14 Clarence Thomas Transcript
[00:00:00] Ed Wexler: 
[00:00:05] Daryl Cagle: Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle and this is The Caglecast. We're all about political cartoons, and today our Caglecast is about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who's recently been embroiled in ethics scandals about very expensive vacations and undisclosed gifts and purchases of property made and paid for by his friend, billionaire real estate developer, Harlan Crow, which has led to speculation that Thomas has been selling his votes on the court.
[00:00:32] Daryl Cagle: We remember Thomas's confirmation hearings. decades ago, where he was accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill and Thomas's wife, Ginni has also been controversial as a conservative activist and conspiracy theory believer who lobbied the White House and state legislators to overturn the presidential election, turning the election over to Vice President Mike Pence to
[00:00:52] Daryl Cagle: decide on January 6th, and thank goodness that didn't happen. We've got a bunch of great cartoonists today from Maine. We have RJ Matson, who's the cartoonist for Roll Call in Washington DC for over 30 years. For many years, RJ was the cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He's been a cartoonist for the New York Observer, the New Yorker MAD Magazine, and he's won lots of awards.
[00:01:14] Daryl Cagle: From Florida, we have Taylor Jones, who's been drawing cartoons for decades, for the Hoover Digest for many years. He was the cartoonist for El Nuevo Dia in, uh, Puerto Rico and for US News and World Report, and he has a butterfly garden in his front yard and his backyard entirely surrounding him. Monte Wolverton from Washington State draws wonderful, quirky liberal cartoons that we syndicate everywhere.
[00:01:36] Daryl Cagle: Monte's doing a crowdfunding campaign now at Cagle.com/wolverton. Please take a look. It's. It's tough to make a living in editorial cartoons with newspapers dying so the supportive fans can make all the difference in keeping artists like Monte Drawing, and you can make a difference. Please visit Cagle.com/wolverton and Ed Wexler in Los Angeles.
[00:01:57] Daryl Cagle: Ed was a creative director at Disney for 30 years. He's a regular cartoonist for US News and World Report also, and he drew the star studded caricature covers for the Hollywood Reporter's, Emmy and Academy Awards issues for many years, everyone welcome Lets start it off with one by Ed. Ed. This 
[00:02:16] Ed Wexler: is a 
[00:02:16] Daryl Cagle: great cartoon.
[00:02:17] Daryl Cagle: This is Justice Thomas and wife Ginni, and they're drinking champagne and justice. Thomas Says, "Thanks for the personal hospitality." And we draw out to see that they're on a big, fancy yacht. And Thomas says, "... but I prefer RV parks and Walmart parking lots. This is quite an expensive looking vacation here.
Ed Wexler: One of many, apparently.
[00:02:39] Daryl Cagle: It is crazy to hear how much these vacations cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a vacation in the Adirondacks. I can't even think of how to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a vacation in the Adirondacks. 
[00:02:53] Ed Wexler: I wonder if they're always just the two of them on vacation.
[00:02:57] Ed Wexler: Do they go with other couples? Do they go, you know, is it always just ...
[00:02:59] Taylor Jones: I think it's mostly them. Uh, of course I do have their, their, their rich friends. They visit. 
[00:03:09] Daryl Cagle: Rj, here's an excellent one from you. This is a view of the Supreme Court and it looks very much like the Catholic Church conservatives on the left and the normal liberal folks on the right with, uh, partition.
[00:03:22] Daryl Cagle: Tell us about this one. Church and state. 
[00:03:26] RJ Matson: Church and state,, yeah, separate. I've been thinking of it for a while and, um, and putting the curtain at that angle finally solved the problem graphically for me. This was drawn after the opinion overturning Roe v Wade, which seems to be rooted in a particular religious reading of the origin of life, and not really in legal precedent. But who am I to judge, right?
[00:03:47] Daryl Cagle: It does. I don't really think you needed the curtain to separate them. The, the hats do it for me. Mm-hmm. But, This a great cartoon. 
[00:03:57] Monte Wolverton: I like the miters. They're very attractive. 
Daryl Cagle:  Miers. Uh, here's another one from you RJ. Here's Clarence Thomas water skiing through the Ethics Swamp in front of the Supreme Court. It's a great cartoon. He's got his money shirt. 
[00:04:14] RJ Matson: I wanted to come up with an image that just showed him. Having a great time and sort of laughing away any ethical concerns that there might be, and kind of laughing at our faces.
[00:04:22] Daryl Cagle: There's nothing that holds them to account for anything that they do.  
[00:04:31] RJ Matson: I liked Ed's drawing with, uh, that showed, uh, justice Thomas with the big grin on his face because, um, I mean, so often he just, he never speaks when in session and, uh, rarely asks questions and he always seems to have, he's always seems to be photographed with a very doer look on his face, never smiling.
[00:04:50] RJ Matson: So we're sort of learning of a different side of him as this, uh, scandal. Um, his report,
[00:04:56] Daryl Cagle: he's a party animal. Yep. This is a, a rough sketch that you gave me that I guess your, your editor didn't take, but I thought this was a wonderful cartoon and, uh, I would post this and syndicate it just like this. I don't think you need to do a finish.
[00:05:12] Daryl Cagle: This is, this is great fun. So you've got, uh, Justice Thomas, and it looks like Justice Roberts and they've got the ethics jar that you put money into Justice Thomas says, "Hey John, what's this?" And John says, "It's our new Supreme Court ethics jar. Every time you accept an expensive gift or a luxury trip, you just have to put a dollar in the jar."
[00:05:35] Daryl Cagle: Who needs actual ethics rules? We can police ourselves and save a little money too." Then Roberts walks away saying, but be careful. Those dollars can add up fast. Ha ha. And then Thomas looks both ways and he takes all the money out of the ethics jar. What a wonderful, funny cartoon. I think that's great

[00:05:51] Ed Wexler: Yeah, you gotta upload this. 
[00:05:54] Daryl Cagle: It's a great cartoon. I love it. Great idea. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta upload this. I am absolutely fine with your roughs. 
[00:06:00] Ed Wexler: Uh, really? All right. I've heard that from a lot of people. I still like to put a little more polish in the final art. 
[00:06:08] Monte Wolverton: Yeah. Um, it's got, it's got energy to it. It's got, uh, yeah. 
[00:06:12] Ed Wexler: It's always interesting seeing, uh, works in progress, you know, of, uh, your fellow cartoons, you know, who's, whose work you get to know as polished finishes.
[00:06:21] Ed Wexler: Yeah. 
[00:06:26] RJ Matson: Well these, these sketches are, are, they're really just for me and my editors. I just Right. As quickly as I can get the idea on paper, you know, so it's, it's almost coming out of 
[00:06:32] Daryl Cagle: my, well, this isn't as quick as you, you're putting in color. Yeah. 
[00:06:36] RJ Matson: Um, Well, I scan it and then slap a little color on in Photoshop.
[00:06:42] Daryl Cagle: I think it's fun, you know, if you wanted to have a pen name, nobody would know this is you. Um, you could, you could have another persona. 
RJ Matson: Mm-hmm. 
[00:06:51] Taylor Jones: I, um, I refine my, my cartoons, the sketches so often, so many times. Uh, and, and nearly all of my rough drafts are destined for the trashcan put out with recycling.
[00:07:04] Taylor Jones: But, uh, I try to save on to final rough drafts and, uh, I have a couple of times Daryl that just posted those as is. And, uh, yeah, I agree. I off often the, the, the rough, the rough stuff looks, looks the, sometimes it looks the best because I've, I've found myself and maybe others of you have felt the same way.
[00:07:23] Taylor Jones: If you do a lot of refining like I do. Is that sometimes the more refined, the further you, the further you get away from the spontaneity and sometimes the end result isn't, isn't so great that 
[00:07:36] Ed Wexler: That's, that's the good thing about working digitally. You can always go back. Mm-hmm. Yep. To where it's lively.
[00:07:42] Daryl Cagle: Well, Taylor, here's one of yours. Uh, a portrait of the whole Supreme Court. Back when we had Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tell us about this one. 
[00:07:50] Taylor Jones: I think Kavanaugh's uh, drinking proclivities is pretty much says it all, but I thought I'd add the ...
 
[00:07:55] Daryl Cagle: So we've got Kavanaugh here in a, in a beer drinking Make America Great again hat. And we have Clarence Thomas with the Coca-Cola and the infamous pubic hair that was discussed at the Anita Hill hearings. 
[00:08:07] Taylor Jones: Indeed. And that, that, I mean, you know, that sort of thing is, that is clung to. Clarence Thomas for all these years. Of course, during Anita Hill hearings, Thomas's most successful effort to defend himself was that he described himself as guilty of a high-tech lynching.
[00:08:24] Taylor Jones: And I'm quite sure he would say that again if, uh, there was a real effort to impeach him. So I think, uh, anything like that is kind of a waste of time. He ought to retire, but of course he won't. Some would fail and probably backfire on those. Bringing the impeachment. 
[00:08:41] Daryl Cagle: Or at least as a first step, have some ethics rules that have some teeth that they must abide by.
[00:08:45] Taylor Jones: Well, Roberts didn't show up, you know, he sent a letter trying to the head of the Senate, the judiciary Committee, saying that he would, he would decline testifying. So, and, um, I guess, I guess he figures they don't need it. They ...
[00:08:59] Daryl Cagle: He's beholden to no one. So, uh, what the hell? 
[00:09:01] Ed Wexler: They can't possibly be corrupt.
[00:09:03] Daryl Cagle: I thought this one was wonderful. This is, uh, Clarence Thomas'. His lips are zipped closed as he's, uh, shredding the constitution. Uh, so what, what was happening at this time? Uh, that was him shredding the constitution. Taylor, what, what, what did you have on your mind here? 
[00:09:23] Taylor Jones: well, that time and every time  I'm trying to remember now.
[00:09:23] Taylor Jones: Of course, that is my actual, uh, spreader. A shredder. Uh, I still have it all these years later. I forget exactly when I did this. But you can be sure that, that, uh, Thomas was shredding. Something at the time, you know? 
[00:09:40] Daryl Cagle: Well, you know, some time ago, there were many years when Thomas was famous for not saying a word, 
[00:09:44] Daryl Cagle: During the Supreme Court sessions, he was silent, and that was just strange because that's their time to ask questions. So,in a way being silent is just not doing his job at a time when he should be asking questions. Well, I so it, it raised lots of questions about. Why the hell is this guy not saying anything for years after years? And then he suddenly started talking. I can tell that this is a few years old, back when he was silent. 
[00:10:09] Taylor Jones: Well, Daryl, he has to talk now because as the Senior Associate Justice, he is the first. Uh, uh, tradi that the tradition is the, the the Senior Associate Justice asks the first question whenever they meet, 
[00:10:22] Daryl Cagle: perhaps they would have respect for rules if they were suffering from rules.
[00:10:27] Daryl Cagle: Monte, here's one of yours. You've got Trump's lawyers talking to Clarence Thomas that says, not long before January 6th, 2021, one of the lawyers says, "Help us Justice Thomas, you're our only hope." Justice Thomas thinks, "Sure, pal. And I'll email you my opinion." 
[00:10:44] Monte Wolverton: This is, uh, uh, when I saw sort of a glimmer of, uh, ethics and jurisprudence from, uh, from Clarence.
[00:10:55] Monte Wolverton: But because he might be not willing to do something unethical by caving to, uh, uh, Trump's uh, lawyers. But imagine my disappointment when, uh, you know, that really wasn't his intent after all.
[00:11:09] Daryl Cagle: Now that we saw emails and things from Jenny Thomas about how nutty and conspiracy theorists she was and how she was lobbying everyone to try to turn the election over to Trump.
[00:11:22] Daryl Cagle: The presumption is that the spouse has much the same ideas. Yes. And of course, I suppose that's kind of sexist to, to make that presumption, but. You know, in this case I make that presumption and, uh, that's pretty scary. 
[00:11:36] Monte Wolverton: Yeah. So this is the only of, of this whole wheelbarrow load of cartoons here. This is the only one that's remotely, uh, says anything positive about, uh, uh, Clarence. But, uh, but in the end of course, It's not.
[00:11:51] Taylor Jones: I like your treatment of, uh, Thomas's mustache. 
[00:11:59] Monte Wolverton: I put a lot of work into that, because it looks spontaneous, but hey, 
[00:12:00] Daryl Cagle: Very often, Monte, I think of your work as being very much influenced by the Play-Doh extruder. You know how you put Yes. The little, uh, cap on it, know it's squid out the little 
[00:12:12] Monte Wolverton: Yes, I know.
[00:12:13] Monte Wolverton: Yeah. And I, I, I work with ceramics, uh, regularly and I use a, a food grinder to do just exactly that.
[00:12:21] Daryl Cagle: There are ver - very often I see characters that have hair that looks like a big extrusion. Like they must have a handle behind them where you're squeezing the Play-Doh through. I don't know. I think that's great.
[00:12:33] I don't know how to draw hair any other  way.
[00:12:34] Taylor Jones: I recall eating Play-Doh when I was about five. 
Monte Wolverton: Is that what happened? 
Taylor Jones: yeah.
[00:12:42] Daryl Cagle: Okay. This is from Randy Enos, and this is actually quite a, an old cartoon, uh, that seems especially fresh now. I thought I might repost it. This is, uh, back when he was doing linoleum prints and inking the linoleum. He draws this backwards and, and carves in the lettering, "Clarence Thomas" backwards like a mirror 
Taylor Jones:  DaVinci.
Ed Wexler: Crazy time consuming.
RJ Matson: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:04] Daryl Cagle: Great image though. Here's Pat Bagley. You've got Billionaire Crow and he says, "My best friend is black", and Thomas says, "Mine is green." I think that's cute. 
RJ Matson: Mm-hmm. 
Taylor Jones:  Good cartoon.
[00:13:18] Monte Wolverton: It is. 
[00:13:19] Daryl Cagle: Here's one that I drew a long time ago when the court was debating gay marriage, and I think, uh, It could be at risk., I'm, it's just amazing to me how sex obsessed, uh, the conservatives are with all of this. Uh, the trans legislator in Montana yesterday, uh, uh, I 
[00:13:39] Ed Wexler: felt so bad for her. 
[00:13:40] Taylor Jones: Zoe Zephyr 
[00:13:42] Daryl Cagle: Zoe Zephyr. Yes. What is it that is this crazy passion for them to want to, enforce their sex ideas on everybody.
[00:13:54] Ed Wexler: Its about which bathroom, who goes to which bathroom
[00:13:55] Taylor Jones: It's because they're obsessed with sex. It it, 
Daryl Cagle: They are. 
[00:14:00] Ed Wexler: Yeah. 
[00:14:01] Monte Wolverton: You know, if there, if there's not a lot, a lot of activity in your life, then you know, they, you're gonna be obsessed with it.
[00:14:05] Taylor Jones: I think the biggest, when we look back on history last say a hundred years, I think we're gonna find the biggest single social.
[00:14:14] Taylor Jones: And, and our, um, social cultural development was, uh, the, um, the pill bigger than everything. Bigger than civil rights, bigger than anything else, cuz it, for one, it, it, it, uh, it had a lot to do with allowing, uh, a lot of young women to go to college, seek careers where, uh, it, for instance, uh, the marriage age began to rise precipitously after the pill.
[00:14:38] Taylor Jones: And, uh, I, it, it is, uh, the pill in the later abortion brought the Catholic clergy together with the evangelicals. I remember this from history. I was only eight years old at the time, but I remember 1960 that, that the most important speech JFK gave was to, uh, uh, com, the, the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Houston, Texas, where he had to assure them that he wasn't a papist.
[00:15:04] Taylor Jones: Mm-hmm. And, uh, uh, but. 10, fast forward 10 or 12 years to Roe vs. Wade, and you have these two groups of, uh, individuals, uh, the Catholic, uh, hierarchy and, and evangelicals all, um, uh, you know, singing from the same page. And the whole point is to not have young people have sex. They still want that, that they wanna keep it from happening as long as they possibly can.
[00:15:29] Ed Wexler: I, I, 
[00:15:30] Daryl Cagle: some time ago I read that book Freakonomics, where they had a chapter devoted to how abortion had really been the major change agent in society and was responsible for driving down crime because it was crime-ridden families that tended to have more abortions. And uh, that was quite controversial.
[00:15:49] Daryl Cagle: It made people angry about the book. Um, But these do seem to be the society changing kinds of issues related to sex that obsess the conservatives. And I think the whole, whole notion of this obsession is really scary. The case, 
[00:16:04] Taylor Jones: The case, the Supreme Court case, uh, just a cup two, three years ago, the cake baker in Colorado, and that only struck me as really should be a First Amendment case, uh, a, a free speech, not, uh, freedom of religion, 
[00:16:17] Daryl Cagle: Of course, that's why I drew a cake here.
[00:16:19] Taylor Jones: Yeah. Well, well, right. You know, you can. Uh, um, as far as I'm concerned, he had every right to have a cake in a big cake in his display case to say God hates all and he can add the word, but that doesn't mean he should not be able to serve a gay couple wanting his services. There's two different things and, and, but the court treated it as, you know, this freedom of religion, which of course seems to me our high court's notion of freedom of religion is the freedom to exclude.
[00:16:53] Daryl Cagle: Yes, exclude people that do not conform to their, uh, religious ideas, their sex ideas, uh, sexual enforcement. I think it's all very scary. So here's John Darkow. He's got Justice Thomas on on the Scales, held up by the Statue of Liberty. Great looking Statue of Liberty. And Justice Thomas, of course, is waiting down the scale saying, "We are not political hacks."
[00:17:12] Daryl Cagle: I like this Cardon. This is a great cartoon. 
Ed Wexler: I love that drawing, 
Daryl Cagle: And he draws on this textured paper that looks like it's on canvas. Mm-hmm. Um, at the statue of Liberty's. Just great. I like the view of her nose. Yep. Mm-hmm. 
[00:17:26] Taylor Jones: As always, his, his renderings and pencil are just terrific. 
[00:17:29] Ed Wexler: Really good. 
[00:17:31] Daryl Cagle: Here is John Darkow drawing Harlan Crowe and, uh, Clarence Thomas on the fancy boat, the "Bribery Coast." And Thomas, who has a big outie belly button, which I see as the central point of this cartoon. Uh, I think this whole cartoon is really about his outie belly button. And Justice Thomas says, "It's in the Justice's opinion that the rules don't apply to me". This is great. I don't think I have ever drawn an Outie belly button 
Ed Wexler: Love it.
[00:18:00] Taylor Jones: Me neither.
[00:18:01] Taylor Jones: I think it's time for us all to do that now. 
[00:18:04] Ed Wexler: I don't think I've ever put a belly button in any of my cartoons. I can't think. 
RJ Matson: Yeah. I wonder if he did some research for uh, 
Ed Wexler: yeah, it's actually correct. 
[00:18:13] Taylor Jones: May have just been navel gazing. 
Monte Wolverton: Anatomically correct. 
[00:18:18] Daryl Cagle: Oh, this is a Naval cartoon, another Darco cartoon. Uh, the janitors are cleaning up in the Supreme Court room, and one of them says, "That's Justice  Thomas's chair, Harlan Crow bought it for him", and it's quite a. Expensive golden chair, Harlan Crow's getting to be quite the cartoon character too. So here's a Ginni cartoon from Bob Englehart we're, we have a whole bunch of great Ginni cartoons and Ginni is such a foul cartoon character that there have just been a ton of Ginni cartoons.
[00:18:50] Daryl Cagle: Uh, so Ginni saying, "top the steal. Qanon on and Clarence is following up with, The garbage to sweep up the poop she leaves behind. I don't think he really takes that role. I think he's fully on board. 
RJ Matson: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you, Daryl. I think that's kinda a hopeful image there. Yeah. 
Ed Wexler: Ginny should always be depicted in that ugly green dress that dowager your dress in that famous photograph for their famous group of photographs.
[00:19:14] Daryl Cagle: That particular kind of of push garbage can with the sweeper and thing is traditional in cartoons for following the parade to sweep up through the horses and elephants and things. Right? 
RJ Matson: Yep. That's great. Yeah. 
[00:19:27] Ed Wexler: And then, uh, the Rocky and Bullwinkle Fractured Fairy Tales. 
Monte Wolverton: Oh yeah, I remember that.
[00:19:33] RJ Matson: It's a trope I've used at least four or five times in, in, 
Taylor Jones: same here. 
RJ Matson: Various reasons.
[00:19:37] Daryl Cagle: So just to be clear, it was the poop that he had in mind.
 Ed Wexler: right
[00:19:42] Taylor Jones: Well, I would've, I would've added the poop
[00:19:45] RJ Matson: The BS, I'd say, right?
[00:19:46] Ed Wexler: Yeah. 
[00:19:47] Daryl Cagle: The BS. 
[00:19:48] RJ Matson: The Bs. 
[00:19:50] Monte Wolverton: His demeaning, but he's demeaned himself already, so. Mm-hmm. That's ...
[00:19:54] Daryl Cagle: Here's another Engelhart cartoon. You've got the, the conservative justices and each is saying, "We tried everything to stop abortion." "We tried prayer/" "We tried shaming,." "We tried guilt."  "Now we're trying cruelty." Indeed they are. 
[00:20:09] Taylor Jones: I was gonna say that, of course, you can't see here cuz the, the, the figure of Coney Barrett is small and, and, and her eyes are black.
[00:20:15] Taylor Jones: Her irises are black here. But she definitely has the eye, the eyes of a fanatic. Uh, uh, 
Ed Wexler: She does have, she has crazy eyes. 
Taylor Jones: Yeah. They're just this burning, burning, you know, ember. Mm-hmm. Uh, pale, pale blue. And I've found that generally people with eyes like that indeed have, indeed have extreme views. 
Monte Wolverton: Huh? Hadn't thought of that. 
Taylor Jones: You can find y y that goes back, that goes back to John Brown. I mean, obviously long before, but there are Matthew Brady photos of John Brown and he has these crazy. Burning eyes of a fanatic. 
[00:20:53] Daryl Cagle: I recall on your earlier cartoon you had some really crazy eyes on John Roberts. 
[00:20:59] RJ Matson: Yeah. Remember the old, um, uh, Peanuts strips were Linus at one point decided he wanted to be a fanatic, and he was drawn with same eyes, with very simple Charles Schulz style. Yeah, those are strips. I remember reading when I must have been eight, nine years old, and I, I decided then and there, I will never be a fanatic.
[00:21:15] Monte Wolverton: Are you, are you not a fanatic then? 
RJ Matson: No. 
Monte Wolverton: Okay, good. Good
[00:21:19] Daryl Cagle:. I should add here that I describe and read the cartoons because so many of our listeners are getting an audio-only podcast. If you wanna watch the video podcast and see the cartoons, you can go to YouTube or Apple Podcasts or Spotify where we have it in video.
[00:21:36] Daryl Cagle: You can go to Cagle.com and see it on the front page or go to Caglecast.com. But here we have a giant Clarence Thomas with Uncle Sam, and it says, the Senate Judiciary Committee investigate Clarence Thomas and Uncle Sam says, do you know a good lawyer? Mm-hmm. That's another optimistic cartoon because 
There's no chance that he's gonna have to deal with any of that junk or need a lawyer. He's just got impunity. 
Ed Wexler: He's self self policed.
[00:22:02] Taylor Jones: Well, you know, going back to earlier points you made about Clarence Thomas being so reticent, especially in his early years in the court, well a rap against him when he was first nominated is he really had very little experience, uh, uh, of any very little judicial experience.
[00:22:18] Taylor Jones: I think, wasn't he, he'd been, Bush had hired him. Bush 41 had hired him to, head the, I think the EEOC and I wonder if he was kind of afraid to say anything the first 20 years, cuz he, he was, he was having to. You know, kind of get up to speed. 
[00:22:33] Monte Wolverton: So you're saying that he had nothing to say because, uh, he didn't say anything because he had nothing to say? Is there a proverb that says even a fool is, uh, counted as intelligent when he keeps his mouth shut. And this is the case here apparently 
[00:22:48] Taylor Jones: there are exceptions to the rule. 
[00:22:50] Daryl Cagle: Okay. Here's Naked Thomas with his robe that's labeled Ethics and his, 
Monte Wolverton: He's covering up his spelling button too. 
[00:22:59] Daryl Cagle: Oh yes. His Outie, 
Taylor Jones: Well its a pretty big Outie Big. 
[00:23:06] Daryl Cagle: Okay. Here's, uh, Clarence Thomas with wife Ginni, about to blow up the capitol with her TNT on January 6th, and Thomas says,  "People should just live with the outcomes they don't like. Isn't that right? Dear?" 
[00:23:17] Taylor Jones: Yeah. I like Jenny's buttocks here. Great. 
[00:23:20] RJ Matson: I like the cartoons that use the quotes or actually paraphrase something actually said.
[00:23:24] Ed Wexler: Yeah. 
[00:23:26] RJ Matson: I don't think it was Thomas who said that, but it might have been Alito, but it doesn't matter. It came from the bench. 
[00:23:32] Monte Wolverton: I only see one buttock. 
[00:23:34] Daryl Cagle: Here's one that I did, but, uh, Clarence Thomas, he's like, uh, Jack in the Box and Ginni Thomas pops out of his Jack In the box head, it says, "Pop goes the weasel."
[00:23:45] Daryl Cagle: And of course that means Ginni Thomas is the weasel and she's on his mind. And I thought I had lots of good metaphors in here, and people didn't get it. I got, uh, letters from people saying, what the hell? And what's this?  
[00:23:58] Taylor Jones: I like your Ginni. And your Clarence. 
[00:24:01] Monte Wolverton: I don't know what's to get. It's, it's, uh, it's great.
[00:24:04] Daryl Cagle: Yep. She's the weasel. All right. Here's another Darkow cartoon with Ginni Seditionist Thomas under Clarence Thomas's robe, she says, pay no attention to the lady behind the robe. 
[00:24:18] Ed Wexler: That's good. That's a good variation. Good image variation on the Wizard of Oz thing. Yep. Yeah, it 
[00:24:23] Daryl Cagle: is. I like the angle facing away. The angle you hardly ever draw shoes at. Yeah. Great. All right, so here's uh, Bob Englehart and he's drawn a uterus. With the names in, uh, stencil font as I guess it's been stencil on the uterus "Property of all of the conservative justices". This is a cartoon that I would guess no editor printed. What do you guys think?
[00:24:49] Ed Wexler: 
[00:24:49] Monte Wolverton: I did a uterus cartoon and nobody printed it. It seems that nobody wants to print uteruses. Well, It depends. It looks vaguely like a, a uh, a cow skull. As Uteruses do, 
[00:25:07] Daryl Cagle: well say anything you want on this one, cuz I'll probably edit out the whole thing. What do you drawn?
[00:25:14] Ed Wexler: Looks It's like somebody doing this. 
Daryl Cagle:  It is.
Ed Wexler: oh no, that's good then. 
Taylor Jones: Or a, or Rorchshach test. 
[00:25:20] Daryl Cagle: Has anybody else drawn uterus cartoons?
[00:25:21] Ed Wexler: No. I'm gonna start. 
[00:25:26] Daryl Cagle: Well, uh, you know when you do it, you're doing it just for yourself. Okay. All of that gets edited out. 
[00:25:32] Taylor Jones: I'm gonna use it with a, with an Oz theme.
[00:25:40] Daryl Cagle: Okay, that. All right, RJ, here's your Ameri-Qanon Gothic RJ, tell us about this one. I think this is a great, good looking. That's 
RJ Matson: That's one of those puns you gotta see rather than read out loud,
[00:25:46] Daryl Cagle: I guess it is. We have Jimmy. Yeah, I. I'm done wearing the clothes of the QAN on Shaman, um, with, uh, "Release the Kraken" button and a Trump won in voter fraud buttons. Her Big Q, her big J-6 button stop the steal. This is a very funny cartoon and 
[00:26:07] Ed Wexler: and it's great likeness of Clarence Thomas 
[00:26:08] RJ Matson: is not really betraying any emotion. We can't tell no, no emotion. We can't tell if he's embarrassed by her or a true believer like her. 
Ed Wexler: Nice caricatures of both of them. 
[00:26:27] Taylor Jones: Well, of course that's true, RJ, of course, every chance he has, he likes to say that she is his best friend and soulmate.
RJ Matson:  true. 
[00:26:29] Monte Wolverton: And she does have fanatical eyes. 
[00:26:31] RJ Matson: Not only are the gifts that he's receiving problematic, but I think the fact that most of these justices take speaking fees and speak to political organizations is problematic and if, if I'm, if we're gonna form a committee of cartoonists to write new ethics rules for the Supreme Court.
[00:26:49] RJ Matson: I don't think that Supreme Court justices should be associating with any, any political groups and being paid to give speeches. There's a, there's an accusation that the media's liberal and there's a liberal bias and you can't really get a job or you can't get published. You can't work in media if you're not liberal.
[00:27:07] RJ Matson: But, um, I went to the kind of college that the Supreme Court justices went to and. I know from experience knowing the conservative kids that if one of them like, well, uh, Neil Gorsuch went to my college and he wanted to start a conservative magazine. Um, money, money appears, not from the college, but from a whole network of, of rich philanthropists, conservative philanthropists who, who are developed talent.
[00:27:40] RJ Matson: So these kids learn early on that they can. Adopt political positions, write papers, and get funded. And it's just part of this ecosystem that they grow up in. So, um, it's what they do their whole life, you know, and why, why should that change? I guess they think why should that change once they're on the Supreme Court?
[00:28:01] RJ Matson: But I like to think once you're appointed to the Supreme Court, you should be out of the political game that got you there in the first place. And, 
[00:28:10] Daryl Cagle: That was supposed to be the point of the lifetime appointments. 
[00:28:14] RJ Matson: Yeah. And I'm willing to pay these guys a million dollars a year so they don't get tempted it to get the money, but they should just stop it, you know?
[00:28:23] Taylor Jones: Well, I think, uh, I think that Thomas, of course, revealed his guilt in this matter by, what is it? He would report, he did report the tires that somebody, uh, somebody sent him, you know? Uh, but, uh, but not the half million dollar trip. Uh, uh, by the way, rj, I, I just, I keep looking at the reflection at top of, uh, uh, Thomas's forehead here.
[00:28:44] Taylor Jones: It just, it's just great. 
[00:28:51] RJ Matson: Um, you know, I, I, painting and Photoshop, it just allows me be a little more painterly and I, and I mess around with oil paint brushes and blending brushes so I can get these effects. I always wanted to work in oil paint. In the old days, uh, but I can never get the, the, the drawing to dry fast enough to turn it into a, a deadline.
[00:29:12] RJ Matson: So this is really a fun time for me, um, to, to have a computer finally that can work quickly and um, and have all these new techniques available.
[00:29:22] Daryl Cagle: Well, this looks great. Yeah. This is by Chris Weyant and Justice Thomas is saying, "I don't believe in the power of a woman to choose her unborn child. That power belongs only to a man."
[00:29:37] Daryl Cagle: Hmm. It's a, it's a good ugly cartoon. Mm-hmm. (Yeah. Very good.) Here you've got another WT cartoon. Ginni is pulling out the thread, taking apart his robes and his legitimacy, and she says, "The greatest art history, Biden crime family. There are no rules in war. Release the Kraken!" That release the Kraken is, is just nuts.
[00:30:05] RJ Matson: It's always good to use their own words in the cartoon and not put words in someone's mouth.
[00:30:08] Daryl Cagle: Although we do enjoy a unique place in journalism where we're the only people allowed to make up things to put in people's mouths. That's 
RJ Matson: That is true. But it's like a, it's like you should, it's a power you should use responsibly and with restraint.
[00:30:27] RJ Matson: It's always funnier to take their own words and turn 'em against them with a great image, I think. 
[00:30:31] Taylor Jones: Well, I've got a bumper sticker in my car that says, draw responsibly.
[00:30:40] Daryl Cagle: (That's great. I love it.) So here's the Dave Whamond cartoon, and Ginni is the Ginni in the bottle. And, uh, she says, "I love MAGA people. The left is attempting the greatest heist in history. Do not concede fire everybody." And the Republican elephant says, "So, uh, any judge, we can put Jenny back into bottle." She would say those things.
[00:30:58] Daryl Cagle: Mm-hmm. And here, uh, Dave Granlund draws, uh, Thomas with a um, coat hanger. Gonna have to hang up his robe for some recess, and he's taking his free luxury trips every year for many years as the baggage piles up on him. Daryl 
[00:31:18] Taylor Jones: question, uh, uh, over the years you find it. Editors are kind of reluctant to publish coat hanger cartoons.
[00:31:25] Taylor Jones: I know I've done a few. And does it just bother them or not? 
[00:31:28] Daryl Cagle: I think in general now, the trend has been to avoid anything that is controversy and people are gonna disagree with. So we see less of that. All right, here's our new cartoonist, Frank Hansen, and he's got Sammy "The Bull: Alito, who says,"On the contrary, this is a hundred percent personal and 0% legal" as he's got the typical US lady with her feet and cement about to be, uh, thrown into the river.
[00:31:59] Daryl Cagle: And Clarence, "the Cadillac" Thomas says, uh, "It'll be on the Lido deck." I think that's cute. Here we've got, uh, Clarence Thomas tripping off the plane in this Koterba cartoon, GOP donor luxury trips. "Nothing to see here" as he is caught tripping out of the plane. And another Weyant cartoon, "Order, order", and I think Clarence is ordering vacations in real estate from Harland Crow again.
[00:32:26] Daryl Cagle: Here he is tripping over his ethics in a Zyglis cartoon. Mm-hmm. That's all the cartoons we got, gentlemen. 
[00:32:33] Monte Wolverton: I have a comment on ethics in general, and I'll start it with the word oftentimes, and when I start it with the word oftentimes, and I sound like a rabbi or a minister or something, but I will anyway, oftentimes we find ourselves maybe in a compromising position.
[00:32:50] Monte Wolverton: Or potentially compromising position going along. And then, and then at some point we realize that, hey, this is an ethically compromising position. And then we do one of three things, which I think Clarence has done. Uh, one we say, oh, this is against my personal ethics, and then we make a change or we apologize, or whatever we have to do.
[00:33:12] Monte Wolverton: And the the, the second thing would be, This appears unethical and I don't wanna look unethical, so I'll make a change. And the third thing is "I don't care," which is what Clarence has done. So we can only conclude that years of power, uh, have corrupted him and his wife and they are ethically blind. That's my conclusion.
[00:33:35] Daryl Cagle: Perhaps he's bitter after his confirmation hearings and Anita Hill and half the country being disgusted with him. Maybe his bitterness has led to his seeming indifference.
[00:33:48] Ed Wexler: Anita Hill was right. 
[00:33:48] Taylor Jones: I think Republicans conserves in general, are more, um, comfortable with hypocrisy. It doesn't mean that Democrats and liberals are any less, less hypocritical, but I think if, uh, Al Franken were a Republican, he'd still be sitting in the Senate.
[00:34:03] Taylor Jones: I think they're, they're just okay with it, you know? It's kind of like, I remember, uh, when, when some, one of the things that growing up my. You know, you always got in trouble. If you're my brother, I accuse my parents of hypocrisy. You know, that was a bad line not to cross, but of course was the, so the adage, you know, "do as I say, not as I do."
[00:34:25] Taylor Jones: And I think that's something very much embraced. By, uh, by people like Clarence Thomas. Mm-hmm. I will say one thing in Thomas's favor. He has a lovely speaking voice. I enjoy listening to.
[00:34:34] Monte Wolverton: Yes, yes, he does. 
[00:34:35] Daryl Cagle: I think kind of a gravelly, arrogant voice. 
[00:34:39] Monte Wolverton: Darth Vader ish. 
[00:34:40] Taylor Jones: Well, Earl Jones, you know, so, 
[00:34:44] RJ Matson: no, it's just a sorry, state of affairs when, uh, we're drawing cartoons about, members of Supreme Court for ethics concerns, and when there is no recourse and there are no checks and balances, the founding fathers created a system of government with checks and balances.
[00:34:58] RJ Matson: but if one branch of government decides to ignore the other two, that hardly allows the checks and balances to flourish. So what we're left with is just shame and ridicule. 
[00:35:10] Daryl Cagle: All right. I guess this show is over, gentlemen, thank you so much. Everybody. Please remember to subscribe to the Caglecast, SUBSCRIBE to the Caglecast wherever you're watching this.
[00:35:21] Daryl Cagle: And, uh, our Caglcast is available in both video and audio versions, so if you didn't see the cartoons, go to Cagle.com or Apple Podcast, or YouTube or Spotify to watch the video. And we look forward to seeing you next time. And gentlemen, thank you again for being here. Thanks for having 
RJ Matson: Thanks. 
[00:35:38] Ed Wexler: Thanks.
[00:35:39] Monte Wolverton: Pleasure.