My Missing Donald Trump Cartoon
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NBC and the VT Killer Tapes
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Imus Hara kiri
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Cartoonists Draw Blood
Like most people, cartoonists love to watch stars fall. This was the week to watch Don Imus fall, in a media frenzy that was tailor made for cartoonists. Imus looks like a cartoon character already; his ugly comment, calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed ho’s,” put Imus at the center of a media feeding frenzy, with characters on all sides who wanted to see him bleed.
Many cartoonists pointed out the hypocrisy of crucifying Imus for a comment that was no worse than what we hear in rap music, and no worse than other nasty comments by other, ugly media personalities. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson demanded that Imus be fired and used the media frenzy to put their faces in front of television cameras at every opportunity.
In the end, Imus was fired by both MSNBC and CBS, and he no longer has a place on radio or television. I don’t think this week’s Imus rumble will do much to make the media less coarse, and I won’t miss Imus, but I enjoyed the spectacle and it was great fun to draw the guy getting bashed and skewered by his own words.
Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.
Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.
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High School Prepares for Jobs
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Jesse Jackson and Imus
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Imus and Sharpton
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No Child Left Behind
“24,” 5 1/2 Seasons, One Column (Revised to include the 3/12/07 episode)
With all the news about the military objecting to torture scenes and with cultural references to Jack Bauer everywhere in the media, I realized that it was my duty as a political cartoonist to actually watch “24.” I bought all five seasons as DVD box sets, then I watched the 13 episodes from the current sixth season online; that’s 133 episodes. It took me a month.
I learned four important lessons: 1.) torture works great; 2.) people always give in to the demands of terrorists; 3.) the fate of the world is always decided in the San Fernando Valley; and 4.) it takes me an hour to go anywhere in LA, but federal agents can get anywhere in minutes. Now, while it is still fresh in my mind, here is the story of “24,” all in one column:
We start Season One with Federal Agent Jack Bauer who thinks his boss, George Mason at the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), is lying to him, so Jack shoots Mason with a tranquilizer dart. A terrorist parachutes from a plane that she blows up to steal a “key card” that leads to two or three assassination attempts on presidential candidate David Palmer, who has an evil, ambitious, whiny wife Sherry, and who’s being blackmailed because his son murdered a guy who raped his daughter. Jack’s ex-lover, agent Nina, is secretly a CTU mole controlled by an evil Yugoslav family, the Drazens, who are hunting Jack and Palmer for revenge. Jack’s daughter Kim and his pregnant wife Terri are kidnapped and then escape. Jack is blackmailed. Terri gets amnesia. Kim gets into a drug deal and goes to jail with the math professor girlfriend from “Numb3rs.” The evil Drazens break their patriarch, Dennis Hopper, out of a secret jail; they kill Lou Diamond Phillips and kidnap Jack. Kim is kidnapped again and escapes. Jack is blackmailed again; he shoots it out with the Drazens and kills them all. Nina, the evil mole, kills Jack’s wife Terri.
In Season Two, Jack hunts for a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles (Jack says “nu-cu-lar” like President Bush). A blond Valley Girl is preparing to marry a terrorist, but it turns out she’s the real terrorist. Kim is a nanny for an evil guy who kills his wife and tries to kill Kim, who tries to save the guy’s annoying, abused daughter. Kim is saved by her boyfriend who loses his leg and jilts her. She’s then caught in a bear trap and locked up by a lonely survivalist in a mountain cabin. She is stalked by a mountain lion and is falsely arrested for shooting a convenience store clerk. Jack goes undercover with thugs who are hired by evil Nina and kills them after they blow up CTU’s offices. President David Palmer pardons Nina, who gives up the terrorists. Jack is captured and tortured by terrorists; he then escapes and kills them all. President Palmer’s nasty now-ex Sherry is part of a government conspiracy to start a war; Jack catches her. Palmer has the head of the NSA tortured to find out the location of the bomb. Mason is poisoned with plutonium and has only hours to live; he gets blown up with the nuclear bomb in the desert. Palmer is poisoned by a terrorist handshake assassination attempt.
In Season Three, Palmer is fine. Jack just spent a year undercover with Mexican drug lords who want to buy a deadly virus from Ukrainian terrorists and hold the world up for ransom (so does evil Nina). Jack breaks a mobster out of prison and goes back to Mexico with him to find the virus. Chase, a CTU agent who is Kim’s fiancé, and who has a secret daughter, follows, gets tortured, escapes and gets his hand chopped off. The mobster’s sister in law is killed; then the mobster kills his brother; then the mobster gets blown up. Nina gives Jack trouble, and then gets killed. In Los Angeles, Harry Dresden, from “The Dresden Files” (with an English accent here) has the virus released into a hotel. Agent Michelle (who is in love with Agent Tony) is in the hotel as everyone else dies, but she is immune. Dresden demands that Jack kill his boss, Chappelle, so Jack shoots Chappelle in the head. Dresden kidnaps Michelle and blackmails Tony; Jack kidnaps Dresden’s daughter and blackmails Dresden. President Palmer’s ex, Sherry, kills a guy, blackmails Palmer and is killed by the guy’s girlfriend, who then kills herself.
Jack starts Season Four working for Secretary of Defense Heller, who is kidnapped by terrorists along with his daughter Audrey, who is Jack’s new girlfriend. Jack breaks them out and kills the terrorists, but there are more terrorists, one of whom tries to kill his own wife and son. Air Force One is shot down and terrorists steal the president’s “football,” which contains codes for arming nuclear bombs. Evil and incompetent Vice President Logan assumes the presidency and invites former President Palmer to run things. Jack raids the Chinese Embassy. A bad guy steals a stealth bomber to drop an A-bomb on LA, and gets shot down at the last minute.
Season Five starts with the assassination of former President David Palmer. Jack’s buddies Tony and Michelle are blown up. Nasty President Logan has a complicated plan to start a war and lets his screwy wife drive into a trap with the president of Russia; Jack saves them. Russian terrorists take over Ontario Airport and threaten Jack’s new girlfriend’s son, who Jack saves. The terrorists are killed, but one steals nerve gas which he uses to kill shoppers in a mall. Jack finds the big bad guy is Peter Weller (Buckaroo Bonsai), a former CTU agent. The nerve gas is released in CTU, killing lots of agents, including Edgar the computer nerd and Sam the Hobbit. Jack thinks his old girlfriend Audrey is evil, but she’s not. Terrorists try to release the gas again, but Jack stops them. Jack kidnaps President Logan and tortures him, and then Jack is kidnapped by the Chinese, who are still mad at Jack from Season Four.
In the current Season Six, Jack is back, after having been tortured for two years in China, and he’s ready to kick some terrorist butt. David Palmer’s brother Wayne is president now and one of his advisors is Tom Lennox, another math professor friend from “Numb3rs,” who is tied up by his assistant while some guy blows up President Wayne Palmer along with a terrorist who decided to be a good guy. Nerdy CTU analyst Chloe is working with her ex-husband Morris, who is kidnapped, tortured and agrees to arm nuclear bombs. A nuke goes off in Valencia (Magic Mountain), there are more nukes out there and nasty ex-President Logan wants to help Jack find the bombs through the Russian Consulate. Jack breaks in and tortures the Russian Consul General where Jack is captured and he escapes. Ex-President Logan’s ex-wife stabs him and Logan dies. The nukes are about to be launched.
That’s where we are today, and that’s all you need to know.
Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.
Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.
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Walter Reed Rat
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Mitt Romney Evolution
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Too Many Cartoonists Too Little Time
Too Many Cartoonists, Too Little Time
Whenever cartoonists get together we complain about syndicates (the businesses that sell our cartoons to newspapers). Cartoonists are no businessmen — we want syndicates to be like mothers to us, selflessly nurturing our careers so we don’t have to sully our minds with yucky business thoughts, when we’d rather be thinking about cartoons. But syndicates don’t act like mothers, and cartoonists have some very colorful names for the syndicate executives who sell their work – in fact, some of these colorful names include the word “mother.”
In addition to being a political cartoonist myself, I run a small syndicate that specializes in editorial cartoons; I see that there must be one thousand aspiring cartoonists for every working professional, as I’m deluged with unsolicited submissions that are truly awful. At times like this, when people are passionate about politics, the inner political cartoonist emerges from the psyche of the talentless “wannabe.”
Many wannabe cartoonists recognize that they have no drawing talent, but it seems that everyone thinks they are a writer. I get many submissions from writers who are looking to collaborate with editorial cartoonists. These writers want to send me gags, or want to find cartoonists who will draw their gags. Here is a typical gag submission:
“So, we have President Bush standing there, and he says, ‘Things are improving in Iraq’ and behind him you see two massive armies, the Shiites and the Sunnis, about to fight each other, and the sky is filled with thousands of U.S. helicopters, then, in the next panel …”
These are people who think in words, not pictures. For some reason, this group of wannabes includes lots of lawyers who think they are funny. I think lawyers are funny, but I laugh at-them, not with-them; and it is a dark humor that makes me want to go take a shower afterwards. These guys just don’t get it. The cartoon writers often send obvious or trite gags that they think are brilliant and original. Sometimes the writers follow up with angry mail when they notice that another cartoonist has “stolen” their gag.
The second group of wannabes do their own drawings, but can’t see how truly awful their drawings are. These guys like to use computer fonts in their cartoons instead of hand lettering. Often they will use clip art in their cartoons, or lift photographs from the web, or they will use simple objects like squares and circles, and then have these objects making comments in speech balloons. These wannabes frequently don’t know how to work their scanner and will send murky gray images that show crinkled paper backgrounds from the napkins they drew their cartoons on.
One thing aspiring editorial cartoonists have in common is paranoia. I get inquiries like this: “I’m really funny and I have some great ideas, but I need to know how to get them copyrighted first so you won’t steal them.”
I have a notice on our syndicate web site that that says: “We do not accept and will not review unsolicited submissions from cartoonists.” Often the submissions come in with a note saying, “I know you don’t accept submissions, but …”
Ambitious aspiring cartoonists see syndicates as gatekeepers, guarding a barrier to the success they deserve. Sometimes the passion and perseverance of these wannabes can be frightening. They find my home phone number and my home address. Drive and perseverance in the face of adversity is a virtue, so their quest never ends.
Some horrid amateur cartoonists are convinced that the world of professional cartooning is a closed shop, an old-boy’s network where success is a matter of who you know. Wannabes try to be friendly with my employees or cartoonist colleagues, hoping that the relationship will get them past the barrier. Many terrible submissions are forwarded to me by friends.
When I was an aspiring cartoonist I thought the syndicates were arrogant for sending form-letter responses, or for ignoring submissions – but now I understand why. For many wannabes, any response is an invitation to argue. The aspirants are convinced that their work is great and anyone who doesn’t “get it” needs educating. Giving a polite brush-off sometimes fuels their anger.
Ironically, editorial cartooning is a terrible business. Newspapers pay only a few dollars a week for packaged groups of talented cartoonists who are, in turn, poorly paid. The professionals compete for fewer and fewer staff cartoonist positions at papers that are cutting back, as the internet crushes print. More and more professional cartoonists can’t make ends meet. The syndicates aren’t really a barrier to success for the aspiring cartoonists, just a hurdle on the road to more frustration in a dying profession.
My profession is fading away, I’m poorly paid and there are thousands of rude, talentless wannabes who want my job … but Britney Spears shaved her head – at least the life of a professional editorial cartoonist has its little pleasures.
Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Editions,” are available in bookstores now.
Copyright 2007 Cagle Cartoons Inc. Please contact Sales at [email protected] for reproduction rights.
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Korea Crossed Fingers
