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Kill the Messenger

The Daily Illini college newspaper at the University of Illinois cancelled their subscription to the 50+ cartoonists in our CagleCartoons.com syndication package this week in response to protests against the Rick McKee cartoon below, that they chose to reprint. Read their statement apologizing for publishing the cartoon. The Daily Illini student editor who chose to publish Rick McKee’s cartoon was suspended. USA Today did a story about the cartoon controversy.

In their apology, the Daily Illini editors write:

The person who selected the cartoon is currently on suspension due to regrets on the oversight. This choice was made out of carelessness, not out of malice. This student has learned an important lesson about carelessness.

We unfortunately cannot go back and erase it from yesterday’s paper, yet we hope this serves as a wake-up call in our decisions as an editorial staff. We apologize again, and hope that we can earn back the trust and confidence of our readers with each issue of The Daily Illini from here on.

We have reached out to the directors of the Native American House, La Casa Cultura Latina, Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center and the Asian American Cultural Center and invited them to come in and talk with the staff about mindfully reporting on issues pertinent to underrepresented communities.

We recognize that a statement can not recognize the hurt that this cartoon may have caused and we apologize for the perpetration of this disgusting stereotype.

Our cartoon package includes cartoonists with a range of views from conservative to liberal, and it isn’t unusual that we get complaints from editors about cartoons they disagree with. Often the complaints come with threats to unsubscribe if we don’t remove content that the editor doesn’t like. Sometimes we get demands that we “fire” the cartoonists that editors or readers disagree with.

With a wide range of content, we have something new that everyone can disagree with, every day.  Since editors receive about a dozen cartoons a day to choose from they can easily choose cartoons that meet their preconceived world views and they always have cartoon choices available that will not challenge their readers. It is usually the conservative editors who complain about liberal cartoons that offend them. In the case of the Daily Illini, the complaints, and the subscription cancellation come from the liberal side of the spectrum – which fits the conservative narrative about “politically correct” colleges stifling conservative ideas. Our experience is that the liberal editors are usually the ones who print left vs. right columns and cartoons, while the conservative editors prefer to reassure their conservative readers by only reinforcing the views their readers already hold.

As a liberal cartoonist who runs a business that includes conservative cartoonists and columnists, it is fascinating to see the change in attitudes among editors and readers as both ends of the spectrum become less tolerant and seek to punish those who hold opposing views who offend them.

Rick McKee’s response made me smile:

“I think it’s a sad day for journalism whenever a newspaper feels it has to apologize for something they knowingly published. But I don’t blame the students. They’re just kids and they’re learning. I blame the politically correct atmosphere they find themselves in that exists on most U.S. college campuses. Our institutions of higher learning are supposed to be safe spaces where differing viewpoints are tolerated, but that no longer seems to be the case. There’s nothing racist about the cartoon and the notion that people should come into this country legally is an opinion that is widely held by many Americans. I’d also like to add that if you hated this cartoon — or if you loved it — my new book is filled with much of the same and can be pre-ordered at a discount right now at mckee.cartoonistbook.com !”

Want to comment to the Daily Illini? Email them at [email protected]. You can make a comment for us here or on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PoliticalCartoons

We’ve gotten some interesting comments, here is a sampling …

Rich Moyer Of course, having him just stand around out-waiting his visa is a boring illustration.
Jim Engel I think every political cartoonist should apologize every day.
Aaron Hill Makes me wonder if they published it on purpose to stir up controversy to get out of settling their bill…!
(the Daily Illini is five months behind on their payments for our cartoon package)
Gary McCoy If you look up “gutless-wonder” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of the Daily Illini.
Wise The editor probably supported Woodrow Wilson.
Jim Phillips Isn’t that like blaming the grocery store because you didn’t like the new cereal you bought? After you ate the whole box.
—

Joe Gandelman, who runs The Moderate Voice site wrote a long and interesting response to my column about the Daily Illini dropping CagleCartoons.com over the Rick McKee Illegal Immigrant Trick or Treater cartoon. Here it is:

I have to add to this. I started The Moderate Voice in December 2003 and it became a group blog by 2004. I’ve written for The Week online and for nearly five years did a syndicated column for Cagle Cartoons. Not a WEEK goes by when I don’t get some emails or facebook messages from someone trying to ban an opposing view or taking great exception to a post or a comment. I know that some will now sic The False Equivilancy Police on me, but the fact is left, center, right are now almost all the same when it comes trying to remove a viewpoint or limit it, in so many areas.

No, this isn’t just talking about the decade plus of TMV but about Facebook, response to my columns and emails on my pieces I did for The Week. Rage and outrage are prime components of our politics on so many fronts now. Just as there’s a 24/7 news cycle and social media is instantaneous, so is the tendency now to slip into outrage mode ASAP.. Once upon a time there was a delay as people pondered the meaning of things but reaction (rage, outrage, demands, threats not to read again) is now instantaneous.

In the case of Cagle Cartoons, I have a large number of columns and cartoons I can choose from. Many do NOT reflect my view and I run some of them. If I really don’t like one, I can pass on it. And that’s no big deal (some people prefer fish to meat). But so many cartoons are offered from all around the world. Cancelling a service because an editor chose to run a cartoon out of a huge number is puzzling. But not surprising (these days).

I’m sure this cartoon will spark some spirited discussion here at TMV. I need to add that over the years TMV has lost people who were modest donors of the center right and center left due to my refusing to ban someone from the site or remove a post they didn’t like.

I saw this cartoon, but didn’t run it because I had many others I wanted to run and hadn’t gotten to even putting them up, And for another reason: I’m someone who had someone who was here illegally as his Little Brother in Wichita , Kansas, years ago and who has covered immigrants at the border in my old job on the San Diego Union covering the border, Reagan’s immigration reform and Tijuana so it wasn’t one I CHOSE to put up. I make my choices VERY quickly about what I’ll put up or pass on because I read so many posts, syndicated materials and cartoons. So this was no biggie. I merely chose another one — a process I do EACH time I choose cartoons to put up.. I’ve run many cartoonists by the cartoonist who did the one above over the years. And I’ve run many others by other cartoonists, who I’ve also many times chosen not to run in favor of using another cartoon by another cartoonist. I’m not obligated to use or not use a cartoon but in the end it’s my decision what I put on the site.

I need to add that I run some other syndicated materials. I CHOOSE what I put up. And if readers were upset over one of the syndicated pieces I CHOOSE to put up from a service, I could let it stand or remove it. But I wouldn’t cancel using the entire syndicate when it had been MY choice to use it or not use it.

I’ll leave the rest to readers in comments.

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The New House Speaker, Paul Ryan

Today the house Republicans voted to make Paul Ryan the new house speaker, replacing John Boehner who seems to have taken a responsible turn in negotiating a spending bill.

Paul Ryan was Mitt Romney’s running mate, and he has a history as a budget-cutting-wonk. He also had longer, puffier hair the last time around, which was much more fun to draw.

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Carson Tortoise and Trump Hare

Bombastic Donald Trump is falling behind Ben “slow and steady wins the race” Carson, which sounds to me like the Tortoise and the Hare fable.

Both of these guys are gifts to cartoonists. People find it disturbing whenever I mention this, but I like Donald Trump, compared to the other Republican candidates – it sounds crazy, but I think he’s more reasonable and moderate than Carson. It is only Carson’s demeanor that implies moderation.

Notice that I avoided drawing a tail on the turtle (most turtles have nice little tails). Given the position of the running turtle, there was no position I could find for a tail that didn’t look like a turtle penis. Self-censorship – its an ugly thing.

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Hillary at the Benghazi Hearing Today

This hearing is much ado about nothing. I think my past cartoons about the Republican obsession with Benghazi are just as relevant today. Here’s a selection.
cagle-benghazi1

benghazi6 benghazi5 benghazi4 benghazi3 benghazi2

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Monkey on Your Back

I’ve enjoyed the recent back-and-forth sniping between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush about whether President George W. Bush “kept us safe.” Of-course the answer to that is that he kept us safe, here but not overseas, from September 12th, 2001 going forward – a couple of qualifiers that Jeb neglected to mention.

A “monkey on the back” is an editorial cartooning standard – in fact, my buddy Taylor Jones drew a better George W. Bush monkey on the back cartoon recently, that I noticed just now, after I finished my cartoon above. I might not have drawn it had I noticed Taylor’s excellent work first – oh well, there will be plenty of monkeys on the back to come.
taylorMonkey

Here’s President George W. Bush as a monkey on the back of John McCain back in 2008, by David Fitzsimmons.

This is one of my favorite monkey-Bush oldies, by Sandy Huffaker, from the good old days of 2005.

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Republican Nooses

The Republicans infighting in congress is pretty crazy – enough for another noose cartoon. 

I seem to draw a lot of nooses. I draw lots of wordless cartoons and a noose is a good, simple, graphic threat. Here are the Republicans with a caduceus noose, from when they were trying to stop the government over and over, to protest Obamacare.

And here’s a more recent Trump tongue noose, when everyone, including me, thought that Donald Trumps provocative statements would knock him out of the presidential race – I was wrong; I guess I was playing too loose with that noose.

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Palestinian Daggar Eyes

In old time comics there was a great thing where, when a character gives a dirty look the cartoonist would draw knives, or daggers, coming out of their eyes, pointing at where they are looking. Urbandictionary.com defines it this way:

When someone who tries to intimidate another person, they will flinch quickly towards that person, and exercise a quick widening of the eyes, in effort to scare away the supposed moron who tried to intimidate them in the first place. Usually, the kid who gives the dagger eyes is much more adapted to survive through mockery, and this action helps to scare off possible douche bags who try to scare the dagger eyed kid.
In Hawaii they call it “stink-eye”. With all the stabbings, “dagger eyes” worked for me.
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Obama, Putin, Assad and Doggies

I think all world issues can be boiled down to doggies.

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See me at MTSU, in Tennessee on Thursday, October 22nd

I’ll be giving a lecture with lots of cartoons at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (just south of Nashville). It is a rare opportunity to see the reclusive, elusive Cagle – and it is free to the public! It will be at 4:30pm pon Thursday, October 22nd in the Bragg Media and Entertainment Building, Room 104.

MTSUposter

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Republican Leadership Puzzle

The Republicans in the House of Representative are a real puzzle – so I decided to go with that for today’s cartoon. Perhaps this a little obtuse. I think that readers who are familiar with my work would be able to decipher my GOP elephant from just a tiny little puzzle piece, but this cartoon may go over the heads of many readers.

I thought it was possible that some readers (particularly elderly readers who love old-fashioned jigsaw puzzles) might actually cut the little pieces out and assemble the puzzle – and it actually works! SPOILER ALERT — scroll down to see the solution … or, is that really the solution … ?

AssembledGOPpuzzle

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Republican Disarray!

The Republican battles for Speaker of the House make great theatre. Here’s my new one – a battle royale.

Here are a couple of oldies that I reposted because they seem so appropriate right now.

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The New York Times, a Student Contest and Editorial Cartoons

The New York Times, which doesn’t have an editorial cartoonist and dropped their weekly round-up of syndicated editorial cartoons years ago, recently announced a contest for budding, young, student editorial cartoonists, who may grow up to not be published in the New York Times.

NYtimesClipThis story is so tone deaf and ironic that I had to write a bit about it. A judge of the contest is my cartoonist buddy, Patrick Chappatte, pictured at right, who draws for the New York Times owned “International New York Times” which was formerly the “International Herald Tribune.” Patrick lives and works from his home in Switzerland.

The Times runs a lot of illustrations on their editorial pages, and these may look like editorial cartoons to readers, but illustrations are done to the specifications of the client, and are usually depicting the ideas of the writer of the columns that the art accompanies. Editorial cartoonists are like visual columnists, we draw our own ideas, something that clearly makes editors at the New York Times feel uncomfortable.

There are two famous, unattributed quotes from NY Times editors:

1) We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because we would never give so much power to one man.

2) We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because you can’t edit and editorial cartoonist like you can a writer.

Most of the syndicated cartoonists submitted their work to the Times back when they did a weekly “round-up.” The Times would pick perhaps three cartoons, and paid $50.00 each, but only if the cartoonist noticed that they ran his cartoon, and sent them an invoice. When I asked them about this system, they told me that they expect everyone to read the Times, so, of-course, everyone would notice if a cartoon was used.

Suppose I placed a standing order with McDonalds; I would instruct McDonalds to deliver a hamburger to me every day at lunch time. I may or may not choose to eat the hamburger, and if I choose to eat it I’ll pay for it, but only if someone from McDonalds sees me eating it and asks me to pay. Cartoonists went along with a plan that McDonalds would never countenance.

Sometime after dropping their round-up, editors at the Times had second thoughts. They had conducted surveys where readers responded that they missed seeing editorial cartoons in the Times, so the Times decided to bring the round-up back, but this time, without paying the pesky $50.00 fee to the cartoonists. They sent emails to the top cartoonists, inviting them to submit again, for the privilege and exposure that having a cartoon in the Times would bring them.

To their credit, my colleagues revolted, with most of them responding in emails to the Times that they would not submit cartoons for no payment and the Times dropped the idea.

And that’s where we are with traditional editorial cartoons in the New York Times – America’s newspaper of record; they could have any of the best editorial cartoonists jump at the opportunity to work for them, but, alas, we’re not worth $50.00.

The biggest circulation newspaper in America, The Wall Street Journal, doesn’t have an editorial cartoonist either. At least USA Today still pays $50.00 for a cartoon.