School for Sex Scandal

I've been over the river and through the woods with family over the Thanksgiving holiday, so I may have missed whatever new accusations of sexual harassment or under age dating or indecent exposure have come out against whatever beloved, respected, or powerful politician, entertainer or sports figure came out Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. It's not as though I've been incommunicado with the world, but given the vast range of political opinions around our dinner table, some subjects just had to be ignored for a while.

But now that we're all back home with our Thanksgiving leftovers, Sexcapadeback Saturday reheats cartoons of selected sexual scandals that I've had the occasion to draw about. This mess didn't start with Harvey Weinstein, and it probably won't end with Charlie Rose. It goes way back, and there has often been one Usual Suspect in particular.

Because of the accusations against Alabama Inquisitor Judge Roy Moore, conservatives want to re-litigate the sexual dalliances of President Bill Clinton. His peccadilloes fall in that gray area between consensual affairs and clear and obvious sexual harassment; Monica Lewinsky was no 14-year-old, but she was a subordinate employee, and the episode displayed, more than any of Clinton's other affairs, a profound lapse of judgement on the President's part.

But if we are to re-litigate the Clinton imbroglio, it's only fair to file an amicus curiae brief about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, too. After all, unlike Bill Clinton, Justice Thomas is still regularly collecting a government paycheck.

Sexual harassment scandals are the exclusive province of no political party. But the Edwin Edwards test often determines the degree of damage to the accused: the Louisiana Democrat once boasted, "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."

In 2006, Republican Congressman Mark Foley lost his reelection bid in Florida over revelations that he propositioned male pages who worked in his office.

Four years later, it was Democrat Eric Massa of New York who was compelled to resign as the House Ethics Committee investigated reports that he habitually groped male members of his staff. He admitted on Glenn Beck's Fox News program that "not only did I grope [a staffer], I tickled him until he couldn't breathe," but then he denied on Larry King's CNN program ever having groped anyone.

The revelations that House Speaker Dennis Hastert had molested student athletes when he was a high school wrestling coach in Illinois came out only after he had left office. The statute of limitations had run out on those incidents; he was convicted of violating banking rules when he paid hush money to the now adult victims of his predatory behavior.

Sexual harassment typically involves an imbalance of power: adult vs. adolescent or child; employer vs. employee; faculty vs. student; celebrity vs. average citizen. Or the strong arm of the law vs. the legally vulnerable:

Many of these cartoons have involved male-on-male misdeeds because I draw cartoons for the LGBTQ press, so unless the perpetrator has a history of telling us how immoral we are, it's extremely rare that I turn my pen to heterosexual hanky-panky. In part it's also because for so long, male-to-female sexual harassment was passed off as relatively normative — even funny. (You can draw a straight line from Pepe LePew to Al Franken.)

When it comes to sexual relationships between adults and children, however, we have always reacted with more seriousness, whether we're talking about girls or boys. (Gauzy recollections of heterosexual boys coming of age in The Graduate and The Summer of '42 notwithstanding.) Prior to the Roy Moore accusations, the right-wing media played up man-on-boy pedophilia scandals because it was so easy to extrapolate sexual misbehavior victimizing under-age males with consensual and healthy relationships between adult gay men.

The LGBTQ community constantly needs to remind Republican Puritans that one thing is not always like another thing. Again and again.

Q Toon: Moore-ality Play

Cartoonist and content provider Daryl Cagle coined the term "Yahtzee" for when two or more editorial cartoonists draw the same idea on the same topic. That's what happened with the cartoon I drew on Sunday night, because I've seen the same basic idea, more or less, in the meantime drawn by Steve Sack and Phil Hinds. (Sack, as ever, did the concept up best, if I do say so myself, since he's not the sort to say it himself.)

Anyway, it's too late to change my cartoon now, and besides, all the other great ideas about Alabama's Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate have already been taken.

When I was at the drawing board, my chief worry was that Judge Moore would drop out or be forced out of the race between then and now.

I needn't have worried. A poll found that 37% of Alabama Evangelicals, and 29% of the electorate in general, claimed they were "more likely" to vote for Moore after the allegations against him were made public. Dinesh D'Souza, or whomever he was plagiarizing, tweeted that he used to be lukewarm about Moore, but now "we must elect him." An Alabama politician compared Moore to St. Joseph, Step-Father of Our Lord, and an Alabama pastor slammed Washington Republicans as "sissies" for withdrawing their support of Moore.

On the other hand, current polls show that Moore's Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, has come from behind and may have as much as a 12-point lead. Jones, a former U.S. Attorney during the Clinton administration who prosecuted Klan members who bombed a black church in 1963, has been careful to distance himself from national Democrats. Republicans are desperately considering delaying next month's special election, or pushing a write-in campaign for incumbent Luther Strange, whom Moore beat in the September primary.

I don't know whether Alabama is one of those states that requires a run-off election if nobody gets over 50% of the vote, but it seems likely (that being one of the tactics southern states used to safeguard against Black candidates coming out ahead if the White vote were split); that would be a possibility if Republicans split between Moore and Strange. National Republicans would prefer a Strange-Jones runoff or maybe a Strange-Moore runoff, but could be stuck with a Moore-Jones runoff prolonging their present agony.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, an evil wizard at the byzantine rules of politics, has even floated the idea of having Strange resign from the Senate before the December election, in order to force a new election. If Moore should win next month's election outright, the Senate could vote to expel him, allowing Alabama's Republican Governor to appoint a replacement. That seems a long shot with little precedent, but so did refusing to consider President Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

These are interesting times. Strange days, indeed.

Frankie and Donnie in the Q Cartoon

"And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything." — Donald J. Trump

The 2005 Billy Bush tape was not enough to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, but the barrage of allegations against boorish celebrities has succeeded in the premature end of another fake presidency: that of Frank Underwood on Netflix's House of Cards.

In his public statement after Anthony Rapp accused him of sexually assaulting him at a 1986 cast party, Kevin Spacey claimed not to remember the incident. He blamed the alcohol, but it appears that the incident simply didn't stand out.

Spacey, if reports are to be believed, has been using Mr. Trump's motto above as a personal modus operandi toward fellow actors, bartenders, a reporter, a military set advisor, and any other attractive male in the 14-to-29-year-old age bracket who have caught his eye, even before he achieved stardom himself. At the same time, he steadfastly refused to come out publicly as gay until that revelation was overshadowed by his being outed as a creep and pedophile.

Indeed, that "when you're a star, you can do anything" motto held true for decades. Harry Dreyfuss alleges that in 2008, Spacey repeatedly groped him in front of his father, Richard Dreyfuss. Personally, I do not know anybody, gay or straight, who would grope an 18-year-old in front of his or her parents without suffering the loss of some teeth; but in this case, Spacey was the elder Dreyfuss's boss and an idol of the younger Dreyfuss, who at the time tried desperately to keep his father from noticing what was going on. (Spacey, through his publicist, denies the incident ever took place.)

It has proven a simple matter for Netflix to kick Frank Underwood out of the White House; how the imaginary U.S. fares under Claire Underwood's presidency makes little difference to us in the real world.* With Red America having overlooked Donald Trump's crass objectification of women last year, real U.S. is stuck with him for the next three seasons.

And nobody else down the line of succession appears to be much of any improvement.

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* I don't watch the show — I watched the BBC version years ago, and once through that wringer was enough — so I don't know how its First Lady overcame the constitutional barrier to being her husband's Vice President. But you can put your mind at ease that there is absolutely, positively, 100% guaranteed no way that Melania Trump will be President of the United States.

Isn't that right, Edith Wilson?

Q Toon: Rush on Coach Sandusky

Last week, Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience, "[Jerry] Sandusky has to be — he’s a gay guy. Nobody’s mentioning that aspect, because it’s just too dangerous." The Gay Mafia, Limbaugh explained, is enforcing omertà on the mainstream media, keeping the former Penn State assistant football coach's homosexuality hidden way back in the closet.

This cartoon would have been easier to draw if Limbaugh hadn't taken the care to draw a distinction between gays and pedophiles. Right-wingers have a long history of broadcasting their belief that there is no difference between two consenting adults having a sexual relationship on the one hand and pedophiles or "Man-on-Dog" on the other. So I at least give Limbaugh credit for steering clear of that canard.

Another problem with this cartoon is that Limbaugh got more publicity out of calling Michelle Obama "uppity" this week, defending NASCAR fans who booed the First Lady as she, Dr. Jill Biden, a veteran and some children of servicemen prepared to say "Gentlemen, start your engines" a at a Florida race. Somewhere, an editor is wondering what Jerry Sandusky's legal problems have to do with a radio blowhard calling Mrs. Obama "uppity."

(Remember when all those elitist liberals booed First Lady Laura Bush at that one event? Yeah, neither do I.)

A couple weeks ago, when I drew a cartoon about Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh, I was happy to see that  videos of him were going viral in the meantime, because it meant that there would be more readers who had some idea who he was. I don't need to worry about people not knowing who Rush Limbaugh is (although I will never forget a guy I dated for a while who thought that Senator Jesse Helms was an ally of the LGBT community; you can fool some of the people all of the time). I do expect, however, that a lot of readers will have no knowledge of anything Rush Limbaugh has said about the scandal at Penn State. 

With any luck, there will be some news event of common knowledge to draw about next week -- although there's a big holiday this week shutting down Washington D.C. and many of the big-name newsmakers around the country are taking most of the week off. Unless I finally find some gay angle to the Occupy Movement (oh, God, I hope Offisa Pike is straight!), I suspect that next week's cartoon will be just as obscure as this week's.

Q Cartoon: Those Darn Pedophile Priests

And if this turns out to have been a problem in the 1940's and '50's, we can always blame comic books and commies.

Trouble in the Catholic Church, Part XVI

NPR reported today that ten years after the Catholic Church in America was rocked by charges of pedophile priests whom the church quietly reassigned to other, unsuspecting parishes, Catholic bishops are -- believe it or not -- quietly reassigning defrocked pedophile priests to other, unsuspecting parishes. The NPR report described how one pedophile priest has been reassigned to congregations in several states and Peru since initial reports of his sexual abuse have come to light.

Priests accused of sexual abuse are supposed to be immediately suspended from their post, pending a church investigation of the charges. The boards of clergy and lay persons set up to review charges of sexual abuse by priests are, according to the report, appointed by bishops, who have been known to ignore the findings of such boards. Church officials have even refused to accept court judgments against pedophile priests as definitive.

I have to wonder how this compares with the process when a priest is accused of imbezzling from church funds.

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By the way, alert readers of a certain age may find an allusion to a song by Tom Lehrer in this week's cartoon.

Sneak peek for the Week

The topic for this week's Q Syndicate cartoon could hardly be about anything other than the latest charges in the neverending saga of pedophile Catholic priests -- in Ireland, Germany, and not far from me at a Wisconsin school for the deaf.

Several American cartoonists have weighed in on the scandal this week. The story made waves in Europe while most American cartoonists were dealing with the passage of Health Care Reform and its Republican/Teabagger wrath. Most American cartoons about the Catholic pedophile scandal have been pretty tame; not so with our European counterparts. (The link is to a page on Darryl Cagle's site; the cartoons may move around as more cartoons on the topic are added. As of this writing, there are about ten pages of Catholic Sex Scandal cartoons.)

My cartoon, while not drawn for the mainstream press, is still pretty tame -- especially compared with, say, Herbjørn Skogstad's. He doesn't have to worry about Bill Donohue suing his ass.