This Week's Sneak Peek

Finally weeding most of the wild geraniums out of our vegetable garden a few weeks ago, I discovered just how ineffective the rabbit fencing around the garden was.

There, right under one of the tomato plants was a rabbit nest, with a bunch of little bunnies squirming deeper in to get out of sight. Even without the weeds to give them cover, that fencing was doing a fine job keeping raccoons and feral cats away from the nest.

We managed to nab two bunnies, which we hauled out to some of the undeveloped FoxConn property, a spot about a mile or two away from our house. They were just about big enough that they might have a chance to make it on their own. Maybe.

When I mowed the lawn a few days later, two more little bunnies began running around inside the garden in a panic, trying to jump out as I mowed around outside it. They had to be two different bunnies from the litter.

Unless this were a Bugs Bunny cartoon, in which case they'd be the same two.

Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories

It will not come as a surprise to you, dear reader, as it did to newspaper readers across the United States, that President Warren Gamaliel Harding died on August 2, 1923 in San Francisco, California, while on an ambitious speaking tour.

Unsigned (O.C. Chopin?) in San Francisco Examiner, August 3, 1923

Editorial cartoonists around the country (but not all of them) rushed to their drawing boards in an effort to express the nation's grief. 

Your humble blogger has observed before that the cartoon character of Miss Columbia used to be the one drawn to mark a time of mourning, notably after the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. This was still the case in 1923...

"A Nation Bowed in Grief," unsigned, in San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1923

"One in Sorrow and Faith" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, 1923

No caption, by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, August 3, 1923

...but upon the death of President Harding, Uncle Sam appeared in several cartoonists' work.

No caption, by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, August 4, 1923

"One Touch of Sorrow Makes Us Kin" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 5, 1923

"On the shores of the Pacific," Unsigned (McCutcheon?) in Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1923

"He Has Found Eternal Peace" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 4, 1923

No caption, by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, August 4, 1923

"For Grief Is Proud and Makes His Owner Stoop" by Roy James in St. Louis Star, August 4, 1923

Uncle Sam had also appeared to pay his respects upon the death of Teddy Roosevelt in 1919, the distinction at that time being that Roosevelt was no longer in office, and the most memorable cartoons centered on the larger-than-life former president himself. No cartoon in this collection rivals "Ding" Darling's "The Long, Long Trail" eulogizing Roosevelt.

Harold Wahl, eschewing any national symbol, may have been trying to make a more universal statement. Or perhaps he just a bit more macabre than everybody else.

"In Death as in Life" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, August 4, 1923

I mentioned that not all cartoonists drew eulogy cartoons. Syndicated ones such as Dorman Smith would have found little market for a weepy cartoon that might not be published by some newspapers until several days later. Others, such as the Louisville Courier Journal's Grover Page and Daniel Fitzpatrick the St. Louis Post Dispatch simply decided to let Harding's death pass unremarked for their own reasons.

And then there is the approach of Frank Spangler, who packed a reference to Harding's passing (an arm band, and a train carrying the body of our 30th president) into a cartoon about a French general coming to town to Montgomery to honor local war veterans.

"Arms and the Men" by Frank "Spang" Spangler in Montgomery Advertiser, August 4, 1923

If Miss Columbia still held onto her job as Mourner-In-Chief, it was now Uncle Sam who greeted the new chief executive.

"The New Helmsman" by Oscar C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, August 6, 1923

"Carrying On" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, August 4, 1923

"Let Us Work Together" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, August 6, 1923

"To New Shoulders" by Lute Pease in Newark Daily News, August, 1923

Fasces would fall out of fashion as a symbol of "responsibility of great power" after the outbreak of World War II, although you will still find them in some of our most famous presidential monuments.

McCutcheon in Chicago Sunday Tribune, August 5, 1923

"May He Choose Well His Course" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1923

Okay, perhaps not quite everybody got the Uncle Sam memo.

Meanwhile, August 10 was declared the official day of mourning, but editorial cartoonists had to do what editorial cartoonists do in the days following the transition to a new administration.

"His Last Message..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, August 5, 1923

I imagine that Darling may have had this cartoon on his drawing board before news came of Harding's death, and that he decided to tweak the caption and send it along to his publishers anyway. Harding may have appreciated leaving the World Court as his lasting legacy — or bringing peace to the Pacific as cited in the unsigned Chicago Tribune cartoon above — but history has decided otherwise.

Kind of like remembering Richard Nixon for creating the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Close the Fatal Road" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 5, 1923

Nelson Harding's call to stop presidents from national speaking tours wouldn't get much traction, even though the new president had a reputation for not speaking out much.

"Nary a Word" by William C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, August, 1923

Indeed, I don't believe I have run across a single cartoon about Coolidge by anyone between the 1920 Republican national convention and August 4, 1923.

Q Toon: Don't Go Queer the Water

Presidential stalking horse Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been under criticism recently for a number of outrageous statements he has made during the COVID-19 pandemic: alleging that the virus was somehow engineered to spare Chinese and Jews, and likening vaccination with the Holocaust.

So it is hardly surprising that he has also promulgated some highly dubious anti-LGBTQ claims.

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.

Experts dispute the claims from Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, and told CNN’s KFile his theories that “sexual identification” and “gender confusion” among children could be from their exposure to “endocrine disruptors” found in the environment are completely unfounded.

“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” Kennedy said on his podcast in June last year. “These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today.”

...

The baseless claim that chemicals – particularly in tap water – could turn people gay has gained popularity with conspiracy theorists over the years, most memorably with conservative radio host Alex Jones, who said chemicals in the water were “turning the friggin’ frogs gay.”

On numerous podcasts between March 2022 and June 2023, Kennedy has alleged that certain chemicals, particularly atrazine, are responsible for the gaying of a generation, largely based on the pesticide's effects on frogs. 

While it is certainly true that mankind has been disposing of all manner of chemicals and medications and toxic fumes into our air and water, most experts who actually know what they are talking about dismiss Kennedy's allegations that atrazine is turning kids gay and trans, delaying puberty in some and accelerating it in others. CNN interviewed  Dr. Linda Kahn, assistant professor in the departments of pediatrics and population health at New York University, who rebutted that comparing frogs to humans is an “apples and oranges thing, it’s not appropriate.” For humans, atrazine is metabolized and excreted from the body within 12 hours, she said.

What is more likely is that in societies where LGBTQ+ members are more likely to be accepted, LGBTQ+ persons are more likely to be out and open about themselves. There was no sudden increase of environmental endocrine disruptors in Weimar Germany, the court of Edward II, or the Sacred Band of Thebes.

More worrisome than Kennedy's charges themselves is the implicit message that there is something intrinsically wrong with LGBTQ+ persons.

Not to mention how this, taken together with his anti-vax hysteria and racist claims that COVID-19 was designed to target some ethnic groups and not others, makes it easier for skeptics to disregard honest environmentalists as crackpots crying wolf.

This Week's Sneak Peek

As I was filling in the grays in the grayscale version of this week's cartoon, I decided that this character shouldn't be wearing such a drab outfit.

See the colorized version later this week.
 

The Telltale Tapes

Today's Graphical History Tour is going to be extra heavy on the cartoonistry and light on the commentary; so if you're the kind of reader who skips to the editorial cartoons, you've come to the right place.

"Speak Frankly into the Olive" by Jeff Darcy in Newsday, Long Island NY, ca. July 23, 1973

Fifty years ago this month, on Friday, July 13, Donald Sanders, a junior staff Republican counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Watergate affair, asked Alexander Butterfield, a former White House aide to Nixon Chief of Staff Harry R. Haldeman whether "conversations in the President's office are recorded."

It was a throw-away question asked at the end of an up-to-then unremarkable interview, with no Senators or top counsel present.

"Oh god, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that," Butterfield answered. Richard Nixon had been tape recording conversations and phone calls in the Oval Office since the spring of 1971.

"Testing, Testing" by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Today, ca. July 21, 1973

Editorial cartoonists reacted immediately with a lot of cartoons mocking Nixon for the recording system — seeming not to realize that the tapes would support or refute the testimony before the committee given that month by those closest to the President: former Attorney General John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, and former presidential counsels John Ehrlichman and John Dean III.

"You Can Say That Again" by Herb Block in Washington (DC) Post, July 17, 1973

Instead, we had a lot of cartoons about people with much less to be worried about in those recordings than Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, or Nixon.

"Go Ahead, Kissinger" by David Simpson in Tulsa Tribune, ca. July 21, 1973

"About That Conversation We Had" by Leonard Borozinski in Wisconsin State Journal, Madison WI, July 18, 1973

Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev had just returned home from a state visit to the U.S.

"Good Lord, That's My Voice" by Bill Crawford for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. July 27, 1973

Nixon wasn't the first president to record White House conversations; Lyndon Johnson had done the same. It seems Nixon tossed out the best legacies of the Johnson administration and kept the worst.

No caption, by Louis "Tim" Mitelberg in Paris Match, 1973 (?)

(Having not putting a date on the above clipping, I could be off on whether Tim's cartoon was drawn in July with the rest of these; but it was one of my earliest favorites, so I'm including it anyway.)

No caption, by Fritz Behrendt in Het Parool, Amsterdam Netherlands, ca. July 19, 1973

At this same time, Nixon was briefly sidelined with a bout of pneumonia.

No caption, by Don Wright in Miami News, July 26, 1973

The Senate Committee, chaired by folksy "old country lawyer" Sam Ervin (D-NC), subpoenaed the administration to turn over to them tapes which might have recorded conversations about the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

"This Jus' Might Unravel the Mummy's Secret" by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, July 18, 1973

Claiming "executive privilege," Nixon refused, and a constitutional crisis was thus in the making.

"The Collectors" by Gene Basset for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, ca. July 20, 1973

It's at this point that most cartoonists quit using bugs as a symbol of the scandal, in favor of reel-to-reel tapes.

"And Stay on Your Own Side" by Leonard D. Warren in Cincinnati Enquirer, ca. July 30, 1973

"Constitutional Crisis in the Oval Office" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, July 25, 1973

It's only fair that I include a couple of cartoons by defenders of the President:

"You Guys Are Way Off the Trail" by D. Edward Holland in Chicago Tribune, July 30, 1973

I have a difficult time imagining where Nixon apologist Ed Holland thought the Watergate investigation ought to have been leading. It was too early to be worried about Hillary's emails (although she was actually an aide to the committee) or Hunter Biden's laptop (he was three years old). Teenager Barack Obama's birth certificate, perhaps?

"We'd Be Delighted for Him to Prove His Innocence" by Don Hesse in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, ca. July 24, 1973

Don Hesse's reaction is more typical of the Nixon Defense League. "If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell." —Carl Sandberg

No caption, by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca. July 31, 1973

As tempting as it is to go on, I have to stop somewhere. So I'll wrap up with Pat Oliphant's pointed reference to the Nixon plumbers' earlier break-in of the offices of the psychiatrist of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

✍

Say what you will about Richard M. Nixon, but his Watergate scandal (and the war in Vietnam) brought out a golden age of editorial cartooning. I was just beginning to appreciate and eagerly read the work of these guys above and many more: Paul Conrad, Jacob Burck, Bill Mauldin, Bill Sanders, Jeff MacNelly, Dick Locher, John Fischetti, Tom Curtis, Jim Berry, Ed Valtman, Draper Hill, "Corky" Trinidad, Lou Grant, Dennis Renault, Guernsey LePelley, Ranan Lurie, Jules Feiffer, Edward Sorel, Robert Gray Smith, Mike Peters, Mike Konopacki, Ed Huck — there were literally hundreds of them. You could find their work daily in just about any newspaper with a modicum of self-respect, and every major newsmagazine around the world.

The hedge fund managers pretending they know how to run today's newsmedia don't know what they're killing off. Or perhaps they just don't care.

Q Toon: All Safe Zones Matter

 

My cartoon this week derives from a local news story here in Wisconsin, but it's a story that is being repeated with minor variations across the United States.

The Arrowhead Union High School Board in ruby-red Waukesha County, immediately west of Milwaukee, voted this month to forbid any teacher from posting that their classroom is an "LGBTQ+ Safe Space."

Board President Kim Schubert strongly opposed having safe space stickers placed on classroom doors. Having such imagery and messaging, she said, could stunt students’ development at pivotal points in their lives.
“I believe that safe spaces are, in fact, a detriment to our society,” Schubert said.

One of the TV news reports included a comment that "all areas of the school should be considered to be safe," which struck me as a particularly specious argument, given that our current right-wing Supreme Court believes that the First Amendment to the Constitution gives a Right to Refuse Service Card to anyone who claims a religious exemption from doing their job.

In other states, legislatures have passed laws requiring school staff to out LGBTQ+ students to their parents, regardless whether the home environment is a safe or unsafe space for LGBTQ+ kids. If kids in those states get kicked out of the home and into the streets, I guess that's just fine and dandy with the Republican legislators who don't have to worry about being kicked out of their safe seats.

So as not to appear to be singling LGBTQ+ youth out for abuse, the Arrowhead High board also forbade flags or other signage associated with Black Lives Matter, Latino/a heritage, and so forth (well, of course they would). They even included MAGA flags in the ban, although I don't think there is much danger of any kid in Waukesha being teased or beaten up for being a little Trumpster.

Elsewhere in Waukesha, the school district fired a first grade teacher who complained after the district told her she couldn't include the Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton duet "Rainbowland" in a school program.

The lyrics were widely believed to focus on acceptance, but district officials said they found the song "could be deemed controversial."  

Tempel raised her concerns on social media and received national attention. She told news outlets, including Wisconsin Public Radio, that the Muppets' "Rainbow Connection" was initially banned but later accepted after pushback from parents and the Alliance for Education in Waukesha. 

She also told WPR the district had not offered any specific reasons for the ban, but "the only common thread between those two songs was the word rainbow."

Waukesha school district officials claim they are just avoiding potential controversial subjects in their elementary schools, but don't be surprised if you see a choir of Waukesha schoolkids singing "The Donald Trump Song" at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next summer.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 This conspiracy theory idiocy might have been an interesting topic for a cartoon this week. But it isn't.