Q Toon: Nudge, Nudge

I am one of those people who can't remember where my husband always puts things, or how much flour to use when making crepes, or whether I shut the garage door before driving away, because all those synapses in my brain have been permanently wired to remembering each and every Monty Python sketch ever filmed.

So naturally, when Tucker Carlson fantasized about getting Pete Buttigieg on his podcast so that he could grill him on whether he's really gay, my mind immediately leapt to the "Nudge, Nudge" sketch of Eric Idle and the late Terry Jones.

In a recent interview on his namesake podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, the former Fox News prime-time host raised some concerns about former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Carlson was speaking with Michael Knowles, another conservative political commentator, about a litany of issues including Trump's dustup with Harvard.

“The fake gay guy?” Carlson asks when Buttigieg’s name is mentioned. “My gay producer is always like, ‘He’s not gay.’ He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago and like he wants to be the Democratic nominee. It’s like: ‘Time for a gay guy!’” ...

“I’ve always wanted to interview him,” Carlson continued, later. “He’s never agreed to an interview but I’m going to ask him like some very specific questions about gay sex and see if he can even answer. I doubt he even knows. You’re not gay, dude, stop.”

In the interest of space, I had to condense the dialogue considerably for this cartoon, especially the part of Jones/Buttigieg. Regrettable, but necessary. I also wish that I didn't have to include the ultimate punch line; but I recognize that some readers out there might not have the exhaustive knowledge of 55-year-old British television comedy sketches that I do.

I suspect that Secretary Buttigieg doesn't need me to tell him that he should not take Carlson's bait. Buttigieg has demonstrated a talent for going on Fox Noise, MAGA podcasts, etc., and holding his own against their right-wing point talkers. He was arguably the Biden administration's best spokesperson: cogent, logical, and unrattled by their hyperbole, whataboutism, and mischaracterization.

Carlson's aim, therefore, is to destroy whatever gravitas Buttigieg has accrued through his service in the military and elected office by getting him to talk about who does what in his bedroom, how often, and what is his favorite lube, so that the right-wing echo chamber can repeat it ad infinitum any time he tries to talk about urban renewal, international alliances, tax policy, or airplane safety.

Which could come in handy when ReTrumplicans need to distract the rest of us from the moral and sexual depravity of the thrice-married, 34-times-convicted, pussy-grabbing Epstein pal currently making the White House over into a gilded bordello fit for Louis XIV's favorite concubines.

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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.

Q Toon: All Your Data Are Belong to Us

While Facebook has been getting a lot of attention from Congress and the mainstream media this week, Grindr has also had to hastily explain to its customers that its same-sex dating app has shared users' HIV statuses (stati?), with two outside analytics firms.

Further analysis also revealed that Grindr is sharing users’ precise GPS position, sexuality, relationship status, ethnicity, and phone ID to other third-party advertising companies. This information – which didn’t include HIV status data – was sometimes being shared in a ‘plain text’ format, which meant it could be easily hacked.

Anyone who uses a computer hooked up to the internet has seen their privacy eroded bit by megabit over the years. Those cookies piling up unseen in the bowels of our computers are, we are told, essential components of our on-line existence. But they result in experiences such as this: I was looking for some sheet music on-line last week, and ever since, the advertising on gocomics.com has been nothing but sheet music.

You no doubt have had the same experience. Well after you bought that clothes dryer at Best Buy, every dot.com Dick and Harry seems to be trying to sell you another one.

Facebook took that business even further, enabling Big Brothr.com to glean everything knowable about you because some idle friend of yours on Facebook answered a questionnaire to find out which H.R. Puff'n'stuff character he is, or decided to prove that, why yes, she could indeed think of a word that contains a vowel, so there!

Then, through no fault of your own, your news feed becomes rife with stories about Hillary Clinton wanting to confiscate everyone's clothes dryers.

Now, as for the Grindr breach, the company assures its LGBTQ users that their data was shared responsibly, and that they're in no danger of it (them?) getting out to potential employers, TMZ or Vice President Pence.

Still, [chief security officer Bryce] Case defended Grindr's decision to share the data, arguing that Apptimize and Localytics are simply tools to help apps like Grindr function better, and that the information was not shared to make money or for other nefarious purposes.
Case stressed that the HIV data had only been shared with Apptimize as part of Grindr's standard rollout procedure for new features on the app. In this case, it was part of a new opt-in feature that would allow users to be reminded to get tested for HIV. The company stopped sharing the information with the third party when the feature was rolled out last week, Case said.

Whether or not Grindr's users begin to shy away from the company's outreach efforts, this episode demonstrates the need to update the 22-year-old rules for patient privacy observed by every hospital, doctor, and insurance company in the country.

Grindr data breach is a wake-up call for policymakers to revisit and revise privacy regulations, specifically the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Since 1996, HIPAA has governed the patient privacy and protection of private medical information. Back then, policymakers did not foresee situations in which sensitive medical data is shared with a platform that is not involved in medical care. Therefore HIPAA only covers medical providers and their business associates and does not pertain to platforms such as Grindr. Had a similar breach happened at a hospital, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would immediately start a thorough investigation, fine the hospital, and ensure that adequate policies are in place to prevent breaches in future.

Under the Corrupt Trump Administration, I doubt that any investigation into Grindr's data breach would not be focused on protecting user's privacy but in shutting the app down, or at least ferreting out gay, bi and trans soldiers in the armed forces. And I shudder to imagine what the congressional hearings would be like.

2017 Locher Award Winner: Damian Alexander

This year's AAEC/John Locher Award for best aspiring college-age cartoonist has been awarded to Damian Alexander, a graduate student at Boston's Simmons College. The award was founded in 1986 by members of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists as a memorial to the late son of Dick and Mary Locher. (Dick Locher, an editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune and cartoonist of Dick Tracy, died this last month.)

Alexander's illustrations highlight personal experiences with social equality, LGBTQ issues, and mental health. "Through compelling and brutally honest storytelling, Damian's entries successfully make the personal political. His comic about his teenage self thinking he had AIDS simply because he was gay speaks to the importance of media representation. His meditations on technology and suicide are also thoughtful and socially-relevant."

Excerpt from "I'm Gay. That Means I Have AIDS, Right?" by Damian Alexander in Narratively

See the rest of this comic at the Locher Award site or in scrollable format at Narrative.ly.

I hope he's seen "Jeffrey," "The Broken Hearts Club," or "To Wong Foo" by now.

The Empire Strikes Back

I usually save this sort of thing for Saturday, but I have something else planned for tomorrow.

The Advocate, April 29, 1916

I did want to follow up on last week's Slainteback Sathairn, however, and today is the centennial of the quashing of the Easter Rising in Ireland. Above is the front page of the April 29, 1916 Advocate, a weekly newspaper of the Irish in New York City, still reporting "Rebellion Spreading in Ireland."

The Chicago Daily Tribune, April 27, 1916

In keeping with this blog's gay slant, here's the LGBT connection with the Easter Rising. Sir Roger Casement, an Irish sympathizer, was captured by British forces during the failed attempt to ship guns from Germany to the Irish rebels.

Casement had worked with Henry Stanley (the guy famous for saying "Dr. Livingston, I presume") in the Congo (Zaire). He documented human rights abuses, up to and including murder, by the private army created in the Congo by Belgian King Leopold II to force the locals to work in the King's rubber plantations. He investigated similar abuses in Peru of the Putumayo Indians, and was knighted by the British crown in 1911 for his efforts.

Retiring from the British consular service in 1913, Casement was a founder of the Irish Volunteers, and met with German diplomats at the outbreak of World War I to funnel German arms to Ireland. 900 Mauser rifles made it to the rebels in July, 1914, but the British were able to intercept the April, 1916 shipment and sink the ship.

Suffering from malaria, a disease he was never able to completely shake from his days in the Congo, Casement was arrested in County Kerry and imprisoned in the Tower of London. A petition urging clemency was circulated by such luminaries of the time as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw; to counter this, the British released Casement's "Black Diaries," detailing a series of sexual encounters with young men in 1903, 1910 and 1911.

Whether genuine or forged, the Black Diaries essentially quashed support for Casement among Irish and American Catholics. Casement was convicted of treason, stripped of his knighthood, and hanged on August 3, 1916. Ireland now has a military airfield named in Casement's honor, even though he wouldn't have been allowed to march in the Ancient Order of Hibernians St. Patrick's Day Parade until very recently.

The Duluth Herald, April 29, 1916

In closing, here's the May 5 edition of The Advocate. You can embiggen these images all you want, but the resolution of my original source wasn't good enough to read the copy anyway.

The Advocate, May 5, 1916

Why Are You Wearing These Clothes?

Since this week's Q Syndicate cartoon fell somewhat wide of the mark LGBT-wise, here's a cartoon from ten Decembers ago for Sleighback Saturday that should mollify everyone who caught my "wonderful people out there in the dark" reference.

2014 in Review

It's time for my annual snapshot of the Year In Front Pages, which is embiggenable if enclickulated:

Newspaper front pages don't necessarily reflect the same news as the 24-hour news channels; a single headline seldom adequately encapsulates events that unfold over an extended period of time, such as this year's protests against police tactics, or the unsuccessful search for a missing plane.

Also, the ones I have access to tend to be Yankee-centric --hence "U.S. Ramps Up Fight on Ebola" and the lack of banner headlines about elections in India or the gunman who attacked the Canadian Parliament.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by to read my little drawings this year. Best wishes, and we'll see you bright and early in 2015!

Qtoon: Some Nights You Can Still Hear His Fabulous Cry

Based as it is upon a Change.org press release, this week's cartoon might be a step or two ahead of reality.

NEW YORK, NY – Sources have confirmed that Boy Scouts of America officials have proposed a new policy — which could be voted on as early as 2013 — that would allow local chartering organizations to decide whether or not to accept gay youth and leaders, according to Change.org .

The proposal comes after Eagle Scout Zach Wahls delivered more than 275,000 signatures to the National Annual Meeting of the Boy Scouts of America from a popular petition on Change.org . The petition calls on the Boy Scouts to reinstate a lesbian den leader in Ohio, Jennifer Tyrrell, who was removed from her position because of her sexual orientation, and to end the Boy Scouts' long-held policy barring openly gay scouts and scout leaders.

My better half thinks that I made the story-teller in the cartoon look a lot like his late father, a scout leader for many years. I just don't see it, though. I imagine that it's probably just the uniform. I think the story teller looks more like Ron Swanson or  Tom Friedman or that one guy on Newhart.

This Week's Toon: Frank Kameny

Readers, the conventional wisdom goes, love cartoons memorializing the recently deceased. Editorial cartoonists, by and large, hate them.

Sure, there are cartoonists like Mark Streeter of the Savannah Morning News who draw obituary cartoons at the drop of a hat. But most cartoonists draw them begrudgingly, usually cranking out a cartoon of a single tear dropping from some object or logo associated with the dead person. Or St. Peter greeting the late lamented at the Pearly Gates with some catch phrase associated with the stiff -- even if the deceased was not a Christian.

(I heard objections to a cartoon I drew after the death of Meir Kahane that showed him storming away from the Pearly Gates upon finding that Palestinians were allowed in. On the one hand, I'm told that there is no Jewish concept of heaven; but on the other hand, where did Jesus come up with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus if the idea of someplace nice where Lazarus ends up were alien to his audience? How do you draw being in the bosom of Abraham?)

Matt Bors has drawn a cartoon mocking the obituary cartoons for Buddhist Steve Jobs which depicted him at heaven's gate. In coming up with a more Buddhist concept of the afterlife, it ends up being less than respectful of the dead, but cartoonists love this cartoon.

This is the second obituary cartoon I've drawn this year (the first being for Liz Taylor); in these cases and several others, I've let the deceased speak for him or herself. This quotation is from a 1965 essay by Frank Kameny titled "Does Research into Homosexuality Matter?" If you are interested in reading the quotation in context, you can find it in We Are Everywhere: A Historical Source Book in Gay and Lesbian Politics.

P.S.: Yes, Mr. Kameny came up with the "Gay Is Good" motto years after he picketed the White House. His picket that day was nowhere near as pithy.