Spooky Toons

Welcome to a special Halloween edition of Spookback Saturday! My cartoon this week was about an actual Halloween costume, but usually, we cartoonists mine this holiday for metaphors we can apply to whatever political story is in the headlines.

And I'm no exception. The charge that one's political opponent was attempting to scare seniors on the issue of social security was ready-made for a Halloween cartoon -- this one featuring the candidates for Wisconsin's 1st congressional seat in 1996 (Republican Mark Neumann and Democrat Lydia Spottswood).

Halloween and elections are made for each other. You can illustrate a charge that Candidate A is a Republican or Democrat in name only, for example, by having a donkey trick-or-treating in an elephant mask or vice versa. Just having kids dressed as political candidates and declaring that to be the scariest costume ever is overdone, I think -- I've seen way too many of such cartoons this season -- so the challenge is to find some way to turn that idea on its head.

I tried doing that in 2006 by portraying right-wingers attempting to be the very opposite of scary as they bemoaned Republicans' dismal chances in off-year elections. Fortunately, they did not succeed in convincing Democrats to stay home on Election Day that year.

Jumping ahead to 2013, these two persistent trick-or-treaters weren't being scary; but they were going to be disappointed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the issue of marriage equality.

Another use for Halloween imagery is when there is some issue that "just won't die," as in this 1986 cartoon for the NorthCountry Journal about a dam on the Kickapoo River, started in the 1960's; the Army Corps of Engineers ended up leaving the gates open, however, yielding to environmental concerns. A Democrat running for Wisconsin State Assembly in 1986 wanted the project completed.

This cartoon actually ran in the November issue, so I had to frame it from the vantage point of being after Halloween.

A big problem with Halloween is that it is so prone to cliché. Do you think taxes, prices, or the rent is too damn high? Vampire cartoon! Do you think somebody doesn't realize how hopeless they are? Great Pumpkin cartoon! Do you think Tea Partisans are mindlessly reckless and bent on destruction? Zombie (or Frankenstein) cartoon! Do you hate Hillary Clinton? Witch cartoon!

I can't be sure whether this 1900 R. C. Bowman cartoon was drawn for Halloween, but it illustrates how old these spooky ideas are. There is very little new material without having to dig very deep (oh, about six feet) to find anything original on which to hang a cartoon.

The most famous Halloween editorial cartoon of all time was drawn in 1936 by J. "Ding" Darling, showing Harry Hopkins, James Farley and Franklin Roosevelt running off with a family's outhouse, labeled "Private Rights," with an alarmed John Q. Public peering out from inside. Darling hadn't actually meant the cartoon for publication, and his editor at the Des Moines Register thought it was in bad taste; but the wife of his syndicate publisher reportedly told the New York Herald Tribune editors, "If you don't publish it, I'll put it on the woman's page!"

If you're going to swipe an old cartoon idea from someone else, at least give them the credit for it.

Q Toon: Costume Drama

One of  2015's crop of topical Hallowe'en costumes has drawn the ire of the transgendered community: for $29.95, you can dress up like Caitlyn Jenner's "Call Me Caitlyn" Vanity Fair cover.

Spirit Halloween sells a costume consisting of a corset similar to the one Jenner wore on the magazine cover, plus a reddish wig; a version sold at Wholesale Halloween Costumes adds a sash with the words "Call Me Caitlyn" on it.

An on-line petition started in August demanded that Spirit Halloween withdraw the Jenner outfit.

"[I]f you follow through with production of a Caitlyn Jenner costume, cisgender people will purchase it to make fun of her and our community. At a time when trans women and GNC folx, especially black trans women, are being murdered at such a high rate, and homelessness, unemployment, and inaccessbility to healthcare run rampant in our community, making fun of one or all of us is utterly insensitive and deplorable."

(That word "folx" is a new one on me -- I'm familiar with the attempts to castrate words that contain the letters "man" or "men" in them, but I had no idea that "folks" was somehow trans/gyno/homo/whatever-phobic. I'll have to look that up.)

Spirit Halloween spokesperson Lisa Barr told CNN: "At Spirit Halloween we create a wide range of costumes that are often based on celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes. Caitlyn Jenner is all of the above and our Caitlyn-inspired costume reflects just that."

CNN offers some suggestions for Halloween costumes "you can get away with," although I'd caution white cisgender guys to be careful about dressing up as their #1 suggestion, Cookie from Empire.

Sometimes a Sausage is Just a Sausage

The current fuss over whether smoked meats are bad for you is nothing new. Walt Kelly noted the concern in 1955:

from Pogo Peek-a-Book,"The Man from Suffern on the Steppes"

This Week's Sneak Peek

Someday, I'm going to draw a cartoon in which the jock with the split-level hair and ripped t-shirt is intelligent and insightful.

But probably not this week.

The PostWar World: Back to the Future

With Back to the Future now set entirely in the past, Skateback Saturday returns once more to A Bird's-Eye View of the Postwar World, (Consolidated Book Publishers, 153 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago 1, Illinois. And no, I don't know whatever became of Chicago 2. But that's what it says on the front cover.)

Click on image to enlarge.

I'm posting some text-intensive stuff today, starting with the above riff on the postwar kitchen from none other than Gracie Allen (George Burns's better half, for those of you too young to remember, but old enough to know who George Burns was. For you millennials, she portrayed a ditsy female whose innocent misunderstanding of the world around her delighted radio and TV audiences in the 1940's and 50's. This piece doesn't really show off her style, which required having George there as the straight man).

Gracie's home planner was definitely overoptimistic about an antless future, but Gracie was not alone in her opinion of orange decor. The color I associate with a 1950's kitchen is white, which I assume looked better than orange on a black-and-white TV. Ugly colors came roaring back about the same time as color televisions came into general usage; avocado was inexplicably popular.

This next one, imagining the changes to be faced by the man of the house, takes up two pages. I had to look up who H. I. Phillips was; imdb.com reports that he was a Broadway composer and sketch writer who contributed to such memorable revues as "Life Begins at 8:40" (1935) and "Ziegfeld Follies of 1934" (1934).

Whether Phillips was writing for radio by 1944, or Colliers, I have no idea. There's nothing in his imdb.com credits after the mid-1930's.

At any rate, even though he failed to foresee gas supplanting coal and oil as the heating source for the majority of American homes -- and perhaps the toaster-sized furnace is yet to come -- it's kind of fun to see how some anonymous artist pictured the domicile of the 1950's.

Marty McFly would have felt right at home.

Q Toon: Office Space Cadet

Campaigning at Drake University last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was asked whether it was right for someone to be fired from their job because he/she is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Paul responded by lamenting that LGBT people these days have the audacity to be open and honest about their families and relationships:

“I think, really, the things you do in your house, just leave those in your house and they wouldn’t have to be a part of the workplace, to tell you the truth.”

Given the extent to which today's employers think they have a right to know everything about every job applicant and employee (and certainly Mr. LibertariAyn Rand Paul wouldn't want to prohibit employers from requiring you to give them the password to your Facebook account), Paul certainly hasn't given any thought to what it would take to "leave those in your house."

Face it, Senator, LGBT citizens just want the same rights every other American has to surrender their privacy.

Paul has since attempted to walk back his comments by saying that, sure, it's wrong to fire someone for being LGBT, but it's even wronger for the fired person to take the ex-employer to court, and wrongest for the federal government to protect LGBT rights in the first place. He thinks these things ought to be left to state legislatures -- where some people want your boss to be able to require you to friend him on social media.

If Paul still sees nothing wrong with that, all I have to say is: Ophthalmologist, heal thyself!

Great News for Cubs Fans

...as well as for fans of Queen Diana, cholesterol, and the Jaws film franchise.