The Toons of November Remembered

Rummaging through the archives in Bergetoons' state-of-the-art plastic bins, our Graphical History Tour guides have run across my cartoon about funding the federal government forty years ago this month.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Nov. 7, 1985

There's a lot of charcoal in this cartoon of Congress congratulating itself on agreeing on a deadline for resolving the federal deficit, which was almost $212 billion, 4.9% of Gross Domestic Product, in 1985. President Ronald Reagan had promised in 1980 to reduce the deficit, at which time those same figures were $74 billion and 2.6%.

Where are we now? That would be $1.8 trillion in the hole, representing 6.0% of GDP.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., Nov. 21, 1995

2011 Redistricting in Wisconsin has secured a lopsided Republican advantage in the state legislature and our congressional delegation ever since; that was not the case in 1995. Republicans held a 17-to-16 majority in the State Senate that year.

The Milwaukee Brewers came to Madison asking for help funding the building of what is currently American Family Field. Governor Tommy Thompson was loath to raise taxes on the entire state, so he proposed instead imposing a .1% sales tax on Milwaukee County and the four counties adjacent to it, including Racine County to its south. 

The idea was extremely unpopular in Racine, and wasn't helped by Thompson gleefully telling voters outside the five-county area to "stick it to 'em." State Senator George Petak, Republican from Racine, pledged to vote against the five-county tax, and did so on several procedural votes. The deal appeared destined to fail by one vote, but then, around 4:00 in the morning, Petak switched his vote to Aye.

A supposedly grass-roots group quickly gathered enough signatures for a recall election against Sen. Petak. The Wisconsin Democratic Party denied involvement in the "No More Petax" recall effort, and if you believed them, I've got a Bridge To Nowhere I'd like to have sold you.

In the end, the recall was successful, and Democrats were happy to take over control of the State Senate from 1996 to 1998.

not in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 18, 2005

In a multi-panel cartoon, one can often get away with not drawing any background, and merely drawing one or two characters standing and talking. In a single-panel cartoon, however, it's best to have the characters doing something somewhere (especially now that everything has to be in color).

So when the Business Journal editors told me that the week's editorial was going to chide corporate boards that professed not to be able to find qualified women to serve on them, I figured the characters in my cartoon had to be discussing the issue in some men-only space. They aren't as plentiful as they were, oh, half a century ago, so I drew these corporate guys schvitzing in a sauna.

My editor quickly got back to me that the sauna setting was unacceptable, as was the second product line of Amalgamated Mustache Wax & Urinal LLC.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 18, 2005

I whipped off this version with the Mustache Wax CEO talking by phone to some unseen person, and pasted in the dialogue from the earlier version, minus the "and urinal." (It being Milwaukee, I counted on readers recognizing the Rollie Fingers bobblehead on the corner of the man's desk.)

It was the third time that year that the Business Journal editors asked me to edit or redo a cartoon, which may have had something to do with them deciding at year's end to go forward with no editorial page cartoon at all.

Or maybe it was because I had been away on a planned vacation for the November 11 issue, and readers hadn't missed me.

Moving right along...

for Q Syndicate, Nov. 2015

It seems nearly inconceivable now, but a mere ten years ago, Donald Humbert Trumpbert was just one of a dozen Republican presidential candidates, each of them clawing and biting to stand out from the pack.

At a candidates' cattle call on CNBC in October, Ted Cruz figured that the way to stand out was to attack the debate moderators. He accused them of asking "frivolous" questions (he had been asked about his opposition to the recent budget agreement, but ran out of allotted time before getting around to answering it), and said future GOP debates should have only questions submitted by GOP voters.

And his ploy might have worked, too, except that Marco Rubio and Chris Christie quickly seconded Cruz's complaint; Trump also called the questions "nasty," and it should come as no surprise to you that he was answering a question from the one female moderator on the panel when he said that.

To be fair, the moderators' first question to the group was to identify their biggest weaknesses. It's the sort of question you might be asked in a job interview at a company whose biggest weakness is employee retention; it's not the sort of question its CEO, much less a president of the United States ever has to answer.

The unquestioned loser of that debate was CNBC itself, although they were stuck with the format of trying to get twelve candidates to do something other than regurgitate standard Republican talking points and their own campaign slogans.

As for those candidates, they had already gotten their wish. The next debate was hosted by Fox Noise.

Q Toon: Will He Be Greeted with Flowers?

Looking over my shoulder as I was sending this cartoon to my syndicate editors over the weekend, my husband asked the immortal question: "Too soon?"

If anything, my publication schedule rendered this cartoon too late. The news cycle keeps on rollin', and all the other editorial cartoonists have moved on to other topics.

Frankly, mine is perhaps the mildest cartoon about the passing of former Vice President Dick Cheney that I've seen. Quite a few of my colleagues chose to chastise him one last time for leading the country into Iraq War II under false pretenses and with unrealistic expectations. 

Those weapons of mass destruction were never found, and we were greeted not with flowers but with IEDs. Then there was the true cost of the war: not the $728 billion spent by the U.S. government on hostilities, but 4,492 U.S. soldiers killed and 32,292 wounded, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 Iraqis killed.

Looking back from an LGBTQ+ perspective (as your humble scribbler did this past Saturday), one can muster up a demimodicum of sympathy for a man who has been rated the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history who had to hold his tongue is deference to the homophobic policies of his President that worked to the detriment of his own daughter. George W. Bush campaigned for reelection pushing a constitutional amendment denigrating people like Mary Cheney, in a committed but legally unrecognized relationship with a woman with whom she would raise a family.

Democrats exploited that conflict in 2004, earning the Cheneys' everlasting resentment; but he was after all the loyal Republican from his days as Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff onward. But then, Republicans turned on Dick and Lynne's other daughter after Donald Trump's thwarted coup attempt in January, 2021. Liz Cheney joined Adam Kinzlinger on the House impeachment panel, the only two House Republicans brave enough to stand up for country over party.

Even the Wyoming Republican Party turned against the Cheneys; Liz was trounced in her 2022 reelection bid for not pledging allegiance to Trump, who has complained ever since that she ought to be prosecuted for treason. 

For the first time in his long life, Dick Cheney endorsed a Democrat for President in 2024. Publicly and strongly.

Not that it helped Kamala Harris a whole hell of a lot. But it's the thought that counts.

Is Cheney's unjust war outweighed by turning away from the Dark Side in his twilight years? You, dear reader, get to decide which direction the celestial elevator in today's cartoon is headed.

Heavy responsibility, ain't it?

This Week's Sneak Peek

I incorporated the design of this mosaic at Santa Cruz in Seville into this week's cartoon. Can I deduct the trip to Spain as a business expense now?

The Good, The Bad, and The Cheney

A special Graphical History Tour bulletin: former Vice President Dick Cheney passed away this week. Since the man was often the subject of editorial cartoons, not least by your humble scribbler, this week's installment is dedicated to his memory... for better or worse.

Cheney, then a Congressman from Wyoming, was President George H.W. Bush's second choice for Secretary of Defense, after his first choice, powerful Texas Senator John Tower was forced to withdraw over a drip, drip, drip of allegations of womanizing and heavy drinking.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March, 1989

No, there were no such pesky rumors against Mr. Cheney, who had not cultivated the kind of resentment among his colleagues that Mr. Tower had. 

As Defense Secretary, he oversaw the Bush administration's military overthrow of General Manuel Noriega's regime in Panama; and later, Operation Desert Storm. The latter successfully repulsed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but Cheney allowed General Norman Schwarzkopf to be the public face of the military action.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Sept. 23, 1991

Operation Desert Storm was one of the Bush administration's many foreign policy wins, even though it left Saddam Hussein in power; the international coalition behind Operation Desert Storm would not have held together for an advance on Baghdad. By the time I drew the above cartoon, the Soviet empire was crumbling, reformer Boris Yeltsin was the hero for thwarting a hardliners' coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, and the U.S. had extended Most Favored Nation trading status to Communist China.

Moving on to the year 2000, I've got a couple cartoons that I drew but didn't submit for publication:

August, 2000

After George H.W. Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton, Cheney was in charge of energy conglomerate Halliburton. Then Republican nominee-presumptive George W. Bush tapped him to lead the search for his 2000 running mate. After vetting several potential vice presidents, Cheney found the perfect choice staring back at him from the mirror.

I didn't submit the above cartoon for publication because I was not satisfied with how this cartoon came out visually; a vertical format might have worked better than this horizontal one.

Every once in a while, a cartoonist gets an idea that is too mean to publish, but too wicked not to draw.

November, 2000

When Dick Cheney suffered one of his five heart attacks while the outcome of the 2000 election was still being decided in the courts, I drew this take-off of the running gag in the TV cartoon South Park. I posted it to the GeoCities page I had at the time, and nowhere else.

The joke here was that the Kenny character got killed off in every episode only to reappear in the next. Yet aside from being such an insensitive cartoon, the one other problem with it is that no Republican then (or now) would pronounce the "ic" in "Democratic bastards!"

As for worrying that the level of political discourse had sunken so low, none of us a quarter century ago would have imagined a President of the United States posting a video on line of himself literally bombarding citizens of an American city with a planeload of shit.

February, 2002

I think this was another unpublished cartoon, but only because I didn't have a market for it: not local enough for the Journal Times, not addressing LGBTQ+ issues for Q Syndicate, and not aligned with a Business Journal editorial. I apparently expended quite a lot of ink on it anyway.

The cartoon comments on Cheney's efforts to intercede for California energy provider Enron from his position as Vice President. When mismanagement from the top forced the company to go belly-up and under-the-table deals between the company and government came to light, any association with Enron could have been injurious to one's political career.

March, 2003

I drew this one for a former editor of mine from In Step days, Jamakaya, who liked my conceit of a Journal of Faith-Based Statistics. The imaginary magazine's medical advice has since come to fruition in the Health Department of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy the Lesser.

Cheney would be the most forceful advocate for achieving the unfinished task from twelve years earlier of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but unlike so many of my colleagues, I didn't draw any cartoons depicting his role in Iraq War II (or, for that matter, any cartoons about the famous incident when he accidentally shot a friend in the face while quail hunting. What could I possibly draw for publication a week later that outdid what all the other cartoonists and late night comedians put out the next day?).

Q Syndicate, January, 2004

Instead, I drew a series of cartoons highlighting how his daughter Mary living openly with her partner, Heather Poe, left Cheney in the awkward position of having to support President Bush's advocacy of amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as existing only between one man and one woman (at a time, one presumes) despite how it directly affected his own flesh and blood.

His rival for the vice presidency in 2004, Senator John Edwards, attempted to needle Cheney about this during their televised debate.

for Q Syndicate, Oct., 2004

John Edwards: "I think the Vice President and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And and you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy. ...." (He went on to criticize the GOP's Definition of Marriage constitutional amendment.)

Moderator Gwen Ifill: "Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds."

Dick Cheney: "Let me simply thank the Senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much."

Ifill: "That's it?"

Cheney: "That's it."

At another point in the debate, Cheney dismissed Edwards as an empty suit: “I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.” When Edwards's running mate, Sen. John Kerry, brought Mary Cheney up during the next presidential debate, Cheney told reporters that "I am a pretty angry father," and his wife, Lynne, accused Kerry of "a cheap and tawdry political trick."

for Q Syndicate, February, 2007

Mary and Heather welcomed son Samuel into their family in 2007, so I supposed that Dick and Liz were still tight-lipped on a subject about which most grandparents are more than happy to regale passers-by. Drivers-by, too.

This cartoon broke free of my clientele of LGBTQ+ niche publications, catching the eye of my esteemed colleague Joel Pett, who put together weekly editorial cartoon round-ups for the Sunday Los Angeles Times in those days. (February 11, page M2, at the top of the display, for gosh sakes! Thanks, Joel!)

I did check with my syndicate editors in case having the cartoon in the LA Times might scoop a subscriber in the local LGBTQ+ press. They gave the go-ahead.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2007

Early in the 2008 presidential campaign cycle, some genealogist with lots of time on their hands determined that Dick Cheney and Democratic candidate Barack Obama are ninth cousins once removed. It was a news story that didn't stop certain other people from making up stories about Obama being born in Kenya. Nor did it get Cheney and Obama to invite each other to family reunions.

for Q Syndicate, 2013

By the time Cheney's other daughter, Liz, ran for Congress, Dad had mellowed on the question of marriage equality. Liz, however, campaigned on a platform of anti-LGBTQ Republican orthodoxy. But she and her father deserve credit for putting country above partisanship after Donald Trump's attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Unfortunately for them and the rest of us, the MAGA Kool-aid has proved thicker than TEA.

That, ladies and gents, would be my last cartoon of Mr. Cheney, except that I have drawn one more. See you next week.

Q Toon: It's About Time

Say what you will about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA). Republicans came to Congress with a majority pledging openness and transparency, and Johnson has been very open and transparent about not having taken the time to find out what's going on in the country.

You can ask him about the Trump regime's graft and corruption, Trump's granting pardons to people the President has never heard of, Trump posting scatological videos on Ministry of Truth Social, Trump bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela seemingly at random, Trump bailing out the Milei regime in Argentina and taking in shiploads of Argentinian beef while our own government is shut down and our farmers are losing markets to China thanks to Trump's misguided tariff policies. 

Johnson's answer is pretty much the same.

“I’m not trying to dodge the question,” the top lawmaker said. “I haven’t had time to get the details, OK? That’s still on my list, things-to-do list.”

We know that whatever is keeping Speaker Johnson so busy he can't get around to his things-to-do list, it isn't running the House of Representatives. When Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open, he sent the members home. When Arizona voters sent Adelita Grijalva to succeed her late father in Congress, Johnson told them, "All representatives are currently out of the office, but your call is very important to us. Please hang up and your vote will be ignored in the order you get redistricted."

Why, then, is Speaker Johnson unable to find the time to get anything done, to catch up on the news, to notice that a 34-time-convicted felon is running roughshod over the U.S. Constitution?

You may be holding it in your hands right now.

Every app on your phone is designed to be a bigger timesuck than the others.

I don't know much about that app Mr. Johnson and Mr. Johnsonson use to keep tabs on each other's sexual activity, but you have to know that it sucks its users in and keeps them engaged with the promise that if they just keep reading on, pushing its buttons, racking up higher scores, clicking on those video reels of attractive people abstaining from sex, something really worthwhile is bound to come up on the screen any minute.

By the way, if you liked this cartoon about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, here are some others you might enjoy.

This Week's Sneak Peek

We ran out of candy for the neighborhood trick-or-treaters on Friday night and had to turn kids away while we put away our table and chairs. Last year, we ended up with several dozen pieces left over at the end of the evening even after giving away fistfuls at a time during the last hour. Someday, we'll do a better job of guesstimating how much candy to buy.

Our jack-o-lanterns we left out overnight. I cut "Pizza Rat" as a tribute to fellow editorial cartoonist Clay Jones (it's a recurring character in his work), who is recovering from a stroke affecting his right side — his drawing side.

Editorial cartooning and self-syndication is Clay's sole source of income, and he won't be able to draw again for some time yet. Given that health care in this country is nothing short of exorbitant, his friends have set up a GoFundMe account to help him out.

Here's a link.

Clean-up in Aisle Beback

Today's Graphical History Tour catches up on a few news items from a century ago that we left unresolved last Saturday, and had overlooked in previous episodes.

We'll start with the inconclusive federal election in Canada, in which the coalition government of Liberals and Progressives suffered significant losses, but without giving the Conservatives a majority in Parliament.

"Tit for Tat" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Nov. 2, 1925

A major issue in the 1925 campaign particularly a propos today was tariffs against United States imports: the Conservatives wanted them raised, while the Liberals and Progressives were opposed. I posted some Canadian cartoonists' arguments for and against higher tariffs last week; Ed LeCocq, filling in for "Ding" Darling at the Des Moines Register, is the only cartoonist from across the line I've found addressing the issue.

"After the Assault" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Nov. 3, 1925

Cartoons by "Passepoil" in last week's installment showed Baptiste Ladébauche, the characterization of French Canada, mocking Québécois Conservative Esioff-Léon Patenaude. This cartoon by Sam Hunter in Toronto, with his own version of M. Ladébauche, cheered Patenaude's election loss as a rebuff to "Montreal big interest dictation" and "Montreal Star dictation." The "Noble Lord" in the cartoon is the founder of the Montreal Star, Sir Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan, who had sold the newspaper earlier that year but still had a hand in its management.

By the way, it seems that at least for now the identity of "Passepoil" will have to remain a mystery. His cartoons on the front page of Le Canada stopped abruptly after the 1925 election. Since his version of Baptiste Ladébauche was virtually identical to that of Albéric Bourgeois, I have to wonder whether those two cartoonists were one and the same.

"And the Cat Came Back" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Star, Nov. 5, 1925

Over at the Montreal Star, A.G. Racey was hugely disappointed that Prime Minister William Mackenzie King was back at Canada's doorstep in spite of his party having lost 18 seats in Parliament — including his own.

King managed to stay in Parliament by getting one of the other members of his party to resign so that King could run in his place. Somehow that's perfectly acceptable in a parliamentary system, even though King had represented a Toronto, Ontario neighborhood, and the guy who gave up his seat for him represented Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

In my country, we call that carpetbagging.

"When the Western Train Comes In" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Nov. 17, 1925

Sam Hunter used a different baggage reference to depict the Conservative and Liberal leaders wooing Progressive leader Robert Forke. The Progressives' 22 seats would be more than Conservative leader Arthur Meighen needed for a majority, but not enough to do the same for King's Liberals. Ideologically, however, they had little in common with Meighen's party.

"Still Going Strong" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4, 1925

I have overlooked some of the other elections taking place in the fall of 1925, the most prominent of which in the U.S. was for mayor of New York. I presume that since William Randolph Hearst supported the incumbent, John Hylan, cartoonists for his New York newspapers were obliged to do the same; I unfortunately do not have any examples of them. Brooklyn Daily Eagle cartoonist Nelson Harding, on the other hand, attacked him relentlessly throughout his term in office.

"Trimming His War Bonnet" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Nov. 9, 1925

Hylan, a somewhat dull-witted fellow who was not a particularly good public speaker, lost the Democratic Party primary in September to flashy man-about-town Jimmy Walker, a protegé of Governor Al Smith. Charismatic and benefiting from a smear campaign out of Tammany Hall, Walker easily bested the Republican candidate, pen magnate Frank Waterman, by 35 percentage points, and would go on to be one of the city's most colorful, albeit not ethical, mayors.

"Washington Bedtime Story" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Nov. 1, 1925

Updating this page's cartoons of Wisconsin's special election of Robert M. La Follette, Jr., to succeed his late father in the U.S. Senate, we have a belated Hallowe'en cartoon by Ed LeCocq. "Young Bob" was elected as a Republican, but with the active opposition of the national GOP. Republicans grudgingly accepted his landslide win as at least adding to their numerical majority in the Senate, trusting that, as the Senate's most junior member, he wouldn't be as much of a problem to them as La Follette Sr. had been.

"Nathan Hale—Mitchell" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Nov. 2, 1925

Wisconsin has a tie to one other news item that I've overlooked: Army Brigadier General Billy Mitchell was demoted to colonel, then court-martialed for insubordination in November of 1925. A commander of all American air combat units in France during World War I, he advocated after war publicly and strongly that the next war would be fought in the air, necessitating the creation of a separate Air Force.

"Chief Witness for the Defense" by W.A. Rogers in Washington Post, Nov. 3, 1925

This antagonized Army and Navy brass, who were more interested in beefing up the nation's fleet of battleships, particularly because he accused them of "an almost treasonable administration of the national defense."

"Did I Get Him" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, ca. Nov. 14, 1925

Convicted of insubordination in December, Mitchell resigned his military commission the following February. Later events would vindicate Mitchell's views, although the Army refused to reverse Mitchell's court-martial conviction on the grounds that, right or wrong, he had still been insubordinate. World War II led to establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

By then, Mitchell had been dead for eleven years. He is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city whose international airport has borne his name since 1941.