This Week's Sneak Peek

As a symbol of the Republican party, the elephant dates back to 1864, the party's third presidential election. A pro-Lincoln newspaper in Pennsylvania (published 1864-1873), Father Abraham, published a picture of an elephant carrying a banner reading "The Elephant Is Coming" amid text about how the Lincoln was headed to victory in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Maryland.

Thomas Nast's series of cartoons featuring a Republican elephant came ten years later, starting with "Third Term Panic," depicting a braying donkey (representing the Democratic-leaning New York Herald) in a lion's skin inciting panic among other animals. Prominent among them is an elephant on a precarious footbridge (with planks labeled "deflation," "reform," "repudiation" and "Reconstruction") over a chasm of "Southern claims chaos."

Oliphant on Carter

Having already shared my ballpoint pen tracing of Pat Oliphant caricatures of Presidents Nixon and Ford, I guess the news that former President Jimmy Carter has cancer means that this week's Sweaterback Saturday ought to feature Oliphant's vision of the 39th President of the United States.

In this case, it's a daunting proposition: I have three pages of these Jimmy Carters. I was in college for much of Carter's presidency, able to hop on over to the library and trace every Oliphant cartoon in the periodicals rack, and to rummage through the hometown newspapers thrown out by others in the dorm. I don't want to overwhelm you, dear reader, with every last one of these Jimmies, so here's a select representation.

Unlike with Nixon, Carter was virtually unknown outside of his home state prior to his candidacy for the presidency, so I know of no Oliphant cartoons about Carter's governorship (1971-1975). As did most cartoonists in 1976, Oliphant fixated on Candidate Carter's omnipresent grin as the basis for caricature.

After Carter was inaugurated and had to deal with a Congress and other world leaders who played much harder to get than the American electorate had, there was less reason for Carter, the man or the cartoon, to smile. Oliphant saw in Carter's foreign policy emphasis on Human Rights and his domestic policy of urging Americans to lower their thermostats a humorless puritan.

Over time, given the 1979 "Malaise speech" and the 444-day-long Iranian hostage crisis, Oliphant's Carter shrunk in stature, perpetually at the mercy of events. Cartoon Carter even lost quite a bit of his hair, aging faster than the real man. Perhaps Oliphant had the portrait of Dorian Gray somewhere in mind.

Oliphant has continued over the years to give Carter no break, drawing him as a dour, Bible-toting wet blanket in this 1995 sketch, or as a grumpy, pug-nosed dwarf in his 2004 "Legacies" cartoon. (At least Cartoon Carter's hair has grown back.) At any rate, Oliphant has only posted two cartoons at all in the past year, so he may not rush to his drawing board to make nice just because of a little brain cancer.

Rall Entando al Fine

Ted Rall continues his series on How I Got Fired And Nobody Cared at rall.com this week, coming around to the failure of his fellow cartoonists to leap to his defense.

"You guys suck" was Rall's header for an August 9 screed on the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) listserv blasting the AAEC's silence on his case -- described as deafening in another cartoonist's posting, the first on the topic, on July 28. (Postings on the listserv are supposed to be confidential, but since Rall has brought the discussion out into the open, I think the cat is out of the bag.)

Between July 28 and the publication of the AAEC statement on August 11, there was a lot of back and forth on the listserv over whether Rall had proven that his case was any worse than that any of the scores of other editorial cartoonists who have lost their jobs in the last 20-30 years, none of which have produced official statements from the AAEC. Of course, hardly any of those cartoonists were sent out the door with an editorial calling them liars.

So far this year, the AAEC has condemned the killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors, condemned the arrest of Malaysian cartoonist Zunar, condemned the shootings at the "Draw Mohammed" confab in Dallas, called for Maine's Governor LePage to apologize for telling a cartoonist's son that the governor would like to shoot the boy's father, and, of course, called for an investigation into the tape the Los Angeles Police Department gave to the L.A. Times editors to get Rall fired.

On the other side of the coin, I can't recall any instance of the AAEC officially criticizing any cartoonist by name -- although accusations of plagiarism have resulted in heated discussion on the listserv, a few well-known cartoonists leaving the association, and eventually, a code of ethics (see the update at the end of this story). There was plenty of internal discussion whether or not the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the Texas anti-Islam cartoon contest were defensible, but in the end, the Free Speech absolutists won out.

We cartoonists are used to having our work criticized; we love praise, of course, but see criticism as a sign that our cartoons have succeeded in sparking conversation. Bill Sanders, for example, devoted three pages of The Sanders Book (1977) to hate mail. Today's editors, on the other hand, see editorial cartoons as little more than a graphic to break up an otherwise gray page. The occasional threat from a reader to cancel a subscription may not get a cartoonist fired, but complaints from advertisers, law enforcement, or the publisher's golfing buddies are likely to prompt an editor to discover reasons to "tighten the budget."

At issue here is not just whether the L.A. Times unjustly besmirched a cartoonist's reputation by calling him a liar, but also whether it should have leapt to conclusions based upon accusations by the LAPD supported only by a poor-quality recording.

I don't know who is qualified to step in at this late date, but a recent cartoon by Matt Wuerker was parsed by Politifact (and found "mostly true"), so perhaps we should let the Tampa Bay Times judge whether Rall's or the LAPD's pants are on fire.

Postscript:  (The Times defends its actions here, including a link to a recording from the LAPD purporting to document LAPD's failed attempts to contact Rall after his initial complaint about his treatment.
(But according to one of Rall's colleagues, J.P. Trostle, "As someone who has known Mr. Rall for almost 20 years, and was calling him frequently during this time period (as we finished collaborating on the book Attitude: The New Subversive Alternative Political Cartoonists), I can assure you that that is NOT Ted Rall’s voice on the answering machine, nor was it the greeting message he was using at time — which means the LAPD was calling the wrong number.")

Q Toon: Sermon at the Counter II

In spite of feeling that I put out the definitive cartoon on the topic just over a month ago, I've drawn about local county and municipal clerks who still defiantly refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the Supreme Court of the United States notwithstanding.

Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis is putting up a legal fight claiming that other people's right to a marriage license is a violation of her First Amendment religious liberty rights to refuse to do her job. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning stayed his earlier ruling that had required Davis to set her religious views aside and stop discriminating against same-sex couples.

Kentucky is not alone in facing unresolved issues related to marriage equality since Obergefell v. Hodges. Lawsuits have now been filed in Colorado, Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina claiming that public officials' religious beliefs supersede their responsibilities to their constituents.

Now, in case there are any sticklers out there who question the religious sincerity of the unnamed clerk in this week's cartoon, please note that in every panel of the cartoon, her head is covered by a dialogue balloon.

It's on the Internet, So It Must Be True

This Week's Tease

Yes, I did notice the story about a minor-league baseball player coming out as gay over the weekend. He plays, after all, for one of the farm clubs of our local Brewers, so the Milwaukee media have been on the story, after a fashion. (Since Mr. Denson plays for the team in Helena, Montana, where none of the Milwaukee media have reporters, much of the coverage has been of the variety where a reporter solicits reactions from passers-by.) And I read about Britain's first openly gay rugby star, as well.

But with the early, disappointing end to Michael Sam's career this week, it hardly seems like a good time for a Hooray For Gays In Sports cartoon. So it's back to that tired old topic of resistance to marriage equality.

Postwar World: War's End

This week marked the 70th anniversary of V-J Day, so for Saluteback Saturday, another look through the cartoons of A Bird's Eye View of the Postwar World. Another cartoon by William Wenzel illustrates the anticipation of the war's end:

"Your third from the left postwar plan is home, baby!"

The anticipation of a return to a normal home life was not limited to seeing one's loved ones again. At least of the flesh and bones variety -- America's love affair with the car was about to shift into high gear.

A generation that had grown up with Depression Era and War Time austerity was eager for an end to shortages and rationing. Aside from failing to foresee the mobile home, cartoonist Harvey Johnson wasn't terribly far off the mark:

"This is my first postwar plan. Every day I'm gonna drive in and say 'Fill'er up!'"

The return to normalcy was, nevertheless, going to take some getting used to.

"Please don't salute me any more, your lordship -- I'm no longer a colonel, nor you a captain!"

(Cartoonist identified only as "Medill" in the book credits)

"I beg your pardon but this is an old sailor habit that keeps coming back to me!"

(Cartoonist William Wenzel, again -- some editor having decided to print a mirror image of the cartoon!)