My Missing Donald Trump Cartoon
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Miers Squished
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Bennett Reprehensible
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Dropping Billions
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Take Responsibility
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FEMA Snail
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The President Leaps Into Action
Worldwide Cartoonists Take Pleasure in America’s Pain
The easiest way to see what world opinion looks like is to look through the mirror of political cartoons. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has done nothing to elicit sympathy from the world according to cartoonists around the globe who are finding pleasure in America’s pain.
In Europe, anger at President Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto treaty to stop global warming is the focus of “I told you so” cartoons. The Europeans see global warming as the obvious cause of Hurricane Katrina and seize the opportunity to blame the president for causing the calamity.
German cartoonist Heiko Sakurai depicts President Bush swept up in a tornado along with a sign that reads, “Welcome to New Orleans.” The president says, “Global warming? What a ridiculous idea! But we got very serious information from our intelligence services that there might be a connection to Al Qaeda …”
Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune (owned by the New York Times) draws a scene of flooded New Orleans ruins, with a billboard that quotes the president, “’Climate change remains to be proven’ –George W. Bush.”
Cartoonist Olle Johansson from Sweden shows the president taking his “global warming dog” for a walk; the dog has escaped from his collar and turned into a raging storm outside the frame, as the president says, “The hurricanes just love to play with him.”
New Zealand Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson shows President Bush addressing the nation, “The American people can rest assured that we plan to invade New Orleans as soon as possible.”
Bill Leak of The Australian newspaper in Sydney shows President Bush dressed as a cowboy, holding out a tin cup begging for help as Australian President John Howard looks the other way, telling an aide to tell Bush that he gave “at the office.”
Cartoonists in developing countries, the Middle East and Latin America display their disgust for America and President Bush at every opportunity. Americans are portrayed as greedy, obese, stupid and arrogant. Hamburgers are a worldwide symbol for America and we often see ugly depictions of hamburgers; it seems strange to us, but defiled burgers are instantly recognizable around the world as insults directed against America. In Middle Eastern countries where there is no Christian lore that would give rise to a devil character, Dracula is substituted for Satan, and President Bush or Uncle Sam are often depicted as vampires.
Another common symbol for America is the comic book superhero, sometimes Batman or Spiderman, but usually Superman is the worldwide substitute for Uncle Sam, and in most cartoons Superman suffers an indignity that brings joy to an America hating audience. In his most recent cartoon, Emad Hajjaj of the Al-Ghad newspaper in Amman, Jordan draws President Bush in his Superman suit, with Hurricane Katrina as his up-blown skirt, exposing his skinny, naked, black legs trudging through the mud, labeled, “Third World.”
Many of the world’s cartoonists work in countries that allow no press freedom, but the cartoonists describe themselves as being “free.” A Cuban cartoonist once told me, “I’m free to draw whatever I want … as long as it is about the United States.”
Bashing America is a daily job for the world’s cartoonists, and it will take a lot more than death, devastation and widespread human suffering to jar them from their routine.
Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.
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Civil War On The Table
Civil War on the Table
As a political cartoonist I sit around all day watching cable news pundits argue with each other. That’s what all of the political cartoonists do. Our cartoons are nothing more than more screaming voices on the editorial page and our cartoons typically amplify the standard opinions we hear on TV, where pundits offer ready-made opinions on every issue. All I have to do is pick from the tasty opinion smorgasbord that is served up to me, 24 hours a day. The problem is that lately, I’m feeling a bit overstuffed, and the opinions I’m being served aren’t tasting very good.
The ready-made opinions on Iraq come in three flavors:
1. Stay the course and fight the good fight for democracy and freedom (this is what the President and the far-right pundits tell me).
2. Iraq is a big mess, but it would be worse if we left because there would be civil war (this is what most of the pundits tell me).
3. We should get out now (this is what Cindy Sheehan and the far-left pundits tell me).
All of these choices leave a bad taste in my mouth. As a cartoonist, I want a bad guy to bash. The only good cartoons are the ones that bash a bad guy. Most of the cartoonists have chosen to bash President Bush as the bad guy for getting us into Iraq and keeping us there. In my own cartoons I’ve chosen to bash the insurgents in Iraq; they seem like the obvious bad guys to me. The Sunnis hate America. The Sunni insurgents don’t have much success blowing up American soldiers, so they spend most of their time blowing up Shiites; they oppress women, they boycott the elections, they refuse to negotiate on a new constitution. They seem like good, all around, bad guys.
The Shiites are bad guys too. They also hate America, they want an oppressive religious theocracy to rule Iraq, they oppress women, they are aligned with Axis of Evil member, Iran; but at least they negotiate, they vote, they don’t blow things up as much as the Sunnis, and they are the majority in Iraq. I’ll call them: “less-bad guys.” (We like the Kurds, so we’ll ignore them.)
The TV pundits tell me that we must stay in Iraq because if we leave there will be a terrible civil war. All of the options seem dark and gloomy. I wonder why none of the pundits ever discuss the bright side of civil war. I see four arguments for civil war in Iraq:
1. There are a lot more Shiites than Sunnis, so the “less-bad guys” would win.
2. With the Shiites fighting the Sunnis, we (and the Kurds) can sit back and watch until it’s over
3. We’ve learned that the American army is the world’s best at destroying things, but we do a lousy job of building things and keeping peace. We should quit trying to do the things we do poorly.
4. There will be a lot of death, destruction and suffering in a civil war, but many pundits argue that our initial war was so clean and efficient in targeting only the military and sparing the civilian population in Iraq, that the Iraqi people never suffered enough to be willing to make the compromises necessary for peace and democracy. Until they suffer enough to cry, “Uncle Sam,” there is no reason to expect the Sunnis to be civil; they lost their man Saddam and lost their control over Iraq. Of course they would be in a surly mood.
Iraq seems to be having a civil war now anyway, but we’re keeping the heat down by constantly stirring the Iraqi pot. It is a natural American tendency to think that if we stir the pot, the stew will be better; but we could turn up the heat, sit back and let the stew simmer until done. That seems to me to be a recipe that would taste as good as any of the others that are being offered to me, and I’d like to have it served up along with the other dishes on my TV pundit smorgasbord.
Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.
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Sheehan Snooze
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How to Draw President Bush
How to Draw President George W. Bush
Political cartoonists are not much different from comic strip cartoonists; both draw an ongoing daily soap opera featuring a regular cast of characters. While comic strip cartoonists invent their own characters, the political cartoonist’s characters are given to him by events in the world; we are all drawing our own little daily sagas starring the same main character, President Bush.
Around the world, cartoonists almost always draw President Bush as a cowboy. Outside America, a Texas cowboy is seen as: uneducated, ill mannered, a “trigger-happy marshal” or outlaw who is prone to violence. Cowboy depictions of the president by worldwide cartoonists are meant to be insults, but Americans see cowboys differently. In the USA, cowboys are noble, independent souls, living a romantic lifestyle by taming the wilderness and taking matters into their own hands whenever they see a wrong that needs to be righted. We are a nation of wanna-be cowboys.
The image of President Bush evolves with each cartoonist’s personal perspective. Bush started out as most political cartoon characters start out, as a caricature of a real person, meant to be recognizable from a photograph. As time goes by, the cartoonists stop looking at photographs and start doing drawings of drawings, then drawings of drawings of drawings, so that the George W. Bush drawings morph into strangely deformed characters that look nothing like the real man, but are instantly recognizable because we’ve come to know the drawings as a symbol of the man. It is surprising that each cartoonist’s drawings of the president look entirely different, but each is easily recognizable as representing the same character.
For some cartoonists, the president’s ears have grown huge; a strange phenomenon, since the president doesn’t have unusually large ears, and isn’t well known for listening. Some cartoonists have seen President Bush shrink in height; a combination of these has the president sometimes looking like a little bunny rabbit.
The president who shrank most in cartoons was Jimmy Carter. At the end of Carter’s term he was a Munchkin, standing below knee height on almost every cartoonist’s drawing table. President Bush has shrunk for only some of the more liberal cartoonists. President Reagan grew taller during his cartoon term in office. President Clinton grew fatter, even as he lost weight in real life. Bill Clinton’s personality was fat, and the cartoonists drew the personality rather than the man. President Clinton is now skinny, but he will always be fat in cartoons.
Another cartoon characteristic that has grown from years of drawing President Bush are his eyes, two little dots, close together, topped by raised, quizzical eyebrows. The close, dotted eyes are an interesting universal phenomenon, shared by almost every cartoonist, that doesn’t relate to the president’s actual features. Over time, most cartoonists will draw a character with eyes that grow larger, but President Bush’s eyes shrink, while his ears grow. There may be a political message in that, but I can’t figure it out.
I once played “Political Cartoonist Name That Tune.” The game went like this:
“I can draw President Bush in SIX LINES.”
“Well, I can draw President Bush in FOUR LINES!”
“I can draw President Bush in THREE LINES!”
“OK. Draw that President!”
…and I did, two little dots topped by a raised, quizzical eyebrow line. It looked just like him.
Daryl Cagle is the political cartoonist for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to over eight hundred newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His book, “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2005 Edition,” is available in bookstores now.
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Roberts and his Wife
