Our resident satirist Will Durst pops off about Bank of America charging $5 a month for customers to use their debit cards. Check out Durst’s entire column about the greedy banks here.
Another busy week for the nation’s cartoonists. Not only did they have fun with Obama’s Jobs Plan and that weird Iranian assassination plot, the ascension of Herman Cain to the top of GOP Presidential polls gave us all great fodder, considering a cartoonist’s fuel is pizza and silly politicians.
We have lots and lots of Occupy Wall Street cartoons coming in these days (check out our cartoon collections here and here). It seems like the type of movement most cartoonists would be supportive off – a bunch of rag-tag troublemakers taking on the man, in this case the big banks and greedy Wall Street types already the subject of many cartoons (here’s my Occupy Wall Street cartoon).
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I noticed that Washington Examiner cartoonist Nate Beeler wasn’t exactly taken with the protesters themselves, and filed back-to-back cartoons mocking them as jobless, ambitiousness anarchists more at home playing video games then following through with a political movement.
I asked Nate for his thoughts, and here’s what he wrote me:
“My office happens to be next door to the Occupy DC protest at McPherson Square, so I get to experience these guys every day.
I certainly share the protesters’ outrage over the sleezy conduct of the big banks, but I can’t support their politics. I went to college, worked together at the school newspaper and was friends with these people — only then they weren’t as well organized, had more anarchists in their midst and were protesting against the WTO and IMF.
There are plenty of reasons to be ticked off at Wall Street, but I don’t think the solution to the nation’s economic problems lies in what we’ve already tried, which is more government. And yet, that’s just what the protesters are calling for when you get down to it. So, I sympathize with the “Occupy” crowd, but I think they’re terribly misguided and out of touch with the real world.”
Below are more of Nate’s Occupy Wall Street cartoons. What do you think of the protests?
Every Monday, we collect the best cartoons of the week drawn by some of the world’s top political cartoonists, and jam them into one big, terrific cartoon slideshow.
Readers were divided about this Steve Jobs cartoon by Dutch cartoonist Hajo de Reijger. Some of you thought it was funny, even poignant. But most thought it was tasteless and unnecessary.
“I didn’t know Steve personally,” Hajo emailed me. “I know his products, and they’re great! But for me Steve Jobs is a human being that died. He was not the Messiah. His image did not appear on my toast this morning.”
We received a lot of feedback about it, and here are just a sampling of your comments:
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Raul: I don’t like it. It shows a poor taste. However, is easy to see the irony on it. I think Jobs deserves a clever attempt to mock him.
Joann Betschart: iDisgusted.
Scott Bolderson: iGiggled. Life’ll kill ya’. Can’t take it.
Dennis Jasinski: Death is a fact of life….one that Steve Jobs himself faced with humor and tenacity. My favorite comment on his death was iSad.
John Tyrrell: iLOLed.
Nina Maya Cording: I think it’s reducing Steve Jobs to mainly those 3 devices he made popular in the last few years although it was so much more.
Nicola Stratford: Oh, come on. Our culture is so PC these days. If the cartoon has read igone or ipassed or some other euphemism, I’ll bet there’d be no debate. idead is the truth using the word that means just that; it’s not disrespect.
Judy Masterson Blandino: Thumbs down…deserved more creativity than that.
Dee Dee Merritt: If your living you are going to die, dont take it to seriously, I like it.
Clvex: It’s neither fair nor foul because there’s no real joke there. It’s not harsh, it just fails to find a punch line in that final panel. It’s a non sequitur.
Jennifer Bourne: I thought it was funny and poignant at the same time: he pioneered wonderful inventions and now he’s gone.
We’ve had a lot of Steve Jobs obituary cartoons come in. And I mean a lot (view them all here). Obituary cartoons frustrate political cartoonists – most hate to draw them, but readers love them. With a public figure so important to modern culture and universally liked and admired, it’s almost obligatory that a cartoonist notes his passing.
It’s interesting to track our analytics and see which cartoons are getting shared more, and which ones are the most popular. According to our numbers, here are the five most popular Steve Jobs cartoons from the last couple of days.
The big news this week was the shocking announcement of the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. We also had some Chris Christie drama, witnessed Herman Cain’s ascent and saw the growth of a little thing called Occupy Wall Street.
Last night, the world was shocked with the news that Steve Jobs, co-founder and former chairman of Apple, died at the age of 56. Jobs has revolutionized the world and become a tech icon, and in recent years he gave us items like the iPod, iPhone, iPad and iCloud.
Poor Bank of America. The bailout recipient has drawn the ire of many critics by instituting a new $5 monthly fee on customers who use their debit card to make purchases starting next year.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi marks his 75th birthday today, but as our cartoonists are quick to note, the notorious horn-dog has very little to celebrate. From his own personal legal woes to the possibility of Italy being swallowed by Europe’s ongoing debt crisis, one wonders how much longer Italians can tolerate Berlusconi and his bunga bunga parties.
We’ve had a lot of funny cartoons about Berlusconi and his antics come in over the years from our foreign contributors. Here are some of the best:
Will he or won’t he? New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has repeatedly said he’s not running for president, yet the GOP faithful continue to beg the Garden State Republican to jump in and save them from their slate of lackluster candidates.