Judge — June 22, 1929 — page 26: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a humorous comic strip about **John Roach Straton**, a prominent fundamentalist Protestant minister of the 1920s, accidentally entering a Turkish bath during ladies' hours. The satire works on multiple levels: 1. **The Setup**: Straton was known for fiery moral condemnation of modern entertainments and social practices he deemed sinful. 2. **The Joke**: His accidental intrusion into the women's bath—a scenario he would publicly denounce as improper—creates ironic comedy. His outraged monologue about "despicably malicious display of contempt for all the ethics of propriety" is undermined by his own compromising position. 3. **The Point**: The cartoon mocks religious hypocrisy and moral crusaders who condemn others' behavior while finding themselves in awkward situations. The chaos of rats and animals fleeing the bath adds absurdist humor. The satire targets Straton's public moralizing by showing him literally trapped in exactly the kind of morally ambiguous scenario his sermons railed against.