Pride Cometh to North Pratt Falls

It's LGBTQet-al. Pride Month, so let's start today's Graphical History Tour with something in a lighter vein than Thursday's cartoon.

Q Syndicate, June, 2004

Here's a cartoon I drew in time for client publications' Pride Month issues in 2004 (meaning that I drew it in May, of course), observing that Gay Pride celebrations were no longer found exclusively in major metropolitan cities.

"Boy Meets Boy" was one of those "reality" TV shows — on Bravo if I remember correctly. A gay twist on "The Bachelor," the main contestant was presented with several potential male suitors to choose among — the catch being that some of them, unbeknownst to him, were straight.

I have no recollection who the geeky straight contestant was, whether he was the guy picked in the end, or whatever happened to him or anybody else connected with the show. And it's just as well.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 18, 1984

Let's keep talking about sex, but step back 20 more years to 1984.

That year, the Racine Unified School Board voted to reject five recommended textbooks, including two sex education books for teenage readers. Married and Single Life and Living Today offered frank discussion of the sorts of questions real adolescents have about relationships, loving, and, yes, sex. Beyond "When a man and a woman love each other very much they share a special kiss and have a baby."

The ban ignited controversy between Racinians who believed that teens deserve access to books that deal frankly and honestly with sex, and others who believed that frank and honest discussion of sex should wait until after teens grow up, get married, share a special kiss, and have children of their own.

The very night after my cartoon appeared in the local newspaper, the school board voted to reverse the ban on the two sex ed books. But the board upheld their vote on rejecting three American history textbooks for supposed liberal bias. The Journal Times reported that board member Barbara Scott said the textbook flap could have been avoided if the board had had time to review the books.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 14, 1994

Continuing with the local scene: Democrat Peter Barca was elected to Congress from Wisconsin's First Congressional District in 1993 to succeed Les Aspin, whom Bill Clinton had appointed Secretary of Defense. Aspin had represented the 1st CD since 1970, routinely trouncing his Republican challengers.

My crystal ball here proved faulty. Republican realtor Mark Neumann, who had narrowly lost the 1993 special election, won the rematch in the 1994 GOP wave. A series of Republicans have held the seat ever since, mostly with only token opposition whom the Democratic National Congressional Committee never lifted a finger to help.

In the meantime, Peter Barca went back to representing Kenosha in Madison, including six years as Assembly Minority Leader, before accepting Governor Tony Evers's appointment as Secretary of the Department of Revenue. This year, he's running for Congress again, hoping to unseat three-term incumbent Bryan Steil.

For the moment, the DNCC thinks that Steil might be vulnerable to a challenge. Unlike the other Democratic congressional candidates here since 1998, Barca has plenty of governmental experience — although heading the Department of Revenue is a point on his résumé that Republicans will be more eager to emphasize than he will.

June, 2014

And finally, I began sketching this cartoon ten Junes ago after Judge Barbara Crabb of the United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, ruled my state’s antigay “marriage amendment” unconstitutional. 

Before inking it, I saw that Wisconsin State Journal editorial cartoonist Phil Hands had published a similar cartoon of the sailor and miner shaking hands. He's syndicated throughout Wisconsin, whereas I haven't been published in my home state since InStep magazine folded in 2003. So I decided not to send this cartoon out to my editors at Q Syndicate, on the theory that few readers elsewhere would recognize the men on the Badger State flag.

But I inked, scanned, and colorized it anyway, and here it is again.

Q Toon: The Sunshine State

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his fellow Republicans have their "Don't Say Gay" bill to impose their version of political correctness on state educators, but they haven't succeeded in muzzling their critics. The Walt Disney Company has joined the ranks of some 200 companies from Mattel to Deutsche Bank USA standing up for academic freedom and LGBTQ+ kids.

DeSantis gets all upset when someone calls his law "Don't Say Gay." He complains that those words were not in the bill, so ipso facto, Don't Say Don't Say Gay. 

Heck, just because it authorizes any pearl-clutching Karens and Darrens with an encyclopedic knowledge of that one verse in Leviticus to sue for Big Money any teacher who dares mention Oscar Wilde, Lil Nas X, or meeting Skyler's two mommies at the parent-teacher conference, that doesn't mean that teachers are actually verboten to say gay!

Well, tough titties. The Affordable Care Act didn't have the word "Obamacare" anywhere in it, but it didn't stop Republicans from calling it that.

Republicans are usually the experts in giving their laws names that poll a damned sight better than their contents, and in getting those names to stick. Democrats, and liberal groups in general, tend to be aggravatingly lousy at that sort of thing ("Defund the Police," anyone?), so I strongly suspect that renaming the Precious Little Children's Ears Protection Act "Don't Say Gay" was accomplished by a bunch of liberals who sat down to brainstorm "What would we call this bill if it were ours?"

Part of Democrats' problem is that their leadership prefers when possible to come up with names that make some sort of acronym. So they come up with the Revitalizing Our Transportation Infrastructure National Initiative, but can't get anyone to call it the ROTINI Act because 1.) Bridges are boring until they fall down, and 2.) They don't have anything to do with pasta.

Saddling the Florida bill and the carbon copies sure to follow in the other Red States with the epithet "Don't Say Gay," therefore, was clearly not the work of Democratic Party leaders in Washington D.C. It fits, it works, and it bugs the hell out of the DeSantis crowd.

Now if we could only give all those Ban the Trans bills a moniker that would irritate their authors just as much...

Five Toons in Search of a Theme

Having dealt with Stonewall, the end of World War I, and the start of Prohibition over the past couple weeks, this edition of Surveyback Saturday rummages through my own cartoons from 1989 for the Racine, Wisconsin Journal Times.

in Racine (WI) Journal Times, February, 1989

Most of my cartoons for the JT were about transient local issues and local persons, but here are a handful for which I guess you didn't have to have been there. I don't remember how the furor over Health: Choosing Wellness turned out, but you can probably easily imagine how the story shaped up: educrats select a sex ed textbook that accomplishes teaching kids important information about sex, vs. religious conservatives who don't want their kids learning about sex until their wedding night.

There was sex ed in Racine before 1989; I remember my dad taking me to what was called "Sixth Grade Boys' Hygeine" one evening, where the school showed us a film strip about (among other things) how babies are made. I also remember that I came away from that evening with a completely erroneous understanding of how babies are made.

in Racine Journal Times, April 7, 1989

1989 was the year Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds was accused of gambling on games in which he played or managed. For those of you younger than us baby boomers, my cartoon riffs on a series of TV commercials for a brokerage firm.

in Racine Journal Times, June 2, 1989

I drew these last three cartoons to accompany editorials the Journal Times announced ahead of time and invited readers send in their comments to be printed on the same day as the editorials. "Training wage" was one of those Republican counter-proposals to raising the minimum wage, the idea being that employers could offer new employees a less-than-minimum wage for some set period of time.

The Democratic proposal at the time was to raise the minimum wage, then at $3.25/hour since January, 1981, to $4.35 per hour; the 60-day "training wage" was supported by President George H.W. Bush and Governor Tommy Thompson. But as one letter-writer pointed out, why wouldn't "unscrupulous employers hire unskilled people at the lower training wage, retain them for a few weeks and then fire them when they are eligible for an increased wage and fringe benefits. Then these employers hire another group of unskilled workers at the lower, training wage"?

Bush and Congress agreed to raise the minimum wage to $4.25 in stages over the next two years, with a training wage of $3.35 in 1990 and $3.61 in 1991, restricted to laborers aged 16 to 19.

in Racine Journal Times, July 20, 1989

In July, the Journal Times invited readers' opinions of Wisconsin's child support law determining what non-custodial parents are expected to provide to custodial parents in cases of divorce. Responses were numerous and strong; the JT quoted one non-custodial father who showed up at the newspaper office in person but who didn't want his name used: "All I need to do is say how I feel about it and my ex-wife will haul me back into court faster than you can imagine."

in Racine Journal Times, July 4, 1989

Since it's a long Independence Day Weekend for many of you, how better to close today's installment than by resurrecting the 1989 controversy over flag burning. The Supreme Court had ruled that burning the flag in protest was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, so Bush and the GOP proposed adding another amendment to criminalize that form of protest.

That amendment never got very far; it was far more effective as an issue to whip up the Republican base than as actual legislative policy. And they soon found railing against gay people was more effective still.

Which is why you would be free to burn your Betsy Ross Flag shoes from Nike, but tossing them at Colin Kaepernick can get you charged with assault and battery.

And wearing them might also be illegal.

Q Toon: Heaven and Michele

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate👼Jan 11, 2018 EditorialCartoonists.com

Former Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann announced on the Christian Broadcasting Network that she might consider running for the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Al Franken, but she hadn't heard from God on the matter quite yet. Editorial cartoonists are now waiting with bated breath in hopes that God gives the go-ahead to the woman who believes that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, that Iraq and Libya should have reimbursed the U.S. for overthrowing their leaders, that Barack Obama was allowing Islamic extremists to impose Sharia law in the U.S. by 2015, and that

"Because our K-12 public school system, of which ninety per cent of all youth are in the public school system, they will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality."

But wait, there's more.

"What a bizarre time we’re in, Jan, when a judge will say to little children that you can’t say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.”

“You have a teacher talking about his gayness. [The elementary school student] goes home then and says 'Mom! What’s gayness? We had a teacher talking about this today.' The mother says 'Well, that’s when a man likes other men, and they don’t like girls.' The boy’s eight. He’s thinking, 'Hmm. I don’t like girls. I like boys. Maybe I’m gay.' And you think, 'Oh, that’s, that’s way out there. The kid isn’t gonna think that.' Are you kidding? That happens all the time. You don’t think that this is intentional, the message that’s being given to these kids? That’s child abuse.”

"I am not here bashing people who are homosexuals, who are lesbians, who are bisexual, who are transgender. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders."

"So now we find out these people are making decisions based on our politics and beliefs, and they're going to be in charge of our health care. There's a huge national database that's being created right now. Your health care, my health care, all the Fox viewers' health care, their personal, intimate, most close to the vest secrets will be in that database, and the IRS is in charge of that database? So the IRS will have the ability potentially — will they? — to deny health care, to deny access, to delay health care? This is serious! Based upon our political beliefs? That's why we have to repeal Obamacare."

Of course, the last time political wags thought the very idea of a dimwitted, factually-challenged narcissist running for political office ought to be good for a laugh, we ended up with President Trump.

Conventional wisdom, which tends to emanate from NYC, DC and LA, not Lake Wobegon, is that Minnesota is a Blue State; but it's worth remembering that Al Franken was only elected Senator in 2008 by the slimmest of margins. Republicans can and do win statewide races there; Minnesota Democrats have won only five senatorial elections and two gubernatorial races over the last 20 years.

Both of Minnesota's Senate seats will be up for grabs this year. The last time that happened, in 1978, Republicans won both races.

If that should happen again, heaven help us.

Drawing Board of Education

Your kids may be on spring break, but here at Bergetoons, it's Back-to-Schoolback Saturday.

I started my editorial cartoon career forty years ago by drawing about our education system — a topic of interest to me since I was still in school at the time. The 1970s in my hometown were marked by union strikes interrupting every other school year, starting with a custodians' union strike in 1970. Most of the strikes lasted a couple of weeks, but a teachers' strike my senior year lasted 50 days — starting in January and lasting all the way through February and into March.

With plenty of time on my hands, I took ballpoint pen to paper and drew the next two cartoons, my first editorial cartoons to be printed in an honest-to-goodness daily newspaper. (Caricatured on the left of this first one is union negotiator Jim Ennis, who had a conveniently round face; on the right is school board negotiator Thatcher Peterson, who didn't.)

To make up for lost school days once classes finally resumed, the district scheduled classes on Saturdays and extended the school year until June 30. We seniors were graduated weeks earlier, however, in order for schools to send our records to colleges and universities on time. It also gave us a slight edge getting summer jobs.

Racine's experience with teachers' strikes was hardly unique. Between 1969 and 1974, there were 50 teachers' strikes in Wisconsin, most notably the 1974 strike in Hortonville, during which the school district summarily fired 86 of its 88 teachers; townsfolk formed vigilante groups against the union members, and the union leader was hanged in effigy from the town water tower. Teachers unions from around the state sent members to support the Hortonville strikers, but to no avail. The Hortonville teachers appealed their firing all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found in favor of the school district.

I've encountered quite a few people locally whose sour opinion of labor unions is directly a result of  those days. A  jaundiced view  of schools and a reluctance to fund them adequately, on the other hand, predates the union issue. Funding schools through local property taxes makes sense from the point of view of having community-wide support of a community service, but it does require convincing property owners who have no children in school of the value of other people's education.

My generation went through four years of "split shift" middle schools because the community hadn't built enough schools to accommodate the baby boom. Even after we were graduated out of the system, voters only very grudgingly voted to repair or replace older schools that were literally crumbling to pieces.

Sex education has always been a thorny issue for schools. How much information is too much? How much education is not enough?

Sex Ed has been one factor pushing some parents to take their kids out of the public schools; not wanting their kids taught science is another. It furthermore stands to reason that children do better in schools where the whole class is motivated and all parents are invested in the kids' education. Public schools must teach the talented and the indifferent alike, whether the parents have the time or inclination to get involved or not.

Along the way, private school parents have become convinced that it's not fair that they should still have to pay for public schools as well as their private tuition. Thus arose the idea that kids going to private schools should be entitled to public tax dollars, too; its proponents gave their voucher programs the name "School Choice."

The above cartoon fairly encapsulates one of the problems I have with subsidizing private schools. But when I was drawing for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, their editorial stance was firmly in favor of school choice, and they occasionally wanted cartoons that reflected that viewpoint. It can be a good exercise every once in a while to try one's hand at drawing a cartoon with which one disagrees, although I wouldn't recommend making a career of it.

Along came Scott Walker and Republican control of all levers of state government after the 2010 elections. Recognizing them as the last institutional support of the Democratic party, teachers' and other public employee unions were the Republicans' first target. Koch brothers radio and TV ads stoking public resentment of public sector workers. For 30 years, private sector workers had seen their jobs sent overseas and their wages, at best, stagnant. The students of Hortonville and all the other stricken schools in the 1970s were now all grown up and ready to pay those teachers back.

With Republicans now in charge of all levers of the federal government, this will become a national issue yet again. I just posted this last cartoon only a month ago, but I think it's worth another look, since mercurial American President Donald Trump hasn't flip-flopped on subsidizing private education.

Yet.

2015 in Review, part 1

Proving that Christians do not have a corner on the market for loopy televangelists, a Turkish cleric claims that masturbation will result in "pregnant hands" in the afterlife:

Istanbul-based televangelist Mücahid Cihad Han [right], who is active on Twitter and has his own channel on YouTube, made the remarks on May 24 while answering questions from viewers on the 2000 TV channel.
Han initially looked puzzled when a viewer said he “kept masturbating, although he was married, and even during the Umrah”, a pilgrimage to Mecca that can be undertaken by Muslims at any time of the year, unlike the Haj which is performed in the last month of the Islamic calendar.
The televangelist claimed Islam strictly prohibited masturbation as it was a “haram” (forbidden) act, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.
“Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over (their) rights,” he said, referring to what he claimed was a saying of Prophet Mohammed.

So that's where the phrase "pregnant paws" comes from!

Q Toon: The Ring

Bless Pat Robertson's little heart for gift wrapping such a tempting cartoon topic for me in time for me to get it drawn before the Labor Day (and Harley Davidson anniversary) holiday weekend!

With everything else going on in the world, you could easily have missed the story -- indeed, Pat Robertson's people have done everything they could to hide it: the exchange was immediately removed from Christian Broadcasting Company's on-line copy of the 700 Club program, and his lawyers exercised CBN's copyright protections against whoever posted the sermonette on YouTube.

But the footage survives on the Huffington Post -- I guess even Pat Robertson's lawyers can't take on Arianna Huffington.

In the first two panels of this cartoon, I've quoted Mr. Robertson as closely as I can in the space I have to work with. Responding to a caller who had been giving a parishioner rides between his nursing home and his church and then discovered that the man had AIDS, here's what Robertson actually said:

“There are laws now, I think the homosexual community has put these draconian laws on the books that prohibit people from discussing this particular affliction. You can tell somebody you had a heart attack, you can tell them they've got high blood pressure, but you can’t tell anybody you've got AIDS...
"You know what they do in San Francisco. Some in the gay community there, they want to get people, so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger. Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder."

Well, isn't that special.

According to the "apology" posted by Robertson's lawyers, here's what the second portion of that bizarre statement referred to:

"In my own experience, our organization sponsored a meeting years ago in San Francisco where trained security officers warned me about shaking hands because, in those days, certain AIDS-infected activists were deliberately trying to infect people like me by virtue of rings which would cut fingers and transfer blood."

Recalling the days when police departments rushed to supply their officers with latex gloves to reduce their exposure to HIV-positive bodily fluids, one can imagine, I suppose, that "trained security officers" might have warned Mr. Robertson against all manner of dangers from ACT-UP, from blow-darts to retrovirus-tipped umbrellas to exploding remote-controlled toy cars.

As far as the "draconian laws" that prohibit anyone from talking about AIDS, the only such laws I can think of were crafted by the folks on Robertson's side of the cultural divide, who claimed to be protecting children from exposure to so-called alternative lifestyle choices. (You know, just like the Russians are doing now.) I don't recall any AIDS activists holding up Ronald Reagan's silence on AIDS as a model for the nation.

QToon: Don't Say Gay

Republican legislators in Missouri and Tennessee are pushing "Don't Say Gay" bills, which prohibit any mention of homosexuality in sex education or, for that matter, any mention by a gay or lesbian teacher of his or her personal life at school. From a Huffington Post article:

[Missouri] House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Andrew Koenig (R-Winchester) told HuffPost. "It is a pretty political subject. I know there are a lot of parents that do not want the homosexual agenda taught in the schools." Koenig said he has heard of what he called a "homosexual agenda" being taught in elementary school, but when questioned, said he did not know of specific incidents "off the top of my head."

From that same article, there's this little insight into the mindset of the people who come up with this stuff:

State Rep. Steve Cookson (R-Fairdealing), the bill's principal author, was not available for comment. Cookson's assistant, Agnes Rackers, said Cookson rarely speaks to people from outside his southeastern Missouri district.

Q Toon: None So Blind As One Who Tennessee

To be fair, what the legislation up for a vote in Tennessee actually says is that teachers in grades kindergarten through grade 8 would be forbidden from any deviation from the assigned sex education curriculum. (There will be no problem finding a curriculum that avoids any mention of homosexuality. Heck, the Texas School Board has probably devised a sex education curriculum that avoids any mention of sex.)

I look forward to future legislation prohibiting teachers from deviating from assigned curricula for math, spelling, and, of course, science. We wouldn't want curious students to find out about evolution or climate change before they can be indoctrinated against them, and the same goes for imaginary numbers and rules for apostrophe usage.