Q Toon: Citius, Altius, Querulius

Someone got the Christian Right all riled up about the over-the-top opening extravaganza for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. A tableau including a cast of drag queens and an oversized Smurf was supposedly a blasphemous parody of Michelangelo's painting of the Last Supper. Before long, the outrage had spread like mono at a summer camp.

Except, of course, that it was meant to portray a bacchanalia out of Greek myth, and the Last Supper was supposedly not that wild. Just because Jesus's disciples couldn't stay awake afterward, taking post-prandial naps doesn't mean they were in full party mode.

Then last week, the same people got their panties in a collective wad over a transgender female boxer from Algeria who won against a cisgender female boxer from Italy. Fox Noise Machine went into overdrive. Right-wing cartoonists cranked out toons of burly behemoths pummeling defenseless little girls. Even President Melloni of Italy, Trump, and J.D. Vance weighed in.

The thing is, however, that the boxer from Algeria has been female all her life. By every measure promoted by transphobic Republicans — what's on her birth certificate? what's her given name? who does her grandmother think she is? — she is a woman. Not that you’re likely to see any apologies from the people who accused her of being Andre the Giant in drag.

There are certain people here and abroad who make their living being perpetually offended and making sure their audience is, too. 

Don't be surprised if somebody gets all upset that the closing ceremonies end without the IOC wishing the world a "merry Christmas."

This Week's Sneak Peek

Is anyone else out there experiencing the same sort of hurdles I've been running into when trying to upload stuff to web-based apps?

I still find that I can only upload cartoons to this Blogger site if I sign in on in incognito mode. In regular mode, I can sign in, type text, check for comments and stats, etc. Trying to upload any kind of file, however, I get a new window asking me to sign in to Google again, then the upload window — but nothing uploads. It doesn't matter whether I use the Chrome browser or the Edge browser.

In incognito mode, instead of the new sign-in window, I get a window asking permission to authorize cookies, and a second window asking me to be more specific. Then the upload window opens, and it has worked so far.

I haven't tried signing in on a different computer except in incognito mode (I don't want a strange computer saving my log-in info). I could see whether I could upload files here from my phone, except that I don't scan cartoons to it.

Blogger isn't the only site where I'm encountering this. At work, where I use Stripe, Wordpress, and a congregational management program called IconCMO, I've had to start using each one in incognito mode for full functionality. (In the case of Stripe, for any functionality at all.) There I have Foxfire and Safari browsers on an Apple IOS; I have had the same experience using Wordpress and IconCMO from home. 

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In case you've been jonesing for editorial cartoons from 1924 these last couple of weeks, D.D. Degg at Daily Cartoonist highlighted a series of cartoons printed in the San Francisco Bulletin. They called it a "Symposium by American Cartoonists," and it featured a few editorial cartoonists I've included in some of my Saturday Graphical History Tours — William Hanny of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Grover Page of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and Ted Brown of the Chicago Daily News — plus some others who have not yet joined the tour.

The Bulletin apparently intended for the feature to continue, but dropped it after the second week.

Perhaps they hadn't known when to expect their regular editorial page cartoonist, Douglas Rodger, back from vacation or sick leave?

The Wreck of the Richard M. Nixon

The 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation is next week. Although I've revisited cartoons from that historical moment before, the 1970's were a golden age of editorial cartooning; so there are plenty more whence those cartoons came.

"No One Is Above the Law" by Ranan Lurie, ca. July 29, 1974

At the end of July, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in U.S. v. Nixon, rejecting President Nixon's claim that "executive privilege" gave him the right to ignore subpoenas from the courts and Congress to turn over the White House tapes. Even with three Nixon appointees on the Court, the ruling against Nixon was 8-0, Justice William Rehnquist recusing himself.

Such a ruling has proven impossible under today's right-wing Court, stacked with grand old partisans who pretend to profess that the Founding Fathers intended for a president to have executive privilege entitling him to commit crimes, cover them up, and quash any investigation into them.

As long as he's a Republican, of course.

"The Last Bullet" by Walter "Trog" Fawkes in London Observer, August 4, 1974

Complying with the ruling, the White House surrendered the tapes, and investigators soon found the "smoking gun" they were looking for.

Six days after security guard Frank Mills discovered the Watergate break-in, and contrary to the President's claims that he wasn't involved, Richard Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman decided that the CIA should instruct the FBI to drop its investigation on the grounds that it would expose covert operations related to the Bay of Pigs invasion.

"I Didn't Know It Was Loaded" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, August, 1974

I've posted Pat Oliphant's cartoon before, but it's too good not to rerun it again. I'll probably rerun it every time I ever refer back to the final days of Nixon's presidency.

"Wait, fellers..." by Gene Basset for United Feature Syndicate, Aug. 8, 1974

Support from congressional Republicans instantly evaporated. Party leaders Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott, and John Rhodes came to the White House with advice for Nixon to start packing his bags.

by Don Wright in Miami News, August 7, 1974

On the way out, they suggested to Gerald Ford that if he hadn't yet moved into the brand new Vice President's residence at #1 Observatory Circle — he hadn't — he needn't bother.

by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun Times, ca. August 7, 1974

The House Judiciary Committee had already voted to send articles of impeachment to the full House. A few Republicans had voted with the majority Democrats. Now even Nixon's Republican defenders were urging him to resign before the House would have the opportunity to vote.

"Pay" by Jacob Burck in Chicago Sun-Times, August 9, 1974

The only question left was how steep a price Nixon would have to pay.

by Les Gabbard in The Guardian, London, August 8, 1974

Congress would happily drop its impeachment proceedings; but how much longer would the President of the United States remain an unindicted co-conspirator?

by Kenneth Mahood, Punch, London, August, 1974

President Nixon announced his resignation in an address to the nation on Thursday evening, August 8, 1974. Without admitting culpability for the Watergate break-in or the subsequent cover-up, he acknowledged that although "I have never been a quitter," he had lost all support to continue in office.

by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, August 9, 1974

Unlike his "You Won't Have Richard Nixon to Kick Around Any More" speech in 1962, his address didn't wallow in self-pity. He didn't blame his political enemies for his fate. He didn't argue that his discussion about obstructing an FBI investigation was "perfect."

"The System Works" by Clifford "Baldy" Baldowski in Atlanta Constitution, August 8, 1974

And he definitely didn't call upon an unruly mob to march on the Capitol and fight, fight, fight or they wouldn't have a country any more.

by Frank Interlandi in Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1974

I had intended to close out today's post with the above cartoon by Frank Interlandi (which didn't foresee the ink spent on cartoons drawn after Ford's pardon of Nixon a month later, and Nixon's interview with David Frost in 1977); but in light of the passing this week of Tom Engelhardt at 93, I'll let him have the last word instead.

"The End" by Tom Engelhardt in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9, 1974

Q Toon: X Stranged

Elon Musk, the eccentric South African billionaire who bought Tesla and Twitter and founded SpaceX, used to be considered a cool, innovative mastermind. But he has lurched rightward in recent years. Money, and a nostalgia for apartheid is apt to do that to one. 

You just can't keep these masterminds from becoming the evil kind, I guess.

Musk's right-wing politics has included animus toward transgender persons, and for him, it's personal.

He is estranged from his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson; they haven't gotten along for years. Musk discussed their broken relationship psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, streaming the conversation on X for the world to see. As one does when one is an evil mastermind.

He didn't support Wilson's gender identity, he told Peterson and the Xitterverse, repeatedly deadnaming her during the livestream. “I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said, adding that she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”

Wilson, very much alive, responded to her father in a phone conversation with NBC: 

Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.

Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.

Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said.

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”

Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present. “He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”

I don't know Vivian Wilson, but her case seems fairly credible. Musk is the sort of person who crows that he's a fighter for Free Speech, and then suspends the X account of  White Dudes for Harris for no apparent reason. (Were they somehow "violating [X's] rules against evading suspension" without violating some other rule to begin with?) Reports of his volatile temper and intolerance are legion.

There is perhaps some risk in posting a link to this cartoon to X, that someone at Elon's evil lair will take notice and I'll end up having violated some codicil in the Muskovite TOS or other. 

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It would have set up the final panel of my cartoon if I had had Musk use Vivian Wilson's birth name in panels two or three, but I chose not to. Deadnaming a transgender person is considered very rude, on a par with addressing a divorced woman as Mrs. Ex-Husband's Full Name.

Similarly, I had given thought to drawing a cartoon of J.D. Vance, another vocal opponent of transgender persons, objecting to being deadnamed himself. I have not, however, come up with any novel approach to the well-worn on social media topic of his having twice changed his birth name.

Not that I'm precluding such a future cartoon about it. It is just a little bit — you know— weird.

This Week's Sneak Peek

If you were expecting me to jump on the bandwagon with a smart aleck cartoon about J.D. Vance waxing prosaic about Sofa King Unlimited in his memoir, Hillbilly Allergy, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.

That was just someone else's joke.

Like Sarah Palin being able to see Russia from her house.

Or George W. Bush saying "strategery."

Or Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet.

Or Gerald Ford being a klutz.

Of course, Ford did actually stumble on the Air Force One stairs a few times. But so has Joe Biden.

You'd think someone would have fixed those stairs by now.

A Stroll Down Malarkey Lane

Today's Graphical History Tour was supposed to be about some century-old stuff, but it can wait. It waited this long, after all, so what's a couple more weeks?

In light of Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential contest, here's a look back at some of the cartoons I've drawn (and not drawn) of his political career.

He came to speak at my college while I was a freshman at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. I didn't happen to sit in on the first-term Senator's lecture, or, as the Manitou Messenger's editorial page cartoonist, to draw a cartoon about it. Since Biden's appearance came after the last Messenger before first-semester finals was published, it wasn't reported in the next issue, which didn't come out until February.

I didn't see him then, but I did get to see him in person in 2020, after the Kenosha rioting, when he came to the church where I work to hold an invitation-only conversation with local church and community leaders. While I did not get to meet him up close, I did deal with his campaign staff and gave his Secret Service detail a thorough tour of the building.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., September 24, 1987

The first cartoon of mine featuring Joe Biden came after his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination foundered on revelations that he had plagiarized the life story of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock as his own in campaign speeches. Biden was justifiably raked over the coals for this rather stupid move.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Oct. 1, 1987

The gaffe, since it was the one thing most people knew about him, dogged his career well after the 1988 campaign was over and done with. He next came into the national spotlight as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. I thought I might have included him in one of my cartoons about that, but it seems I didn't.

for Q Syndicate, October 2008

Other than including him as one of many congresspersons in a cartoon about a Ronald Reagan State of the Union speech, the next time I saw fit to draw Biden was after his vice presidential candidates debate with Sarah Palin in 2008.

By then, I was drawing primarily for LGBTQ+ publications, so my focus was on the candidates' response to a question about marriage equality. Moderator Gwen Ifill asked Biden (at minute 35 here), "Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?"

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted — same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair.
It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

Palin, in her rebuttal, reframed the question as an opportunity to voice her and John McCain's opposition to same-sex marriage, although "I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue." The "some of my best friends are..." weasel.

Ifill then asked Biden for his ticket's stance on same-sex marriage, to which Biden demurred, "Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that."

for Q Syndicate, December, 2010

Vice Presidents, and candidates for that office, are expected to echo the position of the guy (or gal) at the top of the ticket. Candidate Obama was officially opposed to same-sex marriage, in spite of having told LGBTQ organizations in Illinois that he was open to marriage equality when he had run for the Senate in 2006.

So, many of us wondered whether Biden was floating a trial balloon or exercising his reputation for verbal gaffetude when, as Vice President in 2010, Joe Biden publicly averred that popular opinion in the United States was "evolving" toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

At that time, marriage equality was the law in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia. 41 other states had legislation or constitutional amendments forbidding same-sex couples from marrying.

for Q Syndicate, May, 2012

In 2012, President Obama's position "evolved"; he stated that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marital rights. The Democratic Party included an endorsement of marriage equality in the party platform for the first time. The Republican platform, of course, was officially opposed to it, calling instead for an opposite-sex marriage exclusivity amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oct. 2012

There were no bombshell announcements in Biden's 2012 debate appearance with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. Republicans groused afterward about the 69-year-old Biden supposedly smirking while the 42-year-old Ryan was speaking.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

Biden sat out the 2016 election, campaign season coming as it did just after the death of his son Beau. But he entered the ring again in 2020, the oldest presidential nominee in history up to that point. I suppose that historians will decide that in the midst of an epidemic the likes of which only centenarians had ever seen, and after four years of a chaotic, mercurial presidency, the United States was ready for a steady, experienced leader who promised stability and reason.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

The Democratic Party Convention, thanks to COVID-19, proved a disappointment to host city Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The city had tried to convince Republicans in Madison to allow bars to stay open past the legal 2:00 a.m. closing time, only to have the candidates and most delegates attending by Zoom rather than in person.

Republicans thought they could show up the Democrats this year by having their 2024 convention in the Brew City. Madison Republicans this time around happily extended Milwaukee bar time to 4:00 a.m. for the week. But with the security zones around the convention center practically forbidden to local residents, and the Republican Party largely made up of people who regard urban areas with fear and loathing, many of the restaurants and bars ended up with their extra staff scheduled to work the wee hours of convention mornings finding nothing to do but polish tables and sweep floors.

October, 2020

Over the years, my caricature of Joe Biden has been as elastic as his hairline. The one thing that came to the fore more and more was his 300-watt smile. How his choppers have remained so day-glo white is beyond me. Does he never drink coffee? Tea? I've heard that some Catholic priests refuse to offer him communion wine.

Maybe it's the ice cream.

for Q Syndicate, 2021

I may have drawn fewer cartoons about Biden as President than I drew about any other president during any given four years. That's largely because I draw for the LGBTQ press, and Biden has a great record on LGBTQ issues, in stark contrast to the leaders in the Republican Party.

The Dad Jokes thing didn't pan out as a running gag, whereas the Republicans' full-bore, sustained persecution of transgender persons has called for a lot of ink and colored pixels over the past four years.

But who knows? I have to come up with a couple cartoons for Q Syndicate to release during weeks when I'm away for the drawing board. If you see any more Dad Jokes here over the next six months, you'll know why.

Q Toon: We Could All Use One

You may have heard the news already, but just in case you've just awakened from a coma: President Joe Biden, sequestered by COVID and beleaguered by his party's call to quit running for reelection after his cringe-worthy debate performance on June 27, withdrew from the race and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, instead.

As unprecedented as his decision was, it was a long time coming. And probably inevitable.

Many who voted for him in 2020 expected him to be a one-term president, cleaning up the mess made by the tumultuous Trump administration. But then he declared his intention to run for reelection, to "finish the job."

Governance, however, is not a job that is there to be finished.

Unless you're planning to implement Project 2025 and finish the Trump job of dismantling democracy once and for all.

Biden's performance in his June debate with Trump obliterated the confidence of every supporter who had been encouraged by his State of the Union speech. It demonstrated why the people around him had scheduled so few press conferences for our octogenarian president during the past four years.

Incidentally, I have heard that people who heard that debate as live-translated into Spanish thought that Biden had won the messaging contest. The Spanish language translators had to make sense of what the candidates said, whether what they actually said made sense or not. Trump's lies, however, translated easily and transparently.

I was pianist last weekend at a wedding where they had two ASL signers up in front for deaf family members and guests. Got me wondering how deaf viewers of the debate thought it went. ASL interpreters don't just use their hands; they also use facial expression — which can be quite exaggerated — to convey more than just the literal spoken word.

Anyway, Democrats now have a lot of enthusiasm and hope invested in Kamala Harris, and will need to keep that intensity up for the next three months. 

Harris has a reputation for having a rough relationship with staff. It supposedly doomed her 2020 campaign aborning, and if there's anything like that during this one, we will hear about it. The media love to report on the nuts and bolts of campaigning, because the campaign staffers are the people the press on the campaign trail talk to all the time. And disgruntled staffers tend to be eager to vent.

So Harris came to Milwaukee this week for a previously scheduled campaign event, and the staff had to find a larger venue to accommodate the increased interest. The Harris for President organization raked in a record amount in donations in the first days of her candidacy. And I dug out the Kamala Harris button I'd picked up at a union picnic in 2019.

Meanwhile, let's see whether Harris can appeal to those doggedly undecided voters out there. 

Like the woman in the focus group on CBS Morning News yesterday who thought that the the first name of the incumbent Vice President of the United States is Camilla.

Yeah, let's not pop the victory champagne just yet, folks.

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Drawing this cartoon put me in mind of a cartoon that was showing up in my social media feed while back. (I'd credit the cartoonist, but now that I want to cite it, I can't find the cartoon.) A guy has brought his car into the shop, and the auto mechanic has the car's hood up. He turns to the vehicle owner and says, "Here's your problem. The cartoonist doesn't know how to draw an engine."