This cartoon is about the congressional baseball shooting, and is based on a cartoon I drew six years ago about the Gabby Giffords shooting. Things don’t change much.
I was troubled to see a cartoon by our own Taylor Jones, on the front page of FoxNews.com in what seems to be a screenshot of the congressional baseball game shooter’s Facebook page, along with the headline: “HISTORY OF HATE.” I thought it was unfair of Fox News to put Taylor in that spot.
Steve Sack, the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune commented, “It could have been any cartoonist’s work there. They’re using a deranged moron’s actions to stifle satire. I’ve seen attacks on TV comedians today as well. Hang in there, Taylor.”
Steve is correct about the right focusing their ire on satire. Conservatives thrive on talk radio where liberals haven’t been able to find an audience because the nature of liberal discourse is different – morning zoo radio and late night comedians are where liberals commune. We would rather laugh at Colbert or Saturday Night Live than listen to hours of Rush Limbaugh preaching reassuringly to his choir. Liberals can laugh at themselves, while conservatives laugh at liberals. This is something we see in totalitarian states around the world, as over half of the world’s population lives in a nation that doesn’t allow cartoonists to draw their nation’s leader. Conservatives and despots both have trouble laughing at themselves. This is a worry to me when Trump talks about limiting press freedoms, and when the media picks up the right’s criticism of satire. I suspect we’ll see more examples of conservative media lumping cartoonists together with monsters.
I’m told that CNN has been repeatedly showing Taylor’s cartoon from the gunman’s Facebook page this morning. Taylor sent me these comments …
I enjoyed watching the coverage of former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony in congress on Fox News, where the talk was all about Hillary’s emails and Benghazi. I’ve noticed that this is a pattern; when the Trump-bashing gets heavy, conservatives retreat into their “happy place” of Hillary (and to a lesser degree, Obama) bashing.
There isn’t a lot of depth to the Republican responses to each increment of Trumpocalypse news. I see it in my e-mail now, when conservatives complain about the Trump cartoons they often ask why we don’t have an equal number of Hillary-bashing cartoons – even though Hillary is defeated and gone.
There were lots of cloud cartoons after former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony last week about President Trump asking Comey to “lift the cloud” of the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. I drew a cloud cartoon myself!
The Comey testimony was a TV ratings hit and I was impressed by how different the coverage was on CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News – that’s what led to my cloud cartoon, and another one I’m drawing up today.
Here are some more Comey cloud cartoons I enjoyed; By Nate Beeler, Steve Sack and John Cole …
Here is Trump and the world.
Yes, that is a map of the world on the globe’s head. I always wonder if things like that are clear enough. On the black and white version I put a label on the “World”.
Labels are for sissies, but without the color globe wasn’t clearly a globe.
Hey! It is nice to be back home and drawing cartoons again! More on the way!
Here’s my Covfefe cartoon!
This is about Trumps Twitter typo, which was mildly amusing and forgettable but elicited a media furor.
Sorry about being away the past two weeks – I’m back to work and drawing cartoons again! I’ll put up a post soon about my trip to the lovely press cartoons festival in Virton, Belgium!
Thanks to my editor, Brian Fairrington for writing the nice obit for my friend, Cagle Cartoonist Larry Wright who passed away last week. Larry was a wonderful guy and a wonderful cartoonist. We miss him.
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June 6, 2017 – Here’s my cartoon as it appears today in USA Today! –Daryl