Whatchamacallitude

My syndicated cartoon this week offered "trans derangement syndrome" as an alternative to the term "transphobia" to describe the near-pathological animus right-wing Republicans have toward transgender persons.

Ten Decembers ago, I offered this cartoon after the Associated Press stylebook decreed that the similar commonly used compound "homophobia" was off-limits to its reporters:

December, 2012

The AP's viewpoint was that a "phobia" is a clinical term that ought not to be applied to persons who have not been diagnosed as such by a professionally licensed psychologist. That a given antigay legislation, gay-bashing attack, or religious belief might be attributed to fear of homosexuals or homosexuality, moreover, is not an independently verifiable fact without an admission by the legislator, attacker, or believer responsible.

I rather liked "gaytred" and "lesbianimus," but I've never had any illusion that they would ever catch on. Meanwhile, the ever-expanding acronym on beyond LGBTQ+ will prevent any neologism devised to be inclusive about any attitude toward LGBTQ+ness. I guess "bigotry" will have to do.

April, 2016

The Supreme Court has taken up an astroturf "religious liberty" case this season. 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis concerns a webpage designer who doesn't want to abide by Colorado's non-discrimination law in case a same-sex couple should ever approach them to design a wedding webpage for them. 

Just to be clear: 303 Creative LLC has not ever been asked to design a wedding webpage for a same-sex couple. No same-sex couple is currently interested in having 303 Creative LLC design a wedding webpage for them. 303 Creative LLC had not been advertising itself as a Christian-based heterosexuals-only webpage design company. In fact, 303 Creative LLC has not yet designed any wedding webpages for anybody.

But the owner, Lorie Smith, wants to discriminate against same-sex couples, and has been encouraged by a right-wing Christianist legal group, Alliance Defending Freedom, to go to court to establish a right to Christian bigotry.

And it appears from their questions that the right-wing Christianist majority on the Court is predisposed to agree with them.

June, 2000

Oh, but how dare I impugn the motives of anyone who just want to impose their religious liberties on everybody else! Away with this talk of phobias, derangement syndromes, and bigotry! The Crusading Right has nothing but love for us heau-meau-sekshuls.

April, 2007

Q Toon: Pecking Ordure

Last weekend, The New Republic posted a supposedly satirical op-ed about Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg by gay author and literary critic Dale Peck. The essay was so outrageous and the howls of protest against it so overwhelming that TNR took it down within hours. Editor Chris Lehman explained, “The New Republic recognizes that this post crossed a line, and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive.”

I didn't read the column while it was on line, but enough sites have posted excerpts that I can offer this synopsis: based upon Peck's memories of an irrelevant and utterly forgettable night at gay bars in 1992, Peck offers a psychosexual analysis of the man he calls "Mary Pete" and concludes that he doesn't want Buttigieg as president because Buttigieg didn't realize he was gay until he was in his thirties, he married his first date soon afterward, and he will therefore experience adolescent wanderlust in the Oval Office.

Well, bully for Mr. Peck for achieving his sexual epiphany at a more tender age than the Mayor of South Bend. Some people realize they are LGBT or Q at the age of five; others don't get it until they're 50. There are even people who feel they don't fit anywhere on the Kinsey scale, and we'd add another letter to our LGBTQIAAcronym except that some of them probably still wouldn't feel it fit them. Maybe they'll fall into one or another category someday, and maybe they won't.

We're not all cut from the same cloth any more than heterosexuals are. Teenagers often have different priorities in their relationships than 30-somethings do. Some people grow up young; others push the Peter Pan thing well into their dotage. Some people experience love at first sight; others spend a lot more time comparison shopping.

It would be nice if all First Families had marriages like the Obamas, but the nation has survived the Hardings, Roosevelts, Clintons and, with any luck, the Trumps. Pete and Chasten seem like a charming couple, and it hardly seems fair to wish their marriage ill when we already have the Religious Right to do that for us.

✍

Usually, drawing an editorial cartoon requires a fair amount of research, but today's cartoon is an exception.

I didn't look up what Dale Peck looks like, or how old he is, or what books, articles, or letters to First Hand he wrote. I just drew my first impression of him from what I've read. Any resemblance between Mr. Peck in this cartoon and Mr. Peck in the flesh is purely coincidental.

And that's pretty much the point of the cartoon.

United Front Toon

The regularly scheduled cartoon will not be presented today in order to bring you this special #freepress United Front cartoon today.

New Rule #2: No recording devices will be allowed anywhere in the building.

New Rule #3: Hey, you out there on the White House lawn: we're sending the guy on the riding mower to circle around you even if it's snowing.

Another One Bites the Dust

The Victoria (British Columbia) Times-Colonist gave its editorial cartoonist, Adrian Raeside, the boot today.

"Sad news. After 36 years of drawing editorial cartoons for the Victoria Times Colonist, I was terminated on Friday, a victim of budget cuts. I will miss the many loyal TC readers I had over the years, but I’m not going to stop drawing, as there are too many important issues out there. The only change is I will now be buying wine that comes in a box. — Adrian"

Raeside is the only Canadian editorial cartoonist with a book on my bookshelf. (I do have one other book of Canadian editorial cartoons, bought at the same time as this one, but it's a compilation of several cartoonists' work about nuclear arms issues.) As you can perhaps see if you embiggen the image above, I bought it for considerably less than the $12.95 Canadian list price.

Blame NAFTA.

The Plagiarism Thing

Lack of talent and originality will out. Especially if you fancy yourself an editorial cartoonist lampooning local officials in the hometown newspaper.

A sorry hack submitting free editorial cartoons to the Montgomery (Maryland) Sentinel under the signature William Charles was exposed by council member Tom Moore as a serial plagiarist, stealing other cartoonists' work, expunging the signatures and repurposing the cartoons to address local issues. (Alan Gardner of the Daily Cartoonist notes that even the cartoonist's name might turn out to be stolen. Heck, even the signature!)

For example, this cartoon from last July, critical of the aforementioned Councilman Moore...

...was a badly labeled rip-off of this CartoonStock.com cartoon by someone named Kes:

Or, compare the "William Charles" cartoon on the left with the Andy Singer "No Exit" original on the right:

"William Charles" swiped the work of about a dozen different cartoonists, whose styles are so dissimilar, it boggles the mind how the Sentinel editors could possibly have mistaken Charles's so-called work as the product of any one individual. I've looked through a number of the cartoons Councilman Moore collected in a .zip file, and several cartoons clearly involve pasting together pieces of three or four different cartoonists' and clip artists' work.

Councilman Moore reports that "I informed the Sentinel’s editor, Brian Karem, in person several months ago that his newspaper is stealing art from all over the Internet and passing it off as its own; he seemed unconcerned and said he’d maybe mention something to 'William Charles' about it." Since Moore took the case public, Mr. Karem has suddenly taken notice:

“He is a third-party UNPAID contributor. We have about four or five of those. As I said, we’re a small family-owned newspaper. As for not noticing, yep, the buck stops here on this one. He sent us Jpegs and PDFs of his art that showed no tells of being manipulated. If there is a way to tell in the future, I’d appreciate a heads up on that. In fact any assistance you can provide in that area would be GREATLY appreciated. I first found out about it from Mike Shapiro [one of the plagiarized cartoonists] two days ago. We pulled all of the cartoons and I now have a copy editor going through them all to see how many are original.”

"No tells of being manipulated"? Seriously? Mr. Karem couldn't see that the piper and the children in this 'toon were not drawn by the same person? (I'd bet that the four or five nearest kids were drawn by Walt Handelsman.)

Given the discrepancy between Karem's responses a couple months ago and a couple days ago, I have to wonder whether this is just another example of a newspaper happily choosing free content, worth every penny. I've been disappointed in a weekly newspaper here in Wisconsin which breaks up its editorial page with its "Web Picks" -- images copied from whatever is trending on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

At least they don't make any pretensions that they are running original work. And the local TV news does the same thing when they present viral videos as news, so I guess that's where bottom line journalism has sunk.

From the Vault: Meaty Issues

If I were really, really, really, really optimistic, I could save this cartoon for Game 7 of the National League playoffs. But unless the Brewers manage to overcome their hitting and pitching slump, I'm afraid Milwaukee's racing sausages have had their last run in the nationally televised sun for the year. But having included lefse in yesterday's cartoon, I thought I'd haul out this one to continue the theme of Norwegian cuisine.

This 2003 cartoon (predating the chorizo guy) was drawn to accompany a Milwaukee Business Journal editorial critical of a New York Times article which had portrayed Milwaukee as a decaying, crime-filled rust belt wasteland with third-rate sports teams and no future. I guess the Times also mentioned the racing sausages. The BJ editorial sniffed that the Times reporter didn't know whereof he wrote.