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Blog

Dinnertime at Guantanamo, Rick Perry and another Red Line

Post author By
Post date May 4, 2013

Click to see a larger view of the Guantanamo force-feeding kit. Dinner. Mmm.

Here’s my weekly update on my new cartoons.

The most recent one is this riff on the famous Norman Rockwell painting, “Freedom from Want.” I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose American values at the dinner table with the dinner table at Guantanamo.

(Added 5/5: OK, from my e-mail box I see that I need to explain this cartoon a bit further as, apparently, it has gone over some readers’ heads. The idea of the cartoon is to show that juxtaposing traditional American values at the dinner table with the “dinner table” at Guantanamo is obviously ridiculous, making the visual point that force feeding the Gitmo prisoners, who are hunger striking and holding the prisoners indefinitely without charge is inconsistent with American values. I can have some fun with injustice, that’s what cartoonists do. Lighten up, people.)

I was intrigued to find that force-feeding the hunger-striking Guantanamo inmates has its own Wikipedia page. That is a picture of the force feeding kit on the right.

I think Ensure is funny too. It is all the food anyone needs to eat; elderly people, who don’t eat enough, drink yummy Ensure – so, like adult diapers and funeral expense insurance, Ensure is advertised extensively to the geriatric audience on Fox News and CNN. The elderly are the only ones left buying newspapers, and reading editorial cartoons too. Maybe my audience doesn’t think Ensure is so funny.

The previous cartoon, below, was this one about Texas Governor Perry and that big fertilizer plant explosion. Perry is a vocal champion for cutting regulations – and it turns out that more regulations were sorely needed in the case of the exploding plant.

Cartoonists have been clucking about this issue because Perry complained about one Perry bashing cartoon, demanding that the cartoonist be fired for being insensitive to the people killed in the explosion. In fact, many cartoonists jumped on this bandwagon drawing similar cartoons that Perry would have objected to if he had read more newspapers – like the two below by our own Pat Bagley and John Cole.

… but I digress! My previous cartoon this week was another Syria red line cartoon. There have been a heck of a lot of red line cartoons this week, but they are getting lots of ink so I thought it was time for another one. I used a real crayon to draw the red lines.

I also noticed, after I drew this, that I put John McCain’s big eye on the wrong side – his big eye is really on our left, his right. This got me to thinking, I drew the face that McCain sees when he looks in the mirror, and he’s the only person who sees that face – so he might think this is the only caricature ever drawn that actually looks like him. That thought makes me smile.

Tags Barack Obama, cartoonist, crayon, Ensure, explosion, fertilizer plant, John McCain, norman rockwell, red line, Rick Perry, Syria, Uncategorized

Cartoons

Guantanamo Dinnertime

Post author By
Post date May 4, 2013

Tags Barack Obama, Ensure, force feeding, hunger strike, norman rockwell, president

Cartoons

Texas Gov Perry Sympathy Card

Post author By
Post date April 29, 2013

Tags Elephant, fertilizer plant, governor, republican, sympathy card, texas

Cartoons

Teas Gov Perry Sympathy Card

Post author By
Post date April 29, 2013

Tags Elephant, fertilizer plant, governor, republican, sympathy card, texas

Blog

New cartoons this week, and a cartoon that is “not a cartoon”

Post author By
Post date April 27, 2013

This week I drew an unusual cartoon that garnered a crazy response from my outraged, cartoonist colleagues.

There was a short lived debate about whether a Miranda Warning should be given to Boston Bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had been questioned without being given the warning. I drew this last Sunday:

I got no response from editors or other cartoonists to this cartoon, but I got such a strong reaction from readers against the cartoon, with many well reasoned arguments, that I changed my mind – something that doesn’t happen much in this profession. (The comments on my Facebook page are representative of the overall comments I received). So I posted a revised version of the cartoon on Monday. I learned that Tsarnaev was given his Miranda rights shortly before I posted the revised cartoon, so I doubt that this second cartoon got reprinted much.

The second version is the same as the first, but instead of “none of them” deserving to be read their Miranda Warning, the revised cartoon says “all of them” should get the warning. I’ve changed my mind before, not often, and usually over a longer period of time, but I won’t go back into the archive to delete the old cartoons. I posted them, I should live with my history. So both cartoons are still posted. (My old cartoons supporting the run up to war in Iraq are still posted too – I’m more embarrassed by those.)

I remember when the Miranda decision came down in the 1960′s, on a 5-4 vote. It was controversial for a long time; the only area of the law where “ignorance of the law is no excuse” didn’t hold true. Liberals like it, conservatives still don’t like it. I decided to disagree with the talking heads at Fox News and I changed my mind to agree with my readers and conclude that the Miranda decision should no longer be controversial – it has become a part of our national fabric. Most of the responses conflate reading the Miranda warning to the suspect with the suspect’s overall civil rights; I have come to the conclusion that is a good thing. (I really do pay attention to the arguments that readers send to me.)

I got very little response to the second version of the cartoon from readers or editors, but there was an angry torrent of responses from my editorial cartoonist colleagues. Some cartoonists blogged that I had a new, insidious business plan to make more money by offering two versions of the same cartoon, for both liberal and conservative editors – to sell twice as many cartoons with only one drawing. Others agreed, adding that I was cheapening the profession with this crass commercialism.

One cartoonist blogged that this was no editorial cartoon at all (and by extension, that I am no editorial cartoonist) because editorial cartoons must, by definition, express only one opinion. Another editorial cartoonist responded to the cartoon in his blog by calling me the “Osama Bin Laden” of editorial cartooning.

Some cartoonists wrote that I must surely be lying about my reason for changing the cartoon, because the idea that I would change my mind was simply not credible. Others called for me to be punished for my breach of the unwritten laws of cartoon ethics. Some demanded that I remove the old version of the cartoon from my archive, as I would do with a cartoon that was revised to correct a spelling error; the idea that an editor could purchase and print both versions of the cartoon, with two different opinions, was repugnant. Bloggers and journalism sites reported on the cartoon controversy.

Yes, the cartoon police really do exist.

I know this all sounds unbelievable, but I’m not exaggerating. It is fascinating that editorial cartoonists have such a different perspective on their own work than editors and readers do. The cartoonists take themselves far more seriously than anyone else takes them.

Perhaps I should change my mind more often – it makes for a wild ride.

My next cartoon, about Fox News and the gold crash, got little attention as the controversy over my previous cartoon raged. Just as well, I draw too many old couples on the couch in front of the TV.

Next came this cartoon about the immigration bill in the Senate. I should note that when I draw cartoons about Mexicans, and draw them with sombreros, I always get some angry mail. I syndicate cartoonists from Mexico, who draw their fellow Mexicans with sombreros just like this, so I take my cue from them. Don’t get mad.

My most recent cartoon is this “Red Line” cartoon about Syria and Bashar Assad. I drew an actual squiggle with a crayon so that I would get nice, crayon texture, and I squished the squiggle in Photoshop so that it would appear to have perspective on the ground. I thought for a bit about the blood on Bashar’s hands, because bloody hands weren’t integral to the gag – but I decided the bloody hands were a necessary part of Bashar’s personality, even if his hands are a bit of a distraction.

Tags asad, Batman shooting, boston bombing, cartoonist, chemical weapons, gold, imigration reform, nra, shooting, Uncategorized

Columns

Miranda Rights and the Cartoon Police

Post author By
Post date April 27, 2013

Now I know how Mitt Romney felt when he was dogged by complaints about his “flip-flopping”. Nothing makes editorial cartoonists angrier than another cartoonist who changes his mind.

There was a short lived debate about whether a Miranda warning should be given to Boston bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had been questioned without being given the warning. I drew a cartoon featuring Dzhokhar with two other, famous killers, and a caption that concluded that “none of them” deserved a Miranda warning. I got no response from editors or other cartoonists to this cartoon, but I got such a strong reaction from readers against the cartoon, with many well reasoned arguments, that I changed my mind — something that doesn’t happen much in the editorial cartooning profession.

I remember when the Miranda decision came down in the 1960’s, on a 5-4 vote. It was controversial for a long time. Liberals liked it, conservatives still don’t like it. The Miranda debate resurfaced when Dzhokhar was questioned without being given a Miranda warning, a topic that filled editorial pages for nearly a week.

Of-course Dzhokhar doesn’t personally deserve any special consideration, but the American people deserve to have civil rights that are applied consistently to all, including the most heinous killers. Most of the reader responses to my cartoon conflated reading the Miranda warning to Dzhokhar with Dzhokhar’s overall civil rights; I have come to the conclusion that this is a good thing. I see now that the Miranda warning has become a part of our national fabric and I changed my mind. I really read the arguments that readers send to me. I drew a new cartoon that showed a revised conclusion that “all of” the killers deserved to be read their Miranda warning.

Then I learned that, as I was drawing the revised cartoon last Monday, Dzhokhar was read his Miranda warning, so I doubt that my second cartoon got reprinted much. Even so, the talking heads on TV were engaging in renewed debate about the wisdom of giving the Miranda warning in this case, which caused the suspect, Dzhokhar, to stop “talking.”

I’ve changed my mind before, not often, and usually over a longer period of time, but I won’t go back into my online archive to delete my regrettable old cartoons. I posted them, I should live with my history. So both versions of my cartoon are still posted on my web site. (My old cartoons supporting the run up to war in Iraq are still posted too — I’m more embarrassed by those.)

I got almost no response to the second version of the cartoon from readers or editors, but there was an angry torrent of responses from my fellow editorial cartoonists. Some of my colleagues blogged that I had a new, insidious business plan to make more money by offering two versions of the same cartoon, for both liberal and conservative editors — to sell twice as many cartoons with only one drawing. Others agreed, adding that I was cheapening the profession with this crass, two-faced commercialism.

One political cartoonist blogged that my cartoon was no editorial cartoon at all (and by extension, that I am no editorial cartoonist) because editorial cartoons must, by definition, express only one opinion. Another editorial cartoonist raged at my cartoon in his blog by calling me the “Osama Bin Laden” of editorial cartooning.

Other editorial cartoonists demanded that I remove the old version of the cartoon from my archive, as I would do with a cartoon that was revised to correct a spelling error. The idea that an editor could purchase and print both versions of the cartoon, with two different opinions, was repugnant. Bloggers and journalism sites reported on the cartoon controversy.

Yes, the cartoon police really do exist.

I know this all sounds unbelievable, but I’m not exaggerating. It is fascinating that editorial cartoonists have such a different perspective on their own work than editors and readers do. We editorial cartoonists take ourselves far more seriously than anyone else takes us.

I’m tempted to resist this cartoon police brutality. When I’m arrested, I hope they read me my Miranda warning.

Daryl Cagle is a cartoonist who runs the CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate distributing editorial cartoons to more than 850 newspapers around the world including the paper you are reading now; he is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society. Comments to Daryl may be sent to [email protected]. Read Daryl’s blog at www.cagle.com/daryl.