I was pleased to learn that my talented, cartoonist buddy, Bill Day, just got a full time job as an editorial cartoonist for FloridaPolitics.com. New jobs for editorial cartoonists are rare these days, and full time jobs with Web site firms are even more rare, so this is great to see!
Kudos to Peter Schorsch of FloridaPolitics.com for being a brave trendsetter who sees the need and value of having a staff cartoonist and local cartoons. Bill will be drawing about Florida issues, at least five cartoons a week, in addition to illustrations for the site.
Bill is formerly the cartoonist for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal and the Detroit Free-Press. I syndicate Bill’s cartoons to newspapers and Bill’s work will continue to appear here on Cagle.com.
Correction: 4:20pm. Bill tells me he hasn’t moved to Florida, he’s still in Memphis. OK. Congrats again, Bill.
Someone tweeted this disturbing, altered, pirated cartoon to me. It is disturbing to have my work pirated like this – but I’m not sure it is copyright infringement, since it has a different message and there are probably enough changes to qualify for the legal standard of “fair use” as commentary. Also, removing my signature from the art removes an argument that the art defames me. Still, it is rude. If an editorial cartoonist did something like this the AAEC would be calling for his head. Here is my original drawing …
Here’s my new one. I was trying to stretch this to make a better tea-party reference to the elephant, but I decided, nah, it is clear enough. Then I thought of putting the GOP elephant in a Fox New t-shirt, and I thought, nah, it is clear enough.
Here’s a Hillary, Benghazi, GOP oldie that will probably never grow stale. Hillary is a wonderful character – I’m looking forward to the campaign!
Wall Street types are holding their breath, eagerly awaiting a new pronouncement from the Federal Reserve Bank’s meeting that’s going on now. Those Wall Street “bulls” are looking for the word, “patience” in a Fed statement, as a clue to whether interest rates will go up, or stay low longer.
Janet Yellen is a rather dull character, but she is delightfully easy to draw. I wash more readers could recognize her so that I wouldn’t have to put a label on her expressive torso. I always feel like I’ve somehow failed in a cartoon when I have to use labels, even when I have a caricature right and the character should be recognizable. Here’s the cartoon in black and white line art, which most readers will see in the newspaper.
…and here it is in color, which most people prefer. Notice that the Wall Street bulls are all brown, St. Just style cattle, ready to slaughter for their delicious beef.
The legislature here in Tennessee is considering over 50 guns bills. It doesn’t deter them that just about everyone in this red state is pro-gun – that just makes them want to fiddle around with gun stuff all the more.
The pro-gun red states like Tennessee are prime fundraising territory for the NRA. It might seem that, where there is broad support for gun culture, there would be little need for battle in the legislature about gun laws – but no – red, pro-gun culture states are the homes of constant legislative madness and NRA fundraising.
Last weekend I was in New York doing a panel keynote at the College Media Association (CMA) convention with Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis and Taylor Jones.
There was a great, receptive crowd of about 600 college newspaper editors and faculty advisors in attendance. Our panel was sponsored by USA Today, one of our clients. The CMA printed out a nice display of Charlie Hebdo tribute cartoons from our collection (http://darylcagle.com/charlie-hebdo-exhibit) which had previously been on display at Vanderbilt University.
The CMA hired eight security guards just for our event, at a cost of $4,000.00, and they rented metal detectors to screen attendees. Also, the NYPD had undercover officers distributed into the crowd, so there was a public expense as well.
The terrorists have succeeded in making editorial cartooning events an expensive burden; events and exhibitions are being cancelled around the world in response to terrorist threats and security concerns. I have to thank the CMA for daring to host cartoonist keynote speakers given their security concerns and the significant hassle and expense that we burdened them with.
I don’t quite understand the Hillary e-mail scandal. There was no law against her using her own e-mail at the time she did it. She had her own e-mail server and 50,000+ emails, but I also have my own e-mail server and 50,000+emails, so it doesn’t seem so strange to me. And if she hadn’t had her own server, all of her emails would Surely have been stolen and revealed by Edward Snowden, so in retrospect, it seems prudent. Much ado about nothing, I think.
E-mail is always a great topic for cartoons.
I’ve been thinking of updating the Hillary-general cartoon below to add an e-mail medal, and take out the stale medals about 2008 election news that everyone has forgotten (like “Michigan” and “Florida”). I drew this one when the daily pundit babble was about Hillary claiming she would make a much better commander in chief, compared to Obama.
I suspect Hillary would have been much more of a hawk than Obama, and would have gotten us much more mixed-up into the middle East muddle. If I had to choose between Hillary and goofy Rand Paul, I think I would vote for Rand Paul, just because I trust that he really don’t want our military meddling around the globe.
I remember back in 2007 there was a scandal about Karl Rove deleting his emails while he worked at the White House. Pundit hacks like Rove benefit from our short memories, as they attack Hillary now.
And please help us out with Cagle.com, now that the site is so much more expensive for us to host. Visit: http://cagle.com/heroes
We just added a new cartoonist to our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate and our Cagle.com site! Cristina Sampaio, the charming and brilliant cartoonist from Portugal. Here are a few samples of her work. Just another great reason for newspaper to subscribe to our syndicate! Read more about Cagle.com here.
I get lots of e-mails with the same message, like this one from little Johnny in Nashville, who writes, “Dear Mr. Cagle, Please explain your cartoon to me. My paper is due tomorrow.”
I hate having to explain myself. So does Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker.
Walker doesn’t like “gotcha” questions from the media. When a reporter asks a politician a question, and knows that an honest answer would be an answer that many people won’t like hearing, that is a “gotcha” question. Walker has been clumsy while learning to avoid “gotcha” questions.
I drew a cartoon showing a reporter interviewing Walker.
Reporter asks, “Gays?”
Walker says, “I don’t wanna answer that.” Walker thinks, “Homos are so nasty.”
Reporter then asks, “Evolution?”
Walker says, “I won’t answer.” Walker thinks, “This liberal ape doesn’t know that evolution is only a ‘theory’.”
Reporter asks, “Do you think Obama is a Christian?”
Walker says, “I never asked him.” Walker thinks, “I never asked that liberal, Muslim, Kenyan atheist.”
Journalists must be accurate and report the exact words a politician says. My job is better. As an editorial cartoonist, I have the freedom to put any words into the mouths of politicians that I want; I can even choose to put any thoughts into their brains.
Republican candidates must pander to the basest of their conservative base, especially in the presidential primaries. My worry is that politicians really believe the blather that they spew. I would like to hear honest answers to the “gotcha” questions.
The problem with avoiding “gotcha” questions is that I’m left with the impression that Walker really believes the knuckle-dragging nonsense that I write into his thought bubbles.
An even bigger problem is that cartoons are not so funny when they are explained.
Another Islamic extremist killing spree was blamed on cartoonists as recent, ugly events unfolded in Denmark surrounding Swedish “cartoonist” Lars Vilks. A lone killer sprayed machine gun fire at a “free speech event” organized around Vilks, who has attained a bizarre level of celebrity for drawing Prophet Muhammad heads on the bodies of dogs.
Vilks is a “conceptual artist” who had been known for building towers made of sticks before he took up the Prophet Muhammad-dog theme. Vilks studied art history and didn’t train as an artist, as is clear to anyone who sees his terrible drawings. His most famous Muhammad dog drawing looks like he drew it in five seconds, on a napkin, with his eyes closed, and both hands behind his back.
Unlike cartoonists who seek to have their work published, Vilks shopped around for galleries that were willing to hang his scribble on their wall – when one gallery agreed, the drawing made the news, and the art show was cancelled, but the news was enough to give Vilks new fame as the Prophet Muhammad dog “cartoonist”.
For a conceptual artist, the act of creating art and the response to the art are all that matters. For example, an artist can put a crucifix into a jar of urine, or cover herself with chocolate and if she can get the National Endowment for the Arts to pay for it – and cause a stir – and create a new conversation, the conceptual art is a success. Vilks’ towers of sticks were built in a Swedish nature sanctuary, violating local regulations, and triggering a reaction from local authorities who wanted to regulate the structures. Drama = art.
Conceptual artists are nothing like cartoonists, who can draw, who usually have editors, and who want to have their cartoons and ideas reprinted and distributed to a large audience through the media. Unfortunately, after the Danish Muhammad cartoons and the Charlie Hebdo attacks, editorial cartoonists are painted with the same broad brush as Vilks, the “artist” who the media insists on labeling a “cartoonist.”
Vilks seems to relish his place in the spotlight as a self-appointed authority on freedom of expression. He’s done an exhibition of classic paintings with Prophet Muhammad-headed dogs inserted into the paintings. He travels with an armed escort and is a featured speaker at “freedom of speech” events, organized by his supporters, like the one that was attacked in Copenhagen. Vilks is a media-darling for interviews. I suppose it isn’t surprising that some narcissist would take a clash of civilizations as a opportunity for self-promotion.
As an editorial cartoonist, I live in a new world now, where timid editors see editorial cartoonists as dangerous. The talented Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are among the top cartoonists in France, their Muhammad cartoons reflect their concerns, and the concerns of their readers, about a culture clash with Islam in French society.
The Danish Muhammad cartoonists, back in 2005 were also different – they were paid $50 each by a local newspaper to draw Muhammad; they were illustrators given an assignment by an editor, Flemming Rose, who wanted to make a point about crossing red-lines by publishing offensive cartoons. In their cartoons, the Danish cartoon illustrators playfully rejected the premise of the assignment, except for one, Kurt Westergaard, who was the staff editorial cartoonist for the newspaper; he drew the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, an image that became the only Danish Muhammad cartoon that anyone remembers. Rose, Westergaard and Vilks share equal billing on the Islamic death-list marquee.
Since the Danish cartoons were drawn only for the purpose of demonstrating that there is a right to offend, they set up the narrative that drawing Prophet Muhammad cartoons is all about freedom of expression, that editorial cartoonists are eager to push the limits, and that editorial cartoonists are dangerous, reinforcing the prejudices of editors who are more timid now than ever. Vilks, by taking the reins of the Prophet-Muhammad-cartoon-bandwagon, is limiting my own freedom of expression as an editorial cartoonist almost as much as the Islamic-extremist-nuts who repeatedly try to kill him.
Vilks doesn’t deserve to be killed by an Islamic assassin; he doesn’t deserve to be punished or silenced, and he doesn’t deserve to be called a “cartoonist”. He deserves to be ignored.
