Fighting Words: 11/17/08 Cartoon...

"Chez Newspaper"...

Three more editorial cartoonists lost their staff jobs at daily papers last week. Among the many reactions to the layoffs, Jimmy Margulies did a pretty ingenious mock news article which reported that Harper's Weekly had eliminated the position of Thomas Nast.

I did a bit of analysis on the challenges facing the newspaper industry (and by extension my chosen profession) in this post last year.  However, I think this article by Philip Meyer is a must-read. Here's a few highlights:

The endgame for newspapers is in sight. How their owners and managers choose to apply their dwindling resources will make all the difference in the nature of the ultimate product, its service to democracy and, of course, its survival.

...

It is now clear that [the internet] is as disruptive to today's newspapers as Gutenberg's invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century.

...

Robert Picard, a media economist who looks at newspapers from an international perspective, believes that [newspapers] try to do too much. He expressed this view in June at the Carnegie-Knight Task Force conference on the Future of Journalism at Harvard University. Newspapers "keep offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of content, and keep diminishing the quality of that content because their budgets are continually thinner," he said. "This is an absurd choice because the audience least interested in news has already abandoned the newspaper."

If they should peel back to some core function, newspapers would still have to worry about the Internet and its unbeatable capacity for narrowcasting. The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.

...

[I]t is possible to envision a scenario in which newspapers trim down to a specialized product and survive by serving a narrow market well. They are already trimming down. But what are they trimming down to? Have they thought about what's left after all the shrinkage?
One of the rules of thumb for coping with substitute technology is to narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution

...

I still believe that a newspaper's most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

It's pretty clear to me what major industry in this country is most in need of a "bailout"... the question is: would they know how to use it right?

Fyi - no animation quite yet on this 'toon again, but if you missed it, I did do a little something for last week's. I'm kinda liking this schedule of getting the static 'toon done and posted on Mondays, and then coming back to the animation later in the week (when I can take my time and put some thought into it).

Ted Stevens caricature

Wow...

And I thought my caricature was nasty!

Yes

(click here to view)

Ed Stein Rocky Mountain News Sep 24, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Slowpoke at the DNC...

If you're reading this blog right now... dude, get off the internet and turn on the convention! Actually, better yet, turn on the TV (don't forget to mute the talking heads), stay on the internet, and go to CWA-er Jen Sorensen's live-blog from the festivities. She's got some great observations...

GOOD one...

Yeah, that's me being sarcastic... apparently it has to be specified these days.

Vanity Fair clearly does not hire political cartoonists to do their political cartoons. Otherwise, they'd know that their hilarious (sarcastic again) parody of a parody has already been done a few times. Once by a two-time Pulitzer winner.

Good research, guys (sarcasm).

More on... that thing that seems to have gone away...

Very short Moron post for this week's 'toon, as the uproar over the New Yorker cover finally seems to be dying down. In a way, I'd like to see people keep talking about it... I think the more we talk about the farcical fear-mongering over Obama's racial background, the easier it will be to defuse when the real Swift-Boating gets going. This is especially true if people are forced to confront our institutional racist tendencies through satire... good satire will always have the effect of making people stop for a moment to consider the absurdity of some of their most deeply-help social preconceptions.

The part of this debate that I think should go away is the part that is kept alive by commentators (mostly on the left, it seems) who have completely missed the point of the satire. Seriously people... go watch Dr. Strangelove or Spinal Tap. Then get a freakin' clue.

For the folks who fret over the idiots who "won't get" the cartoon, I offer these two tidbits:

• My favorite quote on the issue, by Derf:
  

  So many people are misinformed, and you can’t draw to the morons of America. If you don’t know that Obama isn’t a Muslim, we can’t help you.
  
  ...It’s not up to us to hold people’s hands.

  
  
• My favorite cartoon on the issue (y'know... other than my own), by John Branch:
  
  

  (click here to view)

  John Branch San Antonio Express News Jul 20, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

  
  

Fighting Words: 7/21/08 Cartoon...

"Democratic Scholar Round Table: The New Yorker Cover"...

Cartoon Controversy!

Lotta talk today about the cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker. Like many cartoonists whom the New Yorker does not know exist and/or would never publish in a million years, I basically did that same cartoon a few weeks ago (linked below). Anyway, I haven't read anyone else's comments on the subject yet so this may have already been said, but here's my opinion on the "controversy"...

Of course, satire must be done carefully, and the New Yorker illustration may suffer from missing context. However, the Obama campaign's failure to show that they get the point of the joke is yet another missed opportunity to demonstrate a level of intellectual sophistication commensurate with that of his base. The fact that he continues to try to appeal to morons who don't get when they're being made fun of just alienates him further from the people he is supposed to be representing.

Jesus...

OK, I can't let this one pass. There are some seriously God-awful "George Carlin at the pearly gates" editorial cartoons coming down the pike today... even a few by cartoonists that I greatly admire. Some of these 'toons are made even more offensive by the fact that they're either borne out of a complete ignorance of Carlin's views on religion, or they simply (and rather ironically) miss the point of his material.

Seriously... is this what we do -- draw the same damn silly pictures over and over that'll recap any piece of news that might occur? Is it the deadlines? Are editors to blame for not giving their cartoonists more time to, perhaps, listen to a few Carlin albums and do a unique and fitting tribute?

GRRRR! Sorry, this particular one just bothered me more than usual...


UPDATE: Cagle has a post on this, along with a few more "Sorry, Mr. Carlin, you can't say those seven words here either" cartoons that I hadn't seen... (say... you guys know that he did other routines aside from the "seven words" bit, right?)...


P.P.S.: For those who may have been aware of Carlin's religious views and did their cartoons as implicit criticisms of Carlin, I offer a personal note: when Tim Russert died, I did a blog post criticizing him for being such a huge cog in the corporate media machine. Then I realized how tacky it would be to dance on the grave of someone who just died, so I put it in my pocket and bit my fucking tongue. Hint, hint...

More on Racist Caricatures...

I just got done telling someone that I wasn't going to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing the work of other cartoonists, which is a major topic of discussion in editorial cartooning circles these days. This means, of course, that I'm going to do the exact opposite right now and criticize someone else's work (although it is a criticism of substance, not form)...

One of my main influences for this week's 'toon was a recent editorial cartoon by Jake Fuller:

(click here to view)

Jake Fuller Artizans Jun 13, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

To be fair, Fuller is surely not the only one to have drawn a caricature like this... I counted at least half a dozen other similar depictions in the last week alone. Also, to my knowledge I have never met Fuller, so it's not a personal beef.

However, cartoons like this still seem to me to be a clear abuse of editorial and artistic license. There is no argument being made... it's nothing more than a crass exploitation of social fears and preconceptions. As has often been noted, there is a staggering ignorance in cartoons like this of the historical similarities with WWII-era racist depictions of Japanese people. I think it's safe to say that caricatures of that nature have now been universally discredited. What's next, Obama in blackface? (Well, maybe that's not out of the realm of possibility...)

Perhaps the most objectionable thing about caricatures like this is how misleading they are, especially considering how many of the Guantanamo detainees have apparently been children who don't have the ability to grow scary-looking beards. Contrast Fuller's vision of what a detainee looks like with this image. It takes a small amount of reading to find out who these people really are, to make sure your cartoon has a basis in solid journalism.

I suppose it's too much to hope for cartoons like this to just go away, but neither should the offending artists hope to avoid criticism when they draw them.

Tidbits:

• Vincent Rossmeier predicts that Michelle Obama will become a focus of attention for the GOP attack machine, if she hasn't already. Quoting a conservative writer on the alleged videotape where she denounces "whitey":
  

  "No tape exists ... This is the '08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years. The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) it always portrays the wife -- not the candidate -- committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act."

  
  
• The third square of the 'toon was a reference to a recent AP article by Nedra Pickler, which gave an essentially unopposed platform for "fringe Republican operatives" to question Obama's patriotism. It also generated a significant protest from readers:
  

  That kind of media shortcoming has become predictable; reporters love to quote partisan Republicans about how deficient Democrats are. And in the past it would have likely produced angry denunciations online within the liberal blogosphere -- a blog swarm, perhaps...
  But nearly 15,000 letters sent in just a matter of days in response to a single news wire article? That's something else entirely and could mark the dawn of a new era in progressive media activism. The phenomenon has received very little mainstream media attention (journalists probably don't want to encourage this sort of thing), but make no mistake: It was a very big deal.
  

  
  

Fighting Words: 6/16/08 Cartoon...

"Remaining Election Calendar"...


There seems to be a little confusion about what I was trying to say with this one. I'm just trying to satirize the ridiculous caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama that I'm predicting will emerge by October, as fueled by the Republican attack machine and repeated by our moronic media. And, I was trying to portray the disgust that we should all feel by that point if we've watched the news at all...

Probably just a sucky 'toon... sorry...

Bonus art...

Here's a caricature of Arianna Huffington that I did for a recent 'toon, which didn't make it into the final version... just so it sees the light of day, cuz I thought it was decent.

Matt Bors did a good one the other day, too...

More on "Wordy" Editorial Cartoons, Bush's Legacy

Recently, it was suggested in the comments section of a popular cartooning blog that modern editorial cartoonists (as differentiated from retro, Jeff MacNelly-style editorial cartoonists) only use a lot of words because they're trying to be "hip." This is interesting to me... all this time, I've been spending all these hours holed up in libraries reading and writing for each cartoon, and it turns out I was just trying to look cool. If this is indeed true, I expect that this week's cartoon will make me the baddest mutherfucka on the planet. I'm talkin' like the Lenny Kravitz of editorial cartooning...

Article tidbits:

• McClatchy shocker:
  

  An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

• Paul Richter:
  

  President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.
  ...
  
  The plans also would allow Bush to live up to his pledge to the defining mission of his presidency, and perhaps to improve his chances for a decent legacy. He can say he left office pursuing a strategy that was having at least some success in suppressing violence, a claim that some historians may view sympathetically.

• Mark Danner:
  

  At the center of our national life stands the master narrative of this bifurcated politics: the Iraq war, fought to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist, brought to a quick and glorious conclusion on a sunlit aircraft carrier deck whose victory celebration almost instantly became a national embarrassment. That was four and a half years ago; the war's ending and indeed its beginning, so clearly defined for that single trembling instant, have long since vanished into contested history.

• Jack Balkin:
  

  [Bush's larger strategy is] to entrench the U.S. presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and do what he can to ensure that John McCain becomes President, or failing that, Hillary Clinton as a second best solution. He figures that McCain, and, to a lesser extent Clinton, are most likely to continue aspects of his policies and keep troops in Iraq for some time. The longer that the next president continues his policies-- including warrantless surveillance, his interrogation practices, and his war in Iraq, the longer these features will become normalized and/or the next President's problem.

• Robert Costanza makes an interesting point about the prevailing indicator of our economic health:
  

  An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because someone has to clean it up, but it obviously detracts from well-being. More crime, more sickness, more war, more pollution, more fires, storms and pestilence are all potentially positives for the GDP because they can spur an increase in economic activity.
  
  GDP also ignores activity that may enhance well-being but is outside the market. The unpaid work of parents caring for their children at home doesn't show up in GDP, but if they decide to work outside the home and pay for child care, GDP suddenly increases. And even though $1 in income means a lot more to the poor than to the rich, GDP takes no account of income distribution.
  
  In short, GDP was never intended to be a measure of citizens' welfare -- and it functions poorly as such. Yet it is used as a surrogate appraisal of national well-being in far too many circumstances.
  
  

  
  

The Future of Music?

Or maybe the future of creative content of all kinds on the internet?

In case you missed it, Trent Reznor is distributing the latest Nine Inch Nails CD exclusively (at least initially) on the internet... and apparently, it's been a huge success. The first nine tracks are free, and the rest of the 36-track album is $5. Doesn't get much more reasonable than that...

I just listened to the first 9 tracks, and they're decent (although I hope and expect he'll venture beyond instrumentals in the rest of the tracks). I will be spending the $5, and I almost NEVER buy content like this on the internet...

(Yeah, I know-- it's ironic since I offer online creative content myself)


UPDATE: No vocals?! Apparently, the whole damn thing is instrumentals, so maybe I won't buy it. I'll take that money and go buy the online Radiohead album...

First, I'd like to thank Vishnu...

I had an idea on my list of "cartoons to do" about Mike Huckabee as a fundamentalist Hindu... a commentary on the total vanishing of any notion of religious pluralism in our political discourse.

Ted Rall beat me to it. Great 'toon... check it out.

Good Toons...

We CWA-ers are always working to come up with new ideas to help enrich the lives of you, the consumer. Jen Sorensen has introduced a great new product... "Neocondoms!" And August Pollak has yet another... "Baby Legos!"

And, since I never got around to making a comment on the whole Vitter scandal, here's Ruben Bolling telling the story of an illegal alien who receives absolution for his crime by asking forgiveness of his wife and God.

"Lil' Bush"

Speaking of stuff I wish I woulda thought of... oh wait, I did!

A few people have asked me about this. It happens sometimes in the world of satire... people come up with the same idea. But hey, Donick Cary (creator of the show), if you want to give me a job as a writer, I'm a hard-working and conscientious employee...

And, note to Comedy Central: I've got a lot of ideas like that...

People no want think when read comics.

Fellow Attitude 3-er and damn good political cartoonist Eric Millikin points to a review of the "new" Blondie, now penned by a cartoonist named John Marshall:

Marshall calls Blondie a bit of Americana whose lasting appeal stems from the fact that it takes a humorous look at everyday problems. Dagwood overeats and goes to work every day, facing a demanding boss. Blondie is the all-American wife and mother, although she joined the work force in 1991 as the proud owner of Blondie's Catering.

...

Young agrees that the strip's humor relates to the world going on around us and purposefully shies away from politics and controversy.

"My dad told me a long time ago, "we want to win friends, not make enemies.' Our job is to make people laugh," he says.

Eric's dead-on reaction: "That’s right: Blondie relates to the world around us by purposefully shying away from politics and controversy."

Personally, I just feel like a complete jackass. For the 3+ years I've been doing this, I had no idea that truly great satire about "the world around us" means just looking at the insular lives of white suburbanites who obey gender and class roles rooted in 1930's "Americana."

Boy do I have egg on my face.

C.W.A. book to check out...

C.W.A.-ers are leading a revolution in the world of editorial cartooning, and it all starts with releases of high-quality collections of subversive cartoon madness.

Mikhaela's is out soon, and Masheka's is below. I can vouch, this is good stuff:

Deep Doodle by Masheka Wood (Preview)

Kick-ass cartoons...

...from CWA-ers.

Matt Bors out-Tinky-Winkies them all.

Also, the dialogue in this week's Slowpoke just clicks for me.

I love dialogue that makes a meaningful argument and still comes off with just the right rhythm, so it reads almost like music. That's what I strive for every week in my 'toon. More often than not, I miss the mark... but that's what keeps me coming back to try it again.