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Two Kinds of Offensive Cartoonists

Crowds fill the streets in the Middle East, demanding the execution of the Danish cartoonists who drew caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Bounties for the murder of the cartoonists have been offered by Muslim extremists and have been trumpeted in the press as the poor cartoonists live in hiding, under 24-hour police protection.

Why did the Danish cartoonists draw the cartoons? To test the limits of press freedom? To show disrespect for Islam? Because a Danish author couldn’t find an illustrator for his book about Muhammad? No, the Danish cartoonists drew “caricatures” of Muhammad because a Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten, hired them and paid them $73 each, along with the promise that the cartoonists would get their names and photos in the local newspaper.

The cartoonists knew they were being hired to draw provocative cartoons accompanying an article about the limits on press freedom, but they had no idea that they would be the tiny spark that lit a huge bomb in the Muslim world. (If they had known, they certainly wouldn’t have done the drawings in exchange for getting their photos in the newspaper.)

Some of the cartoonists even made fun of the assignment they were given; one of the offending cartoons shows a man looking at a police line-up who asks, “How can I identify Muhammad if I don’t know what he looks like?” Another offending cartoon shows a turban-wearing cartoonist holding his drawing of a stick-figure Muhammad while an orange, labeled “PR Stunt,” drops into his turban. (Dropping an orange refers to a Danish idiom and expresses the cartoonist’s disdain for his assignment.)

As condemnation rains down on the Danish cartoonists an important distinction is lost –the difference between cartoonists who are illustrators and political cartoonists.

I’m a political cartoonist; I draw cartoons that convey my opinions. Anyone who sees my cartoons will know what I think on a wide range of issues. Political cartoonists are journalists, just like columnists we decide for ourselves what we want to say, and we are responsible for what we say. Editors don’t tell political cartoonists what to say (although editors sometimes stop us from saying things that are offensive).

The Danish cartoonists are illustrators; they are given assignments by clients who pay them for their work. Illustrators draw what they are hired to draw. No one can look at the work of an illustrator and discern what the illustrator’s opinions are. Illustrators usually draw pictures that go with an author’s words; they might be creative and inject their own ideas, but still they are working at the direction of a client. The Muhammad cartoons are not political cartoons, they are illustrations drawn to accompany a newspaper article about press limits, an issue that arose because an author couldn’t find an illustrator for his book about Muhammad.

The Danish Muhammad cartoons are broadly – and wrongly – described as political cartoons by pundits and politicians who don’t understand the difference between one kind of cartoonist and another. The “political cartoon” label unfairly condemns the Danish cartoonists, none of whom would have chosen, on their own, to express any opinion about Islam, press freedom or the Prophet Muhammad.

The perception of the Danish Muhammad cartoons as “political cartoons” is chilling to real political cartoonists who are suddenly perceived as ticking time-bombs that can explode at any time. Editors, who were already uncomfortable reining-in their unwieldy, bomb-throwing cartoonists, are now more timid than ever.

Everyone asks me why I don’t draw Muhammad in a political cartoon – am I afraid to give offense or am I afraid for my own safety? I’ll draw whatever I want; I’ll be offensive if I want to be, but I want my cartoons to effectively convey my opinion, and my opinion about the Danish Muhammad cartoons issue is that the violent response to the cartoons is wrong and is far out of proportion to the provocation. If I were to draw a cartoon depicting Muhammad now, the only message the cartoon would convey is: “Hey, look at me, I can offend you too.” That is not what I choose to say.

Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” are available in bookstores now.

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Reprinting Those Horrible Offensive Muhammad Cartoons

Reprinting Those Horrible, Offensive Muhammad Cartoons

There are riots around the Muslim world, with embassies burning; and 12 poor Danish cartoonists who now fear for their lives have gone into hiding, under 24-hour police protection, as millions of angry Muslims call for their execution. Anyone who hasn’t seen the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad must think they are jarringly offensive –and since very few newspapers in America have chosen to print the cartoons, what else is there to think?

To Muslims, depictions of people – and especially depictions of Muhammad – are forbidden, so it doesn’t matter if the cartoons make a statement or not; the very idea that cartoons of Muhammad exist is offensive. To a Western eye, there is little that is offensive in the cartoons. News reports refer to the “Danish cartoons including one showing a bomb in Muhammad’s turban,” and even that is an exaggeration, describing the 12 cartoons by mentioning only the one that Westerners could imagine causing some offense. Truly offensive cartoons, which never appeared in the Danish newspaper, have been circulated to Muslim crowds to whip up their angry religious fervor.

The overblown reaction in Muslim countries to the blasphemy of the cartoons is what the story has become, as streets filled with violent protestors demand that the infidels in other countries respect a Muslim taboo. Clearly there are many in the Muslim world that are eager to stoke the fires of a clash of civilizations; they think they have found their popular issue with the cartoons.

Politically correct commentators in the West devote equal time to condemning Denmark’s Jylland-Posten newspaper as they do for the crowds that are burning embassies and inciting even more violence. Almost every newspaper in America has refused to reprint the cartoons, leaving readers to believe that if they saw the cartoons, they would be offended too. In fact, if American readers saw the cartoons we would say, “This? This is what makes them so angry? That’s crazy!”

New and truly offensive Muhammad images are popping up all over the Web. The images show a Muhammad toy on a Lego box, having sex with an underage Lego Aysha girl, Muhammad on products such as urinals and toilet paper, and lots of usage of the original Danish cartoons, revamped to make them more offensive with references to sex, pork, drugs and Danish products that are boycotted in Arab countries.

Not to be outdone, a Belgian-Dutch Islamic political organization, the Arab European League (AEL) has started posting cartoons that they think will be as offensive as possible to the Danish. They describe their effort this way:

“After the lectures that Arabs and Muslims received from Europeans on Freedom of Speech and on Tolerance. And after … many European newspapers republished the Danish cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed. AEL decided to enter the cartoon business and to use our right to artistic expression. Just like the newspapers in Europe claim that they only want to defend the freedom of speech and do not desire to stigmatize Muslims, we also do stress that our cartoons are not meant as an offence to anybody and ought not to be taken as a statement against any group, community or historical fact. If it is the time to break Taboos and cross all the red lines, we certainly do not want to stay behind.”

One cartoon on the AEL site has gotten the most attention; it features Holocaust victim Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, apparently after having sex, Hitler smokes a cigarette and says, “Write this one in your diary, Anne.” Aside from that cartoon, it appears that the cartoons that the AEL thinks will be most offensive to Danes are anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial cartoons that are not different from what passes as everyday fare in Arab newspapers. Of course, for the AEL to make their point effectively, we’ll need to see the Danes respond by marching in the streets, burning embassies, and calling for the executions of AEL cartoonists.

The proper response to an insult in the press is to respond with more speech, rather than violence in the streets, and the escalating war of offensive cartoons is simply speech. But as the reactions become uglier, readers may believe that the truly offensive images they see on the Web are the kind of cartoons that set off this clash of civilizations, rather than the dull, banal Danish cartoons that they haven’t seen. It is important that readers understand what a small spark set off this religious bomb. American editors should rethink their decision not to reprint the original Danish cartoons.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2006 Edition” and “The Big Book of Bush Cartoons” is available in bookstores and Amazon.com now.

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Cartoon Jihads

Nothing generates anger in the Muslim world like a cartoon. The most recent cartoon-Jihad comes from a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The Jyllands Posten, Denmark’s biggest newspaper, has been bombarded by street protests, international diplomatic incidents and death threats against cartoonists who have gone into hiding, fearing for their lives.

I’m fond of the Jyllands Posten newspaper because they run my cartoons. Reporter Anders Raahauge wrote the report below to cartoonist Doug Marlette who alerted me to the ongoing events:

“To test the limits of self-censorship, we asked all Danish cartoonists to draw Muhammad. We were provoked by the fact that a Danish author of children’s books couldn’t find any illustrators for his planned, decidedly non-polemic book on the prophet. Twelve cartoonists dared.

“There has been a great uproar. 5000 Danish Muslims protested in the streets of Copenhagen, 12 Muslim ambassadors demanded that our Prime Minister should take immediate and harsh action against (us) which he firmly declined (to do). The ambassadors then complained to the “Organization of the Islamic Conference”; there has been a general strike in Kashmir, and a political party in Pakistan, with Danish affiliations, has put a bounty on the heads of the 12 Danish cartoonists: 50,000 Danish Kroners for each execution.”

Danes treasure their press freedoms. The newspaper ran the Muhammad drawings as part of an article about self-censorship in the press, noting that even with a free press defined by law, there are other constraints regarding what can or can’t be published. The Danish prime minister refused to meet with ambassadors from 11 Islamic countries, led by Egypt, who objected to Denmark’s “smear campaign” and demanded punitive action against the newspaper. The ambassadors then announced a general boycott against Denmark. The United Nations weighed in, conveying sympathies to the offended Islamic countries. Last week, in an apparent concession to the angry Muslims, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged Danes to exercise their rights to free speech without inciting hatred against Muslims. The Danish government had the prime minister’s words translated into Arabic and distributed to Middle Eastern countries in the hope of easing the diplomatic crisis. Jyllands Posten’s editor-in-chief is quoted as saying, “the next step will be giving orders to suppress the newspaper.”

I found the offending cartoons on the web; they are disappointingly dull and it is hard to see how they could make anyone angry. Muslims consider any graphic depiction of Muhammad to be taboo. For the Muslim countries, it is a matter of imposing their sensibilities upon the infidels in the West. For the Danish “infidels” at Jyllands Posten, it is a matter of press freedom and an unwillingness to accept restrictions on an absolute and treasured freedom, which includes the right to offend anyone they choose to offend. In America we take our freedom to offend seriously; we would never threaten the lives of artists who paint the Virgin Mary with animal dung, or put a crucifix into a jar of urine -we limit the argument to whether our National Endowment for the Arts will subsidize these artists.

Depictions of Muhammad are not the only cartoons that inspire Islamic rage. Montreal Gazette cartoonist Terry “Aislin” Mosher had a similar experience. In response to a deadly terrorist attack against foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt, Mosher drew a dog wearing Arab headgear; the dog was labeled “Islamic Extremism” and the caption read, “With Apologies to Dogs Everywhere.” Mosher and his newspaper received a flood of Muslim threats and vitriol in a Jihad similar to the situation in Denmark.

A cartoonist whom I syndicate, Sandy Huffaker, drew a cartoon showing an Iraqi holding a book titled, “The Koran for Dummies,” and an American soldier asks, “Anything in there about GRATITUDE?” I was bombarded by many thousands of e-mails in a flame campaign instigated by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which asked readers on their Web site to e-mail me. The e-mails were hysterical, filled with colorful threats and demands that I fire and punish Huffaker. I posted a big batch of the emails on my Web site and asked my own readers to respond to CAIR. (My Web site has a rather large audience, so I flamed CAIR back.) Being on the other end of a flame campaign may have been a new experience for CAIR, because their flame campaign against me stopped abruptly -or more likely, CAIR saw that the hysterical rantings of their supporters, displayed on my Web site, did not speak well for their cause.

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette of the Tallahassee Democrat, found himself blasted by a CAIR e-mail Jihad when he drew a cartoon with the caption, “What Would Muhammad Drive?” The drawing showed a man wearing Arab headdress and driving a Ryder truck (a reference to Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh). In response to an inquiry from Jyllands Posten, Doug writes, “I was used to negative reactions from religious interest groups, but not the kind of sustained violent intensity of the Islamic threats. The nihilism and culture of death of a religion that sanctions suicide bombers, and issues fatwas on people who draw funny pictures, is certainly of a different order and fanatical magnitude than the protests of our home-grown religious true believers.”

Marlette continues, “As a child of the segregated South, I am quite familiar with the damage done to the “good religious people” of my region when the Ku Klux Klan acted in our name. The CAIR organization that led the assault (on me), describes itself as a civil rights advocacy group. Among those whose “civil rights” they advocated were the convicted bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993. They cannot be taken seriously. For many of those who protested my cartoon, recent émigrés, many highly educated, it was obvious that there was not that healthy tradition of free inquiry, humor and irreverence in their background that we have in the west. There was no Jefferson, Madison, Adams in their intellectual tradition. Those who have attacked my work, whether on the right, the left, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim, all seem to experience comic or satirical irreverence as hostility and hate. When all it is, really, is irreverence. Ink on paper is only a thought, an idea. Such people fear ideas. Those who mistake themselves for the God they claim to worship tend to mistake irreverence for blasphemy.”

Muslim countries expect the press in Denmark to suppress cartoons that would be offensive to them, but they don’t extend the same cartoon courtesy to others that they demand for themselves. Cartoons in the Arab press are typically so ugly and racist that American audiences have never seen anything like them. Middle Eastern cartoon venom is targeted toward Israel, often depicting Jews with hooked noses and orthodox garb, sometimes with fangs and bloody teeth, often in the roles of Nazis. The Jews are sometimes shown crucifying Arabs in a “Jews killed Jesus” scenario, or enacting their own concentration camp Holocausts on their neighbors, along with their henchmen, the Americans. The cartoons are designed to be as offensive to Jews as possible, and are seen as nothing out of the ordinary by Middle Eastern newspaper readers.

Unless we defend our funny little drawings with the same zeal that we see from the victims of our irreverence, we’ll continue to see our freedoms constricted by the loud voices of those we offend.

©2006 Daryl Cagle – Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2006 Edition,” are available in bookstores now.

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Cartoonists and Cockroaches

A column in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times starts off like this:

“POPE JOHN XXIII, or ‘Good Pope John,’ remains one of the most beloved figures in recent Catholic history. Among treasured memories of this kindly, roly-poly pope, perhaps none looms larger than the evening of Oct. 11, 1962, when he told a vast crowd on a moonlit night in St. Peter’s Square, ‘Go home tonight and give your children a kiss, and tell them that this kiss comes from the pope.’ When German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s stern doctrinal enforcer, was elected as Benedict XVI in April, an editorial cartoon in an Italian paper showed him looking at a similar crowd and saying, ‘Go home tonight and give your children a spanking, and tell them that this spanking comes from the pope.’

“In a nutshell, the cartoon captured many people’s expectations of Benedict XVI: a hard-line taskmaster who would bring liberals and dissenters in Roman Catholicism to heel.”

Speakers and columnists, like this one, often quote cartoons but seldom mention the name of the cartoonist. With this writer, one fourth of his column came from an uncredited cartoonist. (I think it is fitting that one fourth of my own column starts off with a quote from a writer whom I have chosen not to name.) Writers are almost always named when they are quoted, but cartoons seem to be mere anecdotes that deserve no attribution beyond, “I saw this cartoon …”

An unnamed op-ed page editor at the Los Angeles Times told me that he doesn’t like political cartoons because they tend to “overpower the words that surround them.” He went on to tell me that his two favorite cartoonists are Tom Toles and Ted Rall, two cartoonists with rudimentary drawing styles who put lots of words into their cartoons; this editor liked these cartoonists because they were “more like writers than artists.”

There seems to be a natural friction between the “picture people” and the “word people” who are troubled by those powerful pictures. A famously unnamed editor at The New York Times is quoted as saying, “We would never hire an editorial cartoonist at the Times, because we would never give so much power to one man.” Another unnamed New York Times editor is quoted as saying, “We don’t like editorial cartoons at the Times because you can’t edit a cartoon like you can edit words.”

Editors see cartoonists as “bomb throwers,” because cartoonists enjoy a different set of journalist ethics than writers. Cartoonists can put any words into the mouth of a public figure, whether those words were actual quotes or not. Cartoons make readers angry. A strong political cartoon generates much more mail from readers than the strongest words. Most editors are timid and want to avoid controversy; they choose to run syndicated cartoons that are unobjectionable gags about current topics. Cartoonists call this “Newsweekification” after the inoffensive, bland and opinionless – but funny – political cartoons that Newsweek magazine chooses to reprint each week, further trivializing political cartoons.

The power and effectiveness of political cartoons cause more and more newspapers to avoid cartoons. There are half as many editorial cartoonist jobs as there were 75 years ago. Of the biggest newspapers in America – The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune – none have political cartoonists on staff.

The newspaper industry often complains about a dwindling and aging readership as younger readers prefer to get their news through other media. The old-line “word people” lament that youngsters nowadays get their news from Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” In fact, most young people get their news from political cartoons. Every state in the United States has middle and high school students interpret an editorial cartoon as part of state-mandated testing. Teachers who must “teach to the test” include political cartoons in their classes. Students learn their current events through political cartoons and, ironically, most of the students see newspaper political cartoons on the Internet rather than on paper (visit www.cagle.com). The “word people” who run newspapers have “Newspapers In Education” programs to try to develop a younger readership, but when a stack of newspapers is dropped on a teacher’s doorstep once a week, there is usually only one political cartoon on the editorial page – not very useful to a teacher who only needs the newspaper to teach about editorial cartoons.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see this turn around, and see more columns like this one, where cartoonists’ names are mentioned and writers’ names are not; when that happens, I expect traditional newspapers will have long gone extinct. Just as the cockroach will continue to roam the Earth long after mankind has disappeared, political cartoonists will still be crawling out from dark corners long after the “word people” have killed off newspapers.

Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” are available in bookstores now.

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Worldwide Cartoonists Take Pleasure In America’s Pain

Worldwide Cartoonists Take Pleasure in America’s Pain

The easiest way to see what world opinion looks like is to look through the mirror of political cartoons. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has done nothing to elicit sympathy from the world according to cartoonists around the globe who are finding pleasure in America’s pain.

In Europe, anger at President Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto treaty to stop global warming is the focus of “I told you so” cartoons. The Europeans see global warming as the obvious cause of Hurricane Katrina and seize the opportunity to blame the president for causing the calamity.

German cartoonist Heiko Sakurai depicts President Bush swept up in a tornado along with a sign that reads, “Welcome to New Orleans.” The president says, “Global warming? What a ridiculous idea! But we got very serious information from our intelligence services that there might be a connection to Al Qaeda …”

Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune (owned by the New York Times) draws a scene of flooded New Orleans ruins, with a billboard that quotes the president, “’Climate change remains to be proven’ –George W. Bush.”

Cartoonist Olle Johansson from Sweden shows the president taking his “global warming dog” for a walk; the dog has escaped from his collar and turned into a raging storm outside the frame, as the president says, “The hurricanes just love to play with him.”

New Zealand Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson shows President Bush addressing the nation, “The American people can rest assured that we plan to invade New Orleans as soon as possible.”

Bill Leak of The Australian newspaper in Sydney shows President Bush dressed as a cowboy, holding out a tin cup begging for help as Australian President John Howard looks the other way, telling an aide to tell Bush that he gave “at the office.”

Cartoonists in developing countries, the Middle East and Latin America display their disgust for America and President Bush at every opportunity. Americans are portrayed as greedy, obese, stupid and arrogant. Hamburgers are a worldwide symbol for America and we often see ugly depictions of hamburgers; it seems strange to us, but defiled burgers are instantly recognizable around the world as insults directed against America. In Middle Eastern countries where there is no Christian lore that would give rise to a devil character, Dracula is substituted for Satan, and President Bush or Uncle Sam are often depicted as vampires.

Another common symbol for America is the comic book superhero, sometimes Batman or Spiderman, but usually Superman is the worldwide substitute for Uncle Sam, and in most cartoons Superman suffers an indignity that brings joy to an America hating audience. In his most recent cartoon, Emad Hajjaj of the Al-Ghad newspaper in Amman, Jordan draws President Bush in his Superman suit, with Hurricane Katrina as his up-blown skirt, exposing his skinny, naked, black legs trudging through the mud, labeled, “Third World.”

Many of the world’s cartoonists work in countries that allow no press freedom, but the cartoonists describe themselves as being “free.” A Cuban cartoonist once told me, “I’m free to draw whatever I want … as long as it is about the United States.”

Bashing America is a daily job for the world’s cartoonists, and it will take a lot more than death, devastation and widespread human suffering to jar them from their routine.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.

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Civil War On The Table

Civil War on the Table

As a political cartoonist I sit around all day watching cable news pundits argue with each other. That’s what all of the political cartoonists do. Our cartoons are nothing more than more screaming voices on the editorial page and our cartoons typically amplify the standard opinions we hear on TV, where pundits offer ready-made opinions on every issue. All I have to do is pick from the tasty opinion smorgasbord that is served up to me, 24 hours a day. The problem is that lately, I’m feeling a bit overstuffed, and the opinions I’m being served aren’t tasting very good.

The ready-made opinions on Iraq come in three flavors:

1. Stay the course and fight the good fight for democracy and freedom (this is what the President and the far-right pundits tell me).

2. Iraq is a big mess, but it would be worse if we left because there would be civil war (this is what most of the pundits tell me).

3. We should get out now (this is what Cindy Sheehan and the far-left pundits tell me).

All of these choices leave a bad taste in my mouth. As a cartoonist, I want a bad guy to bash. The only good cartoons are the ones that bash a bad guy. Most of the cartoonists have chosen to bash President Bush as the bad guy for getting us into Iraq and keeping us there. In my own cartoons I’ve chosen to bash the insurgents in Iraq; they seem like the obvious bad guys to me. The Sunnis hate America. The Sunni insurgents don’t have much success blowing up American soldiers, so they spend most of their time blowing up Shiites; they oppress women, they boycott the elections, they refuse to negotiate on a new constitution. They seem like good, all around, bad guys.

The Shiites are bad guys too. They also hate America, they want an oppressive religious theocracy to rule Iraq, they oppress women, they are aligned with Axis of Evil member, Iran; but at least they negotiate, they vote, they don’t blow things up as much as the Sunnis, and they are the majority in Iraq. I’ll call them: “less-bad guys.” (We like the Kurds, so we’ll ignore them.)

The TV pundits tell me that we must stay in Iraq because if we leave there will be a terrible civil war. All of the options seem dark and gloomy. I wonder why none of the pundits ever discuss the bright side of civil war. I see four arguments for civil war in Iraq:

1. There are a lot more Shiites than Sunnis, so the “less-bad guys” would win.

2. With the Shiites fighting the Sunnis, we (and the Kurds) can sit back and watch until it’s over

3. We’ve learned that the American army is the world’s best at destroying things, but we do a lousy job of building things and keeping peace. We should quit trying to do the things we do poorly.

4. There will be a lot of death, destruction and suffering in a civil war, but many pundits argue that our initial war was so clean and efficient in targeting only the military and sparing the civilian population in Iraq, that the Iraqi people never suffered enough to be willing to make the compromises necessary for peace and democracy. Until they suffer enough to cry, “Uncle Sam,” there is no reason to expect the Sunnis to be civil; they lost their man Saddam and lost their control over Iraq. Of course they would be in a surly mood.

Iraq seems to be having a civil war now anyway, but we’re keeping the heat down by constantly stirring the Iraqi pot. It is a natural American tendency to think that if we stir the pot, the stew will be better; but we could turn up the heat, sit back and let the stew simmer until done. That seems to me to be a recipe that would taste as good as any of the others that are being offered to me, and I’d like to have it served up along with the other dishes on my TV pundit smorgasbord.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.

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How to Draw President Bush

How to Draw President George W. Bush

Political cartoonists are not much different from comic strip cartoonists; both draw an ongoing daily soap opera featuring a regular cast of characters. While comic strip cartoonists invent their own characters, the political cartoonist’s characters are given to him by events in the world; we are all drawing our own little daily sagas starring the same main character, President Bush.

Around the world, cartoonists almost always draw President Bush as a cowboy. Outside America, a Texas cowboy is seen as: uneducated, ill mannered, a “trigger-happy marshal” or outlaw who is prone to violence. Cowboy depictions of the president by worldwide cartoonists are meant to be insults, but Americans see cowboys differently. In the USA, cowboys are noble, independent souls, living a romantic lifestyle by taming the wilderness and taking matters into their own hands whenever they see a wrong that needs to be righted. We are a nation of wanna-be cowboys.

The image of President Bush evolves with each cartoonist’s personal perspective. Bush started out as most political cartoon characters start out, as a caricature of a real person, meant to be recognizable from a photograph. As time goes by, the cartoonists stop looking at photographs and start doing drawings of drawings, then drawings of drawings of drawings, so that the George W. Bush drawings morph into strangely deformed characters that look nothing like the real man, but are instantly recognizable because we’ve come to know the drawings as a symbol of the man. It is surprising that each cartoonist’s drawings of the president look entirely different, but each is easily recognizable as representing the same character.

For some cartoonists, the president’s ears have grown huge; a strange phenomenon, since the president doesn’t have unusually large ears, and isn’t well known for listening. Some cartoonists have seen President Bush shrink in height; a combination of these has the president sometimes looking like a little bunny rabbit.

The president who shrank most in cartoons was Jimmy Carter. At the end of Carter’s term he was a Munchkin, standing below knee height on almost every cartoonist’s drawing table. President Bush has shrunk for only some of the more liberal cartoonists. President Reagan grew taller during his cartoon term in office. President Clinton grew fatter, even as he lost weight in real life. Bill Clinton’s personality was fat, and the cartoonists drew the personality rather than the man. President Clinton is now skinny, but he will always be fat in cartoons.

Another cartoon characteristic that has grown from years of drawing President Bush are his eyes, two little dots, close together, topped by raised, quizzical eyebrows. The close, dotted eyes are an interesting universal phenomenon, shared by almost every cartoonist, that doesn’t relate to the president’s actual features. Over time, most cartoonists will draw a character with eyes that grow larger, but President Bush’s eyes shrink, while his ears grow. There may be a political message in that, but I can’t figure it out.

I once played “Political Cartoonist Name That Tune.” The game went like this:

“I can draw President Bush in SIX LINES.”

“Well, I can draw President Bush in FOUR LINES!”

“I can draw President Bush in THREE LINES!”

“OK. Draw that President!”

…and I did, two little dots topped by a raised, quizzical eyebrow line. It looked just like him.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.

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Liberal vs Conservative Humor

Liberal vs. Conservative Humor

Liberals see conservatives as preachy, sanctimonious and humorless. Conservatives see nothing funny about shrill, angry, liberal losers. Who is funny? It depends on your point of view, but humor writers and cartoonists will always be liberal-leaning; it is a bias that is built into the system. It boils down to core values.

Conservatives believe that people should be trusted; they believe that we should all take responsibility for ourselves, that we should enjoy the rewards of our personal successes and suffer the consequences of our personal failures. Liberals believe that people are basically stupid, that we should be protected from hurting ourselves by making the poor decisions that we would certainly make, if we were free to exercise our stupidity. As a cartoonist, I know that I can’t make a living drawing cartoons about people who take responsibility for themselves, but I can make a career out of drawing stupid people.

The responsible vs. stupid perspective is clear for all to see in the Social Security debate. President Bush wants personal retirement accounts where we can make decisions for ourselves about where our money goes. Liberals don’t want us to have the freedom to make the poor investment decisions that could erode our retirement “savings.” There is no middle ground between responsible and stupid. The same is true with humor.

Jay Leno is a liberal humorist. Jay walks down the street and gives everyday folks the opportunity to demonstrate how stupid they are, while Jay laughs at them. David Letterman is a conservative humorist. Dave treats everyday folks with respect, giving them the opportunity to laugh at how silly Dave is, as he has fruit dropped from a rooftop, or when he visits his stoic neighbor, Rupert Jee, at “Hello Deli,” with another goofy contest. Both Leno and Letterman are funny. Liberals and conservatives can both be funny, but it is easier to be funny by laughing at others, rather than laughing with others. Most humorists take the easy road.

In politics it is easy to poke fun at the people in power. Political cartooning is a negative art form. Cartoonists tear things down. There is nothing funny about a cartoon that defends the people in power. With the White House and Congress controlled by conservatives it is no surprise that conservatives are humorless.

Demographics also favor liberal laughs as the blue-state media centers in California and New York broadcast their perspectives into the humorless red states.

Editors often complain that liberal newspaper political cartoonists outnumber conservatives by a ratio of about 10-to-1. Since cartoonists are evenly distributed at newspapers across the country, why would this be true? Most editorial cartoonists rely on a full time newspaper job because it is tough to make a living only through syndication or freelancing. There are fewer and fewer newspaper jobs for cartoonists as papers cut back on their editorial staffs and cartoonists are seen as expendable. The few jobs (about 85) that remain are at the biggest newspapers, which are usually in the biggest cities which tend to be more liberal areas. There are about 1,500 daily newspapers in America, and the vast majority are small, suburban or rural papers that are conservative, and are either too small or too cheap to hire their own local cartoonist. Unless those conservative newspapers get off the dime and decide to hire local cartoonists, we’re always going to see a majority of urban, liberal cartoonists.

Conservatives should learn to laugh at themselves, like David Letterman; instead they choose to complain about liberal control of the media. Rather than complaining, what conservatives need are better jokes, a more liberal attitude about their checkbooks and most of all, a liberal in the White House.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for Slate.com, the opinion site of The Washington Post. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.

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Columns

Cartoonists Bash the New Pope

by Daryl Cagle

The selection of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope has been treated politely by the American press, but cartoonists around the world have been bashing the pontiff in ways that most readers would find shocking.

Mixing the words “rat” and “Nazi,” the British tabloid “The Sun” dubbed the new pope “Papa Ratzi” in a banner headline. American newspapers are more polite to the conservative pontiff, criticizing him in editorials but avoiding Nazi metaphors. Growing up in Germany in the 1930’s, Ratzinger was compelled to join the Hitler Youth and

the German Wehrmacht. As a defender of conservative church doctrine, he was labeled as Pope John Paul II’s “rottweiler.” Cartoonists have seized on these images, portraying the pope as a snarling dog, and putting him in the role of the Fuhrer, reviewing troops of

goose-stepping sheep or Cardinals.

Readers usually see only one editorial cartoon in their daily newspaper and have to wander onto the internet to see what the political cartoonists are doing. Editors typically subscribe to many syndicated editorial cartoonists so that they have a large selection

from which to pick a favorite cartoon of the day. In recent years, the trend among editors is to choose more cartoons that are cute little jokes and do not express a strong point of view. Editors want to avoid controversy; strong cartoons draw a strong reaction from readers. Cartoonists call the trend to opinionless cartoons “Newsweekization,” as Newsweek Magazine is notorious for showcasing funny, pointless, inoffensive cartoons. Cartoonists still draw the strong cartoons, but readers see only the bland jokes that editors select. Cartoons that bash a pope will rarely be seen in the US, simply because too many readers would take offense.

The recent cartoons criticizing the new pontiff come from cartoonists who don’t like his conservative views. Australian cartoonist Paul Zanetti depicts the pope saying, “Forward to the future” as he leads his sheep down a hole labeled “the past.” Canadian cartoonist

Michael DeAdder portrays the pope’s vestments decorated with symbols that say “no condoms”, “no reform” and “no women.” Cartoonist David Horsey of the Seattle Post Intelligencer draws the pontiff invading a woman’s bathroom, scowling as she holds a birth control pill. Cartoonist Nate Beeler of the Washington Examiner draws the new pope with an accordion singing, “Are you ready to party like it’s 1299?”

I drew a breathless television reporter, with her finger on her ear-piece, delivering the breaking news from Rome: “…WAIT … I’m now being told that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the new pope, is NOT … repeat NOT called a ‘German Shepherd,’ he’s a ‘Rottweiler’. He WAS in the Hitler Youth, but he did NOT, repeat NOT, play Cliff the mailman on ‘Cheers.’”

Foreign cartoons are always more harsh than those from America. Brazilian cartoonist Lailson de Hollanda shows an evil-looking pope at the window, with a crowd chanting “Heil Pope! Heil Pope!” Slovakian cartoonist Martin Sutovek shows the pontiff wearing

blinders, like a race horse. Brazilian cartoonist Simanca draws the pope as a shark, about to chew up little fish labeled “homosexuals.”

Cartoonists are bomb-throwers. If this column runs with no cartoons, I’m sure there is nothing to worry about. If this column runs with sample cartoons, I know that somewhere, an editor is hiding under his desk.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for Slate.com, the opinion site of The Washington Post. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.

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Columns

What Terri Schiavo Wanted

We’re told that poor Terri Schiavo could have avoided this great legal drama if only she had a “living will.” We’re also told that Schiavo became a mental vegetable when the blood supply to her brain was interrupted, because her heart stopped, as a result of her bulimia, the binge-and-purge eating disorder.

A living will tells physicians what a patient wants to have done in the event that she is terminally ill. Terri’s sleazy husband, Michael Schiavo, tells us that Terri wouldn’t want to live on like this, but, like most conservatives, I don’t believe sleazy husbands. After all, Terri was a bulimic, and bulimics are nut-cases. If Terri had a living will, this is how it would read:

“The Terri Schiavo Bulimic Living Will”

Let it be known that I, Terri Schiavo, being of sound mind and body, do hereby direct my physicians to place a feeding tube into my stomach.

Feed me, then take out the tube.

Starve me, then, put the tube back.

Feed me again. More this time. Now take the tube out again.

Starve me again. Put the tube back again.

Repeat until dead.

Signed,

Terri Schiavo

It is a credit to the legal system that Terri can get just what she wants even without a living will.

Liberals think this case is all about the rule of law. Conservatives think the case is all about morality. Political cartoonists know the case is all about feeding tubes. Feeding tubes are funny. There have been lots of cartoons showing a tug of war, with liberals and conservatives tugging on a feeding tube. I drew Uncle Sam whipping himself with Terri’s feeding tube and the title, “Self Flagellation.”

Canadian cartoonist, “Tab,” draws a guy listening as the TV blares, “… surrounded by family and supporters while feebly clutching a feeding tube …” The guy watching TV responds, “I’m getting’ a little tired of Michael Jackson’s antics …”

Conservative Georgia cartoonist, Mike Lester, draws sleazy husband, Michael Schiavo, yanking out the feeding tube, exclaiming, “I would KILL to protect Terri’s right to die!”

Denver Post cartoonist, Mike Keefe, shows Saint Peter on the phone saying, “On the Terri Schiavo Matter, Sir, a Mr. Tom DeLay and company have appointed themselves to represent You …” God responds with thunder and lightening.

Florida cartoonist, Jeff Parker, draws a white, frozen judge with the caption, “Once given the power to play God by the Florida legislature, Jeb Bush intervenes in the Terri Schiavo case and then goes on to turn the courts into a pillar of salt.”

My favorite cartoon came from Mike Lane, who recently left a thirty-year job at the Baltimore Sun. Mike e-mailed me, asking if it would be OK to draw an elephant peeing. In his thirty years at the Sun, he was never allowed to draw an elephant peeing. Would we really dare to send a drawing of an elephant peeing to newspapers around the country? Would newspapers really print that?

I said, “Sure, what the heck?” Mike’s cartoon shows a Republican elephant peeing on the “Rule of Law.” I think it is the best cartoon of all.

Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for Slate.com, the opinion site of The Washington Post. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading