October on the Ones

I lead this Saturday Flashback with an unpublished cartoon I drew after Herblock died 20 years ago this past Thursday. The cartoon references several Herblock cartoons and recurring characters. I was tempted to put together a retrospective of his over 70-year career today — the man published cartoons almost up to the day he died — but you can visit the Library of Congress's exhibit of his work, or buy the book.

So rather than incur the wrath of the Herblock Foundation, I herewith present a smattering of the other cartoons Little Ol' I drew in Octobers of 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011. Let's start with the little oldest:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Oct. 1, 1981

President Reagan had an advertisement on TV, if I remember correctly, urging viewers to call their congressional representatives to express their belief in Reagan's "bipartisan economic recovery plan" —i.e., tax cuts. (Finding a few Democrats willing to sign on to a Republican bill was an easier lift than the opposite is nowadays, especially since there were Democrats to choose from who would soon start calling themselves Republicans.) For the moment, however, the stock market appeared shaky, and a recession was indeed around the corner.

There must be over 100 horizontal lines in that cartoon, all painstakingly drawn by hand. The thick ones behind the window were the most challenging.—

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Oct. 22, 1981

Somewhere along the line, all of my cartoons from the fall of 1981 have somehow gotten mislaid. I still had them a few years ago when I posted one I drew in October, 1981 about the situation in Poland; I had certainly scanned that from the original. The originals aren't where they belong now, so unless Mom or I clipped them for our respective scrapbooks, I have to resort to copying them from the University of Wisconsin Ranger on-line archives, like this one above.

Continuing along to 1991...

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Oct. 3, 1991

Members of the Supreme Court have been at pains lately to deny that they are "partisan hacks." What they cannot deny is that for over half a century, the selection process by which most of them made it onto the Court has been overtly partisan. 

Reacting to civil rights rulings of the 1950's and '60's, conservative partisan hacks have been determined to remake the Court in their own image. Liberal Congresses were able to block the most egregious nominees — Clement Haynsworth, G. Harrold Carswell, Robert Bork — but not right-wingers William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, or, in spite of allegations of sexual harassment, Clarence Thomas, now the most senior Justice on the Court.

in Racine, WI Journal Times, Oct. 17, 1991

Conservatives, for their part, have "Borked" Abe Fortas, Homer Thornberry and Merrick Garland, and pressured presidents of their party to name "No More Souters." Thus we have six currently serving Republican appointees who are all products of the right-wing Federalist Society. I was startled to hear it put this way on NPR this week, but the center of today's Court is no longer Chief Justice John Roberts (himself a conservative George W. Bush pick), but Kevin-Boofing-Kavanaugh!

in Milwaukee WI Business Journal, Oct. 5, 2001

Moving right along to 2001, the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee wrote an editorial critical of labor lawyers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. I drew a silly cartoon to go along with it.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2001

Of course, there were weightier issues in the fall of 2001 than genii safety. The Bush II administration was about to launch a 20-year war in Afghanistan, so naturally, the Christian Right weighed in with their reservations... about the nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Romania.

As with Bill Clinton's appointment of James Hormel to be Ambassador to Luxembourg, antigay groups such as the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America opposed Bush The Younger's appointment of Michael E. Guest as Ambassador to Romania. But unlike with Hormel, the Senate approved Guest's appointment. Also unlike Hormel, who was pressured into promising not to bring his then partner to Luxembourg, Guest's partner, Alex Nevarez, moved into the ambassador's residence with him — with Secretary of State Colin Powell's explicit blessing.

“It put the Secretary of State on record as supporting homosexuality as if it were as normal, healthy and morally sound as marriage," sniffed Concerned Women for America's Robert Knight. "This means that America will be represented to the Romanian people by an openly homosexual couple. How trendy. How decadent.”

for Q Syndicate, October, 2011

Ten years later, when antigay activists were pushing an amendment to enshrine marriage discrimination in the Minnesota state constitution, it only seemed natural to set a cartoon in the Mall of America.

Besides, I enjoy giving odd and punning names to imaginary specialty shops.

Hormel, Hormel, Hormel, Eggs, Bacon and Hormel

Why another post about Ambassador James Catherwood Hormel?

He wasn't the first public figure to ask for an original of one of my cartoons about him, but he is the first one to publish that cartoon in a book, so he holds a special place in my career. The book is his memoir, Fit to Serve, much of which relates what it took for him to get himself appointed by President Bill Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg — America's first openly gay ambassador to a foreign country (not counting James Buchanan).

Hormel and the Clinton State Department initially expected trouble from vociferous homophobe Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), but were surprised when Helms was satisfied with Hormel's promise that his boyfriend would not live with him in the ambassador's residence. There being no possible legal relationship between Hormel and his boyfriend in 1998, any sort of spousal benefits involved was completely out of the question to begin with.

Q Syndicate, May, 1998

Instead, it was Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) who put holds on Hormel's nomination, joined after the holds became public by Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH). Their holds came in response to a right-wing smear campaign; someone had dug up video from KOFY-TV's coverage of the 1996 Pride Parade in San Francisco in which Hormel was chatting with the television hosts as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence passed by. 

As Hormel described the incident in Fit to Serve,

"We can't miss these girls!" [reporter] Ginger [Casey] said. From background notes, Ginger read: "They acquired those genuine habits from a convent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Legend has it that they told the Mother Superior that they needed them because they were putting on The Sound of Music."

I laughed, as did [station owner] Jim [Gabbert].

She followed up, spontaneously: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

I continued laughing, heartily. That's what I did. Not a single word, just a few laughs. It all seemed like good fun.

The vast right-wing conspiracy, the Family Research Council, and their Republican cohorts painted the episode as proof that Hormel was anti-Catholic, bound to offend the sensibilities of the devoutly Catholic Luxembourgoisie (Luxembourg governmental assurances that Hormel would be welcome notwithstanding).

Q Syndicate, January, 1999

This is the cartoon in Hormel's book, drawn when the Senate returned from its December recess to find that Hormel's appointment was still on the docket. I'm somewhat curious why the book describes the cartoon as having appeared in the Seattle Gay News when Mr. Hormel might have been more likely to have seen it in the San Francisco Bay Area Reporter or Washington D.C. Metro Weekly, both of which ran my cartoons in those days.

It may have been a good thing that Hormel (or whatever staffer contacted me through Q Syndicate) hadn't asked for the original of the cartoon at the top of this post; instead of the usual bristol board, I had drawn it on a less firm type of artists paper. At some point, it got crumpled and torn by a rubber band I was using to hold that year's cartoons together. On the other hand, if I had received the request before the cartoon was damaged, it was on paper that, unlike bristol board, would have rolled up easily into a mail tube.

Q Syndicate, June, 1999

So anyway, James Hormel made it to Luxembourg by virtue of a recess appointment when the Senate adjourned for the summer, and I drew a third cartoon about the new ambassador. The embassy did not request the original of this cartoon.

Ambassador Hormel served out the remaining months of the Clinton administration representing American interests in Luxembourg. 

Q Syndicate, January, 2001

Surprisingly, even after that short tenure, one of the next administration's cabinet appointees, former Senator John Ashcroft, had to defend his opposition to Hormel's appointment on his way to becoming Attorney General.

Q Syndicate, January, 2013 (drawn in December)

By the time President Barack Obama nominated Republican another former Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, to be Secretary of Defense in his second term, keeping Luxembourg safe for heterosexual privilege was no longer quite the guaranteed safe issue in Washington, D.C. that it was in Nebraska in 1998.

Hagel's 1998 comments weren't enough to derail his nomination in 2013; they presented only a minor hiccup on his way to the Pentagon. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had been repealed in December of 2010, allowing LGBTQ+ military personnel to serve openly, and was by 2013 a settled issue.

And Hagel did apologize to Mr. Hormel during the course of Hagel's confirmation process, an apology Mr. Hormel accepted.

Q Toon: LGBTQIAA2SGOP+

 

I've quoted GQP Chair Ronna McDonald's Pride Month tweet directly in the first panel of this week's cartoon. She concluded her tweet by explaining that "we will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs."

There has been plenty of pushback to McDonald's tweet, starting with Chasten Buttigieg challenging her to read her own party's platform on LGBTQ rights. The GQP didn't produce a national platform in 2020, but its 2016 platform and its various state party platforms came out resoundingly against LGBTQ rights.

The Transportation Secretary's husband, a Chicago area teacher, also noted that "Those with 'deeply held religious beliefs' are often the parents who force their LGBTQ children out of the home and onto the street. I've met with those kids. 40% of homeless youth in this country are LGBTQ."

Other tweeters have scoffed that doubling LGBTQ support comes from having such low number to start with; but let's be honest. We can be found in every walk of life. Even this guy:

There are more Ric Grenells, Caitlyn Jenners, Tammy Bruces and Milo Yiannopouloi out there than more mainstream LGBTQ+ folk might care to admit. Not enough to have any great influence in their party's platforms, surely, but they exist.

Right-wingers have their own problems with McDaniel's tweet. 

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins tweeted: "Sounds good in a tweet, but the reality is religious freedom is being endangered by those demanding forced acceptance of the LGBTQ agenda from the elementary classroom to the corporate board room and everything in between. There can be no compromise on our First Freedom."

"Stop," said Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican. "We don't want men to play on girls' sports teams and castration of children. Ronna needs to adjust this horrible wrong-headed messaging or resign."

Who is the real Requblican Party any more? McDaniel and Grinell, or Perkins and Rogers? Those new Requblican converts deserve to know what they're getting into. Check out another tweet in response to the GQP Chair:

One small perk of being a white gay guy who can blend-in with Republicans:

When Republicans think they’re in friendly company, I get to hear *precisely* what they think of people who aren’t straight/white/Christian/etc.

It isn’t pretty – and you aren’t fooling anyone.

— Calamity-Era Tom (@HylianTom) June 3, 2021

Say, Tom, that wouldn't have been you blending in at the Capitol, was it?

Q Toon: Lost

GOProud has vanished. The ultra-conservative gay Republican group was to Log Cabin Republicans what the Tea Partisans are to Establishment Republicans -- hardline, doctrinaire, and bitchy.

They outed a Rick Perry pollster in December 2011; they endorsed Mitt Romney, who opposed same-sex marriage; they got into social-media fights with all comers; and they called conservative activist Cleta Mitchell a “bigot,” not especially helpful considering she was on a board that would decide whether they could sponsor the Conservative Political Action Conference, a longtime GOProud goal.

The group split away from the Log Cabineers, who had failed to issue knee-jerk endorsements of Republican candidates who actively opposed gay rights. GOProud's legislative agenda for 2011 was virtually indistinguishable from that of other conservative Republican groups; only its opposition to a federal antigay marriage amendment separated it from the Family Research Council. Even the "Defending Our Community" section of their platform referred to opposition to gun control.

I've had second thoughts about sending this cartoon to Q Syndicate rather than the one about marriage equality in Wisconsin posted here on Tuesday. The Wisconsin cartoon has gotten a lot of positive response in spite of my concern that few readers outside of Wisconsin would recognize that it was based on the seal on the Wisconsin state flag.

But I worry that while readers may pick up the reference to the search for a missing airplane in this week's cartoon, they won't have any awareness of GOProud. GOProud may have seen themselves as Dorothy Parker, but in the end, they were Baby Jane Hudson.

A Brief History of Wisconsin Recall Elections

Now that the 2011-2012 spitstorm of Wisconsin recall elections is over, our elected representatives in Madison (the Republican ones, anyway) have promised to rewrite the state Constitution to make recalls more difficult -- requiring a charge of official malfeasance. They will probably move pretty quickly on that idea, too, while resentment of the recall process remains high.

But before that happens, let's take a quick look at previous recall elections in Wisconsin.

I'm going to stick with the recalls in my lifetime -- the ones I've drawn cartoons about -- starting with the recall of George Petak in 1996. Republican Petak represented Racine County in the State Senate.Republican  Tommy Thompson was Governor, and Republicans held a one-vote margin in the Senate. The Milwaukee Brewers wanted to replace County Stadium, and wanted Wisconsin taxpayers to chip in big time for the proposed Miller Park Stadium.

Instead of hiking taxes on the entire state, Thompson and the Republicans came up with the idea of imposing a .1% sales tax on Milwaukee County and the four counties which border it. Opposition to the tax in Racine County on Milwaukee's southern border was strong (not helped by Thompson's telling the rest of the state to "stick it to 'em"). Petak opposed the tax plan as well, but Senate leaders kept bringing their plan up for votes again and again, late into the night. Finally, at 4:00 in the morning, Petak changed his vote, and the tax plan passed.

Racine citizens started the recall process almost immediately. The Wisconsin Democratic Party claimed at first to have no part in the "No More Petax" drive, although that charade lasted about as long as the pretense that Petak and the Republicans had no connection to "push poll" telephone calls attacking the Democratic candidate, Kim Plache.

Plache, however, won the election, and Democrats gained the majority in the State Senate. Twelve years later, that .1% sales tax is still in place, and the recall is still a sore point with Wisconsin Republicans. It's also not a good idea for Racine residents to identify themselves as such at Brewer home games or Milwaukee sports bars.

The next year, right-wing religious groups, led by Family Research Council chair Gary Bauer and "Virginia Citizens for Reform" (and supported by presidential candidate Steve Forbes) launched a recall effort against Wisconsin's two Democratic U.S. Senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, based on their support of women's right to choose. The drive was unsuccessful, and was ultimately ... aborted.

Which brings us to the recall of Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament in 2002. Ament was a reasonably popular County Executive -- at least, the Milwaukee Business Journal, for whom I was drawing at the time, and the Journal Sentinel liked him. Then the lucrative pension system for Milwaukee County employees and its capacity for bankrupting the county came to light and all hell broke loose. A group calling itself Citizens for Responsible Government mounted a recall drive against Ament. And they would have succeeded, too, if Ament had not resigned from office (thus saving his own $87,000 pension). Seven county supervisors lost recall races over the scandal.


An election to elect a new County Executive was held that summer, and the victor was none other than one Scott Kevin Walker.

Update: And if you perceived a link between the Milwaukee County pension scandal and the Republicans' 2012 attack on unions, give yourself a hand. Bruce Murphy has the best post mortem I've read yet on the bipartisan creation of the scandal and how unions are now paying the price for it.


There has also been a recall of the mayor of Sheboygan earlier this year -- a sordid affair involving public drunkenness and sexual assault. I haven't drawn any cartoons about it, but I bring it up because it is the only one of these recalls that involved "official malfeasance."

Q Toon: Joe Walsh, Family Supporter

This news item may not have the shock value of Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story, but we're giving it the notice it deserves here at Bergetoons. Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh (R-Teaparty, not the former Eagles guitarist) was recently named a "True Blue" member of Congress by the right-wing, gay-bashing Family Research Council. His "unwavering support of the family" falls somewhat short of supporting his own, however; he is more than $117,000 behind in child support payments to his ex-wife and children.

The thick nine-year-old divorce file in Cook County Circuit Court chronicles how every few years Laura Walsh has gone to court saying her ex-husband is not paying [child support] and asking a judge to order him to pay, sometimes garnishing his wages.

He claims that he and his ex agreed to let him slack off on child support.

Running for Congress is mighty darned expensive, you know.

Dancing with the Stars 'toon

Religious conservatives have found a new frenzy to get into with the announcement that Chaz Bono will be on this fall's Dancing With the Stars. Chaz is famous for having been the goldilocked baby daughter of Sonny and Cher, who would bring her out at the end of their 1970's TV show to be cute while they sang "I Got You, Babe."

At 42, Chaz is now Cher's son, which deeply upsets the moral monopoly in America. They are very concerned with the question of which lavatory people go to the bathroom in, and their Dancing With the Stars experience will be totally ruined because they can't help but spend the entire show picturing Chaz taking a dump.
Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council is urging his minions to boycott the show:

"Email ABC Network and let them know that we will not tolerate these subjects being forced into our homes. DWTS airs 8/7 central when children are awake and Christian families will not enhance the ratings by watching the show when it returns September 19 unless this issue is taken care of and these cast members are replaced."

"One Million Moms" whine "This is completely unacceptable, and Christians should not watch the show. No excuses." Fox News Asshat Dr. Keith Ablow advises the nation not to let children watch any DWTS episodes in which Chaz appears, adding, "Chaz Bono should not be applauded for asserting she is a man (and goes about trying to look like one) any more than a woman who believes she will be happier without arms, has them removed and then continues to assert that she was right all along—her self-concept was that of a double amputee." (I'm sure that Ablow is similarly against facelifts, tummy tucks, and hair plugs.)

I haven't been watching DWTS, but now I suppose I'll have to just to offset one of those transphobic Moms... even though I'm not a Nielsen Family, and it won't make a difference to the show's ratings.
Meanwhile, if you're one of those Million Moms, and Dancing With the Stars has been part of your family's weekly routine all these years, and you're petrified of having to explain to your children how Chaz used to be Chastity, I have a suggestion. Instead of boycotting Dancing With the Stars, it might be easier to keep your children from watching 40-year-old reruns of Sonny and Cher.

Q Toon: A Very Hate Group Christmas

This week's Q Syndicate cartoon features several of the antigay organizations recently named as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC): the American Family Association, National Organization for Marriage, the Family Research Council, the Liberty Council, and others.

The Family Research Council has responded by calling the SPLC, founded in 1971, "marginal," and took out an advertisement in Politico and the Washington Examiner headlined "Stop Hating/Start Debating" -- in essence, calling their designation as a hate group itself hateful. The tear-stained letter was co-signed by House Speaker-designate John Boehner and 21 other Republicans.

Crooks and Liars has a rundown of the debate here.

This Week's Totally Gay Cartoon

In Maine, the legislature passed, and the governor signed, a marriage equality bill. Christian Civic League Maine Family Council leader Michael S. Heath wrote an op-ed piece offering the observation that a spell of cold, damp weather and a potato blight just might be a sign of God being peeved with the state legislature and Governor Baldacci.

I just thought it curious that the right wing of this country firmly doubts that a century of CO2 and methane emissions by billions of people couldn't possibly affect global climate, but same-sex marriage can.

Incidentally, the cold snap in Maine has since broken.

But a tornado hit Minneapolis just as the ELCA Churchwide Assembly there was about to vote to adopt (by the exact 2/3 margin required!) a statement on human sexuality that pointedly refuses to condemn homosexuals. Hmmm.