Toon: Wisconsin Burning

 

Sunday afternoon, police responding to a domestic violence complaint in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times at point-blank range as he ignored their orders and started to get into the driver's seat of the SUV his children were in. Blake, 29, has been left paralyzed from the waist down, according to his family. Blake is Black; the police officers at the scene are White.

A video filmed from inside a house across the street doesn't show what, if any, danger Blake posed to the officers or the public. A police source tells me that Blake had a knife; but at this point, I have to treat that as one of the many rumors swirling about here. This was not Blake's first encounter with police, yet nobody has claimed that he had no right to have a knife on his person. Second Amendment, you know.

Officially, Kenosha Police Department has been extremely tight-lipped about the incident. They haven't even said what role, if any, Blake played in the initial complaint. Citizens at the scene claim he was breaking up a fight. The officers have not been publicly identified. Kenosha Police are not equipped with body cameras.

Kenosha officials declared a curfew Sunday night, but protests were perverted into violence anyway. Dozens of downtown businesses were vandalized, and half of the inventory of a used car lot was completely burned.

Monday evening, hoodlums from Milwaukee drove to Kenosha in a caravan of cars for the express purpose of looting and rioting. The rest of the vehicles at Car Source were burned. A business owner was beaten trying to defend his shop. At least three uptown businesses were still on fire well into Tuesday and completely destroyed. The smell of smoke filled the nearby church where I work.

Last night, rumors flew that wherever you were, the rioters were coming to your block. As law enforcement and the National Guard continued to concentrate on protecting government facilities, self-styled militias joined the rioters roaming the streets, and property owners took up arms. Three people were shot, two fatally.

(Update: 17-year-old white vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse from Antioch, Illinois has since been arrested and charged with murder in the first degree.)

We expect things to get worse before they get better. 

Pray for justice.

Work for peace.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 So you don't have to ask, it stands for "Make America Great Again Again."

Oh, Magaa, you've done it again!

Ink-stained Ring-side Seats

Earlier this week, I mourned the end of an era: newspapers sending their editorial cartoonists to Republican and Democratic National Conventions may soon be a thing of the past. So, in the calm between the storms of this year's conventions, let's take a look back at this by-going tradition, shall we?

"More Glimpses of the Democratic Convention" by Leo Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. June 26, 1924

Sending cartoonists to these conventions grew out of newspapers in the 19th Century not being able to reproduce photographs well (and of the earliest cameras requiring everybody to hold very still for several seconds). They sent artists to capture the drama and excitement of Americans from all around the country gathering in hot, sweltering halls to decide the fate of the nation.

Harper's Weekly, May 19, 1860

Perhaps the Republicans' second national convention was as placid an affair as Harper's Weekly's artist conveyed it, but I doubt it. Before long, illustrators wanted to portray the enthusiasm, indeed, partisanship in the hall. Here's some fellow stoked to see his fellow delegates nominating William McKinley for a second term, an outcome that had never been in doubt:

E.N. Blue in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 23, 1900

Not content simply to be neutral observers, newspapers' editorial cartoonists became reporters. As the Republicans failed in ballot after ballot to settle on a candidate at their 1920 convention in Chicago, I imagine that John McCutcheon was hoping to scoop all the other Windy City cartoonists only to have to dash off this hasty oeuvre.

"It's a Boy" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1920

(I've already covered most of McCutcheon's cartoons for the rest of that Chicago convention.)

"And So We Say Farewell to Chicago" by Gene Basset for Scripps Howard Newspapers, Aug. 30, 1968

It would be interesting to assemble visiting cartoonists' sketches of another Chicago convention: the tumultuous Democratic convention of 1968. Did any of them witness the police riot on the streets, or were they all watching the chaos in the International Ampitheatre? Certainly what was going on outside was well-known inside; an Gene Basset cartoon earlier in the week showed Hubert Humphrey obliviously stepping over the bodies of wounded and bandaged protesters.

Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, July, 1972

For the most part, however, the stuff produced by editorial cartoonists at party conventions since I started paying attention have been fun, light-hearted observations of the passing scene, as in this mélange by Pat Oliphant at the Democrats' next convention, in Miami Beach.

"The Room Situation Out Here Is Very Tight" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, August 19, 1976

Or this Bill Sanders missive from the Republicans' 1976 convention in Kansas City. This must have been a good opportunity to get reacquainted with old buddies for Sanders, who worked at the Kansas City Star from 1963 to 1967. He discusses other convention trips in his memoir, but not this one.

I used to have a copy of the Kansas City Star with the banner headline reporting Gerald Ford winning the nomination, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I guess it must have been in the box of my stuff that was destroyed when our basement flooded several years ago. That's pretty much what I figure whenever I give up looking for something.

Paul Szep in Boston Globe, August, 1984

Paul Szep of the Boston Globe took one approach to covering the Republicans' 1984 recoronation of Ronald Reagan. The late, great Jeff MacNelly took another.

"The Culture Scene in 'Big D'" by Jeff MacNelly in Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1984

Just because one's editors sent one all the way to the convention and gave one an entire page of newsprint realty all to oneself — in full color no less, which was a big effing deal in 1984 — didn't mean one actually had to go to the damn convention.

"Yachting in North Texas" by Jeff MacNelly in Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1984

Toon: Ex Post Facto

Remember this? 

Donald Trump must be terrified that he can't win the election this November. With the coronacrisis making standing in line to vote (or volunteering as a poll worker) riskier than ever this year, many voters plan to mail it in this year. So naturally, Mr. Trump wants to make that damn near impossible.

Louis DeJoy, his lackey Postmaster General, has been removing postal equipment and mandating lousy service. He has forbidden postal workers to work overtime, decreeing that when the whistle blows, all mail should be dropped to the floor. As if more mail wouldn't be coming in the door in the morning.

Reports have come in from all over the country of mail drop boxes being carted away. Once upon a time, there were plenty of these blue boxes, some of which were scheduled to be emptied several times a day; but it has been years since one could find them anywhere except right outside the Post Office building. As photos and videos of these remaining boxes being hauled to godknowswhere started filling the internet, DeJoy announced that the confiscations would stop — only to have the boxes locked up so that nobody can use them.

New York Daily News photo

There was at least some lame excuse given for the removal and sealing of the mailboxes — people were stealing from them or dumping kitty litter in them or getting their heads stuck in them — but no explanation has been given why mail sorting machines have been removed from post offices with nothing to replace them. 

And employees forbidden to work overtime to sort the mail by hand.

Once the removal of the sorting machines was made public, DeJoy announced that in order to avoid the appearance of sabotaging the U.S. mail ahead of the election, he is suspending whatever the hell he is doing to the United States Postal Service until after November 3.

So you might want to get your Christmas cards and presents mailed in October.

Q Toon: My Convention in Milwaukee

The Democratic National Convention got underway in Milwaukee this week.

My ringside seat is no closer than anybody else's, since even the stars of the show aren't in town for the shindig, thanks to Trump's clumsy handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's a tremendous disappointment to the city of Milwaukee, which had fought for the rights to host the convention in part to remedy Hillary Clinton's having neglected Wisconsin — to her detriment — in 2016. 

There has been a gradual buildup to this week, but no one anticipated the crescendo would be inverted to a major bummer drawing only a few hundred instead of 50,000 people, $200 million in spending and international exposure to the city and state. Even the presumptive nominees, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, along with dozens of other speakers, will be Zooming it in.

Last month, DNC officials announced everyone attending the convention would have to wear a face mask, consent to daily testing for COVID-19, fill out questionnaires and maintain physical distance from other attendees. Those that do attend in person have been required to self-isolate for at least 72 hours before entering the convention and are being asked to stay out of bars. ...

Even the security zone for the DNC has been significantly downsized, leaving many streets that would have been closed in the downtown now open. Protesters and security around the Wisconsin Center are likely to outnumber the official in-person attendees.

That bit about asking attendees to stay out of bars has got to smart. One of the major bones of contention in this state before COVID-19 hit was Milwaukee and the Tavern League lobbying the hostile Wisconsin legislature to relax the mandatory 2:00 a.m. closing time for bars during the convention. Madison Republicans were still refusing to budge on the issue when it became moot.

Broadcast media are covering the convention from their studios in New York; print media are able to report in their pajamas. Nobody is sending their editorial cartoonist to sketch drawings of delegates in all their wacky regalia; there are no delegates and there is no wacky regalia.

This year's non-conventional conventions have the potential to signal a change in how these overblown circuses (circi?) are held. They weren't always the technicolor extravaganzas that they have become. Once upon a time, nominees didn't even attend their national conventions; that only came about as the rise of radio turned these relatively exclusive events into national platforms. Once television became dominant, both parties turned their conventions into flashy, heavily scripted infomercials.

If we make it through the pandemic by 2024, will the parties simply revert back to that sort of thing, or will the parties take this opportunity to change with the times?

Meanwhile, can we please do something about these godawful State of the Union addresses, too?

P.S.: Check back here tomorrow for another cartoon.

This Week's Sneak Peek

  This is only the third cartoon I've drawn Joe Biden in this year. He really should get out more. 

I'm Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are Good

Earlier this month, I chimed in on a conversation about someone else's cartoon that was widely misunderstood. For that post, I redrew one of my own cartoons in a way that intentionally defeated its own point. For SayWhatBack Saturday, I dredge up a few of my own cartoons that, at least as far as some readers were concerned, missed the mark unintentionally.

I drew the above cartoon for the parody edition of the University of Wisconsin at Parkside student newspaper as a follow-up to an earlier cartoon that, I was told, many readers didn't understand.

UW-Parkside Ranger, January 17, 1985

The cartoon was about the New York "subway vigilante" Bernard Goetz, who had shot some African-American youths on the subway because he had felt threatened by them. There are many reasons, however, that this cartoon didn't work. The guns, for one thing, were terribly drawn and barely recognizable as such. Some cartoonists can get away with oversimplifying objects, but things still have to be drawn so that the reader can't mistake them for something else.

The composition of the cartoon risks confusing the reader as to whether there are two separate panels or four. 

Perhaps most importantly, the racist imagery in the thought balloons is likely to offend readers before they get around to seeing the men below them. While intended to be grossly exaggerated misconceptions of whatever the facts of the subway incident were, they could have left the false impression that I was advocating one or the other.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 16, 1991

I remember worrying that this 1991 cartoon (I must have been still writing 1990 on my checks) featuring two Republican Congressmen from Wisconsin would be taken the wrong way, but I never did hear any feedback about it. When I went to the UW-M Post office with the the cartoon for the next issue, nobody could find the original of this one — the only cartoon original I never got back in several years drawing for the Post — so I guess somebody did take it, the wrong way, after all.

Manitou Messenger, Oct. 4, 1979

Way back in 1979, I drew a cartoon for my college newspaper about John Paul II's first visit to the United States as pope. In it, I likened his crowds to those surrounding the title character in Monty Python's Life of Brian― to which end I had people quoting lines from the film.

I thought that the film reference made the cartoon funny, but somebody wrote the paper the next week to accuse me of plagiarism. I suppose I should have written "Apologies to Monty Python" on the cartoon to explain that I was making a cultural reference. (And to Playboy for the reference to their 1976 Jimmy Carter interview.) 

 

Cartooning rules on plagiarism and cultural references are somewhat hazy. Perhaps I should also have added an apology to DC Comics or Todd Phillips or Joaquin Phoenix to this past week's cartoon just in case Brad Hendricks is still monitoring me for plagiarism.

Anyway, my response to Mr. Hendricks's letter included 17 reference footnotes and hardly a single original thought in it.

Just to be clear about one thing, I didn't remember Mr. Hendricks's name after all these years. I no longer have the original of this cartoon, so I had to hunt it up in the Messenger's on-line archives, and Hendricks's letter to the editor came up in the search first.

UW-Milwaukee Post, Dec. 8, 1994

We cartoonists don't mind people writing in to voice their disagreement with a cartoon ― we invite it. What really hurts is when someone tells us they didn't "get" the cartoon. Readers tend not to write "I don't get it" letters to the editor, though, probably for fear of appearing stupid in case everyone else thought the cartoon was hilarious.

I did hear from readers, however, including staffers at the Post, who didn't get this cartoon about House Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich claiming to have the names of drug users among Bill Clinton's White House staff.

UW-Milwaukee Post, Dec. 12, 1994

So I followed up in the next issue with this cartoon explaining the Gingrich cartoon point by tedious point.

Q Syndicate, April, 2009

Here's another example of bad execution. Acting New York Governor David Paterson took marriage equality advocates by surprise when he proposed legalizing same-sex marriage in his state. I wanted to point out how unprepared for this marriage equality advocates were; but by my featuring not them but Gov. Paterson in the cartoon, several readers were rightly outraged by an apparent joke knocking Paterson for being legally blind. I lost some newspapers over this one, and it was my bad.

Q Syndicate, December, 2012

Finally, returning to the topic of appropriating cultural references: please note that I was careful to include the proper apologies to all the original creators of the characters in this 2012 Christmastime cartoon. 

 

There used to be a weblog called "Editorial Explanations" whose author, Andrew Wheeler, called out confusing and snarkworthy editorial cartoons, and this was one of nearly a dozen of my cartoons that had him befuddled. Well, no wonder. Christmas and marriage equality have nothing to do with each other; but it was December, so I forced them into an unhappy marriage anyway. For that matter, all of the folks in the cartoon happen to be single, adding another layer of non-sequiturity.

There's a good chance of Hermey the Elf being gay, though.

By the way, even though I can recite just about any Monty Python routine verbatim, I have somehow still not actually seen Life of Brian.