Preaching, Praying, Grifting

Our international embarrassment continues

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I feel I need to remind everyone that having a grifter president (sic) is not normal and is an international embarrassment, which Trump excels. But just in case the grifting wasn’t enough of an embarrassment, Trump doubled and tripled down.

The dress code for Pope Francis’ funeral was black…all black. Melania followed the code. Naturally, Trump did not. Trump, who was placed in the front row to embarrass us further, wore blue, but at least the $97 Trump suit was dark blue. Trump talked about his Catholic voters before the trip, but wearing blue at the Pope’s funeral only showed them disrespect.

As involved as Trump was with the Italian mobs in New York, and with the amount of admiration he has for them, he should know they wear black at funerals. C’mon, man. This is almost as bad as him as that time he took Sarah Palin to a chain restaurant for New York pizza, which he ate with a knife and fork.

Trump expressed disrespect in other ways during the funeral. The carpet underneath the Pope’s coffin is considered Holy Ground and not to be walked on. Guess who stepped on it. I’ll give you a hint: He was wearing a blue suit.

Trump was also caught texting on his phone, chewing gum, and falling asleep during the funeral, all while sitting in the front row. There were over 50 world leaders at the funeral, but Trump was probably the only one sleeping, chewing gum, and probably farting.

Acting like someone trying to beat traffic at a baseball game, Trump left in the ninth inning and left the funeral early. Where did Trump have to be? Upon arrival back in the United States, Trump was on his New Jersey golf course. He was overheard saying, “This one’s for you, Pope,” as he kicked his ball out of the rough (I made that one up).

By the way, Trump’s “God Bless the USA” Bibles are made in China. I guess God didn’t bless the USA enough for Trump to give an American company the business to print his Bibles.

Backstory time: Not long after I joined The Free Lance-Star, I drew a cartoon about Pope John Paul II when he visited St. Louis. It was January 1999, and I had only been at the paper for five months. The top scandal at the time was Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The cartoon was the Pope on his hands and knees kissing the ground, which was/is a tradition for the Pope after he steps off his plane. Right next to the Pope, I had President Bill Clinton also on his hands and knees as if he too was kissing the ground, but instead of kissing the ground, he was looking up a skirt.

I thought it was funny. My editor thought it was funny. Everyone at the paper thought it was funny. But they stopped thinking it was funny and ended up apologizing for it after we got a LOT of phone calls from upset Catholics. They were majorly upset, and I was glad they didn’t know I lived across the street from one of their churches at the time.

They misinterpreted, or chose to misinterpret, the cartoon and claimed it showed the Pope looking up the skirt. My defense was that the Pope was looking sideways at Clinton, not up the skirt, he wasn’t under the skirt, and it wouldn’t have made any sense if he was looking up the skirt.

My editors told me it would be nice if I apologized, but I refused because I didn’t have anything to be sorry for. I told my editors that I didn’t offend anyone. They chose to be offended, and it was a stretch to be upset over that. I probably came close to losing my job. My editor didn’t try to fire me until 2001, and that was over a Boy Scouts cartoon, which is another story.

Later, the assistant editorial page editor, who was Catholic, told me we had to make special exceptions for Catholics when they were upset (he’s now the VP for a climate change-denying think tank funded by oil and tobacco companies). I bet the cartoonist for The Washington Times wasn’t allowed to do anything on Moonies.

Months later, it was still being brought up in editorial meetings. I was never again able to do anything that even came slightly close to something on Catholics. And if I were allowed, an entire committee would have to inspect the cartoon first, and then the cartoon would come back with notes, plural, which effectively would kill the cartoon. It also didn’t help that my editor was married to an angry Catholic who once wrote a letter-to-the-editor expressing outrage over one of my “pro-abortion” cartoons.

The biggest reason I didn’t apologize was because I didn’t want any group to control what we could and couldn’t say, or what I could say, and with the paper’s apology, they did. It always created a new rule that we couldn’t say anything about a particular group if they cried. The only other group that came close to being as upset as our local Catholics was our local volunteer fire departments. That’s a story for another day.

The Free Lance-Star was a great newspaper. Emphasis on the WAS. I was extremely proud to work for that newspaper and with my colleagues. We had a conservative editorial page, but the paper wasn’t conservative, as the newsroom was separate from the opinion page, as they all should be. I just worked with some crazy people in the editorial page suite.

By the way, I was born Catholic. I assure you, I detest all organized religions equally.

So, with all that said, I was very careful about where I put the flies in this cartoon.

Music note: I listened to the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

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