My Missing Donald Trump Cartoon
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Greece Merkel and the EuroREPOSTED
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GOP Energizer Bunny Campaign
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Greece Merkel and the Euro REPOSTED
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GOP and the Stupid Good Economy
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Advertising on The Cagle Post
We value our fans and as part of launching our Hero Campaign, we’ve decided to extend an exclusive offer to our existing fans and give them a chance to work directly with us in new ways.
While most publications rely on advertising to pay their bills, Cagle.com has never offered dedicated ads and have depended on ad networks (which is like having leaches stuck everywhere). We don’t have an ad sales rep and we’ve suffered because of it. Why? Because Cagle.com has never really focused on turning a profit. We’ve focused on publishing the best cartoon website and we’ve been the #1 destination online for political cartoons for nearly 15 years. We get millions of page views a month and we reach up to 2% of the entire domestic U.S. population each year. Still, we don’t make much money from advertising and now we need help!
So here’s the deal. If you want to promote your business, we’re looking for a few Heroes that want to help keep our cartoons online and promote their business as well. This is a great opportunity to get really cheap advertising for your business to a national audience. Sign up for any of our Gold level or higher Publisher Hero accounts and not only will we develop a custom ad campaign just for you, we’ll include advertising in our daily newsletter which reaches over 100,000 people every day. That’s a potential 30 million ad exposures every month. Not to mention you get to use our cartoons too!
Learn more by reading about our Hero Publisher accounts!
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I Would Appreciate Your Support!
If you’re a fan of our cartoons and our Cagle.com site, I’d like to ask for your support. Please click here to visit new “heroes” page to make a contribution to keep Cagle.com going – I explain all about it there.
The short version is that Cagle.com is a money loser for us. The recent events and unrelenting hacker attacks have us rethinking our expenses, and I want to focus more on my cartoons – I’m hoping our readers will come to the rescue of Cagle.com. Please, take a look – it is all explained there.
With the support of our fans, we can make it all work. I appreciate you all! Help!
— Daryl Cagle
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Cartoon Revenge Through Hacking
Want to help? Visit cagle.com/heroes. We need more heroes.
There was a time when readers who are offended by a political cartoons would write a letter to the editor. Now angry readers rant online; they demand apologies or retribution for being offended.
I run a “syndicate” that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to about 850 subscribing newspapers in America. I’m perceived to be the “boss” of the cartoonists, and I get angry demands that I fire cartoonists I work with, who drew cartoons that offend. Just draw about abortion, the Confederate Battle Flag, gun control, religion, Israel or the Palestinians – and the cyber outrage will flow.
One of our cartoonists drew a cartoon a few years ago that showed an Iraqi soldier holding a book titled, “The Koran for Dummies.” The cartoon motivated a group called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to put a call out to their members to e-mail me, demanding that I punish the cartoonist; I received many thousands of crazy e-mail threats in response. Whenever there is a big response to a cartoon, it is usually because some group is organizing the effort.
Recently my political cartoon web site at Cagle.com has been getting hacker attacks. New, crazy, huge, sophisticated, brute force, distributed denial of service hacker attacks, from IP addresses all over the world, focusing on taking us down.
The hackers succeeded in breaking through to erase data on our hard drives on our servers and bring our Cagle.com site down. Luckily, we had an unconnected backup in the cloud, and this attack had us down for only a day rewriting the hard drives. We don’t keep credit card information or salacious emails about movie stars online, so there isn’t much for hackers to do except to take us down.
The new attacks started before the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, back when we were featuring cartoons about North Korea and the Sony Pictures hackers. Cagle.com is still going down occasionally as the hackers change their strategies. I suppose this is the new reality for editorial cartoonists, who have never been well paid by newspapers that are continuing to cut their budgets. Editorial cartoons seem to be the new flashpoint for a clash of civilizations, even as we tighten our belts.
The bottom line is that our Cagle.com site is now expensive to host as the attacks continue to become more costly and time consuming for us. We thought about dropping the site and concentrating on our little newspaper syndicate, but we’re trying something different.
We’re putting up a plea to our readers to make contributions to help us keep the Cagle.com site online. I see lots of other sites with “donor” buttons, including opinion sites like Slate.com and Truthdig.com, but this is new to us. Visitors to Cagle.com will see a pop-up window this week, asking for support, and offering lots of nice perks for different levels of support.
We’re hoping the love and support of editorial cartoon fans can overcome the costs of the evil editorial cartoon haters.
Want to help? Visit cagle.com/heroes. We need more heroes.
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Hebdo Miscellany
Yes, it has been more than a week since I have drawn a new cartoon. There’s too much on my plate, sorry; I’m trying to keep up. Here are some recent miscellaneous items.
My cartoonist-journalist daughter, Susie, posted this excellent column about Facebook and other tech companies and their hypocritical “support” for cartoonists and press freedom issues.
I just read that the national cartoon museum in Belgium cancelled their Charlie Hebdo tribute exhibit at the last minute, after it had already been installed and before it was open to the public, because of security concerns. That is sad.
Want to read my Charlie Hebdo column in French? Here it is.
My business phone call voice mails go to a voice recognition line where I get an email of the phone message in text. I thought I would share this one that just came in, for a taste of what my typical phone calls are like …
“Hi my name is XXX XXXXX. I’m not sure how far you guys go your political cartoons but here’s a couple of ideas present Obama sitting on the toilet reading the Koran with the US Constitution roll of toilet paper. President Obama on the golf course with a bunch of crucified Chris’s son-of-fair-fairway(?) in the stadium quote the Bible says just play through the only Christians or grant(?) a baby close to the dj(?) and he walking out the door is away-but(?) I had a busy going you-recipe(?) and have a little Obama has-members-because(?) because he’s leaving. So just some food for thought food for thought. Thanks.”
An update on our hacker attacks, they are continuing, but we have Cagle.com up and relatively stable. Every so often we’re still going down, or we have some odd tech problem that crops up, we appreciate your patience.
Below is a cartoon I drew a while ago that has found new life in social media recently, with the incessant drum banging from Fox News over terrorism recently. With the economy in good shape I expect that fear mongering over terrorism and ISIS will dominate the upcoming Republican presidential primary fight.
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Will Durst on Satire
Decades after being dismissed by George S. Kaufman as a genre that “closes on Saturday night,” satire, like the measles and mumps, is making a comeback. And in many quarters, remains the most feared of the three conditions.
Some experts hold to a strict definition: “Satire portrays a viewpoint, while intending something different.” The most famous example being Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” the essay in which he advised Ireland’s poor to alleviate their poverty by selling their babies as food for the rich. At least we assume he was kidding. Hopefully no besotted chefs replicated his ingredients list.
Another example is the CIA’s assertion that “we don’t torture anybody,” when obviously what they meant was “yeah, we’ve been torturing people since way before we assured you we weren’t. And we’ve gotten pretty good at it.” You could say the CIA is America’s only straight up satirical organization. Proof that satire can exist without laughs.
Modern satirically has loosened up to embrace many forms of humor: sarcasm, cynicism, scorn, contempt, bile, ridicule and recently, an endless fascination with body parts and fluids. Anything to spotlight perceived injustice. Tweak the nose of pomposity. Kick arrogance in the groin.
Seth Rogen and his stoner buddy, that darn Franco guy, first thrust funny onto the front pages with their movie, “The Interview;” a farce about assassinating the President of North Korea. Which you could say, the President of North Korea did not find amusing. You could also say armadillo snouts make inferior shot glasses.
Despots and extremists have the sense of humor of asphalt. With the emphasis on the first syllable. And yes, that’s an example of using a body part as humor. So, in response, North Korea orchestrated a monumental hack of the studio releasing the film. Doing damage to the economy and scaring the bejesus out of Wall Street. We know this happened because the CIA said it didn’t.
The fracas was exacerbated when Hollywood celebrities went to the mats defending free speech while imploring the public to boycott websites exhibiting their pilfered emails, revealing them to be petty snarks. This is known as irony, a brother to satire.
A greater tragedy is the thousands of Americans tricked into watching this cinematic opus under the guise of nationalistic pride. “Laugh, or the terrorists win.”
Then in January, the world witnessed the ghastly murders of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo staffers by lunatic Muslim assassins. Who claimed to be offended by a cartoon. Which confused many US citizens. France has satirical magazines. America has Spongebob. It’s a trade-off.
It’s sad. Call yourself a satirist in America today and folks think you have goat legs. And play the pan flute. Especially when you consider the grand tradition of American political humorists- Twain, Bierce, Mencken, Rogers, Bruce, Krassner, Trudeau, Carlin, Hannity and the Cheneys.
The teachable moment here is how imperative it is we encourage artists to stay on the offensive. To mock and scoff and taunt for the sake of democracy. They should be stopped on the street and thanked for their service. Laugh, or the terrorists win.
Patriots on both sides of the political spectrum need to rally and support our brave perpetrators of mockage and scoffsome taunterating. And to do it even after the CIA says it’s okay to stop. Especially then. Je Suis Charlie. Je Suis Hebdo.
—
Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed political comic. Go to willdurst.com to find about about his new one-man show “BoomeRaging: From LSD to OMG,” and info about the San Francisco premier of the documentary film “3 Still Standing,” on January 29th @ the Marines Memorial Theater.
Email Will at [email protected]. Visit to willdurst.com to find about more about his new CD, “Elect to Laugh” and calendar of personal appearances.
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My Charlie Hebdo Week Rant
I usually don’t draw such wordy cartoons, but I thought this would get around better than if I wrote the same points in a column.
To explain this one, reading from left to right, the wart-hogs become progressively more disturbing. On the less disturbing left is The Los Angeles Times, which ran a blank, editorial cartoon shaped spot that wasn’t really blank, but contained a line of words, telling readers that this is what the world would look like if there were no editorial cartoons, with an attribution to the write who wrote those words. Ironically, The Los Angeles Times runs no cartoons three days a week or so – they could run that line three times a week with no blank spot. Cartoonists are at their best when times are tough and feelings run high. Editors are most cartoon averse when times are tough and feelings run high. (That said, the LA Times runs three or four of our cartoons a month – we usually love you, LA Times.)
The second wart-hog represents “Web pirates”, who are a problem for cartoonists most of the time, although now they have their heart in the right place with Charlie Hebdo tribute cartoons, and I can’t be too angry at them this week. I’m more angry with the big Web sites like The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post that are stealing cartoons and not paying the cartoonists right now. Even The New York Daily News is non-paying pirate now. Come on people – you should pay the cartoonists. Cartoons are cheap. You can see how important editorial cartoons are around the world now. Pay the cartoonists.
The third wart-hog is The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which just laid-off their nationally syndicated cartoonist, Chan Lowe, at a time that couldn’t be more awkward. The Sun-Sentinel just dropped the most important part of their newspaper.
More on word-people who don’t get it – The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, neither of which has an editorial cartoonist. My New York Times wart-hog says, “We can write about dead editorial cartoonists; we don’t need to hire any editorial cartoonists.” My faux quote is inspired by The New York Times‘ famous statement that they don’t need to show the Danish Muhammad cartoons because they can describe the cartoons with words – of-course, they can’t. And The New York Times has been making similar statements recently about not showing the Charlie Hebdo cover.
There are a couple of quotes from The New York Times that I have no attribution for, just cartoonist gossip, but they both ring true. The times is quoted saying, “We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because we would never give so much power to one man.” and the second quote: “We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because you can’t edit art like you can edit words.” At least they are honest, bone-headed word-people. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal run cartoon illustrations, where they give an assignment to a illustrator, rather hiring a real editorial cartoonist who draws what he thinks, like a columnist writes what he thinks – no, not that.
President Obama is on the right. Instead of going to Paris with the other world leaders, Obama met with the N.B.A. Champion San Antonio Spurs. Looks like the White House is run by The New York Times.
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The New Issue of Charlie Hebdo
The new issue of Charlie Hebdo just came out in France, greeted by long lines at newsstands; it reportedly sold out right away. Thanks to my alert buddy, Alan Gardner at thedailycartoonist.com, I’ve posted a downloadable pdf of the whole issue below.
I’m ashamed of my American journalist colleagues who refuse to show the Charlie Hebdo cover, among them The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and CNN.
The New York Times executive editor, Dean Baquet, explained his decision to characterize the cartoons in words rather than show them: “We have a standard that is long held and that serves us well: that there is a line between gratuitous insult and satire. Most of these [cartoons] are gratuitous insult.” Brooke Baldwin on CNN described CNN’s decision as partly based on considerations for their employees’ safety.
I would describe the New York Times’ many false articles about “weapons of mass destruction,” running up to the war with Iraq, as a “gratuitous insults” also.
CNN’s explanation is just cowardice.
