We have lots and lots of Occupy Wall Street cartoons coming in these days (check out our cartoon collections here and here). It seems like the type of movement most cartoonists would be supportive off – a bunch of rag-tag troublemakers taking on the man, in this case the big banks and greedy Wall Street types already the subject of many cartoons (here’s my Occupy Wall Street cartoon).
I noticed that Washington Examiner cartoonist Nate Beeler wasn’t exactly taken with the protesters themselves, and filed back-to-back cartoons mocking them as jobless, ambitiousness anarchists more at home playing video games then following through with a political movement.
I asked Nate for his thoughts, and here’s what he wrote me:
“My office happens to be next door to the Occupy DC protest at McPherson Square, so I get to experience these guys every day.
I certainly share the protesters’ outrage over the sleezy conduct of the big banks, but I can’t support their politics. I went to college, worked together at the school newspaper and was friends with these people — only then they weren’t as well organized, had more anarchists in their midst and were protesting against the WTO and IMF.
There are plenty of reasons to be ticked off at Wall Street, but I don’t think the solution to the nation’s economic problems lies in what we’ve already tried, which is more government. And yet, that’s just what the protesters are calling for when you get down to it. So, I sympathize with the “Occupy” crowd, but I think they’re terribly misguided and out of touch with the real world.”
Below are more of Nate’s Occupy Wall Street cartoons. What do you think of the protests?
