Q Toon: The Stonewall Boycott

This week's cartoon goes far afield from the centers of media attention, so let's start with the back story.

Next month, director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012)  is coming out with a movie, Stonewall, about the gay uprising that broke out when police raided a gay bar on the night of Judy Garland's death in June, 1969. According to Emmerich, the film is a “compelling, fictionalised drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth.” Imdb.com has this synopsis:

The plot revolves around the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the violent clash that kicked off the gay rights movement in New York City. The drama centers on Danny Winters [Jeremy Irvine], who flees to New York, leaving behind his sister [Joey King]. He finds his way to the Stonewall Inn, where he meets Trevor [Jonathan Rhys Meyers] before catching the eye of Ed Murphy [Ron Perlman], manager of the Stonewall. He colludes with corrupt police [Matt Craven] and exploits homeless youth [Caleb Landry Jones -- okay, I'm just guessing on that one].

Publicity image from "Stonewall," the movie. Looks like a musical number.

The problem some LGBT activists have with the movie is that it appears to center on a white, "cisgender" (as opposed to "transgender") male character. Pat Cordova-Goff, described as "a trans activist feminine person of color," launched an on-line petition to boycott the movie, signed by over 23,000 persons as of yesterday:

From the previews alone, queer folks have gathered that the centralized character is a white cis gay man. (WHY?) From the previews alone, queer folks have gathered that not many people of color are even in the film. (WHY?) To make this short, we have also gathered that white folks are being credited in throwing the brick, starting the riots, starting the "gay liberation front" and also capturing the heart of a light-skinned transwomyn. (Of course we all fall in love with the white saviors. WRONG.)

Emmerich and Irvine have responded that the role of non-whites and transgender persyns is given its fair due in the movie. Emmerich posted on Facebook that:

I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film - which is truly a labor of love for me - finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.

Irvine posted on Instagram:

Marsha P Johnson is a major part of the movie, and although first hand accounts of who threw the first brick in the riots vary wildly, it is a fictional black transvestite character played by the very talented @vlad_alexis who pulls out the first brick in the riot scenes. ... In my opinion, the story is driven by the leader of this gang played by @jonnybeauchamp who gives an extraordinary performance as a Puerto Rican transvestite struggling to survive on the streets.

Now, if you see any of these people wresting the microphone from Bernie Sanders, you'll know what they're shouting about.

Ted Rall Gets His Jaywalking Papers

In an era of Black Lives Matter and Je Suis Charlie, a 14-year-old accusation of rude policing during a jay-walking stop may seem pretty trivial.

In this case, it involves editorial cartoonist Ted Rall, a former president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, about as far left in the political spectrum as it is possible to be and still accept payment for one's work. Until recently, he had been freelancing cartoons and blog posts on a regular basis for the Los Angeles Times. In May, he described in a blog entry having been stopped by a police officer in 2001 for jaywalking.

I had done everything right. I waited for the green "walking man" signal before stepping off the curb. I walked between the crosswalk lines. I got across the street just as the flashing red signal began.
All of a sudden, a motorcycle officer zoomed over, threw me up against the wall, slapped on the cuffs, roughed me up and wrote me a ticket. It was an ugly scene, and in broad daylight it must have looked like one, because within minutes there were a couple of dozen passersby shouting at the cop.
Another motorcycle officer appeared, asked the colleague what the heck he was thinking and ordered him to let me go, which he did. But not before he threw my driver's license into the sewer.

Apparently, that jaywalking stop is still alive in LAPD's cold case file, because someone in the LAPD provided a taped recording of the encounter to LA Times editors to refute Rall's account. The recording is mostly static, but what little one can hear of the conversation sounds as if Rall and Officer Will Durr were having a calm, professional encounter.

On the basis of this anonymously leaked tape, editor Nick Goldberg terminated The Times's relationship with Rall, explaining it in a Note to Times Readers on July 28:

An audiotape of the encounter recorded by the police officer does not back up Rall's assertions; it gives no indication that there was physical violence of any sort by the policeman or that Rall's license was thrown into the sewer or that he was handcuffed. Nor is there any evidence on the recording of a crowd of shouting onlookers.
In Rall's initial complaint to the LAPD, he describes the incident without mentioning any physical violence or handcuffing but says that the police officer was "belligerent and hostile" and that he threw Rall's license into the "gutter." The tape depicts a polite interaction.
In addition, Rall wrote in his blog post that the LAPD dismissed his complaint without ever contacting him. Department records show that internal affairs investigators made repeated attempts to contact Rall, without success. ...
However, the recording and other evidence provided by the LAPD raise serious questions about the accuracy of Rall's blog post. Based on this, the piece should not have been published.
Rall's future work will not appear in The Times.
The Los Angeles Times is a trusted source of news because of the quality and integrity of the work its journalists do. This is a reminder of the need to remain vigilant about what we publish.

Rall has paid to have the recording professionally enhanced, and the enhanced version does seem to reveal onlookers berating Officer Durr for handcuffing Rall. You can listen to the recording and read a transcript here. I've listened to it, and without the transcript, you don't learn much. His tech geeks claim that there is evidence of the dubbed tape provided to the Times having stops and splices in it, in which case the tape is not the reliable witness that one would expect it to be.

On the other hand, Rall has walked back "he threw my driver's license into the sewer" to "...into the gutter," and from there to "...on the ground," so my take is that his memory has made the incident more vivid over time. (Exaggeration is, after all, part of the job for us editorial cartoonists. Let's not bring Brian Williams into it, Mr. Gardner.)

Whatever you may think of Rall's role in this story, what is clear to me is that the Times acted in violation of its professional code of ethics (recounted here), in particular:

The new guidelines are quite specific concerning the question of if the Times should and should not rely on anonymous sources, stating:
"An unnamed source should have a compelling reason for insisting on anonymity, such as fear of retaliation, and we should state those reasons when they are relevant to what we publish.”

After a surprisingly long period of discernment, the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists has joined Rall in publicly protesting the Times's actions:

Determining the truth in this matter is important to Mr. Rall's personal and professional reputation, and to the rights of journalists to freely express themselves. Furthermore, the Los Angeles Times should have demanded a higher standard of proof in this matter, and it is clear that Mr. Rall is owed a full and complete analysis of the 14 year old tape used to make a judgment about his actions.

There isn't much profit or career advancement in drawing cartoons protesting timorous newspaper editors, so the first (and perhaps only) cartoonist rushing to his drawing board in Rall's defense is a South African artist, John Curtis. Adopting Rall's style, Curtis pretty much says all there is for a cartoonist to say on the matter:

This Week's Sneak Peek

For the second week in a row, I can promise a virtually Trump-free cartoon.

I just don't know how long I can keep this up.

Oliphant on Nixon

Streakback Saturday this week falls on the 41st anniversary of the night President Richard Milhous Nixon announced his resignation. Nixon was a caricaturist's dream -- you could put those ski-slope nose, heavy jowls, and widow's peak on anything at all, and it was instantly recognizable as the 37th President of the United States.

By the time he was elected president on his second try in 1968, he had been Vice President for eight years, an ambitious Congressman before that, and a failed gubernatorial candidate in California, so established American cartoonists had pretty much settled upon how to draw him. There is little change in the Nixons drawn by Paul Conrad or Herb Block, for example, other than that famous "free shave" the latter gave the president-elect.

Patrick Oliphant, on the other hand, had come to America from Australia during Nixon's years in the wilderness, and it's interesting to see how his version of Nixon developed over the ensuing decade.

These are tracings I made in ballpoint pen of Oliphant's Nixons back in the distant days of my youth. (I wrote about Oliphant's Ford cartoons back in April.) They are by no means a complete representation of Oliphant's work, but only those cartoons I had in my collection of newspaper and magazine clippings started in 1973.

In Oliphant's cartoons from the 1968 campaign through Nixon's first term (above), all Nixon's major features are there, but the caricatures are on the gentle side. His face is stern in only two of these cartoons (in the December, 1970 one, Nixon himself is a bomber over Hanoi; in the June, 1972 one, he's jealous of Henry Kissinger at a state dinner.) Even dripping wet in February, 1969, he's put out, but not scowling.

It isn't until Nixon's second term that Oliphant's drawings of him start to acquire a monstrous quality.

I've skipped ahead to 1973 with these in order to play up the differences with what came before: the jowls are big enough to hide a muskmelon in each one. His eyes are often hooded, and his mouth almost disappears beneath that (presumably sweaty) upper lip.

The last of these Nixons is from a cartoon in the final week of his presidency, as the most damning evidence from the Nixon tapes convinced even his most ardent defenders that he had to go. In a black shirt and pin-striped suit, Nixon is cast as the hardened mafiosi from a '70's flick, offering one last, improbable defense, that he didn't know the smoking gun in his hand was loaded.

There are a few more Nixons from immediately after his resignation on this sheet, but most of them are from a single cartoon -- unrepresentative of the overall trend -- depicting Nixon as each of the characters at the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland. Aside from that cartoon, Nixon tends for a while to appear as a forlorn, embittered figure in Oliphant's cartoons, often appearing only from the nose up peering over the wall around his San Clemente estate. Later on, he becomes an evil, shadowy figure offering devilish advocacy to later presidents, or merely as a counter to the eulogies that followed his death in 1994.

Once I started buying Oliphant's books (starting with Oliphant! in 1980), I didn't see much point in ruining them by tracing every caricature of every president in them, so I didn't keep it up. Besides, I eventually had my own cartoons to draw.

Q Toon: Be Thou Prepared

Last week, officials of the Boy Scouts of America announced that they were officially dropping their blanket opposition to LGBT adults serving as scout leaders. BSA National President Robert Gates (the former Defense Secretary) explained that "due to the social, political and legal changes taking place in our country and in our movement, I did not believe the adult leadership policy could be sustained."

LGBT activists were disappointed that  the new policy will not apply to troops sponsored by religious organizations for whom antigay discrimination is a precious tenet of faith. Given that 70% of Boy Scout troops are chartered by faith-based organizations, the new policy could be of little help to gay scouts nearing adulthood in troops sponsored by evangelical, Mormon, or Catholic congregations.

Some evangelical, Mormon and Catholic sponsors, however, are upset by the new policy as well.

Officials of the Mormon church were apparently on vacation when the policy change was made, and saw that as a problem in an of itself. The church issued a statement complaining, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board. In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the Church’s governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet. When the leadership of the Church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined."

The Vatican hasn't issued any statement on the matter, and the National Catholic Committee on Scouting has been guarded in its reaction. Some local officials, on the other hand, aren't waiting for Holy Writ. Catholic Bishop David Kagan of Western North Dakota announced that, "Effective immediately, the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Bismarck and each and every one of its parishes, schools and other institutions is formally disaffiliated with and from the Boy Scouts of America."

A number of evangelical leaders reacted negatively, including Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who told the Associated Press, "Look, my advice to parents who are asking me about this is if you are concerned about the safety of your boys, you should run, not walk, away from the Boy Scouts as quickly as possible." Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd agreed, telling the Baptist Press, "Sadly and regrettably, I believe churches who stand on the biblical ethic of sexuality will have to cease their sponsorship and involvement in the Boy Scouts of America."

✒

In this week's cartoon, I tried to come up with a name for the fictitious congregation whose council of elders is planning their next move. There are a lot of Catholic churches with "Our Lady" in the name, and "Latter Day" is exclusive to Mormons, but finding a word evoking evangelicals was a little more challenging. "Evangelism" is a core value of all Christian denominations (hence the "E" in the officially LGBT-friendly ELCA), so that word wouldn't work.

I settled on "Fellowship," which appears in the name of many a Baptist, non-denominational, and other fundamentalist church. Of course, other Christian denominations believe in fellowship, too; although, where I come from, the word is intimately associated with coffee and kringle.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This week's cartoon involves some people sitting around a table, which means there must be backs of heads in the foreground.

That never happens on television, which is kind of a weird way to arrange things if you think too hard about it. Everybody sits on three sides of the table, even though they'd have more room if someone sat with his or her back to the camera.

I guess the other side of the table is up against the fourth wall.

Sketches from a Photo Album

For Swooshback Saturday today, I beg your forgiveness for some purely personal nostalgia. (It's my birthday, and I'm ready to rechercher some temps perdu, if you don't mind.)

Looking for something else the other day, I came across these sketches I had done back in college of a few of my friends at the time. They are all drawn from photographs. Sort of.

Nancy V. and Lynn J., from a photo taken at an off-campus Hallowe'en party. Nancy came dressed as an elderly woman, and Lynn  dressed up all formal.

John S., from just hanging around. These drawings are in Bic ballpoint pen on one sheet of newsprint, which accounts for the color.

Eli H. In the original photograph, he was dancing at the Rueb 'n' Stein. It's possible that 131 was his room number.

My junior year roommate, Marc P. If I remember correctly, someone sitting to his right had just attacked his holdings in a game of Risk. We did have a flood in our dorm that year, but not in our room on the second floor.

Marc died the following summer, but the rest of these people are still very much with us.