I’ll give a lecture at California State University Northridge (CSUN) next Monday (November 20th) from 4:30pm to 6:00pm at Manzanita Hall Room 213, on the west side
of campus. It is free, but visitors need to buy a parking pass at an information booth or at a kiosk. Anyone can come who wants to come.
This is being put on by the University’s student SPJ chapter; their journalism professor, Stephanie Bluestein, is my local Los Angeles SPJ Chapter Chairman. I’ll give a PowerPoint presentation with lots of cartoons, and I’ll talk about my work, how my syndicate works, and issues for editorial cartoonists around the world. There will be a one-hour lecture with a half hour of Q&A. The map of where to go at CSUN is below.
I don’t get out much so this is a rare opportunity to see the real me. Don’t be shy. Come on by.
Trump was in China this week. A large part of Trump’s presidential campaign was China bashing, but now Trump’s China bashing is warm and fuzzy, and a bit inconsistent.
I suppose it is obvious that I just wanted to draw a goofy Chinese dragon. I’ve done dragons a few times before. One of my favorites was the cartoon below, about the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong. I was looking at this dragon as I drew and colored today’s dragon, which is why they look like cousins.
I did a speaking tour in China where the audiences were very interested in how I depict China in cartoons. I told them I drew china as a dragon, or as the Great Wall, or as a panda bear, or as that guy standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square (which usually made the crowd gasp, because they don’t mention the Tiananmen Square massacres). At one venue I went through my list and a couple of guys in the crowd got very excited, waving their arms, saying, “Oh! Oh! What kind of dragon?!” That still strikes me funny, although I’m not sure why. I don’t know the answer to that question.
Here’s the dragon I drew when Trump was elected.
And here’s one I drew when Obama finally got Bin Laden, who was hiding out in Pakistan, protected by his Pakistani cronies, who should have also been seen as bad guys for hiding Bin Laden, but we just kept giving a bunch of money to Pakistan anyway.
My “Bad guys, watch out” cartoon is a favorite oldie that I updated.
The recent shootings in Texas, where a good Samaritan with a rifle shot the evil bad guy, then chased him down with the help of another good Samaritan, seems to give weight to the gun-nuts’ argument that we’re all safer when more people carry guns, so I thought it was a good time to bring back this oldie.
Now, I suspect we’ll see more people who are motivated to carry their guns everywhere, to be ready in case a bad guy comes along. I may be bringing this cartoon back every few years, as this issue never goes away.
The new Republican tax plan takes away the deduction for state income taxes, which will hit the high-tax blue states hardest. The red states that voted for Trump are the federal welfare cases.
This cartoon features very blue California and very red Tennessee, two great examples of blue-donor and red-dependent states. I drew this one as a local cartoon for the weekly Nashville Scene when I was living in Nashville and I updated it a bit to apply to the issue today. Things don’t change much.
If this was an issue of fairness, the income tax should be reduced in hight-tax donor states and increased in low-tax dependent states. Of-course this is not an issue of fairness. The red states voted for Trump and now it is time for them to get some payback, at the expense of the Hillary states.
I’ve drawn lots of peeing dog cartoons. One of my favorite oldies is George W. Bush as a dog marking his territory around the world. So naturally I wanted to draw a bull, as Spain, peeing on Catalonia. The problem is, that on the map, Catalonia is in the upper right hand corner of Spain, and for the Spanish bull to pee on Catalonia I would have to have the Spain-Bull stand in France, which doesn’t make much sense. The bull could be standing up to pee, in an arc up to Catalonia, but that’s a little nasty. We have a new “no penises” policy here at Cagle Cartoons, which means that strategic parts of the bull have to be concealed.
So I settled on the doggie style leg up peeing, with the map of Spain in perspective and the pee puddle above the bull. I know that’s a stretch.
Here’s my old favorite Bush peeing cartoon. Bigger map. Smaller doggie. No puddle under the doggie.
Sometimes it’s hard to pee when geography gets in the way – so my Catalonia cartoon is not one of my best. Still, I look to draw peeing “doggies” whenever I can.
Here’s a column I wrote for “The Masthead,” the journal for the ASNE (American Society of News Editors) editorial page editors group.
It is easy to match the topics of editorial cartoons and columns. We deliver our columns with suggested editorial cartoons, and editors can do an easy keyword search of our database of over 200,000 cartoons and illustrations.
What editorial cartoonists want to draw, what editors want to see from cartoonists, and what readers want in cartoons are very different. We have good statistics on which cartoons editors download. Editors prefer cartoons, drawn in a traditional style, which do not express a strong opinion that some readers might disagree with.
Editors prefer cartoons that are funny over cartoons that make readers think or cry.
Editors prefer cartoons that do not deviate from the topics that the pundits are talking about on TV.
American editors prefer cartoons by American cartoonists. International editors prefer cartoons that are not drawn by American cartoonists.
More than half of America’s daily, paid circulation newspapers subscribe to our CagleCartoons.com service for editorial page editors. Our package includes about sixty top cartoonists from around the world and a dozen great columnists. To see how it works, visit CagleWorld.com. We’re cheap and easy and we’re happy to give a generous free trial subscription to any editors who would like to give us a try. We’re the best!
We get statistics on what online readers prefer from the traffic patterns to our Cagle.com site. Unlike editors, readers are open to many topics, including those that are not today’s TV pundit topics. Readers prefer strong opinions in cartoons. Like American editors, our mostly American audience on Cagle.com shows little interest in issues from around the world and they prefer cartoons by American cartoonists.
Editors and readers prefer cartoons about celebrities in the news. The most popular section ever on Cagle.com was Janet Jackson’s boob at the Super Bowl with a whopping sixty million page views. Like most editorial cartoonists, I’m not interested in celebrities, but my most popular cartoons are celebrity obituary cartoons.
Cartoonists prefer cartoons that express strong opinions; we’re frustrated that editors don’t reprint these cartoons much. Most newspaper jobs for editorial cartoonists are gone now; we’re freelancers who are underpaid and struggling. We’re motivated by the joy of being a part of the public debate. We would like for editors to see us as graphic columnists rather than as bomb-throwers or clowns.
We would like for editors to see us as graphic columnists rather than as bomb-throwers or clowns.
Most of America’s 1,400 daily, paid circulation newspapers are small, rural or suburban newspapers with conservative readers, so most editors prefer conservative cartoons to liberal cartoons. The vast majority of editorial cartoonists are liberal and the most frequent complaint we get from editors is that there are not enough conservative cartoons (even though we have many more conservative cartoons than competing packages). We feature a “Trump-Friendly” section on the front page of CagleCartoons.com to point out these cartoons to editors who overlook them. Sometimes dealing with editors is like coaxing kids to eat their broccoli.
Because editors prefer such a narrow range of styles and topics, editorial cartoonists (who are not a diverse group themselves) often come up with cartoons that are similar. Sometimes a dozen cartoonists will draw the same, obvious gag; we call these matching cartoons “Yahtzees.” Columnists do the same thing, often making matching arguments about the issue of the day, but matching cartoons are more obvious than words. Sometimes editors complain that they don’t need to subscribe to more cartoons because the cartoons they see are “all the same,” but editors shun cartoons that are not similar.
Many editors ask, “Why don’t you have more pro-Trump cartoons?” Editorial cartooning is a negative art form. Cartoons in favor of anything are lousy cartoons. Even conservative cartoonists don’t draw pro-Trump cartoons. After the presidential election, cartoonists stopped drawing cartoons criticizing president Obama and Hillary Clinton, a change that disturbed many conservative editors who perceived a sudden shift to the left.
Another top complaint from editors is, “Why don’t you post more cartoons about holidays, and post them earlier?” We put topical keywords on the front page of CagleCartoons.com to help editors find the funny, inoffensive holiday cartoons that they might overlook. Most holiday cartoons don’t go stale. We have a great selection in our archive of over 200,000 key worded cartoons; many editors miss these because they only look at cartoons that are new.
What I would like to see from editorial page editors is more interest in diversity of cartoon content – in style, topic and point of view. I’d like to see editors choose great cartoons over funny cartoons. I’d like for editors to show more tolerance for foreign cartoonists and topics.
All that said, editors are our customers and most of them are great editorial cartoon fans. We love our editors. That’s why we want them to eat their broccoli.
Daryl Cagle is an editorial cartoonist and the owner of Cagle Cartoons, Inc. E-mail Daryl at [email protected]. For more information, visit CagleWorld.com. For a free trial subscription e-mail [email protected].
Every so often a really stinky fish looms over the White House. I have to draw a similar cartoon every seven years or so. Today’s stinky fish is “Whitefish Energy,” the two employee company in WhiteFish, Montana that happened to win a $300,000,000 exclusive contract from Puerto Rico to maintain their electrical system. Why this little company won a contract like this is a mystery to the White House. Interestingly, the tiny town of Whitefish, Montana (population 7.279) is the hometown of the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, and some are wondering if this could be a reason why the little company landed this big contract. Here’s an article with some other interesting Whitefish facts.
Whitefish Energy employs about 300 contractors who are working on tens of thousands of miles of downed power lines in powerless Puerto Rico. Not nearly enough people for the job, but their exclusive contract is keeping more workers out. Sounds stinky to me.
In the past my stinky fish has reared its rotting head for both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. Here’s my stinky Solyndra fish from 2011, depicting a stinky green energy company that blew through $500 million dollars of taxpayer subsidies before turning belly up.
The stinky fish for the Bush administration in 2007 was the Iraq war …
It looks like we should expect another fish to descend in another five or six years. Keep your eye (or nose) out for it.
10/30/17
Here’s how my Whitefish cartoon looks today in USA Today.
The story about President Trump’s awkward condolence call to the widow of a fallen soldier has dragged on for more than a week. I wasn’t going to draw about it, but as the story droned on and on, with more awkward false tweets and statements from the White House, it looks like I can’t avoid this one.
I think the image of Trump throwing paper towels to the hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, and Trump’s love of walls struck a chord with Marian Kamensky.
Sean Delonas may be our most conservative cartoonist. Here Sean shows his disgust for Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.
Our consistently conservative cartoonist, Rick McKee, seems to like Chief of Staff John Kelly’s statement, even though it contained false accusations about the Congresswoman.
I just got back from spending a week in Bulgaria. In the photo below I’m having a lovely Bulgarian dinner with the cartoonist/publishers of Prass-Press (Pig Press), Bulgaria’s national, political cartoon newspaper.
Here I am with the cartoonist/founder/publishers of Prass-Press (Pig Press), the Bulgarian political cartoon magazine. From left, that’s Tchavdar Nikolov, me, Christo Komarnitski, Chavdar Georgiev and Alla Georgieva.
Prass-Press is like Bulgaria’s Charlie Hebdo – it is funny, dirty, and pulls no punches. That’s the most recent issue of Prass-Press at the right, with a cover by longtime CagleCartoonist, Christo Komarnitski, showing Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev having a phone sex call with Vladimir Putin.
Bulgaria is split between about 60% of the population who like Russia and look back fondly on the communist days under the Soviet Union’s thumb; and only 30% of the population who like America more than Russia. It would seem that just having a raunchy political newspaper like Prass-Press on the newsstands is a sign of a nation with well respected press freedoms, but Bulgaria clocks in at number 109 on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, below Bolivia, Gabon and Kuwait. The entire press run of the first issue of Prass-Press was “stolen” from the newspaper delivery trucks, and my Bulgarian cartoonist friends continue to have a terrible time trying to get their newspaper into news kiosks. Although Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, it still has much of the look and feel of a Soviet east block country. As with Russia, Bulgaria’s economy is divided between rich oligarchs, and the oligarch who controls the distribution of news media doesn’t seem to like cartoons that ridicule the government. My Prass-Press friends have enlisted volunteers to drive copies of Prass-Press to kiosks, mostly in the capitol of Sofia, but it is a struggle.
We have an exhibition of Trump cartoons at the House of Humor and Satire in Gabrovo, and I went there to open the show. That’s the museum in the photo below, with a giant, metal bee sculpture that has buried its head into the front of the building. The museum, a converted Soviet era leather factory, is mostly about cartoons, although they are having an exhibition by Christo (the artist who wraps things, not our cartoonist Christo) as their next big show and they have a great exhibit of nasty Bulgarian church frescos that look like cartoons. Our Trump cartoon exhibit runs through February.
I took a panorama shot of half of our Trump exhibition in the photo below. The museum did a lovely job with the show.
The US Embassy in Sofia sponsored my trip and arranged for a bunch of press interviews where I explained that editorial cartoons are the barometer of press freedom in every country – and by that measure, given the hurdles placed in front of Prass-Press, Bulgaria looks pretty lousy. It takes some time to dig out from all of those communist years – and it takes some motivation, which the 60% of Bulgarians who look back with nostalgia on the Soviet days may not have.
Want to see me giving too many interviews, all translated into Bulgarian? Visit the links below!
Press Coverage of Daryl Cagle’s interviews in Sofia, Bulgaria
October 9-10, 2017
Every year, CagleCartoonists get together at the big editorial cartoons (they call them “Press Cartoons”) convention in St Just le Martel, France. The small village has dedicated itself to our art form, building a grand cartoon museum and hosting a great party for us. The museum is run by local volunteers; the townsfolk put most of the cartoonists up in their homes and they cook for us, and give us an open bar, and the teenagers in town are our waiters! I can’t imagine anything like that happening in the USA.
It is a delight to visit St Just and see our profession held in such high esteem. Because of the generosity and support of the village, it is actually cheaper for the cartoonists to come to the convention in St Just than to go to our own, American cartoonist conventions.
This year we had 17 CagleCartoonists from around the world at St Just –you can see 14 of them in the group photo above. That’s our bovine Statue of Liberty looking us over, in the cartoon museum, at our “Trump: Nine Months Later” exhibit.
Our own Angel Boligan went home with the cow –the big annual prize in St Just. Congratulations to Angel!
