Lemmings jumping en-masse off of a cliff are one of the great chichés that editorial cartoonists rely upon – like the Iwo Jima memorial, clown cars, the Statue of Liberty, movie posters, peeing dogs – it is no surprise to see a new lemming/cliff cartoon and it is fun to see the familiar metaphor with a new twist.  I end up doing a new lemming cartoon once every two or three years.

My lemming cartoon yesterday was about the ongoing tumult in Egypt, and protesting Egyptians running their country off of a cliff.

Back in 2009, during the Obamacare debate, I drew the Democrat/lemmings jumping off of a political cliff. Of-course, their cliff was on the left.

 

Back in 2007 at the onset of the mortgage collapse, I drew house/lemmings jumping off of a cliff …

Way back in 2003 unemployment was on our minds (things never change much) and I drew this graduation lemmings cartoon.

The lemming metaphor is popular around the world too.  Here is how my graduation cartoon was plagiarized by a cartoonist at a top newspaper in Saudi Arabia.

It amuses me to see how the positions of all of the characters in the Saudi cartoon match my own drawing.

Here are some lemmings by some of my favorite cartoonists.  This one is by Mike Keefe from back in 2007 …

Here’s Colombian cartoonist “Matador” (Killer) with the Eurozone countries as lemmings.

Joe Heller did the lemmings as a Martin Luther King Day cartoon …

This lemming/shoppers cartoon by Andy Singer made me laugh …

This mortgage crisis cartoon that I drew back in 2007 is a twist on the lemmings …

I did a search on the word “cliff” in our cartoon database and came up with 440 results.  Yipes!  There are cliffs everywhere!