This Week's Sneak Peek

The past several weeks, I've drawn nonagenarian military generals, homely registers of deeds, peeping Coach Toms, and an elephant chef. Every once in a while, however, I feel the need to draw something the "bar rags" that run my cartoon might appreciate. Something for those readers who pick up the issue for the photos.

At the risk of annoying the editors of publications that take their journalistic mission more seriously, here ya go.

After M*A*S*H*, the Deluge

I failed to get a Sinkback Saturday post in yesterday; I had wanted to post a cartoon I'd drawn during Pope John Paul II's first visit to the United States, and a subsequent complaint about the cartoon, but I can't seem to find them.

So instead and a day late, here's a follow-up to last week's cartoon, from 1983.

The CBS comedy M*A*S*H* ran for eleven seasons -- almost three times as long as active hostilities in the Korean War on which it was based. And frankly, it had jumped the shark well beforehand, but was a top-rated program for its network.

I didn't get to see the final program when it originally aired. (I was acting in a local theatre production. The crew had it on a TV backstage, so I did catch a few moments of it; but for the whole show, I had to wait for the episode to be rerun at the end of the summer.) Like the series itself, the final episode dragged on too long, trying to give each of its major characters a Emmy-nomination-worthy send-off.

And there was, in fact, an attempt to squeeze more ratings success out of the expired franchise with the series After-M*A*S*H*, in which Col. Harry Potter, Father Mulcahy and Max Klinger went home to run a rural medical clinic, but that show didn't last long. CBS was already running Trapper John M.D., a medical drama with barely any real connection to M*A*S*H* at all but with a greater degree of success.

China Beach would eventually come along to satisfy the viewership for medical war television, but it wisely had no connection to M*A*S*H* whatsoever.

Francis at the U.N.

--from Pope Francis's address to the United Nations this morning.

Q Toon: Ossified Officers' Club

President Obama last week nominated Eric K. Fanning to be Secretary of the Army. Fanning, 47, has held a variety of Pentagon posts throughout the Obama administration. If confirmed, Fanning would be the first openly gay head of any branch of the U.S. military.

Presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee (R-1947) reacted to Fanning's nomination as if Obama had named Neil Patrick Harris to the post.

"It's clear President Obama is more interested in appeasing America's homosexuals than honoring America's heroes," the former Arkansas governor said in a statement released by his campaign. "Veterans suicide is out-of-control and military readiness is dangerously low, yet Obama is so obsessed with pandering to liberal interest groups he's nominated an openly gay civilian to run the Army. Homosexuality is not a job qualification. The U.S. military is designed to keep Americans safe and complete combat missions, not conduct social experiments."

Putting aside the detail that Veterans' Affairs is a completely different cabinet department these days, I'd like to address a few words to the former Arkansas governor.

Now, then, Mr. Huckabee, I lampooned you last week. You may be kind of fun to draw, and you may need all the publicity you can get, but I only get one opportunity per week to draw something for syndication. You don't get to be in my cartoon two weeks in a row just because you found something else to get your homophobic panties in a bunch about.

Try pacing yourself. Even if you have to drop out of the race before the Iowa caucuses, that's still four months away.

Let Rick Santorum throw one of these antigay tantrums. I haven't drawn him since 2012, and his campaign probably won't even make it to Columbus Day. Or perhaps Lindsey Graham, who, unlike all the other Republicans left in the race, has some military service in his record. I'm sure he would love the attention as well, although I hear he might be a little soft on the antigay schtick.

So anyway, Mike, I appreciate your kind consideration in trying to keep me supplied with fodder for my LGBT cartoons, but you really are in danger of becoming a Johnny One-Note, and after a while, that's just no fun to draw.

The Donald on Line One

Okay, this still counts as the third installment in my series of caricatures of 2016 presidential candidates, because Scott Walker was still nominally in the race when I posted the one of him on Sunday.

I had another Donald Trump sketch that I'd been working on, on and off, for months without ever really arriving at something I was pleased with. Then, I started doodling in my notebook between events at the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning on Friday, resulting in this.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Anyone looking for beefcake in my cartoon this week will probably be sorely disappointed and should probably just check out the reportage about ABC reporter Gio Benitez proposing to his boyfriend in Paris. I can't promise any sort of sexual material in this week's Q Syndicate cartoon.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

The Rise and Fall of Darth Snotwalker

For a while there, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was flying high in neighboring Iowa, where they had heard nothing but glowing reports from Wisconsin media of how Walker had faced down all those uppity school teachers and cut the Democrats out of government. He divided! He conquered! He rode a Harley!

And yet, in the glare of national media attention, all his faults that had somehow escaped the attention of Journal Communications Inc. began to weigh him down. Local TV news might accept the notion of building a wall across the Canadian border, or that taking three positions on a single question does not constitute changing his position, but you can't Face the Nation and get away with that crap.