This Week's Sneak Peek

You might have caught this story in the news this week.

I might show up on fusion.net this week -- it's a venture between Yahoo! and ABC that I hadn't heard of before. If I do show up there, it will be through the "Graphic Culture" link under the "More" tab.

Postwar World: Womenfolk and Tech

It has been a month since Swoopback Saturday has leafed through A Bird's Eye View of the Postwar World, so here we go. We were discussing postwar predictions for the fairer sex, some of which were little more than flimsy excuses to draw some cheesecake.

But of more interest (to me, anyway) are when the cartoonists let their imaginations run wild predicting a world of amazing gadgets, time- and labor-saving devices, and changes to everyday life.

You will probably have to click on this picture to be able to read George Shellhases's flights of fancy, since I didn't separate them out into separate graphics:

Marriage Equality Flashback

In celebration of today's Supreme Court ruling extending marriage equality to all fifty states -- and the separate dissents by each and every one of the justices in the minority, here's a cartoon from last year. 

Chief Justice Roberts wasn't in this cartoon, but I have a sneaking feeling he'll join this hapless trio in next week's cartoon.

Q Toon: Terms of Enragement

Given how the assassination of nine Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina's Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church during a Bible study last Wednesday night has dominated the news in the U.S. this week, my Q Syndicate cartoon this week is only very tangential to LGBT issues.

This weekend on NPR's On the Media, Brooke Gladstone noted what she called the media's rules for different races when it comes to mass murder:

"If [Dylann] Roof were Muslim, he would have been identified swiftly and universally as a 'terrorist.' Reporters would focus on his 'recruiters,' which in his case could be a multitude of white supremacist web sites, or one of the many hate groups that exist legally in his own state. But when the suspect is white, he's an 'aberration,' immediately furnished with a name, a family, a history, and a diagnosis. Whereas a black suspect, for instance, accused of far less or nothing, more often is displayed as a nameless emblem of a social disease."

In the days since, The Guardian of Great Britain led American media in unmasking the Council of Conservative Citizens as Roof's on-line recruiter. Digging further, American media found that the head of the CCC, Earl Holt III, has donated thousands of dollars to Republicans over the years (including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Senator Ron Johnson, and Representative Paul Ryan); Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum are among the presidential candidates now stumbling all over themselves to turn away that cash.

Well, who could have known that an organization sharing its acronym with the Coo Clucks Clan would be a bunch of racists? Besides the Southern Poverty Law Center, that is.

And while Republicans have been hastily disavowing Roof's recruiter, Walmart, Amazon, Target and even the state of Alabama have taken the rebel battle flag off their shelves and flagpoles. Anything to keep the subject away from gun control, I suppose. Minneapolis might even rename Lake Calhoun.

I do so hope that Roof is being kept up to date with these developments in the Race War he wanted to spark.

This Week's Sneak Peek

There will be no chickens on the other side of the road this week.

I'll take this opportunity, however, to update my entry the other day about Trinidad and Esperanza's wedding and the Telemundo-Milwaukee coverage thereof. I had said that there had not yet been any repercussions from the Anglo or Latino communities.

Since then, a pastoral candidate who works with the Emaús congregation has spent two Sundays leading worship at a Lutheran Latino congregation in Milwaukee, and he tells us that he did undergo some skeptical questioning there about the wedding. So it's safe to say that a same-sex wedding at that particular church would be a harder sell than at Emaús.

We Shall Overcome. Someday.

In light of Wednesday night's terrorist assault on Mother Emanuel AME in Charlotte, I was trying to think of some cartoon I'd drawn about racism to post here on Spyback Saturday. It's not as if I've never addressed the topic, but I couldn't think of anything I've drawn that would be particularly germane in the current context.

So instead, here's a photo that ties together race relations with Fathers' Day.

I don't actually remember much about this photo. All I know about this photo is that it was taken at a civic picnic in the summer of 1968, after the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations; I think this must have been during a prayer or something. That's me, my Dad and my brother.

Q Toon: Courage!

This week's Q Syndicate cartoon was probably inspired by watching so much Game of Thrones ... and by this picture (at right) in the Bible my church gave all of us Sunday School children way back in the days before Good News for Modern Man came out.

This particular edition has a comprehensive concordance, dictionary of biblical terms, maps, and, peppered judiciously throughout, a number of color pictures on glossy paper. The publisher didn't credit whoever was responsible for the pictures, unlike most of the considerably older Bibles I've seen which usually have a list of all the "plates" right after the table of contents.

This particular painting always looked to me as if the Emperor were somehow disintegrating down the wall, and I've never quite figured out what that red swath is supposed to be. Tattered cloth? Fading paint? Blood? Did he choose poorly?

The other source for this cartoon is the continued complaining from the religious righteous about how expecting wedding bakers and florists to treat their customers with equal respect is Just Like The Holocaust.

It's still a bit premature, I think, to make a joke out of Auschwitz; so, with apologies to my Sunday School teachers, I present Saint Godwin, the patron saint of Tiresome Hitler Analogies. (And just in time, Phyllis Schlafly has gone and compared antigay Christians to their lion fodder forebears. Is she a reader of this humble blog?)

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P.S.: I drew this cartoon well before A Jerk With A Gun decided to shoot up a church Bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina last night. No connection with last night's events is intended. But I would nevertheless suggest that there are greater threats to Religious Liberty than Adam and Steve patronizing their local florist.