2023 in Headlines

Another year has come and just about gone, so here is my annual photo of major headlines during anno domini 2023:

By the way, Mike Peterson accepted the challenge of finding some worthwhile year's end cartoons from 1923. You can find Part One here.

Everything Auld Is New Again

I robbed Mike Peterson of 1923 Christmas cartoons last week, so I'll let him have the year-end ones — except for this one that has nothing to do with New Year's Eve, but presages a certain meme:

"'Twixt Love and Duty" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News Tribune, Dec. 31, 1923

Instead, it's time for your humble scribbler's annual review of my favorites of my own work from the rapidly fading year. And as long as we're mimicking memes...

✍

Former Senator from Wisconsin Herb Kohl passed away this week, so I have to acknowledge his career here before the year is up.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 20, 1988

I featured my home state Senator in only a few cartoons over the years, starting in 1988 during his first run for the seat of retiring Bill Proxmire. There were occasional rumors about the lifelong bachelor's sexuality, and I drew referencing that — once — for the LGBTQ press. 

But for the most part, he only appeared as one senator among others in my cartoons — sometimes with a basketball to make sure that Wisconsin readers would recognize the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. I might just as well have alluded to his grocery or department stores instead.

Curiously, I never had occasion to draw him for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee in the nine years that I drew editorial cartoons there. Even when the week's editorial was about the Milwaukee Bucks, the focus was on the stadium board or local government or the players' union. I drew more cartoons for the Beej about our other Senator, Russ Feingold.

That's because Senator Kohl wasn't one to crave the limelight as much as some other politicians. Yet he worked hard on behalf of the state, and put more skin in the game than most team owners do when it came to keeping the Bucks in his hometown. 

Kohl may be the last politician here to gain popularity across the political spectrum. After a modest but respectable victory over then State Senate Majority Leader Susan Engeleiter in 1988, he carried all but nine Wisconsin counties in 1994, and all but eight in 2000. In his last reelection campaign, in 2006, he won each and every county in the state.

For a billionaire, he had the common touch, and kept in touch with his constituents from day one and then some. This was the first year since 1988 that Mr. Kohl did not send my dad a Christmas card.*

Vayanuach b’shalom, Mr. Kohl.

___________

* I stand corrected: Dad did receive a holiday card from Senator Kohl this year.

Q Toon: Holy Matrimony, More or Bless

There must be an appropriate liturgy in the Roman Catholic missal for blessing a same-sex couple; perhaps all it takes is a few Search And Replace edits to the rite for blessing a house or a meal or a football team.

As encouraging as it is to see Pope Francis willing to make this modest accommodation for same-sex couples in the Catholic Church, I'll wait to see what his successor has to say about it before I get my hopes up that his church has entered the 21st Century.

Or that it is willing to hearken back to the medieval and earlier rites of affrèrement or adelphopoiesis, a plighting of troth between unrelated male adults to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse" (one bread, one wine, and one purse). No mention of un lit, but different-sex wedding rites seldom mention that, either. 

The priest in today's cartoon might check out the congregational records of the Monastery de San Salvador de Vilanova de Lourenzá for the 1061 church wedding of Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz. I wouldn't be surprised if their union had been sealed with a Holy Kiss.

You couldn't ask for a more traditional wedding.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Christmas break? I know not of this Christmas break. What is this Christmas break of which you speak?

By the way, Mike Peterson over at Daily Cartoonist linked to my Christmas 1923 post in today's Comic Strip of the Day of more recent Christmas comic strips, so here's a link back to him. Fun column today; go read it.

A propos his column, I can't speak for the Nib's reason for breaking up their multi-panel cartoons, but mine is partly to make my multi-panel cartoons more handheld-device-friendly... and primarily out of frustration at Facebook's habit of displaying everything but the top and bottom 5% of the cartoon when I link from there.

Bah, humbug, Facebook.

Merry Christmas to everybody else!

Since you've been so good this year, here's one more cartoon from Christmas, 1923.

"Christmas Greetings from All Our Little Boobs" by Rube Goldberg for McNaught Syndicate, Dec. 25, 1923

With apologies if you're reading this on a handheld device.

Christmas '23 Skidoo

This week's Graphical History Tour turns the clock back 100 years to find out what America's editorial cartoonists drew for their papers on Christmas Eve and Day, 1923:

"The Message of the Bells" by Oscar Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 25, 1923

"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" remains one of my favorite Christmas songs long after the others have been played ad nauseam since Hallowe'en. It is a setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Civil War poem "Christmas Bells," written as his son Charley lay in hospital, having been shot during a skirmish in the Mine Run Campaign on December 3, 1863.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
....
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

"When the World Sees Us at Our Best" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Dec. 25, 1923

I can't say whether Oscar Chopin had the Longfellow poem in mind when he drew his Christmas Day cartoon, but I'm sure that many of his readers were instantly reminded of it. It was much more widely familiar then than now.

The Great War was receding in Americans' memories by 1923, and John McCutcheon kept his front page Christmas Day cartoon cheerful and optimistic.

"Enlightening the World" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 24, 1923

As did just about all of his fellow editorial cartoonists. The American economy was booming, and nearly every cartoonist had drawn at least one cartoon in December (if not one per week) advising readers to get their shopping and mailing done early.

"Everybody Ready?" by Alfred W. Brewerton in Atlanta Journal, Dec. 24, 1923

Not everybody was consumed by crass commercialism.

"St. Louis Has Filled It" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post Dispatch, Dec. 25, 1923

Daniel Fitzpatrick was one of several cartoonists whose space on Christmas Day celebrated their newspaper's Christmas charity gift drives (the San Francisco Chronicle's Gustavo Bronstrup being another example). 

Written on the stocking is "Post-Dispatch Christmas Festival," an annual charity event since 1900. The newspaper's 1923 festival distributed "well-filled dinner baskets" to 3,000 "worthy families," as well as "pipes and tobacco for homeless men ... at municipal and benevolent lodging houses." There was entertainment for children, featuring mechanical waltzing dolls, ponies, and of course, Santa. Donors' names and contributions were all listed in the Sunday edition, although receipts by December 26 had fallen nearly $1,000 short of the budget.

"With Gifts Galore" by Douglas Rodger in San Francisco Bulletin, Dec. 24, 1923

Scottish-born Douglas Rodger was a recent immigrant to the U.S. Before coming to California in 1922, he had served in the British Army during World War I and the post-war occupation of Germany. His experience of the Great War, therefore, was considerably more immediate than that of the other cartoonists included in today's post. (Even that of McCutcheon, who did some wartime reporting from Europe.) Described as mischievous and good-natured, Rodger was haunted by wartime nightmares for decades afterward. He took his own life in 1962.

I don't want to end this holiday post on such a downer, so let's have some cute little kids or something like that.

"'Twas the Night Before Christmas" by William Ceperley in Davenport Democrat, Dec. 24, 1923

That's more like it, isn't it?

"Merry Christmas Every-Body" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register,  Dec. 25, 1923

Whew! All this merry-making is hard work.

"Please Let Me Sleep" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Dec. 25, 1923

Oh, but now I'm just slapping old cartoons up on the internet without providing insight or adding value to them in any way! Well...

"Gone for Day" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Dec. 25, 1923

See you next week.

Q Toons: Resolutions

I had been concerned that perhaps this news story, a kerfuffle picked up by a right-wing blog, might be too obscure. 

A gay staffer for U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate, his office told the Washington Blade in a statement on Saturday morning, which followed reports that he had filmed amateur pornography in the workplace.

“We will have no further comment on this personnel matter,” Cardin’s office said.

The Daily Caller, a right-wing site founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, uploaded video and still images on Friday that purported to show leaked cell phone video of the staffer engaged in gay sex in a Senate hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building, which is not in the U.S. Capitol building.

I needn't have worried. The story has already been lampooned by a few cartoonists who I suspect get plenty of topics from Daily Caller, but also by the late-night TV shows. After all, sex is always Breaking News!

Let this be a lesson to all you hunky dudes who turn to a little frisky business to supplement your day jobs.

The brand may be Only Fans, but nothing on the internet stays put in a lockbox in a private room of a secluded home behind a paywall for long. The internet is more like a Wuhan wet market: once something gets out, there's no getting it back.

I'm not making a judgment here. If you're okay with Tucker Carlson sharing your sexcapades to your boss, your priest, and your mother, fine, go ahead. More power to ya.

Clearly you've got the balls.

This Week's Sneak Peek

No Santas or Scrooges or reindeer or sleigh bells in the pipeline this week, folks. No, indeedy. It's time for some good old-fashioned post-holiday physical fitness!