The Toons of November Remembered

Rummaging through the archives in Bergetoons' state-of-the-art plastic bins, our Graphical History Tour guides have run across my cartoon about funding the federal government forty years ago this month.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Nov. 7, 1985

There's a lot of charcoal in this cartoon of Congress congratulating itself on agreeing on a deadline for resolving the federal deficit, which was almost $212 billion, 4.9% of Gross Domestic Product, in 1985. President Ronald Reagan had promised in 1980 to reduce the deficit, at which time those same figures were $74 billion and 2.6%.

Where are we now? That would be $1.8 trillion in the hole, representing 6.0% of GDP.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., Nov. 21, 1995

2011 Redistricting in Wisconsin has secured a lopsided Republican advantage in the state legislature and our congressional delegation ever since; that was not the case in 1995. Republicans held a 17-to-16 majority in the State Senate that year.

The Milwaukee Brewers came to Madison asking for help funding the building of what is currently American Family Field. Governor Tommy Thompson was loath to raise taxes on the entire state, so he proposed instead imposing a .1% sales tax on Milwaukee County and the four counties adjacent to it, including Racine County to its south. 

The idea was extremely unpopular in Racine, and wasn't helped by Thompson gleefully telling voters outside the five-county area to "stick it to 'em." State Senator George Petak, Republican from Racine, pledged to vote against the five-county tax, and did so on several procedural votes. The deal appeared destined to fail by one vote, but then, around 4:00 in the morning, Petak switched his vote to Aye.

A supposedly grass-roots group quickly gathered enough signatures for a recall election against Sen. Petak. The Wisconsin Democratic Party denied involvement in the "No More Petax" recall effort, and if you believed them, I've got a Bridge To Nowhere I'd like to have sold you.

In the end, the recall was successful, and Democrats were happy to take over control of the State Senate from 1996 to 1998.

not in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 18, 2005

In a multi-panel cartoon, one can often get away with not drawing any background, and merely drawing one or two characters standing and talking. In a single-panel cartoon, however, it's best to have the characters doing something somewhere (especially now that everything has to be in color).

So when the Business Journal editors told me that the week's editorial was going to chide corporate boards that professed not to be able to find qualified women to serve on them, I figured the characters in my cartoon had to be discussing the issue in some men-only space. They aren't as plentiful as they were, oh, half a century ago, so I drew these corporate guys schvitzing in a sauna.

My editor quickly got back to me that the sauna setting was unacceptable, as was the second product line of Amalgamated Mustache Wax & Urinal LLC.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 18, 2005

I whipped off this version with the Mustache Wax CEO talking by phone to some unseen person, and pasted in the dialogue from the earlier version, minus the "and urinal." (It being Milwaukee, I counted on readers recognizing the Rollie Fingers bobblehead on the corner of the man's desk.)

It was the third time that year that the Business Journal editors asked me to edit or redo a cartoon, which may have had something to do with them deciding at year's end to go forward with no editorial page cartoon at all.

Or maybe it was because I had been away on a planned vacation for the November 11 issue, and readers hadn't missed me.

Moving right along...

for Q Syndicate, Nov. 2015

It seems nearly inconceivable now, but a mere ten years ago, Donald Humbert Trumpbert was just one of a dozen Republican presidential candidates, each of them clawing and biting to stand out from the pack.

At a candidates' cattle call on CNBC in October, Ted Cruz figured that the way to stand out was to attack the debate moderators. He accused them of asking "frivolous" questions (he had been asked about his opposition to the recent budget agreement, but ran out of allotted time before getting around to answering it), and said future GOP debates should have only questions submitted by GOP voters.

And his ploy might have worked, too, except that Marco Rubio and Chris Christie quickly seconded Cruz's complaint; Trump also called the questions "nasty," and it should come as no surprise to you that he was answering a question from the one female moderator on the panel when he said that.

To be fair, the moderators' first question to the group was to identify their biggest weaknesses. It's the sort of question you might be asked in a job interview at a company whose biggest weakness is employee retention; it's not the sort of question its CEO, much less a president of the United States ever has to answer.

The unquestioned loser of that debate was CNBC itself, although they were stuck with the format of trying to get twelve candidates to do something other than regurgitate standard Republican talking points and their own campaign slogans.

As for those candidates, they had already gotten their wish. The next debate was hosted by Fox Noise.

2024: Demokratiedämmerung

Lest auld republic be forgot, let's bring it back to mind: 

For lack of a slide-show feature in this here blog, I present here a column of some of my cartoons from 2024. I might have added the cartoon I drew Sunday, I suppose, even though it's not being published until 2025. Perhaps if I remember it a year from now, it will be part of my 2025 retrospective.

So here, at least to jog my own memory, is what the hell we have been drawing about this year:

Q Toon: All Up In Her Business

Tammy Baldwin, the first out lesbian elected to the United States Senate, has had Republican opponents point out her sexual orientation in each of her four election campaigns. And I'm sure the guys have all just been trying to be helpful.

They don’t make it a campaign issue, but they never fail to mention it, in case there's some housewife up in Ashwaubenon who needed that nugget of information to make up her mind whom to vote for. I can't imagine why other Republican candidates don't bring up their heterosexual opponents’ sexuality unbidden, can you?

Senator Baldwin this year faces bank executive Eric Hovde, who has homes in both the Madison area and Laguna Beach, California; the latter described by the Los Angeles Times as "a mansion." Baldwin's TV and social media ads have played up his California residency, as well as statements Hovde made during his 2012 candidacy questioning allowing seniors who live in assisted living to vote, suggesting that farmers these days have it easy, proposing raising Social Security eligibility age to 72, and "completely" opposing abortion rights. Her tag line for these ads is "What's wrong with this guy?"

Hovde, since his last run, has grown a mustache that gives him the look of the guy in a 1980's movie plotting to steal away the girl, bulldoze the skateboard park, and buy out the rent-controlled apartment building where grandma lives. He has been trying to counter that California banker image with ads pointing out that Tammy Baldwin's girlfriend is a Wall Street financial manager whose investments might be affected by Senate legislation.

Some of his and his backers' ads call her "girlfriend," and some call her "partner." Hovde used the latter when he brought her up in the candidates' one and only debate appearance last Friday.

Baldwin and Maria Brisbane have been dating for about six years, and share an apartment in Washington D.C. They could get married if they wanted to, but for reasons that are none of our business, they haven't. Senate ethics rules have little to say about conflicts of interest covering the dating habits of unmarried members, and perhaps they should. Who wants the job of spelling out at what moment a relationship becomes reportable?

In the third panel of my cartoon this week, I quoted directly Baldwin's response to Hovde's demand that she report Ms. Brisbane's financial activities. I suspect it was a line Baldwin had ready and waiting to deliver, a handy pivot to Hovde's shared position with the Republican Party that women's health care decisions should be left up to statehouse politicians. 

She's hoping that it's a winning argument, and trends suggest it could be. Pro-choice advocates have done surprisingly well even in "red" states ever since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, revealing that Republicans' talk all this time about reducing the size of government meant making it small enough to fit inside a woman's vagina.

The couple in the fourth panel of my cartoon are fairly confident in Baldwin's prospects on November 5 — more confident than I am myself. The polls are reportedly running extremely close, within the margin of error. And you will recall that this state inexplicably tossed Senator Russ Feingold aside — twice — in favor of Ron Johnson, of all people.

Early voting in Wisconsin started on Tuesday, so I marched right on down to the village hall and did my part to send Ron Johnson Jr. back to Laguna Beach.

I'd keep my fingers crossed, but I still have some cartoons to draw.

Toon: Hocus Pocus

This year's vice presidential candidates more or less held their own during their debate performance the other evening, or at least that's the conventional wisdom so far. They voiced agreement with each other several times and mostly avoided patently obvious lies on a Trumpian scale.

Which, since Trump got his whopper about Haitian immigrant petivores from his running mate, is remarkable.

For vice presidential candidates, Job Number One is not to fnck up. Check, and check.

Job Number Two is to brown-nose the boss. For JD BH Vance, that meant pretending that the Corrupt Trump Administration™ was a halcyon quadrennium of universal peace, bipartisan comity, and economic miracles. (Pay no attention to Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan, impeachments I and II, Nancy Pelosi tearing up a state of the union speech, cramming dogmatic right-wingers onto the Supreme Court, and a nation struggling to find toilet paper, diapers, infant formula, and places to bury COVID fatalities.) 

Why, Trump even saved Obamacare, and we didn't even notice it at the time! It just goes to show what a modest fellow Donald J. Trump truly is.

Late in the debate, after Vance risibly claimed that Trump “peacefully gave over power on January the 20th,” Tim Walz tried to get Vance to confess that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. But Vance refused to take the bait, replying instead, “Tim, I’m focused on the future.”

His focus on the past is mighty gauzy, that's for sure.

Toon: Pet Peeve au Poivre

Allow me to chime in to the tintinnabulation of the Trump-Harris Debate Cartoons.

If there is a God, future historians will look back upon Corrupt Former President Donald Trump's clinging — doggedly — to the false allegation that Haitian immigrants have been killing and eating the household pets of Springfield, Ohio, as the moment that Trumpism died.

It's a lie told by Trump's running mate, J.D. Bowman Hamel Vance, picked up from some racist Ohioan's social media spewage, repeated from the rumors told about Vietnamese refugees in the 1970's, hearkening back to the old wives' tales slandering Chinese immigrants in the 1800's.

Given that history, it's probably overly optimistic to hope that the cost of keeping such a racist trope alive will be an ignominious end to Trumpism — which, after all, thrives on that sort of bilious excreta.

The Springfield angle to the story apparently grew out of the nativist uproar after an unlicensed driver from Springfield's Haitian immigrant community collided his minivan into a school bus last year, causing the death of an 11-year-old white boy. White Springfielders demanded that their city council stop any more Haitian refugees from coming to their town, and spread horror tales demonizing the Haitians already there.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

To their credit, the bereaved parents of that 11-year-old boy have spoken out against politicians and rabble-rousers exploiting their tragedy to stoke fear and hatred. The Father, Nathan Clark, went so far as to tell a city hall forum that he would rather his son had been killed by a 60-year-old white man, because "if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone."

“This needs to stop now. [Politicians] can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members,” Clark said. “However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time — to hear their apologies.”

✍

By the way, those Haitian immigrants are not in Springfield illegally, and Trump did not actually call them "illegals" in that part of the debate. But he has devoted much of his political career to making "illegal" into an noun, synonymous with "immigrant."

As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Trump's 34 felony convictions make him an "illegal." And, as I told a Trump loyalist a while back, "You may be comfortable voting for an illegal. I'm not."

When Jack Met Dick

As you may have heard, there's a presidential debate coming up next week between Vice President Kamala Harris and convicted felon Donald Joffrey Trump; so today's Graphical History Tour travels back to September 26, 1960 and the granddaddy of all presidential debates.

"We Have Temporarily Lost Our Picture" by Joseph Parrish in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 27, 1960

The televised debate between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon was precedent-setting. Never before had rival presidential nominees of the two major parties shared a stage face-to-face, answering the same questions and each other.

"News Item" by Vaughn Shoemaker in Chicago Daily News, Sept. 27, 1960

What about the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, I hear you asking. Or maybe it's just the voices in my head. Either way, yes, a series of debates pitted Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas against each other in their race for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1858, but were not repeated when the two vied for the presidency two years later. 

According to contemporary newspaper accounts, 12,000 attended their first debate at Ottawa, 16,000 to 18,000 in Galesburg, 15,000 in Freeport, 12,000 in Quincy, and 5,000 to 10,000 at the last debate in Alton. Given that hyperbole was not unknown in reporting of the time, Vaughn Shoemaker's head count is probably just as valid as any of the others.

"You Were Simply Wonderful" by Gib Crockett in Washington Star, Sept. 28, 1960

Neither Kennedy nor Nixon delivered any memorable zingers, stumbled into major gaffes, or weaved around aimlessly between child care, tariffs, Marco Rubio and the U.S. being a failing nation at their debate. The Louisville Courier-Journal judged that Nixon "had the more flexible and resonant voice of the two," and that Kennedy "often spoke too rapidly" but "seemed less self-conscious than Nixon." A voter interviewed by the Chicago Tribune said that "Nixon made out a bit stronger case, but I got a better impression of Kennedy than I'd had before this show."

"T-V for Victory" by Jesse Taylor Cargill for Central Press Assn., ca. Sept. 30, 1960

On the other hand, the New York Daily News complained that the debate was "a weak and wishy washy piece of history. Both candidates, we thought, overdid the Alphonse-Gaston politeness." The Sacramento Bee agreed, calling it "more of a polite parlor tete a tete than a debate" and griping, "Kennedy and Nixon stipulated there would be no personalities in the debate. The result was like tossing away half the case for Kennedy." 

"The Winner" by Roy Justus in Minneapolis Star, Sept. 28, 1960

What stuck in the collective memory had more to do with appearances than who made the stronger case for himself. I've heard that television viewers thought that Kennedy "won" the debate, whereas radio listeners tended to find Nixon the winner (which may reflect the age of the respective audiences, too).

Nixon's five-o'clock shadow was only one factor for those who judged by appearances; after all, Herblock had been drawing Nixon with darkened chin and jowls for years. Both candidates declined CBS's offer of make-up; Kennedy's slight suntan photographed well anyway, but Nixon was recovering from a bout of flu that rendered him pale and sweaty. Perhaps more significantly in the Age of Television, whereas Kennedy spoke directly to the camera, Nixon faced the off-camera debate moderators when answering their questions.

"Tongue Smoke" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, Sept. 28, 1960

Television being a fairly young medium at the time, several editorial cartoonists drew less inspiration from what the candidates said than where they said it. Frank Miller's cartoon references the number one most popular TV series on the tube in 1960.

"I'm Not Satisfied" by Richard Q. Yardley in Baltimore Sun, Sept. 27, 1960

Still, there were a few cartoonists who dove into the specifics of the debate. Nixon, of course, promised that his policies would continue the post-war economic growth the nation had experienced during (most of) the Eisenhower administration. Kennedy promised that he could do better.

I guess Nikita Khruschev and Mao Zedong are peeking from behind the wall in Yardley's cartoon as an acknowledgement that although this first debate centered on domestic issues, foreign policy would be the focus of a future debate between the candidates.

"The Debate—American Style and Russian" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 29, 1960

Carey Orr couldn't wait, taking the occasion to remind his readers that the U.S.S.R. had brutally suppressed an anti-Soviet rebellion in Hungary four summers earlier.

Bill Mauldin in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 28, 1960

Bill Mauldin highlighted promises by both candidates to replace Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson. Benson's opposition to price supports and government agriculture subsidies won him few friends among farmers, who you might expect would be a key constituency of the Department of Agriculture. As a cleric on the Mormon Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, moreover, his appointment had been opposed by the American Council of Churches, which viewed his church as a anti-Christian cult. (Some of them had the same opinion of Kennedy's Roman Catholic faith.)

Benson had served as Secretary of Agriculture for all eight years of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, however, so it was extremely unlikely that he would continue in the post beyond January, 1961 in any event.

"Critic" by Bill Sanders in Greensboro (NC) Daily News, Sept. 28, 1960

And that takes care of the Cartoons About Substance. Bill Sanders returns us to the historical significance of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates appearing together on the telly.

"Don't All Come at Once" by Franklin Morse in Los Angeles Mirror, Sept. 27, 1960

I was surprised to find that some cartoonists didn't bother to draw about the Kennedy-Nixon debate at all that week. There was, however, plenty of other material for a cartoonist to work with.

The United Nations General Assembly was held that week, witnessing Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khruschev pounding his shoe on the podium and calling for the firing of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. Third World leaders denounced Western colonialism; the harangue by Fidel Castro, barely into his second year as Prime Minister of Cuba, lasted four-hours.

Meanwhile, the space exploration program of the U.S. was struggling to catch up to that of the U.S.S.R. No manned space flights had taken place yet — just dogged, monkeyed, moused, rabbited, and fruit flied ones. Russia was first to send satellites into Earth orbit and probes to the moon; the U.S. had experienced mixed success with both efforts.

"What Are You Fellows Arguing About" by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, Sept. 27, 1960

And, of course, there was baseball for anyone bored by national, global, and extraterrestrial affairs.

"What Do You Suppose Happened After the Debate Went Off the Air" by Frank Interlandi for Register and Tribune Syndicate, Sept. 27, 1960

Nixon and Kennedy met for three more debates before the election, on October 7, 13, and 21.

After that, there would be a 16-year hiatus, including two more Nixon election campaigns, before candidates for president would meet for another debate.

Q Toon: Stumped Speechless

Here at last is my cartoon response to Fox Noise's cattle call in Milwaukee last week of eight of the Republican candidates hoping against hope that something, anything, will force Corrupt Donald Trump to drop out of the presidential race.

At the moment, even though Trump is facing four separate felony trials going into the election, for everything from paying off a porn star to trying to subvert an election to sending a lynch mob into the halls of Congress, that seems like a long shot. Trump does not know the meaning of defeat.

Or truth, or integrity, or perfect, or democracy, or Constitution, or Corinthians.

My cartoon, of course, is riffing on Bret Baier's asking the candidates to raise their hands if they would support Trump as the nominee of their party even if he were convicted in one of those trials. Depending on whom you ask, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson was the only candidate who kept his hands down. 

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been most vocal of any of the eight in proclaiming that Trump is unqualified to be President again; but he sort of halfway raised a hand. Perhaps he was asking recognition to speak.

The other six definitely raised their hands: Tech Bro Vivek Ramaswami right away; Florida Governor Ron DesAntis after checking what the candidates to his right and left were doing.

It was a trick question anyway. Each candidate, in order for permission to be on stage at all, had to first sign a promise to support the Republican presidential nominee, whoever that trumps out to be.

Meanwhile, the only thing more universal among Republicans than slavish loyalty to Donald P0115809 Trump is their fear and loathing of transgender Americans. The candidates pledged to continue their party's assault on transgender student athletes especially:

"If you’re able-bodied in America, you work. If you take out a loan, you pay it back. If you commit a violent crime, you got to jail. And if God made you a man, you play sports against men." — Sen. Tim Scott, closing statement.

“[T]here’s a lot of crazy woke things happening in schools ... biological boys don’t belong in the locker rooms of any of our girls.”— former Gov. Nikki Haley, in response to a question

“I’m saying in North Dakota, we made a priority of protecting women’s sports and we’ve done that in our state." —Gov. Doug Borgum (who vetoed one anti-trans athlete bill in North Dakota but signed two others)

"There are only two genders." — Vivek Ramaswamy

I think we have finally found here one thing that might just possibly shake Republicans' unquestioning devotion to Trump — as absurdly incredible as his declaring himself a transgender student athlete would be.

But then, he does seem to think that he's 6'3" and 215 pounds.

And he does have the vocabulary of a third grader.

Q Toon: Go Ask Joe

As risky as it is to predict what might happen during tonight's Presidential So-Called Debate, I decided at the drawing board Sunday night that a moment like this was more likely than not. It might not be about antifa; Donald Joffrey Trump already tried the "Why Don't You Ask Joe" tack during last week's dueling Town Halls, only to have Savannah Guthrie answer "Because you're here before me."

It might not be whatabout antifa this week; it could be whatabout Hunter Biden, or whatabout something Joe Biden said about busing in 1972, or whatabout Jeffrey Toobin jerking off on Zoom. Or whatabout all three.

Shortly after I sent this cartoon off to Q Syndicate, the debate sponsors announced that each candidate would get two minutes to answer the moderator's questions with the other candidate's microphone muted. Trump's campaign people promise that they're training him to be more polite, calm, and personable this time.

I'm not afraid of any of this getting in the way of Trump's insistence upon being the only person on stage who gets to talk. Expect him to shout, swipe Biden's mic off his podium, pull out an air horn, and maybe shoot spitballs. Certainly do not expect him to stop talking when his own two minutes are up.

 Unless he storms offstage early to go sulk on Twitter.

Toon: Pence Flies Off Topic

Considering how many cartoons I drew with Mike Pence in them during the 2016 campaign and in the early years of the Corrupt Trump Administration, it has been a surprisingly long time since I've drawn him lately.

Never fear. After this week's Vice Presidential So-Called Debate, it was only natural that he should make another appearance — if for no other reason than to celebrate the fly that perched on his head for two minutes and nine seconds, during which it held a nation's undivided attention.

The main difference between these so-called debates and an actual debate is that in an actual debate, you have to respect whatever time limit you have been given, which Mike Pence and Donald Typhoid Mary Trump completely ignored. Short of getting the Oscars' orchestra to start playing candidates off when they prattle on too long, however, there seems to be nothing the moderators of these things are able to do.

You don't get to interrupt the person on the other side of the debate, either, but I guess Pence gets points for interrupting Kamala Harris only a small fraction of the number of times Trump interrupted Joe Biden.

But most importantly, You Have To Stick To The Question You Have Been Asked. Wander off into a completely different topic, and you flunk the debate right away. If you're in a spelling bee, you don't get to choose some word you'd rather spell instead.

Harris evaded a couple of Susan Page's questions about whether Democrats were going to "pack" the Supreme Court and so forth, but Mike Pence didn't just wander off topic, he vaulted over the fence, sprinted far afield, and blatantly refused to answer any question when he felt like talking about something else.

38:57 PAGE 

Senator Harris just said that climate change is an existential threat. Vice President Pence, do you believe that climate change poses an existential threat?

39:07 PENCE

As I said, Susan, the climate is changing. We’ll follow the science, but, once again, Senator Harris is denying the fact that they're gonna raise taxes on every American...

Or, at 14:21, Page asked Pence, in light of Trump's current health crisis, "...have you had a conversation or reached an agreement with President Trump about safeguards or procedures when it comes to the issue of presidential disability? And if not, do you think you should?" Pence ignored the question and went on and on about promising a coronavirus vaccine and warning that the 2009 swine flu epidemic would have been a lot worse if it had been a lot worse.

I do wonder about the debate prep these people go through. For the Harris-Pence event, the candidates prepared with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi playing the part of Senator Harris and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg standing in for the Vice President.

Do these stand-ins play their parts honestly, or do they act out the partisan caricatures they perceive of the other side?

Do they charge ahead over their allotted time and talk over the candidate they're training?

Yeah, that they probably do.

Q Toon: How's This Going to Look

Rush Limbaugh spent a good portion of his program recently gloating over supposed anxiety among Democratic leadership over Pete Buttigieg's decent performance in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. The Presidential Medal of Trumpitude recipient imagined party leaders whimpering the sentence at the top of my cartoon this week.

That's a direct quote. For what it's worth, Pete Buttigieg turned 38 on January 19, three weeks before Rush's remarks, so don't sic the Snopes on me.

Buttigieg isn't ashamed of his PDAs; and to their credit, while the other candidates have plenty of grounds for grudges against the upstart former mayor, they have come to his defense on this little contretemps. Even some Republicans voiced criticism of Limbaugh's comments.

Meanwhile, Melania Trump's sentiments about PDAs with her husband are well documented. So, fine, let's bring it on, Rush.