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

Q Toon: The Sun Will Come Out, Ed Murrow

I had to draw this week's cartoon Sunday night, without knowing what the CBS Evening News set behind Tony Dokoupil took was going to look like, or what clothing choices he was going to make. But I did have this mission statement from the successor to Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley, Norah O'Donnell, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois:

“On too many stories, the press has missed the story,” he said. “And it’s not just us. It’s all of legacy media. Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates, and not the average American. Or, we put too much weight in the analysis of academics, or elites, and not enough on you.”

It seems to be the consensus of media consultant types that news viewers are fed up with what people who know what they are talking about have to say about news events. Rather, viewers want to hear what Average Joe Schmoes think. The local NBC affiliate where I live has been promoting itself with the same promise to eschew expertise in favor of whatever some random person who just heard about something five seconds ago has to say about it.

Dokoupil moved to the evening news anchor post from CBS's morning news program, where he had shared hosting duties with Gayle King and retired football player Nate Burleson. As Katie Couric could have told him, the switch from soft and happy morning news to the let's-get-serious evening desk is gonna be greeted with a lot of wariness and skepticism.

Swinging into your corn flakes, from CBS Mornings promo

So how's it going at Dokoupil's new job? He started his evening anchor stint two days ahead of time on Saturday to interview Pete Hegseth, who identifies as Secretary of War, about the U.S. military strike on Venezuela and kidnapping of President & Mrs. Nicolás Maduro. He lobbed a bunch of softball questions at Hegseth, allowing him to repeat his assigned talking points over and over unchallenged.

Although I'm still waiting to hear someone ask anyone from the Lawless Trump Regime why, if Congress was kept in the dark over our Venezuelan adventure out of concern that there might be a leak, Pete "Open Signal" Hegseth was included in the planning.

(Trump, by the way, has told reporters that oil company executives were kept informed of our invasion before and after the fact. I suspect that could have had something to do with the $436,000 bet somebody won on the Polymarket on-line gambling site by predicting that Maduro would be ousted by January 31. Or maybe that was just some Average Joe Schmoe included in Secy. Hegseth's group chat by mistake.)

Getting back to Dokoupil, there have been one or two technical glitches this week. But more importantly, viewers are waiting to see whether he will participate in Paramount's Bari Weisswashing of Trump regime news coverage by the network.

His leading off a segment on the fifth anniversary of Trump's attempted January 6 coup (the one at the U.S. Capitol, not the one in Venezuela) with cowardly both-sidesism and following up with weird cuddling up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio the other day are not exactly encouraging.

Good night, and good luck.

Q Toon: P.S., You're Fired

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, media from his side of the aisle leapt to the conclusion that his killer must be some leftist transgender anti-gun immigrant tree hugger from Berkeley. And, fess up, you thought so, too.

He turned out to be an ammosexual son of a local sheriff, raised Mormon, who etched right-wing mottos on the bullets he shot. 

Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he's got a transgender roommate and got converted to socialism during his one semester at college before dropping out to attend trade school instead. But the transgender roommate has been helpful to police — although I wouldn't be surprised these days if the transgender roommate turns out to be as real as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

The way the media bubbles of the left and the right have become so self-contained, Schrödinger's Assassin can be whoever you preconceive him to be. He's a disciple of Nick Fuentes. He's a card-carrying liberal thanks to a single semester at Utah State. He's Death Wish and Robocop. He's Crying Game and Brokeback Mountain.

He's a floor wax and a dessert topping!

What he has become, without a doubt, is a convenient excuse for the present authoritarian regime to crack down on and criminalize free speech that does not conform to officially permissible thought.

From Absolutely Corrupt Premier Donald Berzelius Trump on down, this gilded White House and its congressional majority lackeys are now demanding the firing of anyone who dares question Charlie Kirk's sainthood, fails to demonstrate adequate grief, or appears in public without sackcloth and ashes. "They're already under major investigation," Trump told reporters, adding that he means "A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left."

Vice President Shady Vance took time off from his vice presidential duties to guest host Kirk's podcast, telling his audience, "When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer."

Reichkulturkammer Stephen Miller threatened disloyal subjects, "The power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended an Army colonel for a social media post critical of Kirk. Attorney General Pam Bondi went on Fox Noise to admonish private business, "And employers, you have to have an obligation to get rid of people... They shouldn't be working with you."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is running for governor, called on social media for the firings of an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University. All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said Kirk “spoke his fate into existence.” (PBS News)

MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd — a George W. Bush administration strategist — for opining that "Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions." Washington Post global opinions editor Karen Attiah got fired for quoting on her own social media account Kirk's statements demeaning Black women's "brain processing power." Not for celebrating Kirk's death, but for quoting him. Accurately.

PHNX Sports, an online sports news site focused on Arizona, announced the firing of reporter Gerald Bourguet after he said on social media on Wednesday, in a since-deleted post, that "Refusing to mourn a life devoted to that cause is not the same thing as celebrating gun violence." (CBS News)

And just yesterday, ABC pulled the plug on Jimmy Kimmel over Monday night's monologue.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said. He also poked fun at President Trump’s response to a question from the press about how he was mourning Kirk’s death after Trump pivoted to a discussion of the construction of a new White House ballroom.

First Colbert and now Kimmel? Oh, well. I've been staying up too late at night, anyway.

Outside of government, the press, jocks, educators, and comedians, the people fired for reacting to Kirk's death the way the Fornicate Your Feelings mob has responded to the deaths of George Floyd and the assault on Nancy Pelosi's husband have included fire fighters, restaurant managers, airline pilots, Nasdaq employees, and who knows how many more by the time the Ministry of Truth Social declares another thoughtcrime wave?

Toon: Beyond Waving Their Little Paddles

I've seen a lot of editorial cartoons, opinion columns, and social media posts complaining that the Democratic Party isn't doing enough to resist the onslaught of ruinous actions from the unelected bureaucrats at DOGE, facilitated by the Brazenly Corrupt Trump Maladministration™, the Freakdom Caucus in Congress, and the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court, and the Quislings in legacy media.

Well, there's a reason for that.

Given the way the U.S. governing system here are significant tactical advantages Republicans have over Democrats. When Republicans were in the minority in Congress, they had the power to gum up Democratic legislation by threatening to shut down the government. 

Now we have demonstrative proof that shutting down the U.S. government was never just a tactic; it has been the #1 goal of the Republican Party since the days of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.

Democrats, on the other hand, are the party of a functioning government able to get things done. What are they going to do when it comes time to raise the debt ceiling, if preventing it forces the government to default on its loans and shut down? Send Chuck Schumer out to chant cringe-worthy slogans again? Flood my e-mail with twice as many dozens of daily pleas for donations?

Even if Democrats can win in 2026 and 2028, despite the baked-in advantages red states have over blue ones, new Republican roadblocks to suffrage, and the mischief Elon Musk and his merry Muskrat minions are making in federal databases, repairing the damage Trump and the Republicans will have wrought will be a formidable task. 

They will need to flood the zone with an agenda every bit as audacious as Trump's gish gallop has been.

Firing Trump as head of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts will be easy, even if Democrats replace him with Laverne Cox or Elliot Page.

But it will be a heavy lift to restore the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, USAID, Occupational Safety & Health Agency, Department of Education, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Labor, the Civil Rights Divisions of every surviving cabinet department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, National Parks, Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Heck, we'll probably need Congress to authorize re-application for membership in NATO.

In the meantime, if Mitch McConnell really wants to be useful in his waning months in the U.S. Senate, maybe he could give Chuck Schumer some tips on how to be an effective leader of The Opposition.

An Ill Wind

Here's a local issue cartoon — or at least it was when I drew it. Since then, I've seen the story reported on international media and late-night chat show monologues. By the time you read this, it'll probably have its own page on Wikipedia.

Samantha Kuffel, 31, was one of the on-air meteorologists at Milwaukee's CBS affiliate, WDJT-58. But right-wing professional umbrage-takers raised a ruckus after she posted on Instagram about Elon Musk's Nazi salute from the podium bearing the presidential seal at Donald Trump's inauguration festivities. 

Was it? Neo-nazis think so. Judge for yourself.

It cost her her job.

"Meteorologist Sam Kuffel is no longer employed at CBS58," said the staff memo from news director Jessie Garcia that was obtained by the Journal Sentinel. "A search for a replacement is underway."

A spokeswoman for Weigel Broadcasting Co. confirmed via email late Wednesday that Kuffel was no longer with Channel 58. But the spokeswoman said she couldn't comment further because this was a personnel issue.

On Tuesday, conservative radio host Dan O'Donnell sharply criticized Kuffel for her two Instagram posts, accusing her of "spreading the lie that Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute" during the presidential inauguration. He labeled her posts "vulgar."

Was she fired for daring to speak up against the rising tide of fascism in this country? Did Channel 58 worry that viewers wouldn't be able to trust her impartiality when it comes to what percentage chance there is of precipitation or how to calculate wind chill?

Kuffel gave management every excuse to let her go. The Guardian quotes the employment-terminating unexpurgated Instagram posts:

“Dude Nazi saluted twice. Twice. During the inauguration. You fuck with this and this man, I don’t fuck with you. Full stop.”

In her second post, Kuffel appeared to post a screenshot of a scene from the FX sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia in which Rob McElhenney’s character Mac says: “Screw that old bitch. He’s a Nazi.”

Don't go looking for Kuffel's Instagram account now; it's been deactivated.

Those of us in the media, if we want to hang onto our jobs, have to be judicious in how we speak in public. I can cuss a blue streak at my computer; but on-line, restraint is the rule. Quoting other people is one thing; but in cartoons and here on the blog, 

Bad language or abuse
I never ever use
Whatever the emergency.
Though "Bother it!" I may
Occasionally say,
I never use a big, big "D."

No, never.

Well, hardly ever.

Finally, Sam — can I call you that? You local TV news people try so hard to be our friends I feel that I know you — Anyway, Sam, you have to keep in mind at all times that Trump and his MAGA minions are thin-skinned, easily butt-hurt snowflakes. 

Think what happened to you was unfair? Why, they even took offense at Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde and demanded that the New Jersey-born cleric be deported for closing her sermon with this:

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. 

"There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. 

"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. 

"May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

Not an F-word, or even a big, big D, in her whole sermon.

Q Toon: Graveside Manners

Shortly after I pitched this idea to my editors and sat down at my drawing board Sunday, I saw the news that yet another attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump by some deranged idiot equipped with weapons of mass casualty had been thwarted. I seriously considered hunting for some other topic for this week's cartoon; perhaps if some comment by Pete Buttigieg on Meet the Press had tickled my fancy, I would have found one.

Since I didn't, here's this one.

Trump's repeated insistence that somewhere in this glorious country, parents are sending their children off to school only to have the little tykes come home having been subjected to spontaneous gender reassignment surgery in the principal's office apparently falls under JD BH Vance's theory that it's okay "to create stories so that the American media actually [pay] attention."

The ReQublican Qandidates are remarkably less concerned with the very real instances of children going to school only to come home with mortal coil reassignment surgery performed by another one of those deranged idiots equipped with weapons of mass casualty. There have been two attempted assassinations of presidential candidates this year; as of September 6, there have been 46 mass shootings at schools in the United States in 2024.

And zero gender reassignment surgeries at any school anywhere in the country.

Right-wingers have been quick to accept Dear Leader's fairy tales, however, and to discount reality. They dismiss grieving parents as "crisis actors," so it's hardly surprising that some on the other side immediately spread wild conjecture on line that the Mar-a-Lagoon golf course wannabe sniper is also some sort of crisis actor, hired to distract the electorate from Trump's ridiculous debate performance, or Project 2025, or reports that inflation is down and employment is up.

And the Fox Noise Machine just as quickly answered that the guy was inspired by Democratic campaign warnings that Trump is a racist, a fascist, and danger to the Republic, just because Trump says racist, fascist things and promises to be a dictator on Day One.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan's admonishment that "You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts" is so passé these days. Pick and choose whatever facts you fancy, tune out the rest, and believe whatever you want. The gunman is a Republican! He's a Democrat! He's a Ramaswamian! He's a Bernie Bro! He's a floor wax! He's a dessert topping! He's Schrödinger's assassin!

How long, O Lord, how long have we been coming here?

This Week's Sneak Peek

One side note that I hadn't been able to work into Saturday's round-up of cartoons about the second week of the Democrats' 1924 national convention was that President Coolidge's 16-year-old son, Calvin Jr., died that Monday. While playing tennis on the White House lawn, young Calvin contracted blood poisoning from a blister and succumbed to a staph infection.

I could have included any of the cartoons commiserating the president's sorrow, but the post already had more cartoons than usual. None of the sympathy cartoons really stood out from the others, anyway.

During a political convention, cartoonists' attention tends to focus on the party throwing the party. The death of Coolidge's son tended to dissuade cartoonists from drawing cartoons of the president either enjoying the Democrats' difficulties, or of Coolidge and Davis facing off immediately upon the nomination being finally settled.

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In the aftermath of last week's gawdawful presidential (for lack of a better word) debate (ditto), I'm somewhat in a bind. I draw my cartoons days before they get published, in newspapers and magazines that will be on their newsstands for a week or more after that. With the mainstream media drumbeat that Democrats may or may not pressure President Biden to drop out, I'm finding it hazardous to come up with any cartoon about the presidential race that might not have any shelf life to it.

We'll see how this week's cartoon holds up.

✍

By the way, the cartoon I posted on Friday seems to be unusually popular. Maybe. Blogger reports to me that it has about six times the number of hits of the average cartoon I post, although Blogger only tells me that those extra hits are coming from "Other."

Could just be those thousands of bots that used to be in Singapore but have lately moved to Hong Kong.

Toon: Commitment Issues

My cartoon today is a parody of Kristen Welker's interview with GOP vice presidential hopeful Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota. And some dozen or so other attempts by mainstream media to get veep wannabes to call the election already. It's a kabuki show put on by mainstream media and Trumplican politicians now that acceptance of election results is anathema to the leader of their party.

Once upon a time not so very long ago, the interviewer's question would have been a simple, "Yes, of course," spun around to "we expect to win" and all the policy reasons why.

But Trump expected to lose in 2016, which he could never square with having grown up believing that he deserves always to win. So he started blaming his anticipated loss on elections being unfair. He has continued that ever since, and considers it treasonous if anyone suggests that elections might be fair.

It's not a stretch for Republicans to accept the Trumpian position. The GOP has long accused Democrats of election shenanigans for letting urban people of color vote without having to pass a citizenship test. (Yes, that was the Dixiecrat tactic for decades after the Civil War. But those Dixiecrats have been Republicans ever since Reagan was president.)

Ironically, it's Republicans who have the baked-in advantage in presidential elections. Since the founding of the Republican Party, its candidate has been the winner four times in spite of coming in second in the popular vote. In that time, the Democrats' candidate never has. A majority of Americans now live in urban areas, but the electoral college skews rural.

But that's not good enough for the Trumplicans any more. Mr. Trump has demanded that only paper ballots cast in person at a polling place between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on the first Tuesday in November after the first day of November be counted, and that anybody still waiting in line at 8:00 p.m. be sent home so that election workers can report their complete tally by the time the TV news reports its exit polling. Or 8:05, whichever comes first.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Had enough upside-down flag cartoons yet?

Well, tough. 

As it happens, I was out of town for a family wedding over the weekend. An old friend of my husband's lives in the area near the wedding, so I drew this week's cartoon early in case we had the opportunity to stop by for a visit. (The visit didn't work out, but at least it wasn't because I was anxious to get home to my drawing board.)

At the end of every year since 1972, I've taken a photo of the year's front page headlines. One of this year's major front page stories was in Friday's newspapers (you may have heard of it), and I very much wanted to pick up a copy of the local paper.

Couldn't find one.

Not very long ago, one used to find a small stack of newspapers in the lobby of one's hotel, free as part of the cost of one's room. Once upon a time, it would be the local newspaper; then somehow every hotel agreed to stock USA Today. Now they don't even offer that. The young men at the front desk didn't even know where a newspaper might be sold.

Newspaper vending machines are a thing of the past now that the cost of a newspaper is well above the amount of change anyone carries in their pocket. There were no newspapers at the nearby gas station; the clerk told me that they only sold the paper on Sunday. Nor were there any newspapers at the nearest grocery store. The nearby Shoppe-ing Centre had a bookstore; no newspaper there. Maybe I should have checked any of the half a dozen coffee shoppes, but I wasn't in need of half a dozen overpriced cups of coffee.

Yesterday, I saw the premiere post on a new substack by fellow cartoonist Jack Ohman, writing from vacation in Hawai'i about trying to get away from the news. Yet, in spite of that, he apparently had no trouble in paradise coming up with a copy of the local paper.

From https://jackohman.substack.com/p/on-vacation-with-donald-trump

Was it because he was in a Blue State where they get their news from, well, the news, and I was in a Red State where they get their news from Trump Social?

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: In a Customer Service Room

Last Monday, Audrey Hale, 28, shot his way into Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, and fatally shot three staff members and three 9-year-old students. Hale, a former student at the private Presbyterian school, was armed with a semi-automatic pistol, an AR-style rifle, and a handgun.

Initial calls for sensible gun controls after this, the 130th mass shooting in 2023, were quickly drowned out when police let everybody know that Hale identified as transgender on social media. Aha! Something besides guns that Republicans could blame this one on! And they were already trying to ban transgender therapy! Oh, goody!

Several conservative political figures, including Sen. J.D. Vance, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Donald Trump Jr., were among the personalities on social media who implicated the role of the shooter's transgender identity in the shooting. The motive for the shooting remains unknown, according to authorities.

Statistically, transgender Americans are much more likely to be the target of violence than its perpetrator. Yet right-wing propagandist Benny Johnson cited three other presumed transgender or non-binary mass murderers to argue that "the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists."

To which someone with more authority to speak on the issue replied:

"4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary. That's just 1.3 percent of all shooters," Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer in social work at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. "You just proved our point: 99 percent of mass shooters in the United States are cis gendered."

Tennessee politicians have called for publication of a manifesto that Hale left behind, but many in the LGBTQ+ community worry that while his manifesto might help police understand his motives, publishing it only serves to inflame right-wingers' passion for trans-bashing, while perversely glorifying the murderers' twisted thoughts and potentially inspiring some future killer.

We didn't need to read what the Las Vegas shooter thought about casinos, or how the Tree of Life shooter justified slaughtering worshipers in a synagogue, or why the Monterey Park shooter objected to Lunar New Year celebrations, or the ruminations of the guy who killed the journalists at the Capital Gazette regarding freedom of the press.

To list but one cisgender mass murderer for each of the transgender killers Benny Johnson named. 

All we need to know about them is that their minds were filled with hate and rage. Of which, like military-grade weaponry, we seem to have no shortage of peddlers on social media and right-wing "news" channels.

Not Just for the New Yorker

 

Some captions can go just about anywhere.

Toon: Traffic Report

After that first week of seeing the anchors of local news programs sitting at opposite ends of their Plexiglas desk, we're now getting used to seeing at least one of them Skyping it in from home. The weathercaster's large-screen TV is devoted to a graphic of next week's high temperatures, and we get to see all the trophies the sports guy keeps behind the bar in his man cave.

Since our Domingo Mercilus couldn't manage to keep six feet from his helicopter pilot without hanging from the landing skids, he's left to stare out the front window of his home on Collier Bluff Avenue. Fortunately for anyone in Brandon and Shondra's audience who still has to get out in the world, traffic on the freeways has been substantially reduced by the local stay-at-home ordinance.

Offer void in Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas.

Toon: Give It To Me Straight

Sunday, Dear Leader crowed — make that tweeted — that the TV ratings for his daily coronacrisis press briefings are the best anyone has ever seen. Monday Night Football! The Bachelor finale! The Kennedy assassination!

U.S. media complained after the White House quit offering press briefings a little over a year ago; now that Trump himself comes to the podium day after day to spout self-serving nonsense leavened with the occasional scrap of factual information, the media have begun to ask the administration to go back to its cone of silence.

The daily press briefing has taken the place of the Trump campaign rally. He misses the adulation of the red-hatted throng, to be sure; but the State Media over at Fox, America One, and Sinclair Broadcasting do their part to reassure the Trump Loyalists that their overlord and savior is in charge of the situation and everything is under control. And that he has masterfully put down the wicked scheming of the Fake News and the Chinese and the George Soros.

By the way, Monday Night Football ain't all that big a deal any more. Monday Night Football is there for when the NFL lets the Bengals, Raiders or Jets sleep in on Sunday morning.

Toon: Coronaspiracy

Conservative media are at it again, and their captivated audience is eating it up.

Everything is fine.
Rush Limbaugh, who was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, told his audience of millions that the [COVID-19] virus is really just the “common cold.” He claimed that it was being overhyped by the director of the National Center of Immunization—who just happens to be the sister of former acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a bad guy in the world of conservative infotainment, thanks to his role in the Mueller investigation—to damage the president.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham dismissed the fear about a potential pandemic as “a new pathway for hitting President Trump,” and speculated that it had been engineered by China as payback for the president’s trade war.
Fox News’s Sean Hannity said on Thursday that there was little to be afraid of—no Americans had died, he noted, days before they inevitably did—and that the virus was simply the latest desperate anti-Trump ploy from Democrats. Having struck out on impeachment, they were now “sadly politicizing and weaponizing an infectious disease as their next effort to bludgeon President Trump.”
It is the same defense that Trump’s supporters have trotted out for the past four years: Obfuscate the truth, laud the president, blame the Democrats.

This denialism is mother's milk to Donald Berzelius Trump, who tweeted, “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible."

It is true that the markets have been severely shaken by having one of the world's most important suppliers and consumers virtually shut down, and by discovering a turd in the vacation travel industry punch bowl.

Oh, and there is the matter of thousands of deaths and the prospect of there not being a cure for over a year, too. But the stock market doesn't usually have a problem with matters of mortality and morbidity.

But contagion is highly unpredictable — who foresaw Italy and Iran becoming such hot spots? — and if there's anything stock markets hate, it's unpredictability.

That unpredictability is what makes the denialism of Limbaugh, Ingraham, Hannity and their ilk so dangerous. We've seen the danger in the form of the anti-vaxxers who put not only their own children at risk but also any children who have the misfortune to be around them. COVID-19 appears not to pose a lethal threat to the young and hardy at this point, but we know that it has a latency period of several days and is communicable before symptoms are evident.

None of those nursing home residents in Kirkland, Washington had been to China, Iran, or Italy lately, you know.

Well, I'm not a doctor, and I don't even play one on TV, so I'll leave you with this link to the Center for Disease Control if you want to keep up with more authoritative information than your humble ink-slinger can provide.

Winter of '84

As a tribute to Alex Trebek, Winton Smithback Saturday takes a break from cartoons of a century ago and looks instead to a few of my own from 35 years ago. Although Trebek's iteration of Jeopardy! would not begin until October of 1984, these cartoons date from the first three months of the year. And none are in the form of a question.

So, as a tribute to Alex Trebek, this is kind of lame. But indulge me anyway.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan had campaigned heavily against the federal deficit under the Carter administration: the figure that year was $74 billion. By 1984, it had ballooned to $185 billion.

This balancing act cartoon was the final installment of a short-lived running gag I had going. Reagan never returned to the budget balancing act, either in Washington or in my cartoons.

Since then, the Bill Clinton administration managed to pass a handful of balanced budgets, but this year's deficit is estimated to amount to $984 billion.

Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch bought the Chicago Sun-Times from Field Enterprises in 1984. Up to then, the morning tabloid had a liberal reputation, being home to editorial cartoonists Jacob Burck (who died in 1982) and Bill Mauldin, and columnists Roger Simon, Roger Ebert, and Mike Royko. Under the new owner, the Sun Times editorial voice shifted to the right.

His politics notwithstanding, Murdoch was better known at this point for the sensationalism of his Sydney Daily Telegraph, News of the World, the Sun of London, the New York Post and the supermarket tabloid Star.

Murdoch's ownership of the Sun-Times would be brief. He sold the paper in 1986 for $145 million in order to buy Chicago's unaffiliated television station WFLD channel 32 (also from Field Enterprises), and use it to launch his Fox TV network.

The rest, like Yuri Andropov, is history.

Not quite four months after the bombing of the U.S. Marines' barracks in Beirut in which 299 U.S. and French soldiers were killed, President Reagan announced on February 7 that he was pulling our troops out of the Multinational Force in Lebanon. It was not to be called a "retreat," however; officially, our troops were merely being "redeployed." France, Great Britain, and Italy would redeploy their troops by the end of February.

There were some eight serious candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, three of whom withdrew immediately after the February 28 New Hampshire primary. (I'm not counting the perennial candidate, wacko fascist Lyndon LaRouche, who died just last month.) Colorado Senator Gary Hart came in second in the Iowa caucuses and first in New Hampshire, establishing himself as the media's Flavor of the Month.

Besides editorial cartoons, I was also drawing comic strips for the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside. But I've already posted "The Funny Paper Caper" series in this blog (starting here), so I'm not going to repeat it today.

I close instead with my commentary on the evergreen controversy over allowing prayer in public schools. The new wrinkle in right-wing evangelicals' push at the time was their proposal to carve out time in the school day for a "voluntary moment of silent prayer."

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.