Toon: Commitment Issues

My cartoon today is a parody of Kristen Welker's interview with GOP vice presidential hopeful Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota. And some dozen or so other attempts by mainstream media to get veep wannabes to call the election already. It's a kabuki show put on by mainstream media and Trumplican politicians now that acceptance of election results is anathema to the leader of their party.

Once upon a time not so very long ago, the interviewer's question would have been a simple, "Yes, of course," spun around to "we expect to win" and all the policy reasons why.

But Trump expected to lose in 2016, which he could never square with having grown up believing that he deserves always to win. So he started blaming his anticipated loss on elections being unfair. He has continued that ever since, and considers it treasonous if anyone suggests that elections might be fair.

It's not a stretch for Republicans to accept the Trumpian position. The GOP has long accused Democrats of election shenanigans for letting urban people of color vote without having to pass a citizenship test. (Yes, that was the Dixiecrat tactic for decades after the Civil War. But those Dixiecrats have been Republicans ever since Reagan was president.)

Ironically, it's Republicans who have the baked-in advantage in presidential elections. Since the founding of the Republican Party, its candidate has been the winner four times in spite of coming in second in the popular vote. In that time, the Democrats' candidate never has. A majority of Americans now live in urban areas, but the electoral college skews rural.

But that's not good enough for the Trumplicans any more. Mr. Trump has demanded that only paper ballots cast in person at a polling place between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on the first Tuesday in November after the first day of November be counted, and that anybody still waiting in line at 8:00 p.m. be sent home so that election workers can report their complete tally by the time the TV news reports its exit polling. Or 8:05, whichever comes first.

Q Toon : Readin', Writin', and Religion

This week's cartoon does not deal, in a direct way at least, with LGBTQ+ issues. I still think it's relevant to point out Louisiana's new law mandating the posting of the Bible's Ten Commandments in each and every public school classroom, from kindergarten to science lab.

The LGBTQ+ community is a frequent target of the Christian Nationalists who are constantly seeking Establishment of their particular Religion in direct violation of the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. 44 years ago, the Supreme Court invalidated a similar Kentucky law on that very reasoning. But now, having stacked the Court with like-minded judicial activists, religious zealots are seizing the opportunity to cram their dogma down everyone else's throats.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry's mealy-mouthed platitudes about the Decalogue being the foundation of Western Law instead of a religious test are belied by the first three of the commandments. Many of us who revere the teachings of Jesus Christ do not share Mr. Landry's belief that the government has any business deciding who the Lord Thy God is. Or dictating how to spend the sabbath.

Nor did centuries upon centuries of religiously inspired war, torture, and bloodshed recommend itself to the Founding Fathers of this nation.

Tennessee was only the first to get its religious poster decree signed into law. West Virginia, Oklahoma and Mississippi are rarin' to follow suit. Oklahoma has gone ahead with requiring indoctrination teaching of the Bible in public schools. I patiently await reading about a teacher including the actual reason Y*w*h got pissed at King Saul in her lesson plan.

There is a meme going around proposing that teachers post the Ten Commandments in the original Hebrew. It's a clever thought, but the Tennessee legislature has already thought of that. They mandate what exact language must be used. The Required Tennessee Version of the Bible lists one commandment as "Thou shalt not kill," as opposed to the original Hebrew, which translates as "Thou shalt not murder." (OJB)

Distinctions like that do make a difference, and could very well be the basis for a lesson plan. That teacher might want the assign an essay on how to reconcile either translation of that commandment with Y*w*h's command that King Saul commit genocide. 

I patiently wait.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Allo, and happy Canada Day to tout les hosers, eh.

Crack open the Molson's, the back bacon and poutine.

Splendid Isolation

After Thursday's debacle — er, debate — no, I was right the first time — I for one am willing to try retreating to 1924 and all the global issues facing our presidential candidates that year.

"Der Januskopf de Präsidenten Coolidge" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, June 1, 1924

I had initially intended to use this German cartoon in my recent post with the cartoons of Republican vice presidential nominee Charles Dawes, since the face on the right speaking to the German people does not look much like the face on the left. The cartoon was drawn before Dawes was tapped for the second spot on the Coolidge ticket, but he would have been the face of the U.S. proposal for settling the European dispute over German war reparations.

The face doesn't look very much like Dawes, either. But on the other hand, Werner Hahmann probably did not have many photos of Dawes in profile to work from. And Coolidge was somewhat new to the world stage.

Either way, it's one (or two) very different depiction/s of "Silent Cal" than one usually sees from the period.

The tiny text at upper right explains the context of the cartoon:

(Auf dem Jaresdiner der "Liga für nationale Sicherheit" sagte Präsident Coolidge, "Swachliches Bertrauen auf die Rechsidee in der Welt hat wenig Wert.")

(At the National Security League's Annual Dinner, President Coolidge said, "Weak confidence in the idea of ​​law in the world is of little value.")

In looking for the original English version of Coolidge's statement, I found that he said in a letter sent to the Security League Annual Dinner, "I need scarcely tell you how vital I believe it to be in the interests of this country to maintain both the Army and the Navy. Feeble righteousness amounts to but little in this world." The letter said nothing about trusting in world justice; but in a speech at the dinner, his Secretary of the Navy, Curtis Wilbur, did express the administration's hope that eventually humanity would accept a World Court where some international disputes could be settled.

The face on the right doesn't look much like Curtis Wilbur, however. So let's move along.

"Has It Come to This" by Orville Williams for Star Company, ca. June 5, 1924

U.S. cartoonists continued to respond with indignation to Japanese protest against the Immigration Act of 1924 passed by Congress over Coolidge's veto. Orville Williams in the Hearst stable of cartoonists was a reliable critic of all things foreign.

"Keep Your Kimono On" by John Knott in Dallas Morning News, ca. June 5, 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924 drastically limited immigration from southern and eastern Europe (read Catholics and Jews), and prohibited immigration entirely from countries whose citizens "by virtue of race or nationality [were] ineligible for citizenship." Drawing on earlier legislation and a 1923 Supreme Court ruling, that language effectively included all natives of Asia. 

No Asian countries had enough military or diplomatic might to make their opinions of the Immigration Act heard on American shores, except for Japan. Japan was a military and colonial power in its own right.

John Knott's cartoon offers the unique view that the Japanese government did not share in that country's offense taken to the patently racist U.S. law. Yet if the Japanese government had not protested the Act, it is doubtful that it would continue to be a cartoonable issue weeks after it was signed into law.

In fact, Japanese Foreign Minister Matsui Keishirō instructed the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., Masanao Hanihara, to write to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes the Japanese government's dissatisfaction that "the manifest object of the [section barring Japanese immigrants] is to single out Japanese as a nation, stigmatizing them as unworthy and undesirable in the eyes of the American people. ... I realize, as I believe you do, the grave consequences which the enactment of the measure retaining that particular provision would inevitably bring upon the otherwise happy and mutually advantageous relations between our two countries."

"Unsophisticated in Foregn Diplomacy" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Gazette, June 10, 1924

I wouldn't be able to translate Japanese cartoons on the subject, assuming that there were some; but here are a couple cartoons drawn outside U.S. borders.

"Einwanderungs-Gesetz" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, June 22, 1924

Arthur Johnson's cartoons were generally hostile to American administrations in spite of his American heritage. In this case, I think he's seizing the opportunity to twit both the United States and Japan, allies against Germany in the Great War.

"Better Nail Down the U.S." by Winsor McCay for Star Company, ca. June 12, 1924

I don't see a signature on this Winsor McCay cartoon, which I have sometimes interpreted to mean that he drew it at the behest of publisher William Randolph Hearst without entirely agreeing with it. 

Uncle Sam is shown ignoring voices calling to return to a more open immigration policy, to lend financial aid to Europe as it recovered from war's devastation, to "give up our Navy" — and to free the Philippines.

"While We're Giving" by Albert T. Reid in Rutland Herald, June 16, 1924

At this time, talk of liberating the Philippines, an American-governed territory since the Spanish-American War, was coming from the same the Asiatic Exclusion League that had pushed for the Immigration Act. As citizens of a U.S. territory, Filipinos were not barred from coming to the states — a loophole in the Whites Only law.

The Philippines status as a U.S. territory would nevertheless remain unchanged for at least another ten years.

Q Toon: Gay Lib

The Libertarian Party held its national convention last week, rejecting appeals from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and convicted felon Donald Johnny Rocco Trump, instead nominating Chase Oliver as its presidential candidate. It took the party seven ballots to select Oliver, who received 60.6% of the votes over 36.6% for “none of the above.”

Oliver, a pot-smoking, gun-toting, anti-war, out gay 39-year-old from Georgia, was his party's nominee in 2022 for the Senate seat held by Democrat Rev. Rafael Warnock. He pulled in a little over 2% of the vote that year — just enough to send the election to a run-off. 

He represents his party's "classical libertarian" wing, the wing whose beliefs are just a hop, skip, and a jump from anarchism: government shouldn't do anything for you, or get in the way of the big and powerful. If you want to have an abortion, do drugs, dump motor oil in the lake, or burn tires in your back yard, a libertarian government won't stop you. Neither will it deliver your mail, plow your streets, educate your children, put out your house fire, or step in when a pandemic sweeps the country. You want to defund the police? They're your guys.

Libertarian Party leadership is currently dominated by its "Mises" wing, founded by the likes of Ron Paul and which has come to embrace Trumpism. It's named for the Mises Foundation, which is named in turn for Austrian-American economist Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (1881-1973). Les Mises Rabble oppose abortion rights, immigration, transgender rights, and "wokism," for starters. They are accused of supporting racists, bigots, white nationalists, and Putin apologists.

The Libertarians' convention was more interesting than I expect the major parties' conventions will be. Trump and Kennedy were booed on stage; some delegate cast a vote for Stormy Daniels in the first round; and then there was this:

Michael Rectenwald, the favored presidential candidate of the Mises Caucus faction currently running the party, failed to secure the nomination after making a bumbling, post-Trump speech on stage while stoned, having made a spur-of-the-moment decision beforehand to pop an edible.

Could his speech have been any more ridiculous than rambling on about electric-battery-powered boats, sharks, low-flow dishwashers, and how nobody is allowed to watch "Gone with the Wind" any more?

Back to the Libertarians: the Misesthropes are refusing to accept Oliver as their party's standard bearer. The Libertarian Parties in Montana and Colorado quickly voted not to put him on their states' ballots, calling Oliver and running mate Mike ter Maat "culturally woke" "useful idiots for the regime" who are "unfit to represent our values." Its parties in Idaho and New Hampshire may follow suit.

Oliver being openly gay is only part of what makes him woke and unfit in the Mises-to-pieces' eyes. Apparently, he was seen wearing a protective mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not advocating a governmental mask mandate, mind you. Just choosing to wear one himself. But that's enough to tar him as a stooge of the feds.

Psst: I'll bet that he stores his guns in a locked cabinet with the safety on, too!

This Week's Sneak Peek, and Update

First of all, here's a snippet from this week's upcoming cartoon:

Secondly, thank you to reader Bob Harris for uncovering the background information of caricaturist Alberto Barreto, whose rendition of Fighting Bob LaFollette headlined my post here on Saturday.

The Washington (DC) Times Herald devoted an entire page to wunderkind Barreto on Sunday, March 25, 1923:

"Peruvian Boy Artist Clever As Caricaturist" in Washington Times-Herald, March 25, 1923

According to the article by Victor Flambeau (caricatured to the right of Thomas Edison above), Barreto had already achieved "very remarkable success in his native city, where he was already recognized as a leading illustrator," before coming to New York in 1917 at the age of 18. He apparently came to the attention of the Times-Herald when he exhibited a collection of his political caricatures in D.C. in 1922.

"I had always been very much interested in art since I was a kid," Barreto told Flambeau, "and I was reading many books in artistic anatomy, color, perspective, and so forth." He took a single art class with Julio Malaga Grenet, the Peruvian cartoonist who was Director of Art at the weekly magazine Caras y Caretas in Buenos Aires. His cartoons were published in La Prensa of Lima even though he thought his work wasn't yet fit for publication.

Photo of Alberto Barreto at work, with his sister, in Washington Times-Herald, March 25, 1923

His mother and sister followed him to New York in 1919 after the death of his father. He had by then set up his own art school.

Barreto was enthusiastic about life in the U.S. according to the Times-Herald article. "All my success, I believe, has been due to the great artistic spirit and kindness of the Washington people. It makes me feel very happy, the great understanding that exists among people here.... 

"I also feel very much obliged to the Times-Herald and other newspapers that have contributed so much to my success by the wonderful way they have criticized my work. Art critics might say, 'They are so crude,' but that has not been the case. They have been wonderfully nice to me."

It will take some further digging to find out whatever became of him. Was he the Alfredo Barreto who managed the Washington Herald Bridge League in 1934? Was he the Alfredo Barreto who launched Neighbors, a "Magazine of the Americas," at a party attended by several Latin American diplomats in D.C., in 1937?

The Third Man

Caricature of Robert LaFollette by A. Barreto in Public Affairs, ca. May, 1924

We turn now to the third party candidate in the 1924 presidential race, Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Republican from Wisconsin.

I wish I could tell you more about the cartoonist who created the caricature of LaFollette at the top of today’s post. The Washington Herald identified him as being Peruvian, and credited the caricature to a publication called Public Affairs; I have not found either one on line yet. [Update: see comments.]

"The Prairie Fire" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 8, 1924

With Calvin Coolidge's presidential nomination all wrapped up and tied with a bow, and the fight for the Democratic nomination still raging all the way up to and through the party's national convention, Democrat-leaning cartoonists such as Daniel Fitzpatrick seized on the aspirations of Republican Senator Robert LaFollette as a sign that Republican Party unity wasn't what it appeared to be.

"Jazz" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 12, 1924

No doubt the Wisconsin Republican's open intention of waging a third-party campaign annoyed the mainstream of his party.

"Can't Tell What Bad Boys Will Do" by Harry Murphy for Star Newspapers, ca. June 16, 1924

Just how much of a nuisance his campaign would be was anybody's guess — as well as to whom.

"Unperturbed" by "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, ca. June 6, 1924

Despite Progressives' gains in the 1922 congressional elections, conservatives were firmly in charge of the Republican Party; Wall Street interests and southern conservatives were greatly influential on the Democratic side. LaFollette hoped for a Progressive Party in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party as an alternative, which he believed would ultimately replace the Democrats.

"Whip Behind There, Robert" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, June 18, 1924

The 1924 iteration of the Progressive Party was created by the Conference for Progressive Political Action, a collection of socialists, midwestern labor unions, and farmers' coalitions. It had included the Farmer-Labor Party (formerly the Non-partisan League, which we've followed in several earlier posts) but the Farmer-Laborites had split off from the CPPA in 1922.

"What're You Laughing At" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1924

The Farmer-Labor Party held its national convention in St. Paul in June, and was also interested in rejoining the CPPA, or at least endorsing LaFollette as its presidential candidate.

"Go Back" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, June 17, 1924

But LaFollette wasn't interested in the Farmer-Labor Party's endorsement, and their convention nominated a ticket of Illinois miners' union leader Duncan McDonald and Washington state grange activist William Bouck instead. (McDonald and Bouck were back at their day jobs within a month.)

"La Follette Cries for His Mama" by Robert Minor in Daily Worker, Chicago, June 5, 1924

If Republican stalwarts weren't about to let Sen. LaFollette off the hook for his initial support for the Russian Revolution, the Communists at the Daily Worker were not ready to forgive him for his more recent repudiation of Stalinism. "He cries and he scolds, but he doesn't leave his mama," reads the cut line below Robert Minor's cartoon for the Communist daily newspaper out of Chicago.

"I Hope You've Saved Room for This" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June 30, 1924

When the Progressive Party scheduled its convention in Cleveland, Ohio, for July 4 and 5, they probably assumed that both major party nominees would be known. As it turned out, however, when Polly Ticks in Dorman Smith's cartoon brought out the Progressive Conference course, the diner had yet to clean the plate in front of him.