Something Hard and Cool

Well, I've kept you in suspense long enough about the identity of the 1920 presidential nominees. Since we've just passed the centennial of that year's Republican National Convention, it's time for Marion Starback Saturday to relieve at least half of that suspense.

"There Will Be About 30 G.O.P. Nominating Speeches" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1920

The 1920 Republican convention convened in Chicago June 8-12, 1920, so I'm including here several cartoons from the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune, whose John McCutcheon had no reluctance to delve into the minutiae of political machinery. The primaries and caucuses had done nothing to winnow down the field of GOP presidential hopefuls, and the party elders promised an open nominating process free of backroom deals of the sort that had produced Charles Evans Hughes as the nominee four years earlier.

"I've Got 'Im" (detail from "The Tiny Tribune") by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1920

Prominent candidates included Senator Hiram Johnson of California, and General Leonard Wood, a favorite of Teddy Roosevelt's disciples. As host of the convention, Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois was a leader among the many favorite son candidates.

"The Tiny Tribune" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1920

McCutcheon's partner at the Tribune, Carey Orr, takes note of the schmoozing of the many delegates arriving in Chicago without being committed to any particular candidate. He also displays the party's confidence that 1920 was their year.

"Women and Children First" by Jay "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, June 9, 1920

Another Republican cartoonist, "Ding" Darling of the New York Tribune and Des Moines Register, nevertheless seems here to be underwhelmed by his party's field. To Johnson, Wood and Lowden, he adds Gov. Calvin Coolidge, Gov. Henry Allen, Sen. Warren Harding and Sen. Philander C. Knox in baby carriages, holding up the dark horse candidates (among them Hughes, William Howard Taft, and Herbert Hoover) and party boss Sen. Boies Penrose.

Speaking of women: Lucy Page Gaston was perhaps the darkest of dark horse candidates for the Republican nomination. and not just because the 19th Amendment had yet to be ratified. A crusader against tobacco use, the Harvey, Illinois resident, ran on a platform of "clean morals, clean food and fearless law enforcement" but was on the ballot only in South Dakota. She withdrew her candidacy on the eve of the convention and would be sorely disappointed once the Republicans nominated a "cigarette faced" (her description of him) devotee of the evil weed. She then attended the Prohibition Party's convention in support of William Jennings Bryan.

"Helping Hands" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1920

With no clear nominee going in, delegates arrived with plenty of disparate ideas about what ought to be in the party platform: for and against the Treaty of Versailles, for and kinda for Prohibition, various ideas on dealing with the High Cost of Living — even taking over control of Mexico, where President Carranza had recently been overthrown.

"A Pictorial Review of the Platform" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1920

I doubt I shall be able to find a cartoon summing up the 1920 Democratic Party platform as thoroughly as Mr. McCutcheon's review of the GOP platform.

"The Nominee" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Sunday Tribune, June 13, 1920

Finally, on the tenth ballot, the convention nominated Ohio Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding, a moderate conservative more or less acceptable to the progressive wing of the party.

On its surface, McCutcheon's cartoon seems to express reservations about Harding, but I think it is more likely that he drew the cartoon before the outcome of the convention was settled, leaving a large space for the front page editors to insert the nominee's photo. Harding was no stranger to McCutcheon, who had drawn two cartoons partly about Harding's keynote speech at the 2016 convention: in the first, McCutcheon claimed that Harding "hit all the right notes"; but the next day, McCutcheon asked "Where's the entHughesiasm?"

"See Who's Driving" by Doane Powell in Omaha Daily Bee, June 15, 1920

Hoping to gain support from the party's Progressive wing, Harding's people first offered the Vice Presidential nomination to Senator Johnson, who turned it down. They then turned to another Progressive, Wisconsin Senator Irvine Lenroot, who accepted the offer. But as soon as Illinois Senator Meddill McCormick launched into the speech nominating Lenroot, delegates began chanting for Calvin Coolidge instead. The Massachusetts governor, famous for his hard-line response against the 1919 Boston police strike, easily beat Lenroot in the balloting in spite of being absent from the convention.

"Just When She Was Dying for Something Cool" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1920

Given time to come up with an assessment of his party's ticket, McCutcheon's first response was to make puns on the names.

"Warren, You're More Than Welcome to These" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, June 16, 1920

What, then, was Democrats' response to the Republican ticket? It has been customary for the leader of one party to congratulate the nominee of the other party before proceeding for the next five months to call him/her a no-good demon in wolf's clothing who will surely bring upon our great Republic wrack, ruin and the gnashing of teeth. Nevertheless, I have no idea what "Democratic compliments" Aunty Democracy is extending in Clifford Berryman's cartoon.

"Bet It Doesn't Take Me Five Days to Finish My Ticket" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, June 13, 1920

That would be a bet worth taking.

"Coming Out in the Wash" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World, June 17, 1920

Democratic partisan John Cassel clearly didn't think much of Senator Harding, if he thought of him at all.

"The Plain Truth" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 23, 1920

Cassel's "The Plain Truth" includes apologies to Kettner, perhaps syndicated cartoonist Magnus Kettner. I am unaware of the cartoon Cassel may be aping here, and the cartoon does not resemble the style of the Western Newspaper Union cartoonist either in terms of artistry or humor. Cassel's point is that the Republican-led U.S. Senate, having stymied President Wilson's agenda since the end of the Great War, was unlikely to cede any power back to the next president, whoever he may be.

"Jes' Waitin' to See How the Other Guy Gets Through It" by Charles "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, June 16, 1920 

Please come back tomorrow. I've got a completely different centennial to mark this weekend.

Q Toon: Remembering Larry Kramer

I finally get around to penning a memorial cartoon for activist and playwright Larry Kramer this week.

It seemed only fitting to depict him in full outrage mode, circa 1988. Kramer was an early Jeremiah calling everyone, gay or not, to take the AIDS pandemic seriously. Having established himself years earlier as something of a prude, many in New York's gay community dismissed him as alarmist and homophobic.

One of the founders of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Kramer quickly found the group too timid — "GMHC board meetings often degenerated into heated battles with Larry Kramer on one side and everybody else on the other," as Larry Shilts wrote in As the Band Played On. In March, 1983, at a time when the New York Times and even the gay Advocate magazine had barely taken any notice of AIDS, Kramer was ousted from the GMHC board and wrote a scathing cover story for New York Native titled "1,112 and Counting."

"If this article doesn't scare the shit out of you we're in real trouble. If this article doesn't rouse you to anger, fury, rage and action, gay men may have no future on this earth. Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get...
"I'm sick of guys who moan that giving up careless sex until this thing blows over is worse than death. How can they value life so little and cocks and asses so much?"

The quotation in my cartoon is from Kramer's 1985 play The Normal Heart. It's a line by the central character Ned Weeks, a not at all disguised alter ego of the playwright himself. Weeks becomes disgusted with a group very much like the GMHC, known for its deathbed vigils:

"I thought I was starting a bunch of Ralph Naders or Green Berets, and at the first instant they have to take a stand on a political issue and fight, almost in front of my eyes they turn into a bunch of nurse's aides."

As a more radical alternative to the GMHC, Kramer sparked the formation the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) in March, 1987. The background of my cartoon is based on a photo of an ACT-UP march through New York. (As I wrote last week, I try whenever possible to include people of color in my cartoons, but I could only see one in the photo. There were, however, a few women among the white males at the front of the line.)

ACT-UP was no bunch of nurse's aides. To give you a few examples, ACT-UP protesters

• chained themselves to the VIP balcony at the New York Stock Exchange to protest the high cost of AZT, the only anti-AIDS drug at the time.
• blocked access to the Federal Drug Administration to demand faster approval of anti-AIDS medications.
• staged a "die-in" during mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
• encased Senator Jesse Helms's home in a 15-foot tall condom.

ACT-UP chapters still exist, and although the rage of the 1980's and 90's has cooled, its activists are still as relevant as ever today. As Sarah Schulman, a longtime ACT-UPivist and author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power New York, said in a recent interview:

"We are in a new era of repression and profound confusion. Medically, we are much further ahead than we were back then with AIDS. Nevertheless, the government in the U.S. is using the same strategy: it recycles earlier drugs that pharmaceutical companies have patents for because that is more profitable than investing in new or nascent medications. Even if a cure for COVID-19 were found tomorrow, we don’t have a healthcare system that would allow people to access it. In a joint statement issued on 27 February, for example, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said that vaccines should be ‘affordable and available to all.’ They didn’t say: ‘We need a free vaccine.’
"Looking at the history of progressive social movements in the U.S., there is usually a zeitgeist moment when things suddenly leap forward. Unfortunately, you can never force it. Current movements can learn the following from ACT UP: coalition, simultaneity and direct action. That combination is crucial to enable any movement to succeed."

Earlier this year, Kramer took up a new writing project, An Army of Lovers Must Not Die, "about gay people having to live through three plagues": HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and the decline of the human body. The work remains unfinished. HIV-positive since 1988, Kramer died May 27 at the age of 84 of pneumonia.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Pride Goeth Before a Summer

I made reference to the Stonewall riots in this week's cartoon, and since LGBTQ Pride festivals, like just about everything else that is fun, have been cancelled this year, my Sapphoback Saturday post for this week rehashes a fistful of my Stonewall and Pride cartoons.

June, 1999

Actually, I've drawn very few cartoons about the Stonewall riots themselves. This one from their 30th anniversary featured one of the most virulently antigay Senators of the time, Jesse Helms (R-NC). No doubt he was in favor of cutting funding for the National Register of Historic Places even without their having adding the Stonewall Inn to their jurisdiction.

The hand in the framed picture behind the senator refers to an infamous campaign ad of his.

May, 2019

I couldn't let last year's 50th anniversary of the riots go unremarked. The cops were probably not as gentle as this one, but at least nobody died from a knee to the neck over the five days of rioting.

July, 2009

If we've seen tremendous progress in 51 years, much of it has been quite recent. Forty years after Stonewall, a police raid on the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth on June 28, 2009, was a brutal throwback to the bad old days:

...six Fort Worth officers and two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents hauled 20 people from the [Rainbow Lounge] and arrested six of them for public intoxication; one was treated in intensive care with a severe head injury, the result of police tactics that gay rights activists would label brutality. The incident was followed by a blitz of media accounts, thousands of angry e-mails and a gay rights outcry that uncomfortably thrust Fort Worth into a national and even international spotlight.

Police Chief Jeff Halstead was vilified for his handling of the incident. Three officers were suspended. And the Texas LGBTQ community stood up for themselves and marched on city hall.

"A couple of weeks ago I never would have been in the street, let alone talking to a reporter," said Benjamin Guttery, a 24-year-old Army veteran who manages a jewelry store and who was detained in the raid. "This has lit such a fire in me. I have to defend myself." So he is toting a placard through Sundance Square that reads, "I WAS HOG TIED BY THE FWPD." In the oversized O he has drawn a pig's face and colored it a porky pink. It's the color of the day.

Five years later, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported that much had changed because of the raid and the LGBTQ community's reaction.

Todd Camp, a gay activist, said Fort Worth has grown much friendlier toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in five years. Now, maybe an eyebrow or two are raised when two men are seen embracing in public, but gone are the angry fist pumps.
“It’s mind-boggling to think what we would be without it,” said Camp, one of the founders of QCinema, the annual LGBT film festival in Fort Worth. “We would have a much worse Fort Worth for LGBT people. I don’t think we would have made as much progress as we did had it not been for the Rainbow Lounge. It helped the city on a national scale.”

August, 2015

When a film about Stonewall came out in 2015, the trailers showed that its central character was a white male with conventional Hollywood good looks. Activists pointed out — rather strongly — that the central figures in starting the riot were people of color, lesbians, and drag queens whose role ought not to be whitewashed.

June, 2001

So I have generally tried to depict a varied cross-section of our community in my Pride Month cartoons — in most of my cartoons, in fact. Although one can get complaints if the butt of the cartoon is anything other than a white cis male.

May, 1998, In Step Magazine, Milwaukee, WI

And running through the checklist of inclusiveness can be a challenge.

June, 2006

In recent years, at least until COVID-19 came along to spoil the party, the origins of Pride Month often have gotten obscured by the party atmosphere of festivals and parades. But we've thrived in spite of the AIDS crisis and the hounding of religious puritans who, to paraphrase Mencken, can't stand the idea that anyone anywhere might be having a good time.

June, 2004

When I started going to Pride festivals, I had to trek all the way to Milwaukee or Chicago. Not long after that, however, even small cities started having their own LGBTQ festivals.

June, 2011

These festivals allow folks to bust loose and be themselves ... providing it meets with Dad and Papa's approval. Many LGBTQ couples have children of their own, and there are PFLAG parents of elementary-school-age children as well. It is no more unusual to see families enjoying Pride festivals than any other summer festival. (Yes, "PFLAG parents" is redundant, but how else would you know who I was talking about?)

June, 2008

But there's still no escaping the outside world, so I have often used cartoons set at Pride festivals to comment on other issues of the day, whether it was some presidential policy, gays in the military, or in this case, the price of gasoline. Those high gas prices of the summer of 2008 were about to go into freefall, although it came at the price of the rest of the economy tanking.

Q Toon: To Preserve Disorder

I struggled with this week's cartoon.

Having seen the police torture and execution of George Floyd, I completely understand the frustration and rage of the Black community who have complained loud and long of police officers to whom Black Lives Do Not Matter.

I'm not old enough to remember Stonewall, but I do remember the righteous anger of the LGBT community after a jury acquitted police officer Dan White of the cold-blooded murders of Harvey Milk and Mayor Dan Moscone.

But I just couldn't bring myself to draw a cartoon giving my blessing to mob violence.

Hell, I worry enough about the peaceful protesters shouting and singing and not keeping six feet apart. I've been posting here lately about the danger to public health from taverns and churches opening too soon, MAGAlomaniacs screaming at Michigan police, and Madison Republicans forcing all of Milwaukee to crowd into five polling places on election day in the middle of a pandemic. The whole mess must be giving Dr. Fauci a lot of sleepless nights.

These visitors to the city of Milwaukee shouting "Move! Back!" and advancing at the protesters up the street yesterday afternoon weren't social distancing, either. But at least they were wearing sneeze guards.

But protesting on the safety of one's living room couch isn't likely to lead to any improvement in policing practices vis a vis people of color. Unfortunately, people wanting to take advantage of legitimate protest to loot and vandalize appear to have been ready and waiting for this moment.

The arson and looting in Minneapolis appears to have been instigated not by the people protesting Floyd's murder but by some white dude in a gas mask, black raincoat and umbrella, who calmly walked up to an AutoZone store, broke several windows, and started to walk away. All the while, he ignored protesters who shouted at him to stop. You've probably seen the video of the whole incident.

Someone identifying herself as his ex-girlfriend says the AutoZone vandal is a St. Paul police officer. Someone identifying himself as the St. Paul Chief of Police says he isn't.

It's too bad that nobody unmasked him for the cameras and the real police, like this white guy hammering away at a curb in Washington, D.C. Protesters grabbed and unmasked the man, who was dressed all in black just like the Minneapolis vandal, and carried him to police who happened to be on the other side of the street.

It seems clear that there are some young white males itching to foment violence. Chicago Police arrested a provocateur from Illinois who livestreamed himself vandalizing in Minneapolis, and who invited like-minded droogs to join him.

Thursday night, [28-year-old white male Matthew Lee] Rupert, of Galesburg, Illinois, posted on his public Facebook page an invitation for "goons" to join him in traveling to Minneapolis, where he said he was renting hotel rooms and planned to wreak havoc and "take hella good videos." ...
On Saturday night, Rupert posted to Facebook his plans to return to Chicago and riot there. "(Let me know) who's on board I got cars we got this," he wrote on Facebook, updating later that he would arrive in Chicago in two hours....  Videos show him proclaiming, "Let's start a riot" and "I'm going to start doing some damage," according to the complaint.

Again and again, in city after city, witnesses report that the vandals in Black neighborhoods are often white males, some with out-of-state license plates (or none at all). At the very least, some of them seem to have difficulty finding their way back to the freeway.

Maybe these people are just thrill-seeking morons raised on violent video games, or right-wing Proud Boy white nationalists hoping like Dylan Roof to start a race war.

On the other hand, someone identifying himself as the President of the United States says they're all left-wing antifa terrorists, so whom can you believe?

This Week's Sneak Peek

Blogger is switching us content creators over to a new interface this month, and among the things I noticed missing are the statistics on what country readers are from.

For at least a year now, the report has shown that there are about 60 hits from Italy three times per week right at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. (depending whether it's Daylight Saving Time or not). Once or twice per year, there is a jump in views of the post of R.C. Bowman's cartoons about the U.S. occupation of the Philippines; I presume some history teacher over there references the post when discussing the Spanish-American War. And then there are the occasional spikes in hits originating in Russia, which may or may not be real people.

There has also been a routine smattering of readers from "Unknown Region." I hope you people find yourselves, wherever you are. And stay safe. I've heard that there be monsters in such places.

I may not know when readers from around the world are looking my way any more, but know that you are appreciated, benvenuto, maligayang pagdating, добро пожаловать, yI'el, and welcome.

ArmeniaWhile...

Sivasback Saturday this week marks the 100th anniversary of when the United States didn't occupy Turkey.

William Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Oct./Nov., 1918

The chief Entente forces battling the Ottoman Empire in World War I were Russia and Great Britain; but since the Bolsheviks took over Russia and pulled out of the war a year before Armistice Day, it was the British and their ANZAC forces who defeated the Turkish army.

"While the Going's Good" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (D.C.) Everning Star, October 10, 1918

When the war was over and the allies divvied up the spoils, the British took Ottoman territories in Palestine and the Arabian Gulf (and see how smoothly that worked out?), and the French claimed Syria and Lebanon. Had Russia seen the war through to the end, Armenia and other portions of modern-day Turkey would probably have fallen to St. Petersburg. But since Russia had bugged out early — and given the major powers' fear of the spread of communism — British Prime Minister David Lloyd George proposed that Turkey be made a "mandate territory" of the United States.

"This Old Bird..." by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1, 1919

In mandate territories, as created under the Article 22 of the League of Nations' Covenant, governing power was transferred from whatever their Central Power ruler had been to one of the victorious Entente nations. The theory was that their peoples weren't able to rule themselves just then, but would be guided by their mandatory power toward self-rule in the future — as distinct from colonies, to which there was no promise of future independence.

"Uncle Sam, Please Take the Lady Under Your Protection" by Johan Braakensiek in De Amsterdamer, probably in late 1919

The League had no authority to assign any mandate to a non-member country such as the United States. Lloyd George argued, however, that somebody would have to take care of the place, and preferably not the Sultan.

A map of Armenia in the May 8-15, 1920 edition of The Independent surely stretches things a bit.

A major sore point of the Turkish question was the status of Armenia. The 12th of Wilson's 14 Points suggested that Armenia and other ethnic minorities of the Ottoman Empire might someday gain independence:

"The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development..."

"Prohibition's Greatest Martyr" by Leo Thiele in Sioux City Tribune, ca. July, 1919

The Armenian genocide was well known outside the Ottoman Empire, although the word "genocide" wouldn't be coined until 1943. The Ottoman government had long viewed its second-class Christian citizens as a fifth column responsible, if only by their mere existence offending Allah, for the country's losses in war dating back to the 19th Century.

"Crated in Constantinople" by Ralph O. Yardley in San Francisco Chronicle, June/July, 1920

"He'll Be Leaving As Soon As That Fuse Burns" by Hubert Harper in Birmingham Age-Herald, by May 9, 1920

After a disastrous defeat in battle by Russia in Russian Armenia early in World War I, the Ottoman government's tacit approval of massacres of Armenians escalated into an active, official policy of arrests, deportations, death marches, and executions. Depending whom you believe, 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered between 1914 and 1918.

"Armenia" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1920

As horrified as American and European governments (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) were by the Armenian genocide, and fully aware that it would continue as soon as Turkey was left to its own devices, none of the Entente victors were keen to remain involved in the Caucasus.

"Armenia, the Wall Flower," by Johan Braakensiek (?) in De Amsterdamer, ca. early 1920

After all, unlike the British and French mandate territories, Armenia had no oil, no Mediterranean vacation spots, and no sites precious to Western Christianity. The strongest argument to be made was that somebody had to keep Bolshevism from spreading southward.

"The Armenian Mandate" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1920

So on May 24, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for the authority to administer the
 Armenian mandate. Given the Chicago Tribune's stiff isolationist stance, John McCutcheon's cartoon seems surprisingly open to the idea.

"Who! Me?" by Albert T. Reid in The National Republican, May, 1920

"Can He Give It a Home?" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, June, 1920

The cartoons here by Albert Reid and William Morris were more typical of U.S. Republican-affiliated cartoonists and columnists.

"Go Away" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, June, 1920

Between isolationist Republicans and anti-imperialist Bryanist Democrats, Americans were increasingly disinterested in foreign entanglements. To nobody's surprise, the G.O.P. majority in the Senate rejected Wilson's request on June 1, 1920, joined by thirteen Democrats.