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Marie Antoinette

The riots in France have been fascinating to watch. The “Giletes Jaunes” (Yellow Vest) protests were triggered by increases in gasoline taxes that French President Emmanuel Macron implemented to discourage people from driving, as part of his battle against Climate Change. The protest movement sees Macron, a rich, former investment banker, as an aloof elite. Those yellow vesters can go “eat cake.”

I love those crazy, historic, giant French hair-doos with depictions of ships and birds and crazy, coiffed, exotic stuff.

Poor and rural “Gilets Jaunes” who must drive to work, donned the yellow vests that they are required by law to keep in their cars for roadside emergencies, as a theme for their protests against Macron and the rich elite that they see as out of touch with their reality.  Here’s a class warfare cartoon by my buddy Robert Rousso, the dean of the French cartoonists (“jaune” or yellow, rhymes with “Jones” in French.)

Marie Antoinette is a great cartoon cliché. Here’s a “TRUE!” cartoon I drew back in 1995. This really is true.

Here’s Marie Antoinette as a cow, in a poster I drew for the Press Cartoon Festival in St Just le Martel, France, side by side with a cow sculpture that festival organizer, Blanche Vandenbroucke, dressed to match my poster. I think Blanche did an impressive job!

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Snails and Salt!

Snails and salt are a great political cartoon cliché. We’ve all drawn a bunch of them.

That’s Trump’s stooge, Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker as the salt shaker foaming Mueller’s slow moving investigation. Snails have a tough time with salt, as explained in my TRUE! cartoon below …

Here’s one of my snail oldies, from 2005 when George W. Bush was being slimed by FEMA’s slow response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

I love snail cartoons.

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Belts and Roads and Xi

As part of China’s drive to dominate Asia, Xi Jinping’s “Belts and Roads” initiative is tying up third world countries with unsustainable debt for dubious infrastructure improvements. Here’s my cartoon.

This cartoon will surely be banned in China. In fact, images of Winnie the Pooh are broadly censored in China because of memes depicting Chinese president Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh. This seems like a benign metaphor, but Winnie isn’t very smart and often gets his head stuck in the honey jar, so I can see why Winnie might annoy Xi. Here’s another recent one …

I think I’ll keep drawing Xi as Winnie the Pooh, just because of the allure of being censored in China. Xi is a great cartoon character, not just because he murders America’s spies and imprisons millions of Muslims and political dissidents, but because of Winnie the Pooh. This guy just makes me smile.  Here’s another Xi cartoon, showing Xi with his despot friends …

Xi’s not as funny when he’s not Winnie the Pooh.

If anyone in China can see my Xi the Pooh cartoons, please let me know and send me a screenshot – or send me a screenshot of what it looks like when my cartoons are censored in China.

I shouldn’t bash China too hard, lots of places censor my cartoons. Our whole site is blocked in Pakistan and Iran, and occasionally in other nations.  If Cagle.com or particular cartoons on our site are blocked in your country, please let me know and send me a screenshot!

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Split Congress and Sinking Oil Prices

Here’s one I drew a week ago that I forgot to post here! The Democrats have the House and the Republicans have the Senate – I look forward to seeing divided government at work again!

I’m impressed by how quickly oil prices are plummeting, and pulling down that stock market. The cartoon below was an oldie that I drew the last time this happened. There isn’t much news that is truly new news. The same old news seems to happen over and over, so sometimes I dust off an appropriate oldie.

This one needed to be in a vertical format, something that makes editorial cartoons sink. Editors like to leave a standard sized wide box as the editorial cartoon hole to fill each day, so deviating from the standard 1.5 wide by 1 tall box means a cartoon doesn’t get much ink.

But, sometimes I need to break out of the box. I hate being stuck in a box!

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I Miss Wayne Stayskal

I was saddened to learn that one of my favorite cartoonists, Wayne Stayskal, has passed away this week. Wayne retired from editorial cartooning as the conservative cartoonist for The Tampa Tribune in 2004. He was a great guy, and a rare, funny conservative, with a simple, sketchy, charming style. Columnist Cal Thomas wrote a nice obit for Wayne here on Townhall.com.

Devoted Cagle.com fans will remember Wayne from the first ten years of our site. Wayne was an enthusiastic Cagle.com contributor and I often featured him on the front page and in special topical sections devoted just to Wayne. Wayne was a staunch defender of gun rights and the Second Amendment. Wayne laughed about how often he drew variations on the same cartoon of a burglar being frustrated by a gun wielding homeowner – there really were a lot of these, and they were all funny.


In our early years, when Cagle.com  was partnered with Slate.com and MSN.com and we were getting lots of traffic, I often put up special sections of Wayne’s cartoons. The most popular were “Cartoon Shootouts” between Wayne and all the rest of the cartoonists, with Wayne as the sole voice defending gun rights versus all the rest of the cartoonists demanding gun control. Wayne loved these and enjoyed the crazy email responses he got, sharing many of the emails with me. These online, cartoon shootouts were wildly popular.

I’m grateful for the time and conversations I had with Wayne in our early years. I appreciate Wayne’s support. His work stands the test of time and remains brilliant. Wayne was a gentleman and a friend and a great talent.  I miss him.


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Sessions Kicked Out

President Trump had his mind on the FBI’s Russia probe when he kicked Attorney General Jeff Sessions out.

Remember when Trump kicked out his National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, because of Flynn’s ties to Russia?

That seems like a long time ago, but the news happens so fast now, it really wasn’t that long. This seemed like a good time to update this one. Since I drew this one, I’ve started drawing Trump fatter, and with a bigger face and neck. I spent some years living in New York where Trump was in the news throughout the 1980’s, and he was a skinny guy. It has taken me some time to adjust my thinking of him as fat.

Doesn’t it seem like the characters who get the boot are the most fun to draw?

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I Voted

I voted today. Everything on the ballot was unpleasant. There was nothing there that I wanted – only things I dislike less than other things. Which led to this cartoon.

Yes, I know, all of my Uncle Sams look more or less like congressman Steny Hoyer.

As I was finishing this one up, I saw Rick McKee’s election day cartoon, which is basically the same gag.

Rick’s cartoon will get reprinted more than mine, because he doesn’t have any vomit. Editors don’t like vomit. I think Rick wins on this gag.

Taylor Jones drew this one a couple of years ago – it goes well with Rick’s cartoon.

I took a look in the database and I found this nice oldie by Joe Heller

Nate Beeler drew this one back in 2012.

Here’s another nice one from Nate, in 2014.

And another one from Nate, in 2015!

I think Nate wins, 3 to 1.

 

 

 

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Red Meat for Trump’s Base

The mid-term election is coming on Tuesday and president Trump’s strategy is to gin up fear and loathing of immigrants to motivate his base to come out and vote.

Editors don’t like blood in cartoons –but maybe delicious immigration red meat blood is different –it seems to work for Trump.

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Slap Slap

Here’s Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman slapping Uncle Sam around a bit, with the dismembered gauntlet/hand of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. It looks like Uncle Sam is just going to turn the other cheek.

While I was working on this one, I read news reports that Turkey’s secret recording of the alleged murder include the sounds of Saudi agents cutting off all of Khashoggi’s fingers, while he was still alive, during his “interrogation.” That left me in cartoonist conundrum – should I draw the slapping hand with all the fingers removed? That would be hard to read, and most people wouldn’t know the story about Khashoggi’s fingers reportedly being chopped off. I went with the fingers still attached – after all, “we need to wait for the Saudi’s to conclude their investigation.”

Those Saudi royals make life tough for cartoonists too.

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Cagle Cartoonists in France

Every year a big group of cartoonists from our syndicate meet up in France with cartoonists from around the world.

This year 23 CagleCartoonists were there. The “Salon” at St. Just le Martel has become a Cagle convention as we meet with the French cartoonists at their “National Assembly.” There is a great atmosphere as the townsfolk all turn out to support the editorial cartoonists at their very impressive, municipal cartoon museum. We did an exhibition about “guns.”

Here are a few pics of the cartoonists. The first is a group shot of the CagleCartoonists who happened to be there on the last day. That’s me in front, with festival president/founder Gerard Vandenbroucke. There are 19 CagleCartoonists in the photo, which were all we could round up at the moment. A nice French lady who is a courtroom artist wandered into the photo by mistake, so I replaced her head with the head of Angel Boligan, who should have been there but was confused, in the other room. Trying to get cartoonists to do anything together requires mastery in cat herding.

Above, from left to right: Tom Janssen (Holland), Jos Collignon (Holland), Jeff Koterba (USA), Pierre Ballouhey (who is also the president of the French cartoonists association), Gary McCoy (USA), Gatis Sluka (Latvia), Emad Hajjaj (Jordan), Joep Bertrams (Holland), Rick McKee (USA), Bruce Plante (USA), Cristina Sampaio (Portugal), Osama Hajjaj (Jordan), Ed Wexler (USA), Nate Beeler (USA), the head of Angel Boligan (Mexico), pasted on top of a lady who wandered into the photo, Pat Bagley (USA), Brian Adcock (Britain), and Christo Komarnitsky (Bulgaria).

Above, a group of us are having dinner on the first night, taken by a waiter who was rather challenged by the very difficult idea of getting everyone’s face in the photo. That’s me on the left, brave Russian cartoonist Sergey Elkin, who is blocking the face of his wife Tatiana, then there’s Sergei’s son, Toni and Ed Wexler, Nate Beeler and 1/3 of Bruce Plante’s face.

Above, a bunch of us are having dinner at Chez Denise on our last night there – from left to right, Jeff Koterba and his girlfriend Christine, me wearing my son’s band’s t-shirt, Ed Wexler, our waiter/cartoonist/host Noder (Cyril Redon), Cristina Sampaio, Toni Wexler (Ed’s wife) Nate Beeler, brilliant French cartoonist Jackie Redon (Noder’s father and name spelled backwards), and Yves Frémion who publishes the cartoon journal on the table under Jeff’s phone. The restaurant is great, and festooned with 1970’s illustration art like I grew up with in college.

Funny how so much of the internet is devoted to pictures of people eating.

The pic above is the room where the Paris City Council meets, in the Paris City Hall – it is the “Tignous Room” named after the famed, late, beloved Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, Tignous, whose cartoons adorn the walls. I can’t imagine a City Council doing something like that in the USA. We had a cocktail party there.

 

The pic above is a panorama photo from my seat at the Cartooning Global Forum at UNESCO in Paris – this shows about a third of the 100 people there. It is very difficult to get cartoonists to agree on what issues face us, even as print is dying for all of us and our colleagues are brutalized around the world. Also, the USA pulled out of UNESCO. Any talk about cartooning issues is a good thing and it looks like this conference will be an annual event. That’s good.

Below are a couple more from the Cartooning Global Forum at UNESCO, from Nicolas Jacquette, one of the tireless, heroic organizers …

And another from Jacquette and his “Studio Irresistible” (with brilliant co-organizer Jerome Leninger) … I’m hidden in this one.

Below are 7 Cagle Cartoonists at an exhibition opening in Limoges, from left to right, Nate Beeler, Me, in the background, the tiny head of Jean-Michel Delambre (the French cartoonist who won the cow/grand prize at St Just this year), Rick McKee, Gary McCoy, Jeff Koterba, Pat Bagley and Emad Hajjaj.

Regrettably, the tradition of a live cow for the grand cow winner in St Just has come to an end. Last year, when Angel Boligan won the cow, the cow went a little “vaca loco” and charged away from its handler, a kid who broke his finger handling the wild cow leash. This year there was a much better behaved inflatable cow for Jean-Michel Delambre.

In the pic below, a bunch of us are drinking at 1:00am in a cafe in Paris. From left to right are Jeff Koterba, the two wives of Tom Janssen and Jos Colignon (Els and Irma), Bruce Plante, Pat Bagley and his lovely girlfriend Kate, Gary McCoy, Ed Wexler, Rick McKee, Christo Komarnitsky, Jos Collignon, a tiny face of Toni, Ed’s wife, me, Gatis Sluka leaning back, Tom Janssen, Jeff’s girlfriend Christine and Nate Beeler. It looks like our waitress is in the back room, throwing up, or “boofing” as Justice Kavanaugh would say.

In the pic below are Cagle Cartoonists Cristina Sampaio (Portugal), Chris Weyant (New Jersey) and Neils Bo Bojesen (Denmark) in the St Just parking lot next to the giant lunch/dinner tent where big, heavy construction vehicles are parked, to prevent a terrorist from driving a truck into the dinner tent. Editorial cartoonists are always under threat, and always hungry.

Here’s a group of cartoonists in a pic from the St Just Salon folks …

I must thank the inspired volunteers for the Salon at St Just le Martel, and the heroic volunteers who put together the Cartooning Global Forum, which I hope to see continue as an annual event!