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No One Expects the Cartoon Inquisition

Please use this corrected version of this column and disregard the previous one.

The Spanish humor magazine El Jueves published a cartoon on July 18 that was too much for a Spanish court to stomach. Two days after the magazine came out, a judge ordered police to remove all copies of El Jueves from newsstands and kiosks, the magazine’s Web site was taken down and the court is seeking more information on the cartoonist, who faces a possible two-year jail term.

Soon after the judge’s ruling, the cartoon started appearing all over the Web and was published in other Spanish newspapers as a news story. The Internet buzz was so big that the magazines were often sold out when police arrived at newsstands the next day, to confiscate them. Now the cartoon is a phenomenon, having been seen by many millions of people around the world, rather than just the 80,000 readers of El Jueves. Judges should be careful about what they ask for.

The offending cartoon on the cover of the magazine shows Spanish Crown Prince Felipe having “doggie-style” sex with his wife, Letizia, under the headline, “Obviously Elections are Coming, ZP!” (“ZP” is short for Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero); “2,500 Euros per Child” appears in large red type is above the head of the crown prince, who says to his wife, “Do you realize? If you get pregnant … this will be the closest thing to work I will have ever done in my life!” The headline lampoons a recent initiative by the Spanish government, which would give financial help to couples who have children, in the amount of 2,500 euros or about $3450.00 per child.

Spanish judge Juan Del Olmo wrote that the cartoon was “a clearly denigrating act which is objectively defamatory.” It “is a caricature that affects the honor and the intimate nucleus of dignity of the persons represented by it,” Del Olmo said. “It could damage the prestige of the Crown.”

On their Web site, for a few hours before the site was taken down, the editors of El Jueves made this statement, “We are cartoonists, and we are aware that our work, our duty, and what our readers expect from us is for us to explore the limits of our freedom of expression. We understand that, from time to time, we can even exceed them. That’s life. If we exceed them, that’s what courts are for. But… taking the magazine away? The police going from shop to shop all over the country taking away our magazine? Are we really writing this on July 20th, 2007?”

Part of the judge’s ruling was a demand to find out the identity of the cartoonist, who goes by the single name, “Guillermo.” It is common for cartoonists around the world to use one name, a charming conceit that American cartoonists rarely take advantage of – our celebrities have discovered it though, and it works well for Cher, Madonna, Lassie and Flipper. Guillermo’s full name is Guillermo Torres Meana; he also draws for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

In another part of his ruling, the judge demanded that the magazine surrender the “printing plates” that contain the offending cartoon. The judge clearly wasn’t aware that printing plates are not used in modern printing. Guillermo is reported to have said: “They’re going to take the printing plates? Why those haven’t existed for years! The best thing would be for them to cut off my right hand.”

The royal family issued a statement saying that they didn’t ask for the ban. All but one major Spanish newspaper condemned the ban. Al Jazeera showed the cover of the magazine with the racy royals obscured by a black haze. Guillermo’s newspaper, El Mundo, in an editorial commented that the cartoon was “within what is permissible in a society where freedom of expression is a fundamental value.”

The crown prince and his divorcee, TV-newswoman wife have increasingly become the butt of jokes in Spain. El Jueves published a 350 page book of cartoons making fun of the royal family titled, “Tocando los Borbones,” which is a play on the royals’ surname meaning “to be obnoxious,” or that the royal family is obnoxious and the authors will be obnoxious toward them. It may be that the judge doesn’t get out much.

The cartoon kerfuffle in Spain seems more outrageous because it is happening in a modern, EU country where freedom of the press is broadly accepted; but such bans were more common 20 years ago and happened frequently under Spain’s General Franco. In fact, cartoons are one of the best barometers of the freedom of a society; in totalitarian countries cartoonists never think of lampooning their nation’s leaders. Cuban cartoonists never draw Castro. Chinese cartoonists don’t draw their leaders. Don’t even think of drawing the Prophet Muhammad.

When countries teeter on the edge of political freedom the people who test the limits are cartoonists. In recent years: Algerian cartoonist Ali Dilem has been fined and sentenced to jail for drawing his nation’s leaders; South African cartoonist Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro is being sued for millions of dollars by an insulted politician; cartoonist Essam Hanafy was jailed in Egypt for insulting the deputy prime minister; cartoonist Paul “Popoli” Nyemb of Cameroon was chased down by goon squads from the government he ridiculed; cartoonist Musa Kart was sued by the prime minister of Turkey who was insulted by being drawn as a cat. There are many more.

Nations, and judges, are best judged by their tolerance of cartoons.

If your newspaper didn’t print the cartoon with this column, you can see it on Daryl Cagle’s blog at www.cagle.com/news/blog. Thanks to Jose Beltran-Escavy for his help with this column. Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. Daryl 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. He runs the most popular cartoon site on the Web at www.cagle.msnbc.com. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

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A Cartoon Mystery

At the editorial cartoonists convention last week I had an opportunity to have a long conversation with Flemming Rose, the editor for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper who commissioned the Danish Muhammad cartoons that sparked a clash of civilizations last year.

One of the Muhammad cartoons was a puzzle to me. There were countless editorials and explanations of the cartoons, but no one could explain one cartoon, which was variously described as “some kind of doodle on a napkin” or “a poem with an inexplicable drawing.” Since the artist had to go into hiding and had a bounty put on his head for this “drawing of Muhammad” that shook the world, I wanted to know more. Were these little Pac-Man characters eating Islam and Judaism? Perhaps Judaism and Islam share a football helmet. Are those motion lines from the little symbols flying up through the air? Where is Muhammad? What the hell?

The cartoon includes a little poem which roughly translates as: “Prophet, you crazy bloke! Keeping women under yoke!”

Rose told me that a retired cartoonist, Erik Abild Sorensen, who is in his eighties, drew this “Muhammad cartoon.” The cartoonist phoned Rose to ask if he was too late to send something in, and Rose told him “go ahead.” The drawing was the last of the twelve to arrive and came in as a sketch on an envelope.

I asked, “Was there anything in the envelope?”

Rose said, “No.”

I asked, “Do you understand this drawing? Can you explain it?”

Rose said, “Well, there’s a little poem there that addresses the general topic.”

I asked, “OK, but the cartoon, what is it?”

Rose said, “I don’t know”

I asked, “Could it be that the elderly artist actually drew Muhammad, and forgot to put his cartoon in the envelope, and just did a little, thoughtless doodle on the envelope, maybe, while he was talking on the phone?”

Rose said, “Yes, that is possible,” and laughed.

For this “drawing of Muhammad,” the cartoonist went under police protection as the world erupted in chaos. I had to laugh too.

I posted the cartoon on my blog and some readers wrote in with the same take on the cartoon; this explanation comes from “Lady Mim” in Switzerland:

“…Now if I may solve this puzzle for you: the Muhammad cartoon you note on your blog that you can’t understand. I had to laugh too, a bit sourly. These are NOT men with a helmet. These are women. The helmet is the head. The lines are the veil. The Jewish star is the eye. The crescent moon is the open mouth. The cartoon depicts angry women who shout at the Prophet … saying that he is responsible for them being kept under a yoke …”

As I take another look I think I might see a little pupil in the Star of David eyeball in the upper left. Maybe not.

Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. Daryl 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. He runs the most popular cartoon site on the Web at Cagle.msnbc.com. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

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Cinco de Mayo – Cartoonists Day

Cinco de Mayo: Cartoonists Day?

On Saturday we’ll all sip our Margaritas, munch on our burritos and think about cartoonists. Saturday, May 5 is “Cartoonists Day.”

Some readers will remember when most of the newspaper comic strips touted Cartoonists Day. As a cartoonist, I love the idea of having my own day where my fans shower me with gifts and adoration – in fact, that was pretty much the idea behind Cartoonists Day. The date was chosen because the first recurring character in American newspaper comics, the Yellow Kid, first appeared in print on May 5, 1895. Cartoonists are suffering from a painful transition now as newspapers decline and their traditional markets for gag cartoons and advertising work suffer a prolonged slump. We can cheer Mom up on Mothers Day, make the secretary happy on Administrative Professionals Day and feed the government on Tax Day — even trees and flags have their own days — why not make long-suffering cartoonists happy with their own day?

The first Saturday in May is also “Free Comic Book Day,” where comic book stores join in a promotion to give away comic books and which happens to fall on May 5 this year. This is also Cartoon Appreciation Week. The stars are aligned for cartoonists this Saturday.

Unfortunately, Cartoonists Day has had a bumpy ride and cartoonists have allowed it to fade away. It all started back in 1997 when Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman, the creators of the comic strip “Baby Blues,” organized “The Great Comic Strip Switcheroonie,” where cartoonists traded places to draw each other’s comic strips on April Fools’ Day. It was great fun and a creative success.

When I was president of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) in 2000, Charles “Sparky” Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” passed away and I oversaw a special day in the comics where almost all of the cartoonists drew a comic strip tribute to Sparky. After 9/11 the NCS organized a successful Thanksgiving Day tribute on the comics pages to raise money for victims of the World Trade Center disaster.

Cartoonists usually work in isolation and the opportunities to work together were great fun at first – then the glow started to fade. Some cartoonists were enthusiastic about the idea of Cartoonists Day, and pushed the idea of every comic strip artist participating to display the Cartoonists Day logo in their strips, and write something about it in their strip to “raise awareness” of underappreciated cartoonists. The strip cartoonists were urged to do this every year on May 5. Then charities got the idea; they called the NCS saying, “Hey! You cartoonist guys all got together to raise money for the 9/11 victims, how about raising money for this terrible disease, or that one – you can’t believe that Cartoonists Day is more important than my horrible disease, do you? Where are your priorities?!” Of-course, they were right, but there were just too many terrible diseases and social ills waiting in line for space on the comics pages.

Then many of the star cartoonists became weary. They would say, “Why are we doing this Cartoonists Day thing in our strips again?” and “Isn’t it kind of egotistical and self-serving for us to use our strips to call attention to ourselves like this?” Of course, they were right.

Then there was the problem of Cinco de Mayo. Cartoonists who wanted to generate publicity for themselves had to share their day with another topic. Cartoonists in the Midwest couldn’t understand why the cartoonists in California were busy with their Margaritas on Cartoonists Day.

The NCS stopped promoting Cartoonists Day and it slowly faded away. Some cartoonists hated to see it go. There is still a Web site at cartoonistsday.com. Some cartoonists still lobby for the return of Cartoonists Day, but the day has disappeared. Mexico won the cartoon war because the cartoonists took their pens and went home.

And I never got my presents.

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, 2006 and 2007 editions, are available in bookstores now.

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Newspapers and Cartoonists Wandering Blindly

Every day I read something from journalists obsessing about the future of print. The internet is gobbling up newspaper readers and advertisers. The future looks bleak for ink on paper as newspapers respond by downsizing, degrading their product and hastening their own demise. There seems to be a generally accepted axiom that the internet is the future for journalism. Columnists are transforming into multimedia bloggers and cartoonists feel pressure to animate their political cartoons. It makes perfect sense to chase the shifting audience, but the move to the internet doesn’t make much business sense.

Newspapers are bleeding revenue as the web enjoys a rush from new advertisers. The newspaper “group-think” solution is to move onto the internet to reclaim advertising dollars—but the money on the web is flowing to the search engines (mostly to Google) where topical ads are displayed with search results. Ads accompanying original content on the Web still pay poorly. As a political cartoonist, I run some popular Web sites that get millions of page views per month, but the ad revenue only covers the cost of my servers and bandwidth. Newspapers share this problem as they pour resources into building their Web sites and get very little revenue in return. Many try charging their readers to read archives on their Web sites, a strategy that fails almost every time as most Web surfers simply browse somewhere else where content is free.

Newspapers continue to pin their hopes on their Web sites in the belief that their brands carry goodwill into a new medium, when in fact, newspaper brands have little value on the Web. The three most popular news sites on the Web—Yahoo News, CNN and MSNBC.com—dominate the audience, with other news sites trailing far behind. The reason why is simple, each is attached to a huge audience (Yahoo, AOL and MSN.com) which feeds readers into these sites.

My own cartoon site is associated with MSNBC.com, which gets its traffic from MSN.com, which gets most of its traffic from the famous MSN.com home page, the default home page for PC buyers using the Internet Explorer browser, who don’t bother to change their home page. Yahoo and Google channel their huge search engine audiences into their news sites. The trick to finding a big audience on the Web is to bring your site to the audience, not to expect the audience to find your site.

One of the most popular online newspapers, The Washington Post, understands how the Web audience works. The Post partners with MSN.com and MSNBC.com to bring traffic their way. When The Washington Post Company bought my old employer Slate.com from Microsoft, the negotiations focused on Slate continuing to receive a huge audience flow from promotions on MSN.com. The Post understands the Web where traffic flows like a river – the river has to keep flowing or the lake will dry up.

For many newspaper editors, internet strategy is a fantasy from the movie “Field of Dreams.” “If you build it, they will come.” Good content is nice (Slate has great original content) but securing a continuing audience for that content is more important. Yahoo and Google maintain top news sites with almost no original content. That’s journalism 2.0: circulating content that is created in other media, while paying little or nothing for the content.

Reporters, columnists and editorial cartoonists are suffering from ongoing layoffs in the newspaper industry. The cartooning ranks have been thinned and the cartoonists who still have jobs are often asked to do more work online, such as starting blogs and animating their cartoons for the Web. In 2000, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis (JibJab.com) created some animated political cartoons that became hugely popular on the Web and newspaper editorial cartoonists seemed to agree that, in the future, all political cartoons would be animated. The problem for cartoonists is much the same as the problem for other content creators: there is no market for animated political cartoons when Web sites don’t want to pay for content.

I run a popular Web site and I’m the cartoonist for MSNBC.com, but I still make my living selling cartoons that are printed in ink on paper from traditional clients who actually pay. I often get calls from political cartoonists who are starting to animate their cartoons, asking where they can sell their animations; my answer is, “nowhere.” Even the successful JibJab guys use their political cartoons for publicity and make their living doing animations for commercial clients. The editorial cartoonists seem to be charging ahead in their aimless endeavors, typically creating animated political cartoons on the side, for newspaper employers who pay them nothing extra for the extra hours, creating content that no one wants to buy in syndication.

At this summer’s Association of American Editorial Cartoonists conference, there will be two sponsored programs: “What Do You Mean You’re Not Animating Yet?” and “Blog or Die.”

The aimless charge to the internet extends to the Pulitzer Prizes. This is the second year the Pulitzers accepted entries that were not printed, but were posted on the Web sites of paid circulation, daily print newspapers. The winner and nominees this year were all employees of print newspapers who submitted portfolios of animated Web cartoons that could not be printed in their newspapers–a first for the Pulitzers. The editorial cartoonist community is in a tizzy. Cartoonists want to win prizes and keep their jobs, and according to the Pulitzer jury, the way to do that is to jump on an internet bandwagon that no one is steering.

Daryl Cagle won’t be animating his editorial cartoons anytime soon. He is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. Daryl 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. He runs the most popular cartoon site on the Web at Cagle.msnbc.com. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

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Those Terrible Virginia Tech Cartoons

When a lunatic killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University earlier this week I knew what to expect from political cartoonists, who don’t react well to tragedy. Some of the cartoons seemed insensitive, as today’s generation of jokesters struggled to respond to a story with no lighter side.

I have some sympathy for the editorial cartoonists who have a daily deadline and must respond to the headline of the day. The first cartoons were predictable: Uncle Sam or the Virginia Tech mascot, with bowed heads and flags or the school pennant at half-mast. There were lots of riffs on the school logo (the letters “VT”), including one depicting the school logo in dead bodies. Some cartoonists launched immediately into gun control cartoons – “how terrible it is that guns are so widely available” and “what a shame it is that none of the victims were toting firearms to protect themselves.”

I run a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons to newspapers, and our editors were not happy. The day after the tragedy one editor from Georgia wrote: “As a Cagle subscriber, I have to tell you the cartoons sent today about the Virginia Tech shootings showed a deplorable lack of sensitivity and taste. Can’t you find (someone) who isn’t so quick to try to be funny or cute at innocent people’s expense?”

As bad as this week was for cartoonists, it was worse for television. An army of aggressive TV reporters descended on little Blacksburg, Va., asking everyone they could find, “How do you feel?” and “Did you know him?” The television coverage reached new heights of ugliness when NBC released the killer’s “Multimedia Manifesto” and all we could see on cable news was 24 hours of “non-stop nut-case.” It took a day for the wallpaper killer coverage to devolve into finger pointing among the media about whether they were doing the right thing in publicizing the killer’s message.

When I first heard about the massacre, I wrote in my blog that I would not be drawing any cartoons about it. But after only two days the story had matured into something I wanted to draw cartoons about because there was something for me to criticize. I drew two cartoons bashing NBC; one showed the NBC peacock dressed up as the network of gun-brandishing Seung-Hui Cho. I drew another showing two kids dressed like Cho, because “He’s the only guy we see on TV now.” I drew another one generally bashing people who didn’t see that Cho was a psychopath, with Cho painting the giant words “STOP ME” on the ground while two oblivious college professors walk by saying, “How can we know something like this is going to happen?”

Political cartooning is a negative art form. Cartoonists and columnists work best when bashing hypocrites or speaking to issues where opinion is divided. I am fortunate to have no daily deadline. When I don’t want to draw on a subject, I don’t have to; that was a luxury for me with the Virginia Tech story. Unfortunately, the deadlines of the 24-hour news cycle demand that most cartoonists, reporters and commentators chime in right away.

Sometimes it pays to take a step back and hold your breath without writing, drawing or reporting anything for a couple of days – until there is something constructive 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, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

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Cartoonists Draw Blood

Like most people, cartoonists love to watch stars fall. This was the week to watch Don Imus fall, in a media frenzy that was tailor made for cartoonists. Imus looks like a cartoon character already; his ugly comment, calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed ho’s,” put Imus at the center of a media feeding frenzy, with characters on all sides who wanted to see him bleed.

Many cartoonists pointed out the hypocrisy of crucifying Imus for a comment that was no worse than what we hear in rap music, and no worse than other nasty comments by other, ugly media personalities. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson demanded that Imus be fired and used the media frenzy to put their faces in front of television cameras at every opportunity.

In the end, Imus was fired by both MSNBC and CBS, and he no longer has a place on radio or television. I don’t think this week’s Imus rumble will do much to make the media less coarse, and I won’t miss Imus, but I enjoyed the spectacle and it was great fun to draw the guy getting bashed and skewered by his own words.

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, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.

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24, 5 1/2 Seasons One Column Revised to include the 3/12/07 episode

“24,” 5 1/2 Seasons, One Column (Revised to include the 3/12/07 episode)

With all the news about the military objecting to torture scenes and with cultural references to Jack Bauer everywhere in the media, I realized that it was my duty as a political cartoonist to actually watch “24.” I bought all five seasons as DVD box sets, then I watched the 13 episodes from the current sixth season online; that’s 133 episodes. It took me a month.

I learned four important lessons: 1.) torture works great; 2.) people always give in to the demands of terrorists; 3.) the fate of the world is always decided in the San Fernando Valley; and 4.) it takes me an hour to go anywhere in LA, but federal agents can get anywhere in minutes. Now, while it is still fresh in my mind, here is the story of “24,” all in one column:

We start Season One with Federal Agent Jack Bauer who thinks his boss, George Mason at the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), is lying to him, so Jack shoots Mason with a tranquilizer dart. A terrorist parachutes from a plane that she blows up to steal a “key card” that leads to two or three assassination attempts on presidential candidate David Palmer, who has an evil, ambitious, whiny wife Sherry, and who’s being blackmailed because his son murdered a guy who raped his daughter. Jack’s ex-lover, agent Nina, is secretly a CTU mole controlled by an evil Yugoslav family, the Drazens, who are hunting Jack and Palmer for revenge. Jack’s daughter Kim and his pregnant wife Terri are kidnapped and then escape. Jack is blackmailed. Terri gets amnesia. Kim gets into a drug deal and goes to jail with the math professor girlfriend from “Numb3rs.” The evil Drazens break their patriarch, Dennis Hopper, out of a secret jail; they kill Lou Diamond Phillips and kidnap Jack. Kim is kidnapped again and escapes. Jack is blackmailed again; he shoots it out with the Drazens and kills them all. Nina, the evil mole, kills Jack’s wife Terri.

In Season Two, Jack hunts for a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles (Jack says “nu-cu-lar” like President Bush). A blond Valley Girl is preparing to marry a terrorist, but it turns out she’s the real terrorist. Kim is a nanny for an evil guy who kills his wife and tries to kill Kim, who tries to save the guy’s annoying, abused daughter. Kim is saved by her boyfriend who loses his leg and jilts her. She’s then caught in a bear trap and locked up by a lonely survivalist in a mountain cabin. She is stalked by a mountain lion and is falsely arrested for shooting a convenience store clerk. Jack goes undercover with thugs who are hired by evil Nina and kills them after they blow up CTU’s offices. President David Palmer pardons Nina, who gives up the terrorists. Jack is captured and tortured by terrorists; he then escapes and kills them all. President Palmer’s nasty now-ex Sherry is part of a government conspiracy to start a war; Jack catches her. Palmer has the head of the NSA tortured to find out the location of the bomb. Mason is poisoned with plutonium and has only hours to live; he gets blown up with the nuclear bomb in the desert. Palmer is poisoned by a terrorist handshake assassination attempt.

In Season Three, Palmer is fine. Jack just spent a year undercover with Mexican drug lords who want to buy a deadly virus from Ukrainian terrorists and hold the world up for ransom (so does evil Nina). Jack breaks a mobster out of prison and goes back to Mexico with him to find the virus. Chase, a CTU agent who is Kim’s fiancé, and who has a secret daughter, follows, gets tortured, escapes and gets his hand chopped off. The mobster’s sister in law is killed; then the mobster kills his brother; then the mobster gets blown up. Nina gives Jack trouble, and then gets killed. In Los Angeles, Harry Dresden, from “The Dresden Files” (with an English accent here) has the virus released into a hotel. Agent Michelle (who is in love with Agent Tony) is in the hotel as everyone else dies, but she is immune. Dresden demands that Jack kill his boss, Chappelle, so Jack shoots Chappelle in the head. Dresden kidnaps Michelle and blackmails Tony; Jack kidnaps Dresden’s daughter and blackmails Dresden. President Palmer’s ex, Sherry, kills a guy, blackmails Palmer and is killed by the guy’s girlfriend, who then kills herself.

Jack starts Season Four working for Secretary of Defense Heller, who is kidnapped by terrorists along with his daughter Audrey, who is Jack’s new girlfriend. Jack breaks them out and kills the terrorists, but there are more terrorists, one of whom tries to kill his own wife and son. Air Force One is shot down and terrorists steal the president’s “football,” which contains codes for arming nuclear bombs. Evil and incompetent Vice President Logan assumes the presidency and invites former President Palmer to run things. Jack raids the Chinese Embassy. A bad guy steals a stealth bomber to drop an A-bomb on LA, and gets shot down at the last minute.

Season Five starts with the assassination of former President David Palmer. Jack’s buddies Tony and Michelle are blown up. Nasty President Logan has a complicated plan to start a war and lets his screwy wife drive into a trap with the president of Russia; Jack saves them. Russian terrorists take over Ontario Airport and threaten Jack’s new girlfriend’s son, who Jack saves. The terrorists are killed, but one steals nerve gas which he uses to kill shoppers in a mall. Jack finds the big bad guy is Peter Weller (Buckaroo Bonsai), a former CTU agent. The nerve gas is released in CTU, killing lots of agents, including Edgar the computer nerd and Sam the Hobbit. Jack thinks his old girlfriend Audrey is evil, but she’s not. Terrorists try to release the gas again, but Jack stops them. Jack kidnaps President Logan and tortures him, and then Jack is kidnapped by the Chinese, who are still mad at Jack from Season Four.

In the current Season Six, Jack is back, after having been tortured for two years in China, and he’s ready to kick some terrorist butt. David Palmer’s brother Wayne is president now and one of his advisors is Tom Lennox, another math professor friend from “Numb3rs,” who is tied up by his assistant while some guy blows up President Wayne Palmer along with a terrorist who decided to be a good guy. Nerdy CTU analyst Chloe is working with her ex-husband Morris, who is kidnapped, tortured and agrees to arm nuclear bombs. A nuke goes off in Valencia (Magic Mountain), there are more nukes out there and nasty ex-President Logan wants to help Jack find the bombs through the Russian Consulate. Jack breaks in and tortures the Russian Consul General where Jack is captured and he escapes. Ex-President Logan’s ex-wife stabs him and Logan dies. The nukes are about to be launched.

That’s where we are today, and that’s all you need to know.

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, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.

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Too Many Cartoonists Too Little Time

Too Many Cartoonists, Too Little Time

Whenever cartoonists get together we complain about syndicates (the businesses that sell our cartoons to newspapers). Cartoonists are no businessmen — we want syndicates to be like mothers to us, selflessly nurturing our careers so we don’t have to sully our minds with yucky business thoughts, when we’d rather be thinking about cartoons. But syndicates don’t act like mothers, and cartoonists have some very colorful names for the syndicate executives who sell their work – in fact, some of these colorful names include the word “mother.”

In addition to being a political cartoonist myself, I run a small syndicate that specializes in editorial cartoons; I see that there must be one thousand aspiring cartoonists for every working professional, as I’m deluged with unsolicited submissions that are truly awful. At times like this, when people are passionate about politics, the inner political cartoonist emerges from the psyche of the talentless “wannabe.”

Many wannabe cartoonists recognize that they have no drawing talent, but it seems that everyone thinks they are a writer. I get many submissions from writers who are looking to collaborate with editorial cartoonists. These writers want to send me gags, or want to find cartoonists who will draw their gags. Here is a typical gag submission:

“So, we have President Bush standing there, and he says, ‘Things are improving in Iraq’ and behind him you see two massive armies, the Shiites and the Sunnis, about to fight each other, and the sky is filled with thousands of U.S. helicopters, then, in the next panel …”

These are people who think in words, not pictures. For some reason, this group of wannabes includes lots of lawyers who think they are funny. I think lawyers are funny, but I laugh at-them, not with-them; and it is a dark humor that makes me want to go take a shower afterwards. These guys just don’t get it. The cartoon writers often send obvious or trite gags that they think are brilliant and original. Sometimes the writers follow up with angry mail when they notice that another cartoonist has “stolen” their gag.

The second group of wannabes do their own drawings, but can’t see how truly awful their drawings are. These guys like to use computer fonts in their cartoons instead of hand lettering. Often they will use clip art in their cartoons, or lift photographs from the web, or they will use simple objects like squares and circles, and then have these objects making comments in speech balloons. These wannabes frequently don’t know how to work their scanner and will send murky gray images that show crinkled paper backgrounds from the napkins they drew their cartoons on.

One thing aspiring editorial cartoonists have in common is paranoia. I get inquiries like this: “I’m really funny and I have some great ideas, but I need to know how to get them copyrighted first so you won’t steal them.”

I have a notice on our syndicate web site that that says: “We do not accept and will not review unsolicited submissions from cartoonists.” Often the submissions come in with a note saying, “I know you don’t accept submissions, but …”

Ambitious aspiring cartoonists see syndicates as gatekeepers, guarding a barrier to the success they deserve. Sometimes the passion and perseverance of these wannabes can be frightening. They find my home phone number and my home address. Drive and perseverance in the face of adversity is a virtue, so their quest never ends.

Some horrid amateur cartoonists are convinced that the world of professional cartooning is a closed shop, an old-boy’s network where success is a matter of who you know. Wannabes try to be friendly with my employees or cartoonist colleagues, hoping that the relationship will get them past the barrier. Many terrible submissions are forwarded to me by friends.

When I was an aspiring cartoonist I thought the syndicates were arrogant for sending form-letter responses, or for ignoring submissions – but now I understand why. For many wannabes, any response is an invitation to argue. The aspirants are convinced that their work is great and anyone who doesn’t “get it” needs educating. Giving a polite brush-off sometimes fuels their anger.

Ironically, editorial cartooning is a terrible business. Newspapers pay only a few dollars a week for packaged groups of talented cartoonists who are, in turn, poorly paid. The professionals compete for fewer and fewer staff cartoonist positions at papers that are cutting back, as the internet crushes print. More and more professional cartoonists can’t make ends meet. The syndicates aren’t really a barrier to success for the aspiring cartoonists, just a hurdle on the road to more frustration in a dying profession.

My profession is fading away, I’m poorly paid and there are thousands of rude, talentless wannabes who want my job … but Britney Spears shaved her head – at least the life of a professional editorial cartoonist has its little pleasures.

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, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.

Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.

Categories
Columns

Read This Column About Political Cartoons – Then Write About Something Else

Read This Column About Political Cartoons – Then Write About Something Else

As a political cartoonist, I’d like to think my cartoons influence public opinion, but that rarely happens. People love a cartoon that they already agree with, and hate cartoons that they already disagree with. Editors like to choose editorial cartoons that they know their readers will like, so cartoons end up being a reflection of public opinion. In fact, political cartoons offer a great historical tool, giving a true picture of the opinions and emotions of a society at any given time.

Historians seem to have discovered political cartoons only recently, and I’ve started seeing a steady stream of scholarly papers about my profession as college professors and students suddenly look to my work and the work of my colleagues to support their political positions. One widely held canard seems to be popular among the academics: that the world supported the USA after 9/11 and this support was then squandered by the Bush administration’s adventures in the Middle East.

Academics like to look at the cartoons drawn immediately after the 9/11 attack where, around the world, almost every editorial cartoonist drew the same image of a weeping Statue of Liberty. I drew one too. In fact, most cartoonists are ashamed of their weeping statues; we wish we could have a “do-over” where we wouldn’t draw the first image to come to mind. Newspaper columnists all wrote much the same column right after 9/11, but it is easier to notice matching cartoons than matching columns, so cartoonists get the bad rap for “group-think.” Even so, our matching cartoons were what the public wanted to see at that time and I probably received more mail from readers who loved my weeping Liberty than any other cartoon I’ve drawn.

International political cartoonists revile the USA in a uniform drumbeat of daily digs at America. The academics don’t notice that international political cartoons before 9/11 were almost as negative about America as the cartoons now. After our matching, weeping statues, the American and international cartoonists diverged. On 9/12, American cartoonists started drawing patriotic cartoons portraying resolve, strength, and the virtues of the New York Fire and Police Departments, standing tall as twin towers. American cartoonists drew scores of images of a strong Uncle Sam, threatening eagles and a newly militant Statue of Liberty, demanding revenge.

Just after 9/11 the international cartoonists depicted the irony of mighty America put in its place. A favorite, foreign symbol for America is Superman, and we saw scores of images showing both Superman and Uncle Sam defeated, injured, bleeding and grieving. The worldwide cartoonists treated 9/11 in the way that tabloids treat fallen celebrities: with delight in the spectacle of a beautiful actress who is overweight, or getting a messy divorce — or better yet, caught in a drunken scene, screaming racial epithets so that we can see that the rich, powerful, famous, conceited, fallen star was a hypocrite all along.

Some international cartoonists wrote to me about the patriotic cartoons; they couldn’t believe American cartoonists would choose to draw such cartoons by their own free will; we must have been directed to draw that nonsense by the Bush Administration. Academics have picked up on the idea of “self-censorship;” that cartoonists somehow didn’t draw what they wanted to draw because the country wasn’t ready for jokes, or editors didn’t want to see criticism of the Bush administration at a time when we all had to pull together.

In fact, the system worked as it always had: some cartoonists criticized the government right away, some cartoonists were joking immediately, most cartoonists held the same opinions as their readers, editors selected cartoons they agreed with and thought their readers would agree with. Newspapers ended up printing cartoons that accurately reflected public opinion, both here and abroad.

I have a few words for the professors and college students:

1.) Editorial cartoons show that the rest of the world didn’t like America before 9/11; they didn’t like us just after 9/11; and they still don’t like us.

2.) The government doesn’t control or intimidate American cartoonists or editors, now or then. Yes, we really believe what we say in our cartoons. No, cartoonists are not hampered by self-censorship.

3.) Please don’t ask me to comment on your paper, thesis or dissertation about editorial cartoons. Just read this column, then write about something else.

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, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now. Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.

Categories
Columns

The New York Times and Cartoons

Last week The New York Times ran one of my cartoons. The cartoon showed three kids on a couch with their laptops and iPods, one says, “Check out Saddam hanging. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.” The next one says, “He’s so dead.” The third one says, “Let’s look again at Britney Spears with no underwear.” The caption reads, “The death of newspapers.” It is a cartoon that plays well with newspaper editors who are obsessed with the crass, unedited Internet that is destroying their business.

The Times ran my cartoon in their weekly round-up of editorial cartoons where they edit the cartoons to remove the artist’s signature and attribution. Typically, the Times will print the artist’s name and attribution alongside the cartoon, as with the two cartoons above mine where the artist, his newspaper and syndicate are credited. But in my case, only my name is given, no credit is given to MSNBC.com, my publication of record, which was erased from my cartoon and omitted from my attribution.

Although it is traditional for a cartoonist to sign his work and include his publication name in his signature, some newspapers object to any mention of a Web site in a cartoon, or in a syndicated column; the concern is that mentioning a Web site is like giving the cartoonist or writer a free advertisement. The Times wouldn’t be concerned about their readers picking up a copy of The Columbus Dispatch, so an advertisement for another newspaper doesn’t carry much value, but a mention of MSNBC.com might send readers to a serious competitor. This is ironic, given the subject matter of my cartoon. By itself, the cartoon is funny, but suggesting that the cartoon came from a Web site – particularly MSNBC.com, whose audience dwarfs the New York Times – that might just be too painful for the Times to acknowledge.

The Times calls their weekly cartoon round-up “Laugh Lines,” a title that doesn’t sit well with editorial cartoonists who consider themselves to be graphic columnists. Like columnists, cartoonists are sometimes funny; sometimes we want the reader to wince; sometimes we want to bring a tear to the eye. Some of the most famous cartoons are serious cartoons. We all drew the Statue of Liberty weeping after 9/11. Bill Mauldin famously drew the statue of Lincoln weeping after the assassination of President Kennedy. But don’t expect to see a poignant cartoon running in The New York Times under the title “Laugh Lines.” Many cartoonists decry the trivialization of our profession by editors who choose to reprint cartoons that are soft little jokes. Serious cartoons are not so popular with timid editors who want to avoid offending anyone. We call this phenomenon “Newsweekification” because of the funny, inoffensive, trivial cartoons that Newsweek chooses to run each week – just like the Times. The secret to becoming a popular editorial cartoonist is to be funny and not express an opinion.

The New York Times reprints syndicated cartoons on Sundays, but hasn’t had its own editorial cartoonist since the 1950s. More and more newspapers are doing without staff cartoonists as our profession slowly dies. Top newspapers without cartoonists include the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. There are two famous quotes, attributed to “the editor of The New York Times,” (although I’m not quite sure just who actually said these). The first is: “We would never have an editorial cartoonist at the Times because we would never give so much power to one man.” The second quote: “We would never have an editorial cartoonist at the Times because you can’t edit a cartoonist like you can a columnist.” (He must have forgotten about how the Times edits the signatures and attributions of out the cartoons.)

A number of cartoonists e-mailed me this week with the same question, “Hey, Daryl, I saw your cartoon in the Times, how do I get my own cartoons in the Times?” I regret that the reality behind the big-time political cartooning business is a little disappointing. Here’s how it works: dozens of cartoonists around the world e-mail their cartoons to the Times and other “pay-per-use” newspapers who accept unsolicited submissions. It is the same thing with USA Today, send it in and if they run it, they pay $50 – but the Times is a little different. Instead of just paying $50, the Times doesn’t pay unless the cartoonist notices that they ran the cartoon and sends them an invoice. The Times doesn’t tell the cartoonist that they ran the cartoon and if they don’t receive an invoice, the Times saves the $50.

Suppose The New York Times dealt with McDonalds the same way they deal with cartoonists. The Times would say:

“Hey, McDonalds, I want you to deliver a hamburger to me every day; I may choose to eat it, and I may not. If I choose to eat the burger, I will pay you for it. If I don’t eat the burger, I won’t pay you. I’m not going to tell you if I eat a burger or not. If you want to get paid, you’ll have to see me eating the burger and then send me a bill, and the bill must tell me when you saw me eating the burger. I understand that you’ll have to watch me all the time to see if I’m eating one of your burgers, but that shouldn’t be a problem, because I’m very big and very interesting, and I expect you to be watching me all the time anyway. If you’re lucky, I might eat one or two of your burgers every year.”

There are about one thousand aspiring cartoonists for every one who actually makes a living as a professional editorial cartoonist. I’m sure that if the “wanna-be” cartoonists would actually look inside the editorial-cartoon-burger, to see how it is made, it would give them a belly ache – a $50, New York Times-sized belly ache.

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, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now. Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.