And the Wall Came Tumbling Down

Sovietback Saturday puts aside the works of dead cartoonists this week to dredge up my own stuff from the momentous year 1989. That fall, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded in ousting three opponents of his glasnost and perestroika policies from the politburo, and even authorized a new degree of freedom for the state-run press.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., October 19, 1989

All the same, eyebrows were raised around the world when the Soviet news agency TASS reported, in all seriousness, that a three-eyed space alien clad in silver overalls and bronze boots landed in Voronezh and shot a 16-year-old boy with a device that made him disappear for a few minutes. Nor was it the only such story in Soviet media; Komsomolskaya Pravda reported finding a landing field for flying saucers near Perm, and printed a psychic interview with an extraterrestrial from the red star of the constellation of Libra.

Erich Honecker, head of state of East Germany since 1971, had been the communist official in charge of building the Berlin Wall in 1961. As protests in East Germany mounted and refugees from his regime found an escape route through Hungary and Czechoslovakia around his fortified East-West German border, Gorbachev rejected Honecker's pleas for Soviet help crushing dissidents. The 77-year-old Honecker was forced to resign on October 18.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers, Wis., October 26, 1989

The George H.W. Bush administration faced challenges in its own hemisphere: an attempted coup with U.S. backing in Panama failed to overthrow Manuel Noriega, who had voided the results of a fraud-riddled presidential elections in May rather than admit that his candidate had lost.

Through his rise from the Panamanian army, and head of intelligence, to becoming the country's military leader, Noriega had been on the CIA payroll since 1971. He helped fund the right-wing Contras in their civil war against the Nicaraguan government; U.S. intelligence agencies were well aware that drug trafficking was key to Noriega's financial assistance. When U.S. funding of the Contras came to an end after Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, the Contra insurgency came to an end and so did Noriega's usefulness to the CIA. He was suspected, furthermore, of passing intelligence on to the communist government of Cuba, the Medellin drug cartel, and anyone else who greased his palms.

in UW-M Post, November 9, 1989

The seas would prove no calmer —literally — during the U.S.-U.S.S.R. cruise summit in December.

Earlier posts have dealt with on the Polish situation, but I've given short shrift to what was going on in Hungary, the first country to go communist after World War I and the first country to be invaded by Russia after World War II. Fast forward to 1989, and Hungarian acting President Matyas Szuros publicly described the 1956 uprising as a "national independence movement" and declared that his nation was no longer a "People's Republic," which would certainly have gotten him hauled off to Moscow in chains 33 years earlier. Crowds on the streets jeered at Russian soldiers to go home, yet cheered Moscow's new leader with shouts of "Gorby! Gorby!"

in UW-M Post,  November 14, 1989

Then, in late October, Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Edvard Schevardnadze announced the eventual dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Brezhnev doctrine — the U.S.S.R. policy that "when forces hostile to socialism seek to reverse the development of any socialist country whatsoever," the Soviet military would invade and impose the Kremlin's will. In the words of Soviet spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, "You know the Frank Sinatra song My Way? Hungary and Poland are doing it their way. We now have the Sinatra doctrine."

And on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, November 16, 1989

I grew up in a world that had the freedom-loving democratic countries of Anglo America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand on the one side; and the rigid authoritarian communist countries on the other; and a whole lot of other countries stuck in a tug-of-war between them. There was an eternal state of Cold War, a precarious balancing act which could tumble into instant global annihilation at the slightest misstep anywhere.

As of November 9, 1989, all that changed. We saw a new age of peace and cooperation forged from the remnants of the Iron Curtain. There was talk of the "end of history," whatever that meant. If people in Russia and Eastern Europe had the power to triumph over their oppressive governments, perhaps people everywhere could find that same power.

in UW-M Post, November 30, 1989

P.S.: Speaking of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tienanmen, and all that, there's a 1991 cartoon of mine on page 368 of this rather formidable tome hot off the presses at Harper Collins in London:

...and in the soon-to-be published German translation from Random House GmbH. (It has been in this blog before, and no doubt will show up again two years hence.)

Q Toon: Symbolic Gesture

Last week, Procter and Gamble, the parent company of the makers of Always sanitary pads, yielded to protests from transgender and non-gender-conforming people and promised to remove the "Venus" symbol (♀) from their packaging.

Hormone treatments prevent menstruation in many transgender men, but not all; others do not or cannot take the treatments for one reason or another. As for non-binary and gender-fluid (oh, let's avoid that terminology for the moment) people, some dictates of biology simply do not pay attention to what goes on inside one's head.

If one is embarrassed purchasing tampons or pads — let alone calling them by their name — at least there needn't be a reminder of one's "dead gender" every time one opens the box.

Professionally outraged anti-LGBTQ group "One Million Moms" might have been expected to condemn Procter & Gamble's latest move, except that they had already fired their shots last spring over P&G commercials for Head & Shoulders and Gillette. The shampoo commercial featured a girl meeting her female date at prom; the razor commercial showed a father teaching his transgender son how to shave.

The disappearance of the ♀ from Always packaging has so far barely raised a hackle in the Million Moms neck of the woods. It isn't as if those Moms were likely to be confused about the purpose of the product, whatever it's called and even if the packaging were covered with ⚧s.

And by the way, to anyone still waiting for Mom or Dad to sit them down for the Birds And Bees discussion: the "mens" part of "menstruation" comes from the Latin word for "month" and has nothing to do with "men."

Certain transgender and non-gender-conforming persons notwithstanding.

This Week's Sneak Peek

A raid kills ISIS caliph Abu Bupkis Al-Baghdaddio in Syria, so Trump gives a self-congratulatory address to the nation, stages an operations room photo, gets booed at the World Series Game V — and I'm drawing about Procter & Gamble?

Sure looks like it.

1919's Rash of Lynching

Mercurial President Donald Trump brought up the subject of lynching earlier this week, so Sweptback Saturday takes the occasion to travel just slightly over a century into history to a time when lynching was running rampant in the U.S.

The Chicago race riots that we discussed here in August were just one episode out of many that would lead to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. The "Red Summer" continued well into the fall; the entire nation would be shocked by a mob riot in Omaha, Nebraska, on Sunday, September 28.

"Held Up!" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World,  September 30, 1919

A white mob set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse and hanged Mayor Edward Smith from traffic light, demanding that he release to them one William Brown, a black man accused of attacking a white woman. Authorities released some hundred or so prisoners being held at the four-story courthouse onto the roof. According to some accounts, the mob pushed past Sheriff Clark and seized Brown in a corridor; Clark's own account to the press was that other prisoners pushed Brown off the roof into the mob below.

"Dawn in Omaha" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October, 1919

Mayor Smith ended up in the hospital, and Brown ended up in the morgue, shot twice, hanged, and burned. (There are photographs, if you can stomach them, but I will neither include nor link to them here.) Army units under General Leonard Wood were sent to Omaha to restore order, effecting an undeclared martial law over the next two weeks.

But the most deadly riot of the Red Summer was in Elaine, Arkansas two days after the Omaha lynching, when whites panicked over a rumor that blacks were planning an armed insurrection. As many as 237 African-American residents of the small town may have been killed by the white mob. As a further injustice, 72 African-Americans were tried and convicted of murder, and twelve of them sentenced to death.

"Just a Nightmare" by Claude Shafer in Cincinnati Post,  October, 1919

What strikes me about the editorial cartoons I came across about these race riots and lynchings is that so many of them completely overlook the racial component central to the violence. Even John Cassel, whose cartoons praising African-American soldiers I've pointed out before, ignores the issue of race in his cartoon about the Omaha riot.

To some extent, that is because there were at the same time a number of workers' strikes beset by violence (largely blamed on the strikers, although the brutal tactics of law enforcement public and private certainly contributed to that mayhem). And the issues overlap: the official inquiry into the Elaine lynchings admitted no African-American testimony, but historians agree that there was no plot of armed revolt. Rather, black sharecroppers were attempting to organize union-style for more equitable terms from their white landowners. Elsewhere, employers brought in African-Americans as "scab" laborers during labor strikes, only exacerbating racial animosity.

Conflating a host of issues, Sidney Greene, below, cites "mob maniacs" as just the bottom-most of many things which might embarrass the U.S. in front of visiting royalty.

"Hide These 'Sights' from the Belgian King" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, October 3, 1919

Not surprisingly, the one cartoon I've found specifying race as its topic was by an African-American cartoonist, Leslie Rogers of the Chicago Defender.

"Sightseeing" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, October, 1919

For what it's worth, not every lynch mob resulted in mass murder. On Hallowe'en, hundreds of white citizens of Corbin, Kentucky, sparked by a report of a robbery, forced every black resident they could find in town out of their homes and into a train bound for Knoxville.

Rattling off a list of other lynchings in a October 1, 1919 editorial, the Philadelphia Public Ledger gave this mealy-mouthed sort-of condemnation of one of them:

"In Mt. Holly, N.J., there is talk of lynching a negro who attacked a white woman. If anything justifies a lynching, it is the crime with which this negro is charged. But nothing justifies a lynching. Lynching may be too good for the criminal. It is the damnable effect that it has on the mob and the reaction on the country at large that make it wholly bad."

"Oh, Little Brother" by Gaar Williams in Indianapolis News, October, 1919

Sen. John Sharp Williams (D-MS) leapt to the defense of the lynch mobs, harrumphing,

"In all the debates we have had here over these race disturbances, no mention has been made of the fact that they had, in most instances, their inception in attempts by negro men to violate white women. I will go as far as any man along the path of peace, and I will arbitrate any dispute which I think can be settled by peaceful means, but when it comes to a man regardless of his color, violating women, I surrender him to the first crowd."

As shocking as Senator Williams's statement is today, I suspect that the "attempts by negro men to violate white women" that incensed him and his mobs would elicit from even the most hypersensitive of today's #MeToo warriors a hesitant "Is that all?"

"At the Other End of the Lynchers' Rope" by J. N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, October 3, 1919

Consider also that, as a later grand jury in the Omaha case found, "Several reported assaults on white women had actually been perpetrated by whites in blackface," charging that figures in organized crime "premeditated and planned" the rioting. Their evidence included police reports that at least one white rioter was arrested wearing blackface.

Yet no white person was ever found guilty of participation in the riot.

Q Toon: Speaking of a Brexit

Chick-Fil-A opened its first shoppe in the United Kingdom earlier this month, but after protests over the company's support of antigay organizations and causes, the Oracle Mall where the restaurant is located shan't be renewing Chick-Fil-A's lease when it expires in April.

Straining credulity, the chicken chain claims that it never intended to extend the lease of its Reading restaurant beyond six months anyway. Opening a six-month pop-up seems a bizarre business model; one wonders how it's supposed to work. Perhaps after Reading, they open for six months out of a lorry in Ipswich, then for six months in a changing tent in Brighton, followed by six months in a shed in Hucknall Torkard.

✍

How to set a cartoon in England? A very wise cartoonist once counseled me that the best approach is to go there. Unfortunately, my only time in Blighty was an hour spent entirely in Heathrow Airport, which didn't strike me as a workable setting for this cartoon.

My view of England

So I set to imagining a British street scene. Mailbox? Check. Callbox? Check. Zebra crossing? Check. Extraneous "u" between the "o" and the "r"? Check. Double-decker bus? Must be behind the building.

But who can I cast in this cartoon? Characters from Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Benny Hill, Absolutely Fabulous, or Dr. Who might work; but not Mr. Bean (doesn't speak) or Downton Abbey (would never be walking in this neighbourhood).

Since this is a cartoon, however, I decided to feature British cartoon characters. It was either Andy Capp or resurrecting the cast of the cartoons of Carl Giles (1916-1995) of the Daily Express. Opting for the latter makes for an obscure reference on this side of the pond to be sure, and perhaps to the current generation on the other side of it as well.

These are two members of the "Giles family," frequently recurring characters in his post-war cartoons. Grandma Giles is thought to be patterned after Giles himself (there is some resemblance); she appears here with her granddaughter-in-law Vera.

Now, to be a proper homage to Giles, I should have tossed in some naughty detail just to see if I could get it past my editors.

This Weex Sneek Peek

I don't have a secret Twitter account.

But if I did, its handle would be Houston O'Howe.

EnviroStewardship: For the Birds

My father writes a monthly column on caring for the environment for the newsletter at his church. The following is the November column by John Berge, PhD.

Last month, I discussed the ELCA’s Social Statement, "Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice," which lists principles of solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability in very general terms. Recent information on the severe decline in the bird population of North America would suggest we are not doing a very good job in caring for the avian portion of creation. The Bible tells us that God notes the death of a single sparrow, and yet there are nearly three billion fewer birds now in North America than there were in 1970.

The tendency has been for us to look at the decline or recovery of individual species rather than the overall picture. As ecologist Hillary Young of the University of California, Santa Barbara was quoted in Science News, “Individual birds play an important role in ecosystems, including pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and controlling pests. Often it’s the common, abundant birds that keep these ecosystems ticking.”

Three major sources of this decline are generally blamed for the die off, all of which we as individuals can make a significant contribution to reducing. There are differences of opinion on the order of these three, so this list is not intended to say which is worse.

Predation by cats is certainly one of the top three — and possibly the top — that we can influence. Our pet cats do not have to be put out every night to “do their thing”; cats will quite easily adapt to a litter box. If every cat owner would make sure their cats are never outside unsupervised, we could greatly reduce this predation.

Another one of the top three is collision with windows. We used to have a few such incidences at our house every year until I put some of those self sticking decals on the windows near the bird feeders. Bird fatalities due to their seeing their reflection or a possible route to the other side dropped to zero. I am sure that most of these fatalities involve high rise buildings and migrating birds, but our experience would say that single family homes, by their sheer number, also contribute.

The third top cause is loss of habitat. We can blame farmers for planting right up to the edge of the field rather than leaving wild strips and trees along those edges, but our yards can be designed for birds or not. The robin is one of the few birds that really appreciate the large expanse of lawns, especially if we don’t kill off the worms with excessive chemicals and pesticides. Plants with seeds and fruits that the birds like, trees and shrubs for protection and nesting can improve their habitat as well as ours.

An interesting study recently showed that small, non-lethal doses of an insecticide used on seeds and nursery plants (a neonicotinoid) caused weight loss and delayed the migration of these birds by several days, enough to put them at a disadvantage in breeding and possibly out of sync with their food supply. The most  given to each bird was only one tenth of that used to coat an individual corn seed.

The effect of climate change on bird populations is still to be determined. The Audubon Society has reported that 389 North American bird species are vulnerable to extinction from climate change. So all our efforts to reduce green house gas emissions are helpful to the birds.

A speaker I heard the other night on wind power admitted that birds and bats are susceptible to collisions with rotating turbine blades. (The tips can be going over 150 miles per hour.) But his company can install a device to temporarily stop the turbines when migrating birds are detected approaching by radar. Good stewardship from an industrial giant.