of President Trump being asked how he has been holding up since the killing, to which Trump responds: "I think very good" and begins to talk about plans for the new White House ballroom.

The show then cuts back to Kimmel, who continues: "Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief; construction.

"Demolition..construction...

"This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend, this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, ok. And it didn't just happen once".

The host then played another clip of the President on Fox News revealing the moment he was told Kirk had been shot while he was with the architects for the new White House ballroom.

The show cuts back to Kimmel, who says: "And then we installed the most beautiful chandelier...[inaudible] you wouldn't believe.

"There's something wrong with him — there really is. I mean, who thinks like that and why are we building a $200million ballroom in the White..., Is it possible that he is doing it intentionally, so we can be mad about that instead of the Epstein list?

"By the time he's out of office, the White House will have slot machines and a water slide.

"Trump is in major change the subject mode, on Friday he stopped by the always friendly morning crew at Fox. Whenever Trump goes on Fox & Friends it's funny because the hosts are so eager for him to be reasonable, they spell it all out for him. They desperately want to avoid having to nod along with anything crazy or contradict him so they give him the question, and their preferred answer too.

Kimmel then plays a clip from the Fox & Friends interview where the hosts asked the President: "Is the message too, to the right, the people who are going to go 'I want revenge', not to have revenge, Charlie Kirk would not want revenge?" To which the President responds "he would want revenge at the voter [ballot] box"

The show cuts back to Kimmel, who says: "Good answer right, take it to the ballot box. That's reasonable, that's almost presidential but that's the thing, he can never just stop right there."

The late-night host then plays another clip from the Fox & Friends interview where the President remarks that California "doesn't have ballot boxes."

The show cuts back to Kimmel, who says: "Oh well, in that case begin the purge."

"For the record, we live in California we do have ballot boxes, we've got mail boxes, we have lunch boxes, we have all kinds of boxes, you should come see them sometime, we'll give you a toolbox, you can live in it.

"And then we have this head of the FBI, this character Kash Patel who so far has handled this investigation into the murder of Charlie Kirk like a kid who didn't read the book BS-ing his way through an oral report."

The show cuts to the FBI director on Fox, defending a social media post he made about the arrest of a "subject" in the hours after Kirk was shot, who was later released, telling the show: "I was telling the world what the FBI was doing as we were doing."

The show cut backs to Kimmel, who says: "...which was claiming we caught the killer when we had not.

"Kash Patel always looks like he just got hit by a Volkswagen."

He continues: "The Governor of Utah, Governor Spencer Cox, has been a rare voice of sanity after what happened in his state, he urged Americans to choose humanity, connection and love and even encouraged us to listen to people we disagree with, which is not the plan according to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

"Klan Mom wrote today, 'There's nothing left to talk about with the left, they hate us. They assassinated our nice guy who actually talked to them, peacefully debating ideas. Then millions on the left celebrated and made clear they want all of us dead. To be honest I want a peaceful, national divorce,' the same thing her husband said about two and half years ago.

"But a peaceful national divorce, how would that work? You get Florida, we get Vermont? We share custody of Disney World every other weekend? She's right. The right it feels like we are all stuck in a marriage to Marjorie Taylor Greene right now."

Q Toon: Do Not Disturb

Red state colleges are welcoming students back to campus by emptying their libraries of books about feminism, LGBTQ+ experience, African-American and other minority studies, and anything else reeking of social justice. Students returning to New College in Florida last week discovered waste receptacles overflowing onto the ground with such books. 

University of Kentucky President Eli Capilauto also announced this week that UK has disbanded its Diversity office. This after he had criticized anti-DEI lawmakers in February, arguing, "Let’s not extinguish the thirst for knowledge because certain questions aren’t allowed because they are uncomfortable or challenging."

Elsewhere, George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Wyoming are among the other institutions of higher learning that have knuckled under to the demands of politicians who have decreed diversity, equity, and inclusion to be anathema. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are now literally thought crimes in Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Utah, and Kansas.

Those of you who know me know that I do not use the word "literally" figuratively.

Even private enterprise is succumbing to Republican Cancel Culture. Tractor Supply, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson have broken ties with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and announced that they will would strike any "socially motivated content" from their employee training materials. So I guess I won't need my Harley-Davidson tee shirts any more.

Not that little old me would be able to dissuade the farm equipment companies from chasing those lucrative red-state contracts to haul all those academic books and their dangerous ideas to landfills.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Mike Peterson over at the Daily Cartoonist linked to me twice over the weekend — many thanks, Mike! — the first to disagree somewhat with last week's cartoon of Harrison Butker's commencement address.

I think Mike's disagreement might have been that I lump all Catholics into one basket. I do realize that there are Francis Catholics and Benedict Catholics and never-accepted-Vatican-II Catholics and lapsed Catholics and recovering Catholics, but there wasn't much room for that distinction in the cartoon. There isn't much mystery as to which camp the Powers That Be at Benedictine College in ruby-red Kansas are in.

The various flavors of Catholicism were beside the point of the essay I wrote to accompany it; but point taken.

More amusing to me was some censorbot's decision at Bluesky that my retrospective a couple Saturdays ago which included versions of "The Kiss" by Klimt, Munch, and Rodin, was too risqué. Or perhaps it was as offended by its final panel of Michael Sam and his boyfriend smooching as the Karen in the cartoon trying to cover it up.

I can almost imagine some 14-year-old Bluesky user (yeah, right) clicking on the "Adult Content" warning thinking that there must be porn behind it.

Got a Feeling Kansas Is Not on Meta Any More

Screenshot from my phone

I was taken aback to find this notification on my Facebook feed this morning .

Last August, I had posted a link to a news story about a Kansas sheriff who raided the office of a local weekly newspaper, the Marion Record, and the home of its publisher, confiscating the newspaper's computers and resulting in the death of the publisher's elderly mother. The reporting by a progressive online news organization in Kansas was picked up by national media and others like me who were alarmed by this fundamental violation of freedom of the press.

Clicking the "See why" bar, I was told that my post presented a cybersecurity hazard to the metaverse.

Turns out I was by no means alone.

The Kansas Reflector article had been shared by several others in the journalism biz, and everyone who had shared that story on Facebook woke up to the same We Removed Your Content warning.

In fact, so had everyone who had shared any Kansas Reflector article on Facebook.

For the reason why, you'd have to go to the Kansas Reflector itself, because you can't read it on Facebook.

This morning, sometime between 8:20 and 8:50 a.m. Thursday, Facebook removed all posts linking to Kansas Reflector’s website.

This move not only affected Kansas Reflector’s Facebook page, where we link to nearly every story we publish, but the pages of everyone who has ever shared a story from us.

That’s the short version of the virtual earthquake that has shaken our readers. We’ve been flooded with instant messages and emails from readers asking what happened, how they can help and why the platform now falsely claims we’re a cybersecurity risk.

Allow us to assuage the biggest concerns first.

We were not hacked, and our website does not pose a cybersecurity threat. You and your devices are safe while reading our stories and sharing them. Facebook won’t let you do so at present, but other, non-Meta-owned platforms should be fine.

As to what happened, we’re still working on finding out. Many have wondered if one story or another was responsible, highlighting our coverage of the Marion newspaper raid or state government.

Coincidentally, the removals happened the same day we published a column from Dave Kendall that is critical of Facebook’s decision to reject certain types of advertising: “When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future.”

When we attempted to share the column on Facebook this morning — shortly after 8 a.m. — the link was summarily rejected. After a second attempt at posting, we instead simply linked to our website with advice to find the story there. Within the next half-hour, all posts linking to our site were gone. For reference, we have published more than 6,000 news stories, briefs and opinion columns since Kansas Reflector’s founding in 2020.

Now, it is true that the Marion newspaper raid is an ongoing story; the Marion County Record filed a court case against the mayor, police chief, and sheriff just this week. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Facebook isn't desperate to protect Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane and Boss Hogg. To my mind, there is no coincidence that the Dave Kendall article complaining about Facebook was published the very morning that the Zuckerverse came crashing down on the Reflector. 

Kendall had produced a documentary film about local efforts to combat climate change. He then decided to "boost" a Facebook post advertising screenings of his film.

Imagine my surprise when I attempted to “boost” a post on Meta’s Facebook to begin our online promotional efforts — and the company summarily rejected it.

Why? According to the automated response I received, the post “doesn’t comply with our Ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics policy.”

Apparently, Meta deems climate change too controversial for discussion on their platforms.

I had suspected such might be the case, because all the posts I made prior to the attempted boost seemed to drop off the radar with little response. As I took a closer look, I found others complaining about Facebook squelching posts related to climate change.

... [I]n the Meta-verse, where it seems virtually impossible to connect with a human being associated with the administration of the platform, rules are rules, and it appears they would prefer to suppress anything that might prove problematic for them.

 By mid afternoon, the Reflector had updated the story about Facebook shutting them down:

Facebook appears to have restored Kansas Reflector’s ability to share links to our website and our past posts, approximately seven hours after the problem was first reported. We have not received an explanation about why our stories were blocked.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone offered the following response on Twitter: “This was an error that had nothing to do with the Reflector’s recent criticism of Meta. It has since been reversed and we apologize to the Reflector and its readers for the mistake.”

As of Thursday evening, the column criticizing Meta still cannot be shared on Facebook. We are continuing to monitor the situation. If you experience any difficulties with the platform and Reflector articles, please let us know. If you want to support our work, please donate.

Q Toon: She's Got a Little List

 

The Holy Land is erupting in war, bringing horror, misery, and death to innocents of all ages on both sides.

After weeks of dysfunction, Requblicans in the House have finally found a Speaker who is acceptable to both the plutocratic and fascist wings of the party. 

So naturally, my cartoon this week is based, loosely, on a weird little news story that broke while I was busy with the AAEC convention earlier this month.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama public library mistakenly added a children’s picture book to a list of potentially inappropriate titles because the author’s last name is “Gay,” the library’s director said.

Read Me a Story, Stella, a children’s picture book by Canadian author Marie-Louise Gay, was added to a list of books flagged for potential removal from the children’s section of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library because of “sexually explicit” content.

But the book, which is about a pair of siblings reading together and building a dog house, should not have been on the list and was only added because of the keyword “gay,” Cindy Hewitt, the library’s executive director told AL.com on Sunday.

Once the library's ridiculous book censorship made news, the library sheepishly admitted that they had overreacted to a list of "explicit material" generated by AI (i.e., Alabama Intelligence). Their excuse was that they had merely erred on the side of hysteria.

No harm done, right?

Kirsten Brassard, Gay’s publicist at Groundwood Books, said the episode sends a “hateful message” coming from a public library,

“This proves, as always, that censorship is never about limiting access to this book or that one. It is about sending the message to children that certain ideas — or even certain people — are not worthy of discussion or acknowledgment or consideration,” Brassard told the news outlet.

It's not clear from the news accounts that I've read whether the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library even had Read Me a Story, Stella in the children's section in the first place, let alone whether anyone on the staff had ever read it. Perhaps, as a gesture of goodwill, they will now get themselves a copy.

No doubt with a "Parental Advisory" sticker plastered over the author's last name.

Banned on the Internets

 By the way, I finally found out which of my blog posts got flagged for violation of Community Guidelines. It was this one from seven years ago, and the complaint is utterly ridiculous.

There is a link in the post to an article in the Charlotte Observer about a porn site, not a link to the porn site itself; that's the most risqué thing I can find there.

__________________________

Update:

All's swell that ends swell.

Q Toon: Library Checkout Time

The people who insist that we mustn't do anything to keep guns out of our schools are now on a crusade to get books out of our schools instead.

Specifically any books that touch on issues of race or sexual orientation. 

Whipped up by the usual right-wing media agitators, Republican targets include Beloved by Toni Morrison, All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by  George M. Johnson, and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. And literally, by which I always mean literally, 847 other books.

I will grant that some of these books contain passages that aren't suitable for second graders — but then, so does the Old Testament. And high school libraries can't be limited to second-grade material.

You can't discuss race in this country without acknowledging racism, including the institutional racism that well outlasted slavery, forcibly destroyed African-American attempts to enjoy prosperity, legally assaulted Asian-American liberties, and stole the country from its original inhabitants.

Nor can you discuss sexuality without discussing sex. This idea that you can limit sex education to "when a man and a woman really love each other, the man plants his seed in the woman and nine months later there's a baby" is how you get dudes who fetishize farm equipment. 

Our radicalized Republican party and their base, of course, don't want anybody discussing race or sexuality in the first place. 

Or science. Or plutocracy. Or economics. Or public health. Or justice. Or logic. 

Or arithmetic.

Q Toon: Borsch Belt

Researching for this week's cartoon, one of the first news accounts I read was this one from RIA Novosti. Headquartered in Moscow, РИА Новости is the Russian equivalent of the Associated Press in the U.S. or Agence Press-France in (duh) France. At the top of the story, in boldface print, RIA Novosti warns:

This article contains information not suitable for readers younger than 18 years of age, according to Russian legislation.

You will not find lurid accounts of hot and steamy sex in the РИА Новости news article. The headline, "Amid Gay Boycott, Stolichnaya Downplays Russian Identity," pretty well sums up the content of the article. But that's enough, under Russia's puritanical new antigay laws, to warrant the boldface warning.

Anyway, LGBT rights organizations have launched a boycott of Russian products in response to those repressive laws, and one of the most visible targets has been Stolichnaya Vodka. Here's what I wanted to highlight from the news article part of the RIA Novosti news article:

"Technically, to define it as a Russian vodka in the US, it needs to be produced, bottled and distilled in Russia. Yes, it’s distilled in Russia, but it becomes a vodka in Latvia," when the alcohol from Russia is added to the mixture and then bottled, said Marco Ferrari, chief marketing officer for the Luxembourg-based SPI Group, which owns the Stolichnaya brand. "Our ingredients are Russian but technically it’s not a Russian vodka."

If you go to the RIA Novosti story, you will notice that it is illustrated with a photograph of a row of Stolichnaya bottles, and right there on the bottom of every one, in print every bit as bold as the brand name, are the words "Russian Vodka." The Stranger (Seattle, WA) columnist Dan Savage notes that "On January 1, 2014, Stoli becomes a Russian vodka again. The SPI Group -- which will be distributing Stoli in the USA before the Olympic games begin this winter -- is owned by Yuri Scheffler, one of the 100 richest men in Russia."

At any rate, Stoly has gone into overdrive to salvage its image in the LGBT community, posting a banner on its Facebook page stating that "Stolichnaya Premium Vodka stands strong & proud with the global LGBT community against the actions & beliefs of the Russian government." And, sure, it does have a Stoly Pride page and a #Stoliguy hashtag teeming with hunky dudes, not to mention all those reruns of Absolutely Fabulous, to tempt the gay consumer.

We're not big vodka drinkers at our house -- we're more likely to order brandy old fashioneds, although at home, my better half has been perfecting the mint julep lately -- so our joining the vodka boycott won't make much of a difference. Instead, and in spite of my scores of Russian on-line readers, my contribution to the boycott will be not including that boldface content-not-suitable-for-under-18 warning in any more of my blog entries.