2016 in Headlines

Since ’16back Saturday coincides with New Year's Eve this year, I'm going to post my annual photo of newspaper and magazine front pages here.

I offer my usual caveats: with only newspapers from the midwestern United States to choose from, I can't include many big international stories, such as the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The slow crushing of the rebellion in Syria lends itself more to photojournalism than a banner headline. And I might have included the death of Fidel Castro if he hadn't already turned the reins of power over to his brother years ago.

Meanwhile, I don't have a home paper publishing my stuff that would put together a 2016 in cartoons spread, so here are my own favorites from this crappy year:

Q Toon: One More Voice We Will Never Hear Again

This has been a bad year for popular music headliners: an incomplete list of the musicians we lost in 2016 includes David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Paul Kanter, Maurice White, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell, and, sometime before dawn on Christmas Day, George Michael.

There was a temptation to base this week's cartoon on Michael's "Last Christmas."  Instead, the quotation in this week's cartoon, and the headline of this post as well, come from "White Light," a song George Michael wrote after recovering from a serious bout of pneumonia in 2012.

So I just kept breathing, my friends,
Waiting for the man to choose —
Saying this ain’t the day that it ends.
There’s no white light,
And I'm not through —
I’m alive, I'm alive,
And I've got so much more
That I want to do with the music.
Was it music that saved me?
Or the way that you prayed for me?

Michael's t-room arrest in Beverly Hills in 1998 prompted his coming out as bisexual, and could easily have sunk his career and soured his legacy. But just as there was a tension in his music between the profane ("I Want Your Sex," for example) and the sacred ("Praying for Time," among others),   numerous reports have come out since his death about his philanthropy: proceeds from "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" went to the Terrence Higgins Trust,a London HIV charity; and proceeds from "Jesus to a Child" went to a Childline, a London youth support center.

People are reporting on Twitter personal instances of Michael's charity which he had wanted to keep private. He volunteered anonymously at a homeless shelter, footed the medical bill for a TV game show contestant, and set up trusts for disabled children and adults.

So you can remember his public persona as a sexy, sensual pop phenomenon; or the private individual who saw social needs and worked to address them.

'Cause either way
I thank you.

Last Christmas Sneak Peek

I had been hoping to find some topic for this week's cartoon other than North Carolina bathrooms or Donald Berzilius Trump. But this is not how I wanted things to go-go.

The Night Before Christmas 1982

For Santaback Saturday this Nochebuena, I've dug up a front-page cartoon a very much younger me drew for the UW-Parkside Ranger for Christmas of 1982.

I drew it on the back of a 14"x22" student activity poster advertising a past event. The original drawing is way too large to fit on my scanner, so I've broken the cartoon up into three pieces. If you're reading this on computer, you can embiggenify the images; if you're reading this on your phone, what the focaccia! You can't read cartoons on an itty bitty phone screen!

The cartoon ended up in a cardboard art portfolio with the rest of my oversize college works, which was standing on the floor when our basement flooded a couple years ago. There's considerable water damage to this one, including highlighter ink bleeding through from the other side.

If you're too young to remember 1982, I apologize for not offering context for this cartoon. Explaining the joke would spoil what little humor there is in this parody.

I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Content Kwanzaa, Serene Solstice, or the Seasons Greetings of your choice.

Q Toon: Gonna Party Like It's 1921

I figured that enough of the weekly papers which run my cartoon are going to run "double issues" this week (meaning that they won't publish next week), that their editors will be looking for something with a year-end theme.

Donald Berzilius Trump is assembling an incredibly right-wing cabinet. Recent Democratic presidents have always felt compelled to include some Republicans in their cabinet; Barack Obama named three to his inaugural cabinet and was vilified as a ultra-liberal extremist anyway. Even George W. Bush named a token Democrat as Secretary of Transportation. There's no seat at the table in Trump's White House for anyone but Republican ideologues, tycoons and racists, however.

But since I draw for the LGBT press, I couldn't draw this cartoon without sounding the alarm for the future of marriage equality.

If you think my concern is unwarranted, consider all the efforts in Republican statehouses to legislate marriage inequality. In Arkansas, the state Supreme Court ruled that while husband and wife are both recorded as parents to a child, even if one of them is not related by blood, same-sex parents are not.

Several states have put forth so-called religious liberty laws to the effect that anyone can discriminate against same-sex couples as long as they claim religious belief as their excuse. And by anyone, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that that means any corporation: your employer can refuse family leave, your insurer can refuse to cover your spouse; your hospital can refuse to let one spouse make decisions on behalf of (or even visit) an unconscious spouse.

It's not just wedding cakes, and with no check on their power, Republicans have promised that it's about to go national.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Is anybody sorry to see this one go?

1916: Eggs, Dachshunds, Horses and Lions, Oh, My

I've still got a few more cartoons from my December 13, 1916 copy of The Outlook magazine, so here are some almost random cartoons from a century ago. I'll even throw in a couple other cartoons as a bonus.

Prompted by a Chicago alderman, a women's group called the Political Equality League announced a protest against the price of eggs on November 26, 1916. Unless the price were lowered from 50 cents per dozen, the PEL pledged to boycott eggs entirely.

"If James E. Wetz, the Egg King, carries out his threat," [Alderman George Pretzel told the group], "I may be in jail soon for conspiring to boycott him; but I am willing to take this chance to break the egg trust. There are about eight men in the trust, who sell to one another in order to keep the price up."

As egg prices continued to rise, others joined the fight against Mr. Egg over the next year, such as the National Housewives League and the Kansas City Restaurant Association. Prices hit a high of 65 cents per dozen before being cut in half in 1917.

"Boycotted" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, December, 1916

It may be unintentional, but the posters on the wall in Kirby's background are reminiscent of those that would be festooned all over the background of the typical Thomas Nast cartoon (especially the question "What are you going to do about it?"). The lower one refers to a Chicago Commissioner of Weights and Measures, who persuaded local theaters to display a notice on their screens reading,

"Smash the egg gamblers—Join the egg boycott. It's the man higher up—not the retailer. Practice economy in use of eggs. Buy only for aged, infirm and children. Decrease demand and watch price come down. It's up to you."

At The Outlook, the editors attribute the rise in egg prices to the seasonal fact that hens lay fewer eggs in cold weather. The editors recommend "cold storage":

"It requires only the foresight to purchase fresh eggs in the spring, when they are cheap and plentiful, and to preserve these same eggs until the following winter, when they are scarce and dear. Eggs can be preserved for a much longer time than this in crocks filled with a solution of water-glass or silicate of soda."

Nelson Harding finds a clever pun for a cartoon critical of a bill by a Rep. Fitzgerald (D-NY), Chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, enacting an embargo on the exportation of foodstuffs for one year, to be enforced by the U.S. Army and Navy.

"The Dog in the Measure" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December, 1916

The aim of the bill, opposed by farmers and others in the food industry, was to drive down the cost of groceries. Harding here opines that the bill would benefit Germany by cutting off American exports to Great Britain. (England was already blockading American exports to Germany, as we've noted before.) The bill was also opposed by Rep. Adamson of Georgia, Chair of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, whom we have met previously in his bill regarding the railway workers' strike.

Let's give some attention to a few cartoonists from outside the United States, shall we? Turning a cliché back in on itself in this cartoon featuring British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Canadian cartoonist Sam Hunter is skeptical of the latest peace proposal from the Kaiser:

"Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth" by Sam Hunter for Toronto World, December 21, 1916

So is this Parisian cartoonist, I suppose. At least I'm guessing the speaker in the cartoon is a French soldier; the Western front had been fought on French soil, not German soil. for two years and counting. Besides, the uniform seems consistent with that interpretation. If so, then the other two men must be German citizens, unless the soldier is German and the two with the plank are from a neutral country.

"Peace?" by cartoonist in Le Rire, Paris, December, 1916

What's with that P? Are they Privates from Prussia? Peaceniks from Pays Bas? Damn that French cartoonist for not putting one of those helmets with the pointy spire on top on somebody's head so we historically illiterate 21st Century Americans can tell who's who!

There's no ambiguity in this British cartoon featuring Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg.

"The Lion that Grew" by F. Carruthers Gould in Westiminster Gazette, London, December, 1916

A full-page cartoon in the Canadian bi-weekly La Bataille offers a much less smug view of the war. As Europa grimly packs half the seed of Europe, one by one as cannon fodder, the U.S. appears as the light ("la lumiere") on the horizon. (I'm sure I don't need to remind you that Canada, as part of the United Kingdom, was already at war.)

Untitled cartoon by Phyl (LaFerrière?) in La Bataille, Montreal, December 14, 1916