Cagle World

Editor’s note: This column is written by Daryl Cagle, the owner of Cagle Cartoons

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, passed away recently at the age of 80. He was a newspaper columnist, among many other things, and he wrote columns for my syndicate, Cagle Cartoons, as a conservative in a group filled with liberal political cartoonists, like me.

Michael was one of the first columnists to join our little syndicate more than 20 years ago. At that time, he was doing a daily radio show on many hundreds of radio stations, competing head to head with Rush Limbaugh. He was an important part of our getting into newspapers in the beginning. Michael could have gone with any syndicate, but he chose to support our quirky startup, and his longtime support made a big difference for us.

Michael was a conservative Republican, but in the old style of his father, not the crazy MAGA Republicans we know now. He didn’t hesitate to criticize Trump. His columns were always popular. When Michael took a vacation, editors would freak out, calling us, asking what’s wrong and when Michael would be back.

Michael invited me to join him a few times while he did his radio show, live on hundreds of stations, which was great fun and not what I expected. He sat in a dull little room, at a dull little desk that looked nothing like a radio studio, all by himself. I asked him, “Don’t you have a producer? Isn’t there someone you work with who feeds you prompts and clever responses?” There wasn’t. Michael said he used to, but didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

I recall Michael going into a passionate radio rant about some conservative subject and suddenly he stopped, stood up and said, “You want a cup of coffee?” He had just gone to a commercial and had 60 seconds to get coffee. That’s what the radio show was like, we’re having a conversation, suddenly Michael turns his head, talking into the microphone, and then his head snaps back to me, carrying on our conversation, then back to the microphone for couple of minutes, then back to me as there was a traffic report, the news, or another commercial. Never a pause.

Going out to lunch with Michael was a similar experience. Michael always seemed to be surrounded by friends. He lived in the San Fernando Valley, as I do, and I recall going out to lunch with him at Hollywood restaurants where he’d see friends and celebrities pop up like the commercials on his radio show. He’d greet these old buddies, then turn his head back to me to carry on our conversation just as he would after a traffic report on the radio. One time it was to hug his buddy Pete Rose, the baseball player I’ve drawn and syndicated in many ugly editorial cartoons.

Mike lived in a different world as a charming conservative celebrity, among the cartoon characters we editorial cartoonists bash every day. He made time for everyone, he devoted himself to charities, and he was often asked to run for political office and never did, which probably contributed to making him more likable.

Michael leaves a hole in our little newspaper syndicate and I miss him.

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of Cagle Cartoons, Inc, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at: DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, was an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation.

On Halloween night, parents now must decide between the traditional activity — taking the youngsters trick-or-treating — or a newer option: watching the World Series,

The fall classic once ended in mid-September, but could extend into November this year. World Series viewing is only practical for West Coast kids, thanks to late start times geared towards an East Coast audience.

Fans know that if MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could have his way, the league would play regular season games on Christmas Eve in Auckland, New Zealand. Picture Manfred’s fantasy: robots calling the plays at all four corners and players’ uniforms adorned from collar to cleat with advertisements — walking billboards.

Until Manfred realizes his dream, he’ll content himself with adding new teams to the existing leagues. With expansion and the diluted talent pool anticipated before the end of the decade, there could be a major reshuffling of existing leagues to address concerns over brutal travel schedules. Candidates for new franchises include Nashville, Salt Lake City, a possible return to Montreal, or the long shot: Mexico City. Manfred will need to mandate domed stadiums before awarding new franchises. Post-season weather delays are inevitable as games are played later and later in autumn.

Disgruntled fans yearning for true baseball should turn back the pages to relive the greatest Halloween baseball ever played. On October 31, 1924, three Hall of Famers — Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, and Sam “Wahoo” Crawford — played an exhibition game for the ages. Ruth won his only batting crown that year, hitting .378. He led the league with 46 home runs and drove in 121 runs. Highlighted by the Bambino’s cloud-busting 550-foot home run, with a second four-bagger added for good measure, Ruth and the game live on in legend in tiny Brea, California.

Johnson, the “Big Train,” was a local hero. His family moved from Humboldt, Kansas — Johnson’s birthplace — to Olinda, California, just east of Brea, a small oil boomtown. As a frolicking teenager, Johnson rode his black mare “Tar,” worked the rough-and-tumble oil fields, and began pitching for the Union Oil Wells, a company team where he forged his future as a MLB 417-game winner.

Just a few weeks after Johnson’s Senators won the 1924 World Series against the New York Giants, the 36-year-old “Big Train” faced off against Ruth, who toed the slab and pitched a complete-game victory. The game, part of the Johnson-Ruth barnstorming tour, was played in brilliant Southern California sunshine.

In honor of the big day, schools were closed, shops shuttered, Boy Scouts directed traffic, and fans from nearby towns rushed to see baseball played by the best. Though the evidence is lost to time, rumors persist the Hall of Fame duo led the town’s first-ever Halloween parade.

The Brea Bowl erected two thousand seats to accommodate the town’s 1,500 residents, but 15,000 showed up. Those without seats settled for gathering around primitive radio crystal sets. An Anaheim Bulletin headline — “All roads lead to Brea for Monster Athletic Contest” — summed up the pregame excitement. The Los Angeles Times dubbed it “the greatest deluxe sandlot game Southern California has ever seen.” After all, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and the Giants’ shift from New York to San Francisco were more than three decades away.

But Johnson, just days after his triumphant seventh-game World Series win, disappointed his hometown rooters with his substandard pitching performance. With only a day’s rest from an exhibition in Oakland and hampered by semi-pro catcher “Bus” Callan’s limited experience, Johnson was shelled — eight runs on eight hits, including four home runs. Later in his life, Callan revealed a secret about Ruth and his homers. Early in the game, Johnson told his catcher that the fans wanted to see Ruth do what he does best — hit the ball out of sight. During Ruth’s first two at-bats, Johnson grooved fat pitches that, to the fans’ glee, the Sultan of Swat blasted.

After the game, Johnson and Ruth visited Hollywood, with Douglas Fairbanks giving the two a set tour of his latest movie, “The Thief of Bagdad.” The Brea exhibition was the last game of the barnstorming season, beating the November 1 deadline set by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Ruth operated at full throttle on his swing west, playing to an estimated 125,000 fans in 15 cities. “He made 22 scheduled speeches, headed four parades, judged a boxing match, drove a golf ball 353 yards, visited eighteen hospitals and orphan asylums,” Marshall Smelser wrote in his 1975 biography, “The Life That Ruth Built.”

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Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

When I heard the news the authoritarian imbecile had fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics director for the crime of factual math, I dimly recalled something that George Orwell had written in a magazine essay 86 years ago. I had to look it up to confirm my memory, but there it was:

“It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two plus two will make five when the Leader says so.”

Orwell wrote that at a time when fascism and communism were riding high in Germany and the Soviet Union, a time when it was beyond impossible to imagine that such darkness could ever envelop the United States of America. Yet here we are, with 77 million voters having chosen a tyrant to tear us asunder from within, to the point where two plus two equals five because duh Leader can’t abide numbers that measure reality.

Remember, pre-election when he was convicted in a civil trial of massive business fraud because he fed fake numbers about his net worth to banks and insurers? And because, among his many cons, he insisted that his Manhattan apartment was 30,000 square feet, when in truth it was less than 11,000?

And remember, pre-election, when he was booked for alleged crimes in Georgia and, in lieu of being weighed as required, he insisted he was six-foot-three and 215 pounds? That was quite a stretch, coming from a guy whose bloat brings to mind Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca.

It’s a straight line from that weight farce to the firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer for reporting weak job growth. It’s a straight line from her firing to Trump’s math-flunking claim that “we’ve cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1,500 percent” – which is nuts by definition, because it would mean that drug companies are paying us for using their drugs.

As we know, the purge of Dr. McEntarfer – who was confirmed as BLS director by 90 percent of the U.S. Senate, including then-lawmaker J.D. Vance – is merely the latest manifestation of Trump’s multi-front war on all forms of nonpartisan independent inquiry. His regime has even nixed a federal grant to study “The Spread of Unsubstantiated Information,” which was grotesquely predictable.

Day by day, the predator is raping empiricism itself. He told us all along that it would come to this. Those of us who spent years warning about the obvious are dumfounded so many voters remained so oblivious. Now we’ve got the country we deserved.

Without nonpartisan economic numbers, employers and investors are left in the dark, and, more broadly, the rest of us can’t really know what’s going on. But that’s all by design. Priority One in a totalitarian state is to repress knowledge and render the populace clueless. Any numbers that flatter the tyrant are OK; any numbers that make him “look bad” are borderline treasonous. It’s like what happened in the 1930s when Stalin announced a Five-Year Plan, but later purged his statistical director for “bourgeois pessimism,” for reporting low crop yields that made Stalin look bad.

Is there any reason to hope a pivotal share of Americans will wake up to what’s happening in time to salvage some semblance of a society grounded in factual reality? Is there any reason to hope that Trump will pay a steep political price for trying to render us clueless and stupid? I’ve seen polls that show him underwater on virtually every policy front (most notably the economy, thanks to his inflationary tariffs). I’ve heard that House Republicans back home for the August break are getting booed in town hall meetings for toadying to the tyrant – even in red Nebraska. But the road to a patriotic restoration will be long and arduous; failure will leave us with what Orwell prophesied in his dystopian novel, about math and the bending of minds:

“In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it…The very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy…For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

What then indeed.

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Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]

The editorial cartoonist community is global, but it’s a tight knit group.

When one of us is fired for drawing something that is unfairly or mistakenly deemed racist or anti-Semitic, we unite in our outrage – and we rally to the defense of our colleagues.

That’s what happened with the firing of the great Steve Bell, formerly of the British newspaper The Guardian.

On Oct. 16 Bell was summarily “cashiered,” as the Brits say, after more than 40 years with the Guardian, for submitting a cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that someone said contained what some could see as an anti-Semitic trope.

The fatal cartoon – which was never published by the Guardian but which Bell later posted on X (formerly Twitter) – showed Netanyahu preparing to operate on his own stomach while wearing boxing gloves.

On his stomach was an outline of the Gaza Strip.  The caption read “Residents of Gaza, get out now,” which referred to Netanyahu’s harsh evacuation order for Gaza residents.

Bell said his editor thought the cartoon could be seen as playing on the “pound of flesh” line spoken by Shylock, the stereotyped Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, explained with the cryptic words, ‘Jewish bloke; pound of flesh; anti-Semitic trope.’”

That was a stretch, to say the least.

It’s not unusual for cartoonists to have their drawings spiked or edited, but it is unusual for a cartoonist to get so unceremoniously and simultaneous fired and charged with drawing a possibly anti-Semitic cartoon.

When I interviewed Bell for my Caglecast podcast, he said he thought he was let go because he was going against the Guardian’s editorial line.

“My cartoon had nothing to do with the Merchant of Venice,” Bell said, “so it’s pointless discussing that because it’s not there.

“I haven’t been anti-Semitic. I’ve actually just gone against what the Guardian sees as their editorial line. The trouble is, I don’t really understand or know what their editorial line is.”

Bell was a freelancer under contract, not an employee of the Guardian, since 1981 (an arrangement that is common for editorial cartoonists). He’s had a few controversial cartoons over the years that his editors decided not to run for various reasons. That’s par for the course for any newspaper cartoonist.

But only a handful of his cartoons were stopped:

“There’s taste indecency, there’s bad language, there’s all that kind of stuff – but very rarely has it been for political reasons. This is an instance of political censorship, I think.”

Another problem, he said, echoing many of his fellow cartoonists around the world, is that newspapers are run by writers – “word people.”

They are timid people generally uncomfortable with cartoons and infamous for being over-cautious, too literal-minded and prone to seeing deeper meanings and “-isms” in cartoons that are not actually there.

“They tend to misunderstand images almost on purpose,” Bell said. “And this, I think, is a case of that.”

As he said, “It’s not merely a matter of sensitivity, it’s hypersensitivity. They’re apologizing before they’ve actually said anything. That’s the problem.”

Now that he’s been sacked for allegedly being anti-Semitic, Bell says he’s now “in a strange pickle.”

“The hint, the imputation, that my work is anti-Semitic is very damaging, and I’m not likely to find work anywhere else, especially since I’m so closely identified with one paper, i.e., The Guardian.”

When I interviewed Bell, the Israeli cartoonists Michael Kichka and Uri Fink were also on the call.

Both are big fans of Bell and his work, and Fink is president of Israel’s National Cartoonist Association, which has 40 members.

Kichka said they and their Israeli colleagues have drawn “much more extreme and terrible cartoons on Netanyahu” than the one Bell supposedly was sacked for. “None of us was fired, and none of us was accused of anti-Semitism, OK?”

The Israeli cartoonists held a unanimous vote, asking their cartoonist president, Uri Fink, to write a letter defending Bell and his cartoon. Kichka said, “So there’s not one single Jewish Israeli cartoonist who thinks there’s one ounce of anti-Semitism in your cartoon.”

Ironically, it sounds like if my friend Steve Bell needs to find some remote cartooning work, he should be able to find it amongst his fans in Israel.

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Cartoon ©Steve Bell, reprinted here with permission.  Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast “Caglecast” about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

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Steve Bell has given permission for this cartoon to be reprinted with this column. Cartoon ©Steve Bell.

The biggest disappointment of the Kevin McCarthy speakership was on work requirements for welfare. The Limit, Save, Grow Act – the opening House volley in the debt ceiling fight – was strong on work requirements, but the final debt ceiling deal actually weakened them.

Speaker Mike Johnson will have a chance to revisit this defeat in the upcoming Farm Bill debate, because food stamps are by far the largest spending program in that bill, typically accounting for about 75 percent of the total price tag.

The right way to cut that spending is to eliminate the categorical exemption loopholes that were created in the debt ceiling bill to create strong incentives to move Americans into the workforce and up the ladder of economic opportunity so they will no longer need food stamps. It would be a mistake to get sidetracked into a debate over which products should or should not be covered by food stamps, joining a leftist crusade against junk food and soda.

Such proposals do nothing to reduce federal spending, break the cycle of dependency, or prioritize the value of work. They suggest enrollees are wards of a paternalistic state that should decide for them what they should eat and drink. Today, the target is junk food, but in the next Farm Bill, the politically-unfavored product would be red meat, dairy, or fish.

Federal bureaucrats have an infamously bad record of deciding which foods are good and bad. The goal of food stamp reform should not be to modify the diets of enrollees – but to get them off welfare and into work.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act tightened work requirements for cash welfare and food stamps, while imposing new work requirements on Medicaid. House Republicans went into the debt ceiling negotiations with the position that non-disabled, working-age adults should be expected to work or participate in job training to qualify for federal welfare benefits. They had the strong wind of public opinion at their back, with several polls showing public support in excess of 75 percent, and an April ballot question in Wisconsin – the same day they were electing a Democratic state Supreme Court – passing with over 79 percent of the vote.

Even with the weight of public opinion behind them, Republican debt ceiling negotiators repeatedly retreated, removing the provisions imposing new work requirements for able-bodied working-age adults on Medicaid completely, then removing the provisions tightening work requirements for cash welfare, and finally adding categorical exemptions to the food stamp work requirements – they don’t apply to veterans, homeless individuals, and former foster children under age 25.

The Congressional Budget Office found that the new exemptions more than offset the reduction in state discretionary exemptions and the raising of the age that work requirements apply from 49 to 54, and thus the final debt ceiling bill actually increased the number of people on food stamps by 78,000 and raised federal spending by $2.1 billion. Somehow Republican negotiators who had set out to strengthen work requirements agreed to do the opposite.

The farm bill is an opportunity for the new speaker to score a huge victory for the American people: repeal the categorical exemptions so strong work requirements will bring people on food stamps into the workforce and on to the ladder of economic opportunity, easing the labor shortage holding back expansion in many sectors, and saving money for taxpayers. The myth behind the categorical exemptions is that food stamps with no work requirements are a gift to our non-disabled veterans – but the truth is the opposite: welfare without work requirements is a curse that traps people in a safety net that too easily becomes a hammock, sapping ambition and preventing upward mobility.

Speaker McCarthy was close to a historic victory on work requirements but ultimately suffered a total defeat. Speaker Johnson should avoid getting sidetracked by the junk food debate and make work requirements his top farm bill priority.

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Copyright 2023 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Phil Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].

Baseball history is rich with inspiring stories about Hall of Fame players who served with distinction during World War II, then returned to the diamond and picked up their stellar careers exactly where they left off.

In 1942, Marine Corp Captain Ted Williams hit .356, then came back in 1946 to hit .342, which earned him the American League MVP award.

New York Yankees’ shortstop Phil Rizzuto, after two productive years, joined the Navy, and served in the Pacific Theater from 1943 to 1946. Once reunited with the Yankees, Rizzuto excelled, won the 1950 MVP title, and played on five All-Star teams.

But for another shortstop, World War II brought an end to what certainly would have been a Hall of Fame career.

The Washington Senators’ Cecil Travis broke into baseball with a bang. In May 1931, after hitting .356 for the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts, the Washington Senators called Travis up. Travis got five consecutive hits in his first-ever game, quickly establishing himself as one of the American League’s most stellar players.

Playing shortstop and third base, Travis compiled a .322 batting average in 1940. A year later he had his best season as a professional, playing in all 152 games for the Senators and batting .359, second only to Ted Williams’ incredible .406. Unfortunately, Travis, who hit .300 or better in eight of his first nine seasons, played for the perennial-losing Senators, a team that got little media attention. Otherwise, fans nationwide would have hailed Travis as a superstar.

A month after Pearl Harbor, the Army inducted Travis and sent him to Georgia’s Camp Wheeler. By 1944, Travis joined the 76th Infantry Division’s Special Forces and was shipped to Europe for active duty. The 76th entered the European Theater in December. That winter, during the Battle of the Bulge’s final days and in pursuit of Hitler’s retreating German soldiers, Americans suffered through bitter cold. Travis developed frostbite on two of his toes and spent time recovering in a French hospital.

After the 76th was deactivated in June 1945, Travis returned home, and by September, manager Ossie Bluege inserted his name into the Senators’ starting lineup. But Travis never returned to his pre-war excellence, and his potential Hall of Fame career came to a screeching halt. Travis wasn’t the same player who had compiled a .327 career batting average before the war. He batted just .252 in 1946, his last season as a full-time player.

On August 15, 1947 at Griffith Stadium, the Senators celebrated “Cecil Travis Night.” At the ceremony, which former Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower attended, Travis was showered with gifts, including a fancy DeSoto automobile and a 1,500-pound Hereford bull. Travis officially retired after the 1947 season – he hit .216 as a part-time player – and then until 1956, he scouted for the Senators.

Travis, like most World War II veterans, refused to blame his military service for derailing his baseball career. Instead, Travis simply said that his four years away from the game were “too long.” He said, “We had a job to do, an obligation, and we did it. I was hardly the only one.”

Bob Feller and Williams lobbied unsuccessfully for Travis’ Hall of Fame induction, and pointed out that Travis’ .314 career average ranked him favorably with other Hall of Fame shortstops. Feller considered one of the toughest batters he faced, and Williams labeled as an efficient pure hitter.

But as Travis philosophically said: “I was a good player, but I wasn’t a great one.”

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

Believe it or not, August 31 is the 25th anniversary of the traffic accident that robbed the world of the effervescent Diana, Princess of Wales.

Diana was a distant, distant cousin (my great-great grandfather Tyree married Mary Ann Spencer a century before I was born). But even without that connection, I feel compelled to dedicate this week’s column to drawing a few lessons from her too-brief life.

The philosophy “Seemed like a good idea at the time” sums up so much of her public career.

In retrospect, marrying a much-older heir to the throne (whose personality was incompatible with hers and who carried a torch for his present wife) doesn’t sound like the classic recipe for “lived happily ever after.” But it seemed like a good idea at the time to Diana and the millions who watched the wedding on TV.

Agreeing to keep up with all the arbitrary royal etiquette and obligations apparently seemed like a good idea at the time, since Netflix’s “The Crown” wasn’t around in 1981 to air dirty laundry.

The extramarital affairs that brought Diana and Prince Charles to the point of separation and divorce probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the scandal had a lasting impact on the family and the world.

The paparazzi who giddily chased Diana’s vehicle through Paris’s Pont de l’Alma tunnel obviously thought it seemed like a good idea to wallow in wretched excess and snap just one more batch of photographs of one of the most photographed women in the world.

The driver of Diana’s car thought it was a good idea to outrun the paparazzi, but the crash soon cost the lives of Diana, her boyfriend and the driver.

Royalty and commoners alike could learn from the way Diana’s life and death played out.

“You only live once” is the sparkly mantra of many, but there is still a place for doing cost-benefit analyses and counting to ten before making a decision. There remains virtue in adages such as “Measure twice, cut once,” “Haste makes waste,” “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” and the like.

Luckily, several good things did come out of the bad decisions surrounding Diana.

As part of the royal family, Diana had a bully pulpit for advancing her pet projects, including the welfare of AIDS patients and the International Red Cross campaign for the removal of landmines.

(My best friend from third grade passed away from AIDS complications as an adult, so the issue resonates with me.)

Diana’s beloved sons are still with us. Although Harry seems to revel in being the outcast of the family, William gives all indications of being a solid monarch someday.

And of course, by dying at the tender age of 36, Diana remains forever young in the public imagination.

Queen Elizabeth II remains immensely popular at age 96, but who knows what a fickle press would have done with a 61-year-old Diana? As it is, her style, compassion and zest for life remain preserved in amber for future generations.

As you hum the “Goodbye, England’s Rose” version of “Candle in the Wind” this month, spend a little time analyzing your own decision-making processes. You may not ensure a fairytale ending for you and your loved ones, but maybe you can avoid royally messing up.

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Copyright 2022 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”

He said the quiet part out loud is a phrase commonly used in the Black community when referring to whites and others who reveal their innermost thoughts.

Former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden resigned earlier this week after a trove of racist, homophobic, misogynistic and xenophobic emails attributed to him publicly surfaced.

Gruden made the bigoted, anti-gay comments for more than decade, but was only held accountable for such odious behavior when his scurrilous remarks became public property. Among other things, he callously said DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, possessed “lips the size of Michelin tires,” and referred to the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, using homophobic and misogynistic slurs.

Gruden also criticized Goodell for recruiting LGBTQ football players, sent photos of topless women to other coaches, and denounced the recruitment of female referees. The list of disgraceful, reductive commentary goes on.

An in-depth expose published by New York Times detailed that Goodell directed league officials to review 650,000 emails that were sent over the past few months. The NFL launched an investigation to look into allegations of sexism, and other indignities that plagued the league. which as of this moment, have only barely scratched the surface.

The league fined the Washington Football Team $10 million for workplace misconduct, but gave owner Dan Snyder a benign slap on the wrist and have steadfastly refused to release any comprehensive materials that could potentially shed light on untoward behavior.

Let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude why the league has resisted opening up emails for public consumption. Those of us who are Black Americans definitely know the answer.

As is often the case with individuals when caught and exposed with their hand in the racist cookie jar, Gruden reverted to the “Who me? Nah man, I’m not a bigot. There is not a racist bone in my body. That is not who I am” dishonest defense. Well guess what, Gruden — your actions and emails blatantly demonstrate otherwise! You embody all of the traits you profess not to harbor.

Gruden and certain other members of the NFL are representative of a segment of Americans who long for a time when Blacks and, in some cases, Jews, were occasionally seen, certainly not heard from, and deprived of any sense of dignity, fairness and equality. Women were largely relegated to second-class status, were of no competition in the workplace, had to often quietly overlook or turn a blind eye to infidelity or spousal abuse, and were largely relegated to objects of sexual objectification. LGBTQ people were seen as less than human, regarded as deviants, perverts and unworthy of any form of respect. Disabled people were seen as quasi-human, burdensome and semi-tragic figures.

Yes, for a notable segment of Americans like Gruden, these were indeed the “good ol’ days.”

Gruden and Allen arrogantly believed that their comments would not enter into the public domain. Truth be told, they had ample reason to believe such a possible reality. For more than a decade they were given free rein to engage in such perverted, hyper levels of toxic masculinity.

While there has always been a segment of Americans that have harbored rabid levels of hostility and hatred toward non-white people and other marginalized groups, these men and women were largely forced to resort to discussing and reaffirming their racist, anti-Semitic, bigoted, myopic, sectarian and other reductive and largely pathological viewpoints with other like-minded individuals.

Their bigoted views were largely confined to white supremacist newsletters and magazines, obscure far right radio programs and the darkest, racially sordid corners of the web. This was primarily the case up until a few years ago.

The current climate has afforded individuals such as Gruden, Allen, and other closet racists a green light to express their regressive viewpoints with growing levels of fierce pride and confidence. The NFL is just a microcosm of this rabidly festering cancer saturating our society.

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Copyright 2021 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

After the NFL became a bastion of gridiron “wokeness,” I basically stopped paying attention.

But I have to say my interest was piqued by a news item last week involving football, or rather, involving the people who don’t know how to throw a ball or run a pattern but who are expert in throwing shade and running amok. They would be the owners, administrators and “others” who ooze social consciousness, hug trees, wear masks and bleat about their concern for humanity.

In other words, the suits in the front office.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced a draconian system of repercussions and penalties for players who refuse to get vaccinated. He didn’t mandate that the players get the shot. What he did was basically make it financially impossible for players not to get the vaccine.

Pursuant to Goodell’s fiat, if a game is postponed and can’t be rescheduled because some unvaccinated players on one team’s roster cause a COVID outbreak, that team will forfeit the game and neither team will get paid that week. In other words, it’s like when the teacher says, “If the person who put gum on my seat doesn’t own up, the whole class is going to have a detention.”

It’s guilt by association, and reminds me of the fact that, increasingly, athletics has less to do with sports than with virtue signaling (remember those stupid pink cleats to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month, taking a knee like Colin Kaepernick, and forcing the Redskins to abandon their name?). Additionally, Papa Roger has decreed that the team responsible for the outbreak has to shoulder all of the financial losses, and might also face non-monetary discipline.

This is just the latest example of vaccine-shaming. I understand that we want to create herd immunity, and that it is advisable to get inoculated. As soon as I became eligible, I had both shots of the Moderna vaccine, and I am urging all of my friends and family members to do the same.

But this isn’t about the efficacy of the vaccines. It’s about punishing people who make the decision that they do not want the government telling them what to put into their bodies. This whole idea that a person’s personal decision to seek the vaccine is a measure of their moral character is a scary thing. When I see members of the government blaming Facebook for “killing” people if they provide “disinformation” about the vaccines, and when I see random pundits calling parents who won’t have their children vaccinated “abusers,” I realize that I’ve fallen even further down the rabbit hole.

And now, even football has gotten into the act by making innocent parties liable for the medical decisions of their gridiron opponents. It’s frightening, because it’s an example of how, incrementally, society has decided to use shame as a motivator.

And what an extreme irony. Usually, progressives and the type of people who talk about the “common good” are loathe to make moral judgments about those who don’t follow societal norms. But if you decide that you do not want your child to be vaccinated, particularly where there is flimsy evidence that even the delta variant will cause serious illness or infection in those under the age of 16, you have less teeth than toes and likely married your sister. You are also evil.

And somehow, you are white, conservative and likely belong to the GOP. I find that last part to be interesting, because of my personal acquaintance with numerous people of color who do not want the vaccine. They remember the Tuskegee experiments where Black men were treated as guinea pigs, given placebos instead of being treated for syphilis, and the government kept the secret for many years. We might also remember the eugenics crusade of the last century, where “undesirables” like immigrants and the poor were sterilized by progressive white elites, who knew better.

My point is that taking a vaccine should never become a referendum on our patriotism, our humanity or our concern for our children. And it sure as heck shouldn’t be a way to teach football players a lesson.

I got the vaccine. I hope you get the vaccine. But to me, an unvaccinated citizen is a lot less troubling than a society that uses intimidation and threats in its quest to serve the common good.

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Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Wouldn’t it be nice not to wait days for checks to clear and funds to become available? 

Beyond the convenience for individuals, it would be enormously beneficial for the U.S. economy, which lags behind Europe in real-time payments.  For some cash-starved small businesses, funds clearing immediately can make the difference between workers being on the job or sitting at home.

So we should all be pleased that an effective real-time payments system is being developed and deployed in the United States.  About 60 percent of all deposit accounts in the country are already connected to the commercially developed system called The Clearing House (TCH), which expects to cover about 90 percent of all U.S. banks by the end of the year. 

But we should be dismayed that shortly after the Federal Reserve studied the issue and recommended that banks develop a private sector real-time payment system, the Fed announced that it would itself build and deploy a system to compete with the private market.  The regulator will also be a competitor, creating an inherently unfair playing field, and the systems are unlikely to be interoperable.  Smaller banks will likely choose to participate in only one given the fixed costs involved, and that means a balkanized, bifurcated real-time payments system in which the sending and receiving account in many transactions will have to default to older, slower payment methods.

Worse, the Fed’s system, dubbed FedNow but more accurately described by the Wall Street Journal as Chairman Jay Powell’s Public Option, will take at least five years to develop, which will almost certainly slow adoption by banks that choose to wait for the Fed’s system.  That means the benefits of real-time payments will be delayed for years for many businesses and individuals.

Moreover, there is no lack of competition in the private sector that might justify the Fed stepping in as an operator.  While TCH is poised to become widely accepted, it faces intense competition from existing private sector alternatives including Zelle, Mastercard Send, and Visa Direct.

As leading free market economists told the Fed earlier this year: “Generally, central banks and governments should not interfere in the payments market by operating their own services. Over the long term, government competition with the private sector will distort the market, stifle innovation, and ultimately harm services to banks and consumers. “

Nonetheless, the Fed is moving forward with its plan, which is presently open to the public for comment.  Fed Governor Lael Brainard leaned heavily in her August announcement on the fact that 350 commenters supported the proposal, so it might be helpful if thousands of citizens now weighed in against it.

Unfortunately, it is possible that the Fed – perhaps the most powerful and least accountable entity in the entire Federal government – will disregard skeptical public comments.  And unless President Trump and the Senate can agree – after many failures – on new nominees to fill the Fed’s vacant board seats, nothing is likely to change the Feds thinking, which appears to be more about enhancing its own power than realizing the benefits of real-time payments.

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Copyright 2019 Phil Kerpen, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Mr. Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at [email protected].