Q Toon: Meet Speaker Johnson

Republicans in the House of Representatives finally settled on a Speaker last week: Mike Johnson (R-LA), a fourth-term back-bencher who is so unknown that even his closest friends weren't aware he was in Congress.

Well, not that unknown. 

He is a right-wing theocrat who believes that the wall between Church and State has a one-way gate through which his church gets to pass through at will and write all the laws for the rest of us. Before election to Congress, he was senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, where he wrote an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas supporting the state's laws criminalizing homosexuality. There he also defended Louisiana Amendment 1, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman within the Louisiana Constitution.

He was founder and chief legal council of Freedom Guard, a nonprofit legal ministry designed to represent Christian clients such as the Ark Encounter Theme Park, which sued the state of Kentucky when the state withdrew tax breaks worth millions of dollars previously granted the park because it required employees to pledge belief in "Young Earth" creationism.

In a sermon Johnson delivered at his church, he blamed mass shootings on, among other things,  the teaching of evolution in public schools: "People say, 'How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?' Because we've taught a whole generation—a couple generations now—of Americans, that there's no right or wrong, that it's about survival of the fittest, and you evolve from the primordial slime."

Overshadowed by flashier Trumpsters such as Gym Jordan and Perjury Taylor-Greene, Johnson was a busy little bee working to throw out the 2020 election. A month after the election, he called upon his colleagues to file an amicus brief in support of corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's lawsuit to deny Georgia's, Michigan's, Pennsylvania's, and Wisconsin's votes from being counted; 126 Republicans signed on to Johnson's amicus brief. 

He spread the lie that the family of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez owned the company that made voting machines used in the election. Dominion Voting Systems, founded in Canada and now owned by a New York private equity firm, won a $787.5 million judgment against Fox News this year for reporting that lie as fact.

He was one of 37 Republicans who vowed on the morning of January 6, 2021 to "vote to sustain objections to slates of electors submitted by states we believe clearly violated the Constitution in the presidential election of 2020." When Congress reconvened after the January 6 insurrection, Johnson, and most of his GOP colleagues, voted against certifying the results from Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Perhaps it was Mike Johnson's terror over the fact of marriage equality that caused him and his cohorts to vote in favor of overthrowing the results of the 2020 presidential election. If so, okay, then homosexuality actually did "place our entire democratic system in jeopardy."

This Week's Sneak Peek

I've finished Terry Mosher's Aislin's Favourite COVID Cartoons from Around the World, and while I continue to give it an enthusiastic thumbs up, I do have to caution that the Montreal cartoonist does not provide an English translation for the French language cartoons.

I rarely get to use my high school and college French — the one time that comes to mind was when our luggage was misdirected in a Nice hotel — so I didn't mind the lack of Québecois-to-English translation in Aislin's book. Your experience may vary.

From Lebanon to Halloween in Order Categorical

Given the newest war in the Holy Land, it is only appropriate to start our Graphical History Tour of my October cartoons with this reminder of the dangers of getting involved in the region.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers, Wis., Oct. 27, 1983

U.S. Marines were in Beirut in 1983 as part of a multinational peacekeeping force during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. Those dates should give you a good idea of just how successful those "peacekeeping" efforts were.

On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber exploded a truck at the Marines' barracks near Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines, sailors, and soldiers. Another suicide bomber blew himself up at the barracks of the French paratroopers, killing another 58. This coordinated attack, for which Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, was the second deadly attack on Western interests; a suicide bomber had killed 63 at the American embassy in April.

A joint American-French retaliatory strike against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), believed to be training Hezbollah militants, was proposed; but it never came about because of doubts within the Reagan administration that Iran was behind the October 23 bombings. Instead, most of the U.S. peacekeeping force was moved offshore to transport ships. The following February, President Ronald Reagan authorized withdrawal of U.S. troops from the conflict.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 7, 1993

Ten years later, American lives were lost in another civil war, this time in Somalia. Bill Clinton had inherited Operation Restore Hope from the George H.W. Bush administration. U.S. troops were assisting the United Nations operation providing famine relief there when, on October 3, 1993, soldiers loyal to Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed shot down two U.S. Blackhawk helicopters.

Eighteen U.S. soldiers and hundreds Somalis were killed in the crash and ensuing battle. Video of Somali combatants dragging the naked bodies of slain U.S. servicemen through the streets shocked and revolted the nation.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 11, 1993

President Clinton pulled the U.S. forces out of the conflict zone four days later, and from the rest of Somalia the following March. America wanted nothing to do with a distant African nation where all of the warring factions were the bad guys.

The snake imagery in the earlier of these two cartoons echoes two famous cartoons by J.N. "Ding" Darling of a giant German serpent swallowing the world. Darling has not been the only cartoonist to liken war to a giant snake; Pat Oliphant drew at least one cartoon using snake images to represent U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and that country's shape inspired a number of other editorial cartoons.

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Lest today's post get too dark and depressing, let's skip ahead another ten years and sing us Picayune Butler, or something else that's funny.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2003

The U.S. was at war again in October of 2003, but the publications I was drawing for had other priorities. The Business Journal didn't happen to write any editorials about Afghanistan or Iraq that month, and I'd just drawn a cartoon a month earlier for Q Syndicate of religious zealots trying to enlist homophobia in the George W. Bush administration's strategery planning.

My cartoon about the fictional Rock Knuteson was a purely made-up scenario about closeted ball players. We now know of a few bi and gay athletes who were active in professional sports in 2003, but none of them were out to any but their closest friends at the time.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2013

And I couldn't let this post end without a Hallowe'en cartoon.

In 2012, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had vetoed a marriage equality bill passed by the state legislature and had called instead for a putting a constitutional amendment up for popular vote. The legislature failed to override the veto, but didn't pass the amendment measure, either.

Meanwhile, Garden State Equality v. Dow was making its way through the courts, and New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson ruled that New Jersey "shall permit" same-sex couples to marry, effective October 21, 2013. The state Supreme Court unanimously denied Christie's appeal to delay implementation of Judge Jacobson's decision, and New Jersey's first same-sex nuptials were performed at the stroke of midnight.

Christie has a mixed record on LGBTQ+ issues, but a considerably better one than most Republicans. As governor, he favored civil unions for same-sex couples prior to legalization of marriage equality; he also signed a bill outlawing conversion therapy for minors. 

Now making a second run for the presidency, he spoke out against his party's bans on gender-affirming care, telling Brian Kilmeade on "Fox and Friends" this past June, "It's more of a parent’s decision than a governor's decision for goodness sakes, Brian. You really think that [Arkansas Governor] Sarah Huckabee Sanders should be making this decision for children in Arkansas?"

Toon: Perhaps Ivermectin Would Help

Sigh. I've finally given in and drawn Donald Joffrey Trump again.

Try as I might, I just couldn't ignore him any more.

Heck, Stephen Colbert started referring to him by name again when The Late Show came back from the writers' strike. I guess I at least held out longer than Colbert did. 

Q Toon: She's Got a Little List

 

The Holy Land is erupting in war, bringing horror, misery, and death to innocents of all ages on both sides.

After weeks of dysfunction, Requblicans in the House have finally found a Speaker who is acceptable to both the plutocratic and fascist wings of the party. 

So naturally, my cartoon this week is based, loosely, on a weird little news story that broke while I was busy with the AAEC convention earlier this month.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama public library mistakenly added a children’s picture book to a list of potentially inappropriate titles because the author’s last name is “Gay,” the library’s director said.

Read Me a Story, Stella, a children’s picture book by Canadian author Marie-Louise Gay, was added to a list of books flagged for potential removal from the children’s section of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library because of “sexually explicit” content.

But the book, which is about a pair of siblings reading together and building a dog house, should not have been on the list and was only added because of the keyword “gay,” Cindy Hewitt, the library’s executive director told AL.com on Sunday.

Once the library's ridiculous book censorship made news, the library sheepishly admitted that they had overreacted to a list of "explicit material" generated by AI (i.e., Alabama Intelligence). Their excuse was that they had merely erred on the side of hysteria.

No harm done, right?

Kirsten Brassard, Gay’s publicist at Groundwood Books, said the episode sends a “hateful message” coming from a public library,

“This proves, as always, that censorship is never about limiting access to this book or that one. It is about sending the message to children that certain ideas — or even certain people — are not worthy of discussion or acknowledgment or consideration,” Brassard told the news outlet.

It's not clear from the news accounts that I've read whether the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library even had Read Me a Story, Stella in the children's section in the first place, let alone whether anyone on the staff had ever read it. Perhaps, as a gesture of goodwill, they will now get themselves a copy.

No doubt with a "Parental Advisory" sticker plastered over the author's last name.

This Week's Sneak Peek

A page of character sketches drawn in advance of this week's cartoon:

Before posting Saturday's review of May It Amuse the Court, I did take care to check whether John Cassel's given name could possibly have been Ino Casals, as he is credited in the book.

Although the New York Evening World referred to him by his initials "J.H." and later as "John Cassel," his signature does appear as if it were "Jno Cassel" or even "Gino Cassel."

"More" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, April 20, 1919

If he were a first or second generation immigrant, as several other cartoonists of the late 19th and early 20th Century were, it is conceivable that some official at Ellis Island summarily Anglicized his name, or a parochial school nun decided to just change his name to that of a saint. Ellis Island officials and nuns were the coffee baristas of their day.

"After the Downpour" by John Cassel in New York World, November 10, 1922

I did not find a great deal of biographical information about Cassel, but contemporary sources all name him John. My guess is that what appears to be a lower case "o" in his signature is supposed to be a period: "Jn. Cassel."

Incidentally, the illustration credit for the cartoon in May It Amuse the Court is listed as "Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch." Cassel quit the New York World in 1927 over disagreement with management regarding New York Governor Alfred E. Smith's presidential campaign. After that, he was distributed by McClure Syndicate, quitting in May of 1929 to "devote his time to etching and experimental art work." 

By 1932, he had resumed drawing editorial cartoons, now at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. (It would have been odd if he had quit one Joseph Pulitzer newspaper, the Evening World, only to go to work for another, the Post-Dispatch. The St. Louis newspaper did, however, reprint Cassel's work occasionally when Daniel Fitzpatrick was on vacation. The Daily Eagle is correctly listed in the text of May It Amuse the Court as the original publication for the Cassel cartoon.)

The Knee Jerk Review of Books

Your humble scribbler couldn't go to this month's convention of the AAEC without coming home with a couple of books (what, only two this time?), so instead of the usual Graphical History Tour today, I herewith present my highly amateurish book review.

The cover

I spotted May It Amuse the Court: Editorial Cartoons of the Supreme Court (H.L. Pohlman and Michael A. Kahn, Hill Street Press) in the bookstore at the Cartoon Art Museum and knew right away that I would have to buy it. The fellow manning the register told me that one of the authors was supposed to have attended our opening reception but had been unable to make it.

I have editorial cartoon books that focus on presidents, on foreign policy, or on specific wars; this is the only one I've seen devoted to the Court and the Constitution. The text is generously illustrated with editorial cartoons dating back to the mid-19th Century. Thankfully, most of those early cartoons are well-reproduced, considering that many of the original drawings no longer exist.

From the book: "Waiting" by James Albert Wales in Puck, April 20, 1881

Each chapter focuses on a specific constitutional issue: for example, the Civil War constitutional amendments, labor law, women's suffrage, Prohibition, New Deal legislation, and mid-20th-Century civil rights. The chapters are presented chronologically, but the chronology of the cartoons overlap from one chapter to the next.

The book came out in 2005, so there are some chapters that deserve updating — particularly the one on abortion rights — and there is only passing mention of LGBTQ+ rights. Certainly Republicans' denying President Barack Obama his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court nearly a year before the 2016 election and then ramming Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett through barely over a month before the 2020 election in order to pack the court with a right-wing supermajority should merit a new chapter.

If an updated edition ever comes about, there are a few cartoonists from past eras whose names need correction: Winsor McCay is in the book as Winsor Mecay; John Cassel is misidentified as Ino Cassals. Other cartoonists whose signatures are difficult to read, such as Al Frueh and Edwin Marcus, aren't identified at all. Of course, many of the earliest cartoons are unsigned and essentially anonymous. Properly and consistently crediting the rest would be an improvement. An index listing of the cartoonists would also be helpful, as would an index of the several court cases referenced by name in the text.

The authors' habit of describing each cartoon within the text becomes a little grating over the course of the book. Useful when discussing some of the more difficult-to-read and obscure cartoons in the earliest chapters, it seems superfluous in the later ones. Perhaps not in the audio book, if there is one.

Those are minor complaints I have, which I mention at the risk of dissuading someone from seeking out the book — well, that's the trouble with quibbles. 

On balance, I can heartily recommend Pohlman and Kahn's work to anyone interested in cartooning, the Supreme Court, or constitutional law.

From the cover of Terry Mosher's book

The other book I brought home was Terry "Aislin" Mosher's Aislin's Favourite COVID Cartoons from Around the World. Mosher was giving away signed copies of his book, originally published to raise funds for Community Healthcare in his hometown of Montréal. The cartoonists in this 336-page collection all donated their work for the cause.

I would gladly have donated a cartoon or two if I had been asked. For that matter, I would gladly have paid for this book ($30CDN).

I've read less than a third of the book so far, but it's a wonderful sampling of cartoons about the pandemic representing Canada, the U.S., China, Israel, Iran, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Philippines, Mexico, Mosher's native Canada, and many more.

Uncaptioned, by Ilya Katz, Israel

What is not represented, quite intentionally as Mosher told us, are cartoonists who are COVID skeptics, antivaxxers, and conspiracy fabulists. Their opinions may eventually be of interest to future generations marveling at the hysteria of our own, but they have no place in a book dedicated to health care professionals who have been at the front lines throughout the crisis.

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Daily Cartoonist reported last night the death of British cartoonist Tony Husband, whose book America in Cartoons I reviewed here six years ago. (The link to his books at my 2017 posting is broken; Daily Cartoonist has a better one.)

My review of America in Cartoons lamented that there was nothing about Watergate or the impeachment of President Clinton in it; the Pohlman & Kahn book reviewed today has chapters on both.