Q Toon: Exit Stage Right

Far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos found himself the latest victim of the Leopards Eating Faces Party last month.

ICE arrested British-born Yiannopoulos at Louis Armstrong International Airport on Friday for overstayng his visa. Fellow fascist Laura Loomer is claiming credit for ratting Yiannopoulos out to the Feds; he was arriving in New Orleans for a concert by Kanye "Ye" West, with whom Yiannopoulos has been associated in recent years.

Identifying as gay in the '00's and ’10's, Yiannopoulos made a career out of being an offensive internet troll, insulting women and Muslims, and basically anyone to the left of Emperor Palpatine. As a columnist for Andrew Breitbart's website from 2014 to 2017, Yiannopoulos had been an early and vocal advocate for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, especially his anti-immigration plans. 

In February of 2017, he was forced out from Breitbart, cancelled at CPAC, and lost a book contract, after audio surfaced of him defending some sex between teens and adults as “perfectly consensual” and calling some teen-adult sexual interactions “coming-of-age relationships." Exactly the sort of "groomer" stuff conservatives have long used to vilify LGBTQ+ people.

Since then, he has decided that he is no longer gay, telling a Catholic anti-abortion website that he was "living as brothers" with his then husband. (To nobody's surprise, that marriage has not lasted.) In 2022, he signed up to be an intern for then Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; he also got in on the ground floor of Kanye West/Yeezy/Ye's 2024 abortive presidential campaign.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Yiannopoulos entered the U.S. legally in 2019 on a tourist visa, which he overstayed. A final order of removal was issued for him after he missed an immigration hearing in July. 

Yiannopoulos last summer tweeted of masturbating to videos of ICE raids, so it is impossible to muster any vestige of sympathy for the guy.

Besides, England agreed to take him back. It's not like ICE dumped him in South Shitholestan somewhere.

Deciding how to draw Mr. Yiannopoulos wasn't easy, by the way. The guy has changed his hairstyle more often than Cher, and has packed on the pounds and shed them back off. In most photos, he's wearing glasses or shades, which didn't seem appropriate for the setting of the cartoon. I opted for his signature 2017 look, but in what is either his passport or current mug shot, he appears to have quit bleaching or dying his hair, and sports a modest mustache with a modicum of jaw-line whiskers.

Has to be a mug shot. You have to can't have stuff in the background of a passport photo.

Of Graham Bondage

Since last week's Graphical History Tour memorialized a sitting U.S. Senator who claims not to be dead, this week's episode rustles up my cartoons about one of his Republican colleagues whose passing is less, ah, speculative.

April, 2010

Lindsey Graham himself barely appeared in what I believe was my first cartoon about him, sixteen years ago. An anti-immigrant Tea Partisan then from South Carolina, William Gheen, alleged that Senator Lindsey Graham was being blackmailed over his widely rumored homosexual orientation to support Democrats' version of Immigration Reform.

"Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality. Come out of that closet, Lindsey. Come out of that Log Cabin closet," Gheen told a Tea Party Klatch. "Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as our U.S. Senator, I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure your being gay isn't it."

Whether in response to Gheen or not, Graham announced that he opposed the immigration bills proposed by the Democratic majority in Congress. As for Gheen, he has since migrated across the border to North Carolina, where he is President of an anti-immigration political action committee.

December, 2012

I drew this cartoon in response to Graham advocating against achieving marriage equality by congressional legislation or litigation in the courts.

Graham knew full well how unlikely getting a pro-marriage equality amendment to the U.S. Constitution approved by Congress and ratified by 34 state legislatures would be. For years, Republicans pushed an amendment to do exactly the opposite, not to mention other amendments for all sorts of their pet peeves, without getting anywhere. 

October, 2014

Did you know that Lindsey Graham ran for the Republicans' 2016 presidential nomination? Even people who were paying close attention at the time may not remember it.

Graham was running for a third term in the Senate in 2014, and told Politico that in the (inevitable) event that he won reelection, he was considering looking into a 2016 presidential run. He made his official campaign announcement on June 1, 2015, but failed to qualify for a Republican presidential debate cattle call on CNN two months later.

The highlight of his presidential campaign was calling Donald Trump "a jackass" in successive interviews on CNN and CBS. Trump responded by telling Fox & Fiends viewers Graham's personal cell phone number.

By Christmas, Graham had suspended his campaign; he then endorsed Florida Governor Jeb Bush in January. Republican voters didn't listen.

October, 2018

Neither did the Electoral College.

As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham played a prominent role in the confirmation of Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointees. Allegations that the second of them, Brett Kavanaugh, was a beer-swilling bro in college suggested the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" character Brick to me; casting Graham as Maggie followed as a matter of course.

That's Senators Maizie Hirono and Jeff Flake as Mae and Gooper (well, I needed somebody in those roles) and Trump as Big Daddy Pollitt.

March, 2021

Insinuating Lindsey Graham's Kinsey rating couldn't be the point of every cartoon I put him in. Sometimes, he was just a recognizable Senator to populate a cartoon about the Senate Republican Caucus. But as the supposedly closeted gay one, he afforded me the opportunity to draw a cartoon about a non-LGBTQ+ topic for the LGBTQ+ publications that run my cartoons. 

(Openly bi Senator Kyrsten Sinema also figured in this one. A two-fer!)

February, 2021

In the post for this week's cartoon, I included Lindsey Graham's "Count me out" comment on the evening after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, disassociating himself from Donald Trump. I also included Trump's more recent story of Graham then calling him up to apologize.

You certainly can't take Trump's word for anything, but Graham counting himself out on January 6 did not extend to his voting to convict Trump when the Senate voted on his impeachment trial on February 13.

Graham just couldn't stay mad at his latest infatuation.

September, 2022

Republicans who bothered at all to explain their votes against conviction claimed that since Trump was out of office, his attempt to overthrow the government should be a matter for the courts rather than the impeachment process.

As the prosecution of Trump for offenses starting with January 6, tax fraud, and sexual assault crept ever so slowly forward during Joe Biden's presidency, Lindsey Graham and quite a few other Republicans complained that pursuing justice in the courts was a bad idea, too.

In the fall of 2022, Citizen Trump was refusing to return classified papers included among dozens of bankers boxes of files he had spirited off to Mar-a-Lago, directing underlings to hide them away when the FBI showed up to seize them. Graham warned that if Trump were ever brought to trial for those actions, his hordes of MAGA minions would reprise January 6.

To his dying day, Graham was mute about any possibility of Antifa, DEI, or Woke Inc., getting violent over what now passes for the Justice Department's overtly political, Trumped up prosecutions of anyone who has ever crossed Donald Trump.

This Week's Sneak Peek, Sort Of

Well, this isn't a clipping from this week's cartoon as much as it's an update of Saturday's Graphical History Tour.

from Miami  Daily News editorial page, April 1, 1926

Searching for the number 764268, friend of the blog D.D. Degg hunted up the probable Rollin Kirby cartoon in Saturday's posting of cartoons in the Daily Worker. Newspapers.com yielded only one other appearance of that cartoon in any available newspaper, the Miami Daily News and Metropolis edition of April 1, 1926.

I had not tried using the number hanging around the neck of the man in the cartoon as a search term, but now I have, coming up with the same result. (New York Evening World archives after 1923 are not currently available on line anywhere I have been able to find, unfortunately.)

The Miami Daily News printed the cartoon with the same curious headline as did the Daily Worker, and, like the Daily Worker, also without the cartoonist's signature. So I'm still left with the question of who was boycotting what over the congressional bill to require foreign-born workers to register with the government every year.

The boycott in the mainstream news at the time was a Chinese boycott of English goods over Great Britain's possession of Hong Kong, which was serious enough that the British government wanted the U.S. and Japan to intervene. This cartoon clearly has nothing to do with that.

Anyway, thank you to D.D. for digging up this cartoon, and for filling me in on the given name of Daily Worker cartoonist Marvin Pierce "Hay" Bales. Much appreciated!

Hail, Columbia...

Today's Graphical History Tour was inspired by a reader who was curious about the cartoon figure of Miss (sometimes Lady) Columbia.

"America Triumphant and Britannia in Distress" 1782

In the Eighteenth Century, European cartoonists represented the American colonies, later the United States, with a Native American woman, or at least what they imagined Native American women to look like. I’ve seen that personification used in a very few German cartoons as late as 1920; but White Americans preferred seeing their nation represented by White cartoon characters.

European cartoonists were quick to oblige, almost as soon as the ink was dry on Cornwallis’s surrender. “America Triumphant” predates Lady Columbia, but served as a model for her: neoclassical Greco-Roman clothing similar to Brittania’s, plus the liberty cap that would later be the hallmark of revolutionary France’s Marianne.

"Columbia Teaching John Bull a New Lesson" by William Charles, 1813

The name Columbia has been traced to The Gentleman's Magazine's accounts, begun in 1738, of Parliamentary proceedings by Edward Cave. To get around a British law prohibiting accounts of Parliamentary debates, Cave substituted nicknames for persons and places: instead of “America,” he coined the name “Columbia.”

Uncle Sam came along much later. His name originated sometime around the War of 1812, and he first appeared in a political cartoon in 1832. His features evolved from another early cartoon personification of Americans, Brother Jonathan; but the characterization you might recognize only develops around the time of the Civil War. 

"Mistress Columbia, Who Has Been Taking a Nap," in Harper's Weekly, ca. 1860

In general, Brother Jonathan represented the American people, Uncle Sam represented the government in Washington, and Lady Columbia represented the U.S. as a nation. Brother Jonathan could be a wise-ass, but Lady Columbia was always quite serious.

"The Spirit of '61," 1861

Before James Montgomery Flagg painted Uncle Sam wanting you to serve in World War I, Columbia recruited soldiers to come to her defense in the Civil War. I have not been able to discover who created this recruitment poster.

"Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, Nov. 20, 1868

Columbia and Uncle Sam both appeared in this postbellum cartoon by Thomas Nast. She was seated in the foreground between the Black and Chinese Americans at Nast's Thanksgiving table (greatly exaggerating any welcome and promise of freedom and equality the United States offered persons of those two ethnicities).

"The Right Kind of Valentine," in Canadian Illustrated News, Feb. 18, 1871

Columbia had "reciprocity" behind her back in this cartoon in Miss Canada handed her a valentine reading "Freedom of fisheries," a contentious issue between the two nations for years. Curiously, the cartoonist decided that neither Uncle Sam or Johnny Canuck were appropriate for a cartoon about piscine love notes.

"That's a Pretty Chicken" by Joseph Keppler in Puck, 1872

Columbia could register shock and alarm, as in this Keppler cartoon expressing disappointment with proposed civil service reforms.

"Auch eine Tätowierte" by Joseph Keppler in Puck, Nov. 1, 1876

In another Keppler cartoon, "Also a Tattooed Woman" (in the German language edition of Puck), Columbia's shame was laid bare.  tattooed with Corruption, Tammany (New York City's Democratic headquarters), the Crédit Mobilier scandal, Civil War, taxes, Black Friday, Whiskey Ring, Election Frauds, and plenty more. The caption under  indicates that Columbia was not a willing recipient of her tattoos; similarly themed cartoons of Uncle Sam left open the possibility that he might have foolishly submitted to the inkster's ministrations.

"Columbia's Unwelcome Guests" by Frank Beard in Judge, Feb. 7, 1885

Frank Beard drew this version of a more determined Columbia offering a firm KEEP OUT to immigrants arriving on her shores with their strange ideas and drinking habits. It could be your own great-great-great-great grandparents Beard drew streaming out of Europe's sewers. Maybe even Stephen Miller's.

"A Disgusting and Scandalous Condition of Affairs" by Unknown cartoonist, 1899

Here is a cartoon that illustrated the relationship between Lady Columbia and Uncle Sam: she gives the orders to him to do something about the Army beef scandal (meat issued to soldiers in the Spanish-American War with embalming fluid added to it to slow spoilage). Uncle Sam appears slow to act, however; "How long are you going to sit here idle?" she scolds him.

Neither Grainger nor Alamy credit the artist or publication of this cartoon.

"Darned If I Can Have Any Fun" by E.T. Richards in Life, July 5, 1900

After the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American war put the U.S. in charge of Spain's former colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines, Lady Columbia and Uncle Sam both appear uncomfortable in their new role as imperial powers in E.T. Richards's cartoon.

Come back next Saturday, as we follow the fortunes of Lady Columbia into the Twentieth Century.

Q Toon: Besmirching Her Good Name

Watching Homeland Security Secretary Cosplay Kristi Noem's press announcement defending her ICE agent killing a woman in Minneapolis as she attempted to drive away from him — and her and Border Czar Tom Homan's appearances on the Sunday morning news programs — I couldn't get over the cognitive dissonance between their talking point that people need to cool their "overheated rhetoric," and all the overheated rhetoric making up the rest of their talking points.

We've all seen the videos of what really happened, but Noem, Homan, and the rest of the Lawless Trump Regime continue to push a fantasy narrative in which the shooting victim, Renee Macklin Good, was a radical left-wing domestic terrorist who charged her minivan directly at ICE agent Jonathan Ross with intent to kill.

Vice President J.D. Vance has argued that Ross shot Good because he had been struck once before by a vehicle driven by a suspect. But that only demonstrates that Ross uses the foolhardy but common border patrol tactic of getting in front of a moving vehicle in order to justify shooting at its driver.

You may wonder why I have drawn for the LGBTQ+ press a cartoon about this story, or why I inserted "with her lesbian co-conspirator" in the first panel.

Initial reporting stated that the youngest of Renee Macklin Good's children, a six-year-old boy, has been left without parents (his father having died in 2023). Most media and other editorial cartoonists have accepted that as fact, but Advocate and other LGBTQ+ publications, followed by local newsmedia and NPR, have reported that the woman with Renee Good when she was shot was her wife, Becca Good.

I certainly feel terrible for the boy, but at least he still has a step-mother. I hope that she and the boy's grandparents (who, I gather, are not Minnesotans) can remain on amicable terms while working out custody and visitation rights, so as not to make his tragedy even worse than it already is.

Out-of-state politicians and the mainstream media had been glossing over Renee and Becca's relationship, even though Becca was right there when Ross murdered her wife. Trump called Becca Good her wife’s “friend"; even John Stewart called Renee “a single woman” on Monday night’s Daily Show.

On the other hand, the Lawless Trump Regime's ironically-called Department of Justice has reportedly launched a criminal investigation of Renee Good's widow, which has prompted six federal prosecutors in Minnesota to resign in protest. (They include the lead prosecutor in that Minnesota day care fraud case Republicans would much rather talk about.)

Matt Sepic, Minnesota Public Radio: "In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche says, quote, 'There is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.' The DOJ says ICE has its own internal investigation underway that runs parallel to, quote, 'any FBI investigation.' But the same source we mentioned earlier, who's not authorized to speak on the record, tells me that this is untrue and that there is no internal ICE investigation of the shooting."

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey posted on social media that, "The people pushing to prosecute Renee's widow are monsters"; Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) added, "The family and loved ones of Renee Good deserve justice, not political attacks."

Sadly, justice is not a priority of the Lawless Trump Regime, and political attacks are.

Q Toon: Sic Transit Veritas

I figured it was time to put out a back-to-school cartoon this week.

With the new semester, the ham-fisted drive to impose the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime's fascist agenda on academia will certainly resume. Some of our most respected universities, fearful of losing government research grants and tuition assistance, have already bent the knee to the Mar-a-Lago Mussolini, whose demands will only increase and get worse.

Has your board or regents shuttered your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness office? Good. Now scuttle your environmental studies program, drop your epidemiology research, and cancel your unAmerican foreign language courses. Clear your history and literature curricula with the Ministry of Truth Social, and while you're at it, His Excellency Donald The First Of His Name would appreciate an honorary degree. One or two of those Distinguished Chair Things in his name would be nice, too. Gilded, naturally.

I suspect, however, that college students being young and idealistic will not knuckle under to Trump's brand of authoritarianism as readily as their elders. Last year's protests against genocide of Palestinians are likely to resume — or perhaps the spark will be ICE abduction of the cafeteria ladies, or the arrest of a tenured professor who had the temerity to suggest that slavery was racist, or a transgender athlete being whisked off to reeducation camp.

My fear is that sooner or later, as red-state National Guard troops are called in to restore rightthink and order, some campus will witness a repeat of Kent State.

I'm referring, my matriculating friends, not to the university, but to a tragedy your professors may be too young to remember. Look it up before your library and the internet get expurgated: it can happen here.

Riffing on World Affairs

Today's Graphical History Tour takes a quick check-up on the colonial world:

"Getting Down to Cases" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington [DC] Post, August 1, 1925

When last we checked on international affairs, France had sent its military to help Spain quell a revolt in Morocco. Abd El Krim's Moroccan guerillas had stymied the Spanish army since 1921 in the mountains of Rif, effectively establishing the independent state of Rif and confining the Spanish to scattered fortified positions along the coast.

"And Still He Gets Away" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3, 1925

With the entry of France into the Rif War, the European nations launched all-out war to extinguish the independent Berber nation. 

"Up Against It" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, August 22, 1925

Aside from being satisfied to stay removed from the conflict, U.S. cartoonists were divided in their sympathies. The U.S. had allied with France in the Great War, but France's punitive demands against Germany were widely seen as an impediment to a lasting peace; American impatience for France to repay wartime loans from the U.S. was mounting.

"The Iron Dove of Peace" by Douglas Rodger in San Francisco Bulletin, August 10, 1925

As for American attitudes toward Spain, memories of the Spanish-American War were fading — and the U.S. had emerged victorious anyway, so why hold a grudge? Still, it might be telling that, with no justification whatsoever, we blamed the country for the so-called Spanish flu.

"Take Care" by Winsor McCay, ca. August 28, 1925

On the other hand, Americans viewed Europe as a seat of civilization and Africa as part of a backward, benighted world requiring guidance and oversight by White People.

"One of Those English Jokes" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, August 5, 1925

Meanwhile, did we mention war debts?

"Going Up" by Orville Williams for Star Company, ca. Aug. 6, 1925

In part due to protectionist tariffs and trade barriers in vogue between the World Wars, the U.S. demand for rubber to keep everybody's cars on the road had run up against the British Empire trade policy.

"Rubber-r-r" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. August 17, 1925

As long as we have the Philippines essentially as a U.S. colony, some Americans argued, why not promote rubber production there?

It has been a while since we have visited the archipelago taken by the U.S. along with Cuba and Puerto Rico as spoils of the Spanish-American War over a quarter century earlier. The U.S. occupation quashed initial independence movements, promising Filipino self-determination someday. Someday just got pushed a little further down the road.

In spite of a tide of isolationism, the U.S. had come to appreciate close ties with its colonial territories.

"Let's Do It Thoroughly" by Orville P. Williams for Star Company, ca. July 1, 1925

Just not too close.

Q Toon: The Great Escape

The saga continues...

I can't vouch that the chain of events in today's cartoon are entirely plausible; I just want to bring the story of Leo Jefferson's captivity to a close.

Had I been drawing this for a daily cartoon strip, I could have embellished the story with all sorts of details. It's possible Leo made it onto the Canadian evacuation flight because he bears some resemblance to an embassy staffer's husband. I could have had some Afghanis on their way back to face the Taliban deciding to stay in the war-torn shithole country rather than risk ending up en route to Kandahar again.

Details such as what happened to the shackles and handcuffs the concentration camp prisoners were wearing when they got on that plane would have had to be explained. 

I suppose that the ICE gestapo with the keys might have been fatally caught in the crossfire at Shithole International Airfield, but that ought to have sparked an international crisis if it were to happen in the real world. It might even have at least driven the Jeffrey Epstein story to a back burner for a day or two.

Let's just imagine that the keys fell out of his pocket, then.

Q Toon: Fire and ICE

I really do have to wrap up this story arc, and soon. Berkeley Breathed is taking over the job of sentencing a comic character to languish in a Trumpster gulag, and I would rather not risk my Leo and his Opus the Penguin reaching for the same jokes.

Or running into each other.

I’m sure that Breathed will handle the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime’s suspension of human rights under the U.S. Constitution deftly and with insight. After all, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning could have centered his concentration camp story on Bill the Cat, which would just be damned silly.

For the benefit of any readers who have entered the theatre late, Leo is the liberal half of a gay Odd Couple; his partner, Max, has fallen under MAGA’s sway. In February, Leo was swept up in an ICE Gestapo raid and disappeared to Trumplinka Prison. A guard there misinterpreted a tattoo on Leo’s buttocks as an MS-13 insignia, which has now landed him and some fellow detainees on a third world airport tarmac.

Where a civil war is underway. 

I am confident that neither Emperor Trump nor Cruella de Noem nor Oberbefehlshaber Tom Homan nor what is left of the State Department would know nor care what is going on in this unnamed country. I imagine that its head of state agreed to accept custody of American non-persons in exchange for buying up our overstock of Trump Sneakers.

While we wait for the next exciting installment of this gripping saga, let us hope that the government and rebel soldiers fighting over control of the airfield have all learned their marksmanship from the Imperial Storm Troopers of Star Wars Inc., and that Leo is presently rescued and returned to his Max, to argue happily ever after about tariffs, climate change, and Konservative Kancel Kultur.