We just witnessed a crazy scene where Trump had peaceful protesters next to the White House, in Lafayette Park, forcibly cleared out by police, teargas, horses and troops –so that Trump could have a photo op, holding up a bible in front of a church. There had been an arson fire in their bathroom of the boarded-up church that was likely caused by thugs during an earlier protest. Trump a bible up, upside down, as he stood in front of the church, inspiring the cartoonists. I’ve posted the best of the church photo op, from twelve Cagle Cartoonists; come take a look …
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Here are some of my favorite cartoons about the ongoing protests. We see a big divide in the news coverage between Fox News and conservative media vs the rest of the media; we see the same divide with the conservative cartoonists drawing about law and order, and the rest of the cartoonists drawing about racial justice.
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Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
This is the cartoon I drew today about the nationwide protests …
Police violence is contemptible, but police are protecting our burning cities across America – the contradictions are showing up in cartoons as the cartoonists respond to the ugly scenes on television by drawing.
Here’s a cartoon I reposted for newspapers this morning. I drew this one five years ago for the Ferguson riots/protests. Regrettably, this cartoon doesn’t go out of date. Perhaps five years ago police seemed more concerned about being caught on video.
Since this is all happening on the weekend, and cartoonists and newspapers work on weekdays, we don’t have many cartoons yet. Watch Cagle.com where we’re collecting them all.
See the first cartoons about the George Floyd murder in my post from last week.
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Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman, while three other policemen stood by, has horrified the nation. Here are some of the first responses from our cartoonists. Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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.
Here’s president Trump shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, who has blood on his hands for allegedly ordering the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has been quite chummy with Saudi Arabia which seems to be a house of horrors, accounting for most of the 9/11 killers, and a long history of human rights abuses and recent ugly overkill in Yemen.
I like the idea of the black and white image with only the blood in red. Look familiar? I did much the same thing with Trump and Kim Jong Un.
As Trump continues to cozy up to murderous dictators, maybe I’ll make this into a series.
The recent police shootings and the murders of policemen in Dallas are a horror. I think these police shooting horrors have been going on in probably the same or lesser proportion in the past, but now we see them on phone videos. More of a horror are the statistics for how disproportionately more blacks are in prison. My solution is to get rid of the racist laws that disproportionately punish blacks for drug crimes. We should see by now that the war on drugs is unfair and is more costly to society than the cost in lives and suffering of having no war on drugs at all.
I should apologize for taking such a long break from the last cartoon. I’ve been moving back to California. We sold the ranch in Tennessee and we’re back in California, hopefully for good.
I think the police/Black Lives Matter issue will be with us for quite some time and I should come up with some more cartoon ideas on this. I have to admit that this isn’t an easy topic. It is much easier to draw “Trump as a monster” cartoons. I like the black and white line art version of this one, so I didn’t do a grayscale on this one. Unfortunately, most newspapers take the color image and grayscale it rather than using line art when I post line art as the black and white version. Frustrating. Line art is more elegant.
Here’s an oldie on the same topic that I drew last year. This one has been getting more ink recently as it has been more appropriate for the week’s focus.
And here’s another one …
In the video below you can see me drawing the target cartoon in real time.
In the next video see me coloring the cartoon in Photoshop.
Standing in a crowed of bloody, murder victims while saying something ironic or hypocritical is a cartoon cliche that every cartoonist has drawn many times. Here’s a similar cartoon that my buddy Pat Bagley drew recently in response to San Bernardino …
This Steve Sack cartoon is probably my favorite San Bernardino cartoon – it is a response to the New York Daily News prayer front page and the rejection of another gun control vote in congress, with a wonderful rosary.
Here’s another one of my dead field of victims cartoons about Bashar Assar – as fresh today as it was when I drew it some time ago.
Here’s another one where I used the same victims. I traced the same dead crowd, and changed their clothes to Taliban duds. There was a story at the time criticizing American servicemen for peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters they had just killed in battle. I got a lot of angry reader response to this cartoon.
This also isn’t the first time I’ve drawn the NRA as a pig. Here is a Cagle classic NRA pig cartoon …
Pigs are a wonderful cartoon standard; they are a symbol of greed. Here’s a standard Cagle piggy oldie …
Pigs and standing among fields of the dead are two of my favorite things! (Maybe that’s another reason why those Islamic extremists don’t like cartoonists.)
I woke up this morning to the news of the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo Magazine office in Paris. Twelve people were killed and eleven wounded, including two of my French cartoonist friends, Tignous and Wolinski. Cartoonists around the world are grieving.
Americans treat editorial cartoons as a trivial daily joke in the newspaper – in France, editorial cartoons and loved and respected. The Louvre has a branch museum devoted to cartoons; imagine if the Smithsonian had a cartoon museum, that’s the way cartoons are revered in France.
My new editor.
“Charlie Hebdo” is a silly name; it is a weekly magazine filled with editorial cartoons, easily found on news stands everywhere in France. “Hebdo” means “weekly” in French, and “Charlie” comes from France’s love for the comic strip “Peanuts” and Charlie Brown – therefore “Charlie Hebdo.” The top cartoonists in France vie to be on the pages of Charlie Hebdo.
There are cartoon festivals all over France – the best one for political cartoonists is in the small town of St Just le Martel; I’ve been attending for years, along with other cartoonists I syndicate. The townspeople pitch in to throw a festival for the editorial cartoonists every year; villagers put cartoonists up in their homes, and they award a live cow to the “Humor Vache” cartoonist of the year. One greatly respected winner of the cow was Georges Wolinski, a brilliant cartoonist with a masterful loose, swishy, wordy style, highly respected by the French. We were fellow cow winners, having a beer together last October; it is hard to imagine that he is gone.
The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are a diverse group of charming characters; they are the heart of the French cartooning community. There are not a lot of editorial cartoonists. We get to know each other; the murders are a blow that strikes close to all of us.
The Charlie Hebdo artists were energized and incensed by the Danish Muhammad cartoon fracas a few years ago. French cartoonists have a macho attitude, seeing themselves on the front lines of a free speech debate. One Charlie Hebdo issue, touted as “edited by the Profit Muhammad” had all blank pages. One Charlie Hebdo cover featured a drawing, by French cartoonist “Luz” of the magazine’s publisher/cartoonist “Charb” having a sloppy kiss with a Muslim Man, under the headline “L’Amour plus for que la haine” or “love is stronger than hate.” Charb was among those killed in the terror attack.
Terrorists have no sense of humor. Cartoons loom large in the Arab world, typically on the front pages of Arab language newspapers. It is no wonder that our cartoons seem to bother the terrorists more than our words. Sitting behind a beer with Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, the talk often turns to Islamic extremeists and their assaults on press freedoms. No one can doubt that editorial cartoonists are leading the fight for press freedoms now.
Today we are are grieving, but as we move forward, I hope that our cartoons won’t be chilled by these murders and that the cartooning community will step up to this challenge with even more brilliant and insightful work – I’m sure the French cartoonists will do that; they are my heroes.
