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Obama’s Big, Manly Pen, Again

Fox News is aghast and aflutter about President Obama saying he’ll unilaterally enter into an international agreement on Climate Change.  Obama touts that he has a “pen and a phone” to do business without congress.  The pen amuses me.

Barack Obama,pen and a phone,congress,GOP,Republicans,elephant,ink,Climate Change,environment,global warming
President Obama’s pen annoys the GOP.

Like almost every cartoon I draw, I think the black and white line version looks better – and it is what most people will see in the newspaper …

President Barack Obama, phone and a pen,GOP,Republicans,elephant,Climate Change, Global Warming
Black and white always looks better, huh?
ObamaFaceDetail350
My Obama has grown to be gray-haired and weary.

I realized that kids these days might not be familiar with fountain pens, and how they would occasionally squirt by mistake. I was reading Classic Peanuts recently as Charlie Brown was writing to his pen-pal with a fountain pen, squirting all over the page. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a letter on paper, or the last time I used a fountain pen. Charlie Brown is a classic, but the strip seemed to define the elderly audience of the newspaper.

At the right is a close-up detail view of Obama’s head from this cartoon. Over the course of his presidency I’ve been drawing Obama more gray haired and more weary looking. He’s having a visual transformation in cartoons as well as in reality. Also, in his news conference yesterday Obama was wearing a light tan suit. I’ve never seen Obama wear anything other than a black suit! For cartoonists the tan suit should have been the big story of the day.  I like to draw pinstripes and I’ve gotten comments that Obama doesn’t wear suits like the ones I draw him in – artistic license – the cartoon above would have been lousy with a black suit, the composition needs the black pen and black ink to work – a black suit would ruin it.

The renewed talk about Obama’s “pen” got me thinking about a cartoon I drew when the “pen and phone” talk first came out …

Obama with his manly, phallic pen.
Phallic Putin by Taylor Jones.

My new Obama-pen cartoon is also phallic.  Editorial cartoonists love to make phallic references in their cartoons. At the right is one of my recent favorites from Taylor Jones.

International cartoonists draw a whole lot of phallic cartoons. A recurring image is a warlike character holding a missile in a manly position.  Below is one by South African cartoonist Jeremy Nell …

 

The charmer below is from German cartoonist Rainer Hachfeld …

International cartoonists make me feel subtle.

And yes!  We now have a cartoon about Obama’s tan suit from Nate Beeler. I knew that tan suit would find its way into cartoons.

Tan Suit by Beeler!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Daryl Cagle

Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of Cagle Cartoons, Inc, which which is a major distributor of editorial cartoons and columns to newspapers and digital publishers. See Daryl's blog at: www.darylcagle.com, see his site at: Cagle.com get permission to reprint his cartoons at: PoliticalCartoons.com.