Happy New Year

 ...from Andy and Min Gump!

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum new year's card this year features the first two rows of Sidney Smith's "The Gumps" for Sunday, December 31. Since your humble scribe highlighted Andy Gump's first run for Congress back in November, I'm passing this 100-year-old greeting on.

I don't have the full-color resources that they have at the BICL&M, but here's the rest of that day's "The Gumps," anyway.

P.S.: I'd been saving this Denver Post front page for years thinking I would use it at the end of 2022, then forgot all about it.

"'Bout Time to Turn Over a New Leaf" by A. Wilbur Steele in Denver Post, Dec. 30, 1922

Well, it's a shame to waste it, so here it is.

2022 in Review

My Saturday History Tour and year-end retrospective collide today (often a risk you take when looking behind you). So here's a collage of a few of my favorite cartoons from 2022:

(I would have liked to include this week's cartoon, too. But I felt I needed to limit myself to six cartoons.)

Here also is my annual snapshot of the year's biggest headlines.

I've been taking these front-page headline photos for 50 years now, and I don't know how much longer this habit will be possible. Many newspapers have surrendered blaring headlines about national and international news to the immediacy of the internet. The local newspaper here is still likely to give prominent placement to news of the end of U.S. involvement in a long war, or a vice presidential resignation; but for the most part, front page coverage is reserved for local features.

Even the regional papers (e.g.: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chicago Tribune) tend to highlight features of local and state interest over, say, a congressional hearing, or a coup in South America. National papers such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reserve huge bold headlines for singularly monumental events — but on the other hand, I have a much better camera now. No way would you have been able to read the Boris Johnson headline if I were still taking pictures with my Kodak Instamatic.

__________

P.S.: Had I waited until tomorrow to post this, I might have been able to add a newspaper headline about Pope Benedict's death this morning. Well, perhaps. Tomorrow's local newspapers had probably been put to bed Friday night.

Q Toon: Reach Out

The impetus for drawing this week's cartoon was the suicide of Henry Berg-Brousseau, a young trans man who had testified courageously before the Kentucky state legislature while still a teenager as it was poised to pass a mean-spirited, punitive, anti-transgender bill. (Which, having a Republican majority, they passed anyway.)

His testimony was featured on John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight"; his death has received international attention.

I became aware of him through his uncle David Brousseau, a fellow cartoonist for Q Syndicate and my editor for a time. I hadn't realized that Henry's mother, Karen Berg, is a Kentucky State Senator.

I will not presume to guess what made Henry decide life wasn't worth living. He had a promising future, having been hired as deputy press secretary for Human Rights Campaign. I know nothing of his personal life; a press release from his mother noted that he had "long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance."

To paraphrase Tolstoy, every happy person is alike; every unhappy person is unhappy in their own way.

So this cartoon is not specifically about Henry Berg-Brousseau. It fails to encompass all the difficulties that transgender persons face. I don't have the expertise giving me the right to recommend any particular therapy or medication. 

But I hope that somehow, someone somewhere sees this in time to decide to stick it out one more day. To reach out to people who do know what to say, and more importantly, are there to listen.

If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

_________________________

P.S.: To find this cartoon in one piece, visit one of my client publications, such as Q Salt Lake.

One More Holiday Wish

 

In the spirit of the season.

One Last Sneak Peek for 2022

 It's a cartoon that has kept me up nights.

Then, when all the drawing and scanning and formatting and shading the grayscale version was done, it turned out that our internet service was down.

So I rebooted the router a couple times; and when that didn't work, unplugged and replugged the modem as well. Then my better half called Spectrum's three-digit help line, and was put on hold until he got tired of the muzak and hung up. So we rebooted the router and unplugged the modem again.

By then, I was mostly finished with the colorized versions, so I tried calling Spectrum again. The automated voice assured me there were no outages in our area, and advised us to reboot the router and unplug the modem. With a predictable lack of results.

Then I got through to a human. Let's call him Ron.

Ron asked our account information, then wanted to know how many units were affected. One, I told him. We don't have a bunch of modems and routers in the house. Oh, said Ron, do you have a business account with us? And since we have a residential account, not a business account, Ron said he would transfer me to residential services.

After I sat through a recording touting Spectrum's new voice-identification security plan, a guy I'll call Rick picked up the line. The conversation was nearly the same as that with Ron, including the point where Rick said that he was on the business account side of things. Then he told me the phone number to call for residential services.

So I hung up and called the ten-digit number, where the same automated voice as before went through the same automated advice as before — although this time, she did say that there were reports of intermittent service outages in our area, and technicians were already working on the problem.

I put my cartoon files on a USB drive, drove over to my Dad's house and sent them from there.

Four hours later, still no internet at home; so my better half tried calling Spectrum again.

This time, whoever he talked to wanted us not only to reboot the modem and unplug the router, but to turn off the computer as well.

Good thing that worked.

Because the next step would have been to reboot the modem, unplug the router, turn off the computer, and shut off power to the whole house.

Last Christmas

Rather than resurrect yuletide editorial cartoons from 1922 today, I thought I'd reach back 20 years further for the Christmas cartoons that would be Minneapolis Tribune cartoonist R.C. Bowman's last for the holiday.

Of course, Bowman couldn't have known it would be his last Christmas. His death the following June at age 32 would be an accident; he would be overcome by gas in his home.

Bowman's Christmas Eve cartoon concerns the chief foreign affairs news of the day. Seeking to force the Venezuelan government of Cipriano Castro to repay debts incurred prior to his country's 1892 civil war, Germany and Great Britain (joined by Italy) placed a naval blockade against Venezuela. Castro responded by arresting 200 German and British citizens in Caracas. Seeking to avoid having the U.S. navy come to Venezuela's defense, Britain invited the U.S. to arbitrate the dispute.

Bowman's Christmas Day cartoon refers to Rudyard Kipling's poetic screed against Great Britain allying its interests with Germany, "The Rowers," published in London Times Dec. 22. The actual poem is longer than I care to repeat here, but these stanzas show that Bowman's paraphrase didn't exaggerate its sentiment much:

"Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold,
  Our wounds are bleeding yet—
And you tell us now that our strength is sold
 To help them press for a debt!

"'Neath all the flags of all mankind
 That use upon the seas,
Was there no other fleet to find
 That you strike bands with these?"

🎄

Since Bowman's Christmas Day cartoon wasn't particularly Christmasy, let's check over at the Minneapolis Journal, where Charles "Bart" Bartholomew was taking a more festive approach to the holiday.

"An Old Fashioned Christmas" by Charles "Bart" Bartholomew in Minneapolis Journal, Dec. 24, 1902

Alert readers may recall that the Wright brothers had not yet flown their air-ship at Kitty Hawk as of Christmas Eve, 1902. Lighter-than-air balloons had been in use for half a century, however, and by this time had incorporated engines and steering mechanisms (and been involved in a fatal aeronautic accident). 

Like air-ships, automobiles were principally a plaything of the rich and indolent, although they were beginning to catch on with the general public. You'll find the more common modes of transportation referenced in Bartholomew's cartoon for Christmas Day:

"Papa's Christmas" by Charles "Bart" Bartholomew in Minneapolis Journal, Dec. 25, 1902

A third daily newspaper in town, the Daily Times, ran this front page cartoon beneath an editorial promising to publish "the names and addresses of any suffering poor in Minneapolis and St. Paul whose destitution is unknown to the general public."

"The Poor Ye Have Always with You," unsigned, in Minneapolis Daily Times, Dec. 24, 1902

By the way, I don't know what was meant by the "Don't Let This Happen to You" cut line. Surely the Daily Times wasn't advising its readers to pull the shades.

Anyway, the Daily Times, true to its word, printed the names and addresses of some two dozen destitute Minneapolitans (plus one from Minnetonka) "described by acquaintances or observers as needful of aid on this Christmas Day, it having been impossible to separately investigate the accuracy of the description in each case." I can't say how those people reacted to having their situation above the fold on page one, but the Times itself noted that only 5% of the total number of reports to them of destitution (in addition to those 25 there were others to whom the Times brought food and fuel) came from the destitute persons themselves.

"What Has He in the Pouch" by P.J. Carter in Minneapolis Daily Times,  December 25, 1902

P.J. Carter's Christmas Day cartoon for the Times again references the situation in Venezuela, while still keeping a Christmasy theme to his commentary. Carter favored pen and ink for his editorial cartoons, so I'm not prepared to conclude that the previous day's cartoon was his work.

"Sad News for the Trusts" by Tom Thurlby in St. Paul Globe, Dec. 24, 1902

Across the river in St. Paul, I had expected to find more cartoons by Frank Wing. Instead, I found these by a Tom Thurlby and O.C. Holt in the St. Paul Globe. Thurlby's Christmas Eve cartoon jumps past the present holiday to suggest to Mr. Consumer some new year's resolutions.

"When Yet a Farmer Boy" by O.C. Holt in St. Paul Globe, December 24, 1902

By the way, all four newspapers in today's post published on Christmas Day, 1902, a Thursday, although the December 25 Globe didn't happen to have any cartoons in it.

But there were two cartoons in the Christmas Eve edition; this poem and illustration hailing the true bringers of Christmas presents was on an inside page. You know it's hard work when you're sweating like that outdoors in St. Paul, Minnesota, on December the twenty-fourth.

At least someone was kind enough to gift the man a toy whatever-that-critter-is beneath his sack of goodies.

And with that, I wish you a merry little Christmas, eighth night of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Eve, and any other holiday of your choice. 

Qapla'!

Q Toon: At the Independents' Table

Democrats did not even get 24 hours to savor their 51-vote majority in the U.S. Senate before Senator Kyrsten Sinema decided to upstage Rev. Raphael Warnock and announce that she was bolting the party.

She joins Socialist Bernie Sanders (a Democrat in Presidential Politics Only) of Vermont and true Independent Angus King of Maine as the kids at the table in the corner. Both of them came to the Senate without pretending to be Democrats, and their voters elected them with full knowledge of where they stand on the key issues.

Sinema, on the other hand, an erstwhile Green Party activist from Arizona, has been a difficult member of the Democratic caucus, especially in the last two years. She stubbornly defended the chamber's filibuster rules that allow Republicans to block much of President Biden's agenda. Liberal activists have been suspicious that she has allowed herself to become beholden to big-money right-wing donors. 

Given how radically the Republican Party has lurched to the extreme right, I don't expect Sinema to stray far from Democratic Party stands on personal liberties. Fiscal and border issues seem likely to be another story. If the Republican House starts impeaching Biden administration officials willy-nilly, who the hell knows what Sinema would do?

She's up for reelection in 2024, and had been facing a strong challenger in the Democratic primary. By declaring herself an Independent, she sets up a three-way general election; and since Arizona does not have Georgia-style run-offs, even a Requblican who would make Kari Lake look reasonable could take the seat with a measly 34% of the vote.

Hold onto your tater tots.