What a long strange trope it's been

By law, every editorial cartoonist must — at least once — draw the cliché of Father Time, passing his burden onto the New Year, a (sometimes) tophatted baby … each sashed, the old guy carrying a sickle, an hourglass passed between them. Maybe the sickle too, I dunno.

It's just enough to draw the cliché, not to know too much about it.

Smart/lucky cartoonists use this trope only once, then find something original to say instead. I used the cliché three times, in succession. In fairness, I tried once to make it fresh (above), twisting George Bush's "Thousand Points of Light" (which, kinda like Ronald Reagan's "Just say no," or President Obama's "Race to the top," really means, "Don't look behind the curtain — we got nothin'!")

The thousand points of uncertain light were certainly leading us into the darkness of war in Iraq.

Maybe I was a glass-half-empty guy, but I saw 1987 as a particularly bloody year, with the expectation of more to come.

Tragedy bookended Stockton's 1989, with a schoolyard shooting, five children dead, 28 others and a teacher injured in January, and a big rig hitting an Amtrak train days before Christmas, killing three people.

Notice a trend? Similarities, perhaps, to any recent years?

The word that comes to mind is intractable.

Happy (?) new year.

Hopelessly devoted

This is one of my favorite cartoons from way back when, the one that convinced me I could kinda sorta maybe carve out a living as an editorial cartoonist.

It also exposes my devotion to Pat Oliphant, the dean of editorial cartoonists (OK, say it: I'm an Oliphant sycophant). Among the many I admired at the time — including the late Jeff MacNelly, the late Paul Conrad (who in a letter told me to learn how to draw; I leave you to judge his opinion; I didn't take it well), the latest Pulitzer winner Mike Keefe — Oliphant was the only one I "listened" to. Maybe a little too closely.

(Fun-like fact: Oliphant, Conrad and Keefe all won Pulitzers while drawing for The Denver Post. Pedestrian coincidence, or alarming syndrome that requires our brightest minds and tenacity of the American spirit to stop? )

Backstory: Eugene Hasenfus allegedly was a CIA "cargo kicker," delivering supplies to Nicaraguan contras, fighting the government of Nicaragua. Hasenfus' plane was shot down, and Hasenfus was found with a "black book" containing damaging phone numbers and information linking the Reagan administration (and CIA Director-turned-faithful servant-turned-president, George Bush) to a suspected trifecta of delivering U.S. weapons to Iran at exorbitant prices to fund the contras. Hasenfus, sentenced to 25 years in prison in Nicaragua, returned to the United States in an apparent "spy swap."

The 'toon shows then-Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (who returned to become the current president) "shopping" Hasenfus to Reagan to complete the cycle of conspiracy.

I like the cartoon because of the spare composition that still establishes a street and a building, and because I had started to "shut up" with the text; in early cartoons I seemed to write all over the negative space. (Hell, the truth is I like to draw because I like looking at what I eventually draw. That others might see the art and feel some effect from it is icing.)

Looking over the collection of Oliphant cartoons my friend David Middlecamp recently bestowed on me, I'm reminded, with not a little embarrassment, how much I followed Oliphant's style.

Here's Oliphant's 'toon on the same issue, October 1986: Though he thought enough to chronicle it at all, he regarded it as a piffle in the greater scheme of the Iran-Contra scandal.

It does not reveal so much my mindful attention to his composition mastery. Maybe in future posts I'll embarrass myself on that subject.

On the larger issue of the Iran-Contra scandal, and U.S. covert operations in Central America, Oliphant was memorable and bitter. The cartoon below shows his mastery of linking one bleeding wound to another in one inexorable flow of misery, and reminding us, even as we continue in this manner, that we learn little from war:

Mr. Brown is upside down

Monument to the Old School politician. In these and the following, you can see Pat Oliphant's influence.

Then he re-formed into Da Mayor. Note the overwrought Ethics watchdog
in the top two cartoons.

I just read that a preparatory school named after Willie Brown, in San Francisco's under-served Bayview neighborhood, is closing because it could not deliver on its academic promise to students. In fact, it was one of the state's worst-performing schools.

It's too bad because, despite the former Assembly speaker and  San Francisco mayor's many faults and flaws, I think it's safe to say he looked out for the people he served.

Willie Brown was the target of many of my editorial cartoons, and if any of the Powers that Be ever even saw my cartoons, he would have cared the least. By far. He would have said "So what?!" because he bought weapons-grade Teflon®™, not the flimsy stuff Reagan wore. Nothing could bring Willie down, not scandals, ethics investigations, not even the Kryptonite that fells every other politician: Term limits. He just decided he'd like to be "Da Mayor" of The City, and took the job.

Brown was an Old School politician, no doubt having learned at the knee of his Assembly speaker predecessor Jesse Unruh, famous for two Old School quotes: "Money is the mother's milk of politics," and, about lobbyists, "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them, you have no business being up here."

Even John Wayne couldn't do this. This was for what I believed was a
syndicate. That chicanery deserves its own future blog post.

That was Willie Brown, taking as much as he could, pushing the political envelope, and always seeming to one step ahead of his enemies.

Ethics investigations and FBI stings couldn't do it: He managed to elude any dragnets that ensnared others in his party.

Even those in his party couldn't get to him.

Lawmakers tried redistricting to nibble away at Brown's power. Nope, that didn't work, either.

et tu, Assembly?

Of course, I could be using the Bayview School's closing as an excuse to run my Willie Brown cartoons. Which is why I strongly encourage President George Herbert Walker Bush, former governors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former Attorney General John Van de Kamp, and anyone still bumbling about from the Reagan and Bush I administrations, to begin tweeting inappropriate pictures of themselves immediately.

George Deukmejian, Willie Brown, former Sen. Pro Tempore David Roberti … all part of that long tradition
of getting served by …  I mean, serving the people.