I knew this would happen – I’m getting complaints about the relative sizes of the fish in my Google/Yahoo/Microsoft cartoon. Here is an example:

From: Parker, David

Subject: cartoon for 2/2/08

Good day,

I think you have a minor error with the cartoon for 2/2/08.

If you’re picking the fish size based on search market share, then the Microsoft fish should actually be smaller than the Yahoo fish … if you’re sizing them based on Revenue, then the Microsoft fish should be much larger than all the others!

MS revenue: $51.2B

Google revenue: $16.6B

Yahoo revenue: $6.7B

Food for thought

I get a whole lot of e-mail every day reminding me that size DOES matter. In this case, I’m referring to the relative share of the online search market, where Google controls about 75% of the business. Here the fish are drawn with correct relative volumes – the Microsoft and Yahoo! fish are roughly spherical and the Google fish is flat, viewed from the side. Our readers need to think in three dimensions.

We’ve been getting a crazy reaction to a recent column we syndicated by Tom Purcell. Stark raving crazy readers have been flooding us with email and phone calls complaining about the column below, which makes a tongue-in-cheek argument that Girl Scout Cookies should be banned. We’ve learned that you don’t joke about little girls. If you want to comment on the column, click here.

Considering the flood of e-mail from shallow readers, I asked Tom for a comment:

I’d like to say I was surprised by some of the responses I got to a satirical column that calls for a ban on Girl Scout cookies, but the truth is I wasn’t surprised at all.

The idea in the column below was to poke fun at some of the stridency we see on op/ed pages by folks who lecture the rest of us on what we must do to save the world. You might think it obvious that readers would see the gag — what kind of nut would attack Girl Scouts and demand that their cookie sale be banned to save the environment and protect us from a host of other ills — but a number of readers didn’t see the gag.

Some of the early mail I got came from folks on the left who praised me for being anti-capitalist. Much of the mail came from Girl Scout moms who thought I was dead serious. Some of these folks actually called the editors at their local paper to complain; others called Cagle Cartoons directly. They were mighty angry at this writer and responded to my “attack” on the Girl Scouts point by point. Interestingly, the later mail has come from people who saw the real point of the column and got a kick out of it.

In any event, Cagle’s Sales has a theory as to why many folks missed the gag. Though it’s true readers have misunderstood satirical pieces in their local newspaper in the past — think Mike Royko and Art Buchwald — could it be that these days it’s hard to tell the difference between satire and columnists who really mean what they are writing — who really don’t see the silliness in their point of view and the demands that they’re making on the rest of us? –Tom Purcell

Here is the offending column:

Why Girl Scout Cookies Must Be Banned

By Tom Purcell

The Girl Scout cookie season is upon us. That means one thing. The annual cookie sale must be banned.

How can we allow anyone, in these progressive times, to inflict empty calories on an already obese public?

How can we be so inconsiderate to diabetics and others who are unable to consume sugar?

How can we allow any organization, regardless of its cause, to use children to pimp products loaded with trans fat, the partially hydrogenated oil that Americans fear more than communism?

It is true that the Girl Scouts organization was founded in 1912 to help girls develop physically, mentally and spiritually. I know the annual cookie sale has become a tasty part of American culture since it originated in 1917.

But the fact is this: The annual sale is teaching girls TERRIBLE values.

It is teaching them raw capitalism — how to exploit the weak and the helpless. My own niece, an otherwise sweet and lovely child, knows I can’t help but eat shortbread cookies by the row. I eat Thin Mints as though they were Tic Tacs. I down Peanut Butter Patties the way grizzlies dine on wild salmon.

I’m addicted. But rather than protect me from my addiction, she preys on me. She calls or visits just before dinner — when I am at my most hungry and vulnerable. She tells me about her troop’s good deeds and how my order will fund even more.

The clever little manipulator always walks away with a sizable order.

All Girl Scouts do. They probably meet in private to laugh about the helplessness of their victims — they laugh about the strong-arm techniques they use to part friends, family and neighbors from their hard-earned dough.

In the process, they are destroying our environment. More than 200 million boxes of Girl Scout cookies are sold every year — that’s $700 million in annual revenue. Precious trees must be felled to farm the grains and sugars needed to produce them — trees that are essential to dissipating carbon dioxide.

What’s worse, as those cookies are manufactured, packaged and shipped, more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air. That’s right, the Girl Scouts are causing the Arctic ice cap to melt. The next time you dip a shortbread cookie into a cup of milk, the least you can do is remember the starving polar bears stranded on hideously small ice floes.

That’s why the annual Girl Scout cookie sale must end.

Look, if the Girl Scouts want to teach girls how to market products and manage inventory and money, can’t they be more socially responsible? Instead of selling cookies, why not sell low-energy-consumption light bulbs? Why not sell something that makes the girls aware of man’s thoughtless destruction of our fragile ecosystems?

Better yet, instead of teaching the girls the principles of capitalism, why not teach them how to be government bureaucrats instead? America is moving toward European-style socialism. The careers of the future will be in government, not the private sector. Why not have the government produce a pamphlet on the harmful effects of cookies, then mandate that the girls develop a program to distribute it?

Sure, I know some people will criticize me for demanding an end to the cookie sale. They’ll say that it really does teach girls useful business skills. They’ll say that it’s as much a part of American culture as baseball and apple pie — that we should celebrate it and enjoy it. They’ll say that America has real problems and that I ought to focus on those rather than something as harmless as a lousy cookie sale.

Well, nuts to that. I urge you to write your senator and congressperson. If the Girl Scouts won’t willingly stop foisting their cookie pox on the rest of us, we must use the might of the federal government to mandate a ban on their annual sale.

I hope the ban goes into effect before my niece talks me into placing another order.

If you want to comment on Tom’s offensive column, click here

Here is some cartoon supporting evidence for Tom’s position:

Cartoon by M. e. Cohen, Comment on this cartoon.

Cartoon by Mike Lester of the Rome (GA) News-Tribune, Comment on this cartoon.

Cartoon by Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Comment on this cartoon.

This is in from our buddy, Dave Astor at E&P, posted with permission:

A Cartoon Flip-Flop After New Hampshire’s Primary

By Dave Astor, Published: January 16, 2008 11:25 AM ET

NEW YORK Hillary Clinton may have turned the Democratic presidential race upside down when she won last week’s New Hampshire primary. Meanwhile, editorial cartoonist Bob Englehart definitely turned New Hampshire upside down.

Englehart, of The Hartford (Conn.) Courant and the Cagle Cartoons syndicate, did a four-panel drawing last week about Clinton’s victory. In the last panel, the “Live Free or Die” state was flipped.

When contacted by E&P, Englehart replied: “Hah! I made a mistake. I was so focused on making a vertical state fit a horizontal space that I didn’t even notice I had made it upside down! Most people didn’t even notice.”

And he quipped: “I hear New Hampshire is changing its slogan to ‘Live Right Side Up, Or Die.'”

Click here to comment on Bob’s upside down state cartoon.

I’m pleased to add three new foreign cartoonists to our site today. Jens Hage is an award winning ‘toon talent from Denmark, he is a freelancer for the Danish national newspaper “BerlingskeTidende” (the world’s oldest newspaper) and works on the staff for the annual Danish satirical book “Blæksprutten” (the Octopus), which has been published for 116 years. E-mail Jens. Click here to see Jens’ new archive on our site.

 

 

 

Jeremy Nell’s cartoons, titled “Ditwits,” appear on the front page of one of the largest daily, national newspapers in South Africa, “The Times.” Visit Jeremy’s site. E-mail Jeremy. Visit Jeremy’s archive on our site.

This cartoon is about South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC, and its new leader, Jacob Zuma, who is facing corruption charges and has a colorful (and ugly) history.

Yes, it takes some obscure knowledge of foreign affairs to understand the work of most foreign cartoonists, which makes the selection of cartoonists for our site a little tough sometimes. We like for the foreign cartoonists to draw about international issues that an American audience will readily understand, and most of them do – but we also want to present a real picture of what is going on around the world in cartoons. So, suffer and learn about Jacob Zuma.

Our third new cartoonist is Khalil Rahman who is the staff cartoonist for the Bengali newspaper, the Daily Naya Diganta in Dhaka, Bangladesh. E-mail Khalil. Visit Khalil’s cartoon archive.

My friend, professor Chris Lamb, who usually writes about editorial cartoons, has written a book about famous quotes. The book is called, “I’ll be Sober in the Morning.” The title is culled from a famous Winston Churchill quote. The book is great fun and Chris sent me a collection of his favorite quotes from the book that I am including below. E-mail Chris.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been drinking heavily at a party and bumped into Bessie Braddock, a Socialist parliament member.

“Mr. Churchill, you are drunk,” Braddock said harshly.

“And Bessie, you are ugly. You are very ugly,” Churchill snapped and then after a pause, added: “I’ll be sober in the morning.”

John Wilkes, the eighteenth-century British political reformer, was debating John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, in the House of Parliament. As the exchange went on, the tone grew more and more personal. Montagu finally shouted at Wilkes that he would either die on the gallows or of venereal disease. To which Wilkes responded, “That, sir, depends on whether I first embrace your Lordship’s principles or your Lordship’s mistresses.”

During one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Sen. Stephen Douglas told his conservative audience that he had once seen his opponent selling whiskey.

When it was his turn to speak, Lincoln made no attempt to dispute the charge. He agreed that he had once worked as a bartender.

“I was on one side of the bar serving drinks,” he said, “and Douglas was on the other side, drinking them.”

When Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey, he was informed that one of the state’s U.S. senators had died and it would therefore be up to Wilson to appoint a successor. Shortly thereafter, a state politician called Wilson and said, “Mr. Governor, I’d like to take the senator’s place.”

“It’s okay with me,” Wilson replied, “if it’s okay with the undertaker.”

One evening a nervous soprano struggled hopelessly before President Calvin Coolidge at a White House recital.

“What do you think of the singer’s execution?” one of the guests asked Coolidge.

Coolidge paused and then quietly answered, “I’m all for it.”

Former Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge was asked what would be the effect of all the people moving from Georgia to Florida.

“I am sure it will enhance the level of intelligence of both states,” Talmadge said.

During an exchange in Parliament, Lady Nancy Astor snarled at Winston Churchill and said: “If you were my husband, I would poison your coffee.” Churchill replied: “If you were my wife, Nancy, I’d drink it.”

Please use this corrected version of this column and disregard the previous one.

The Spanish humor magazine El Jueves published a cartoon on July 18 that was too much for a Spanish court to stomach. Two days after the magazine came out, a judge ordered police to remove all copies of El Jueves from newsstands and kiosks, the magazine’s Web site was taken down and the court is seeking more information on the cartoonist, who faces a possible two-year jail term.

Soon after the judge’s ruling, the cartoon started appearing all over the Web and was published in other Spanish newspapers as a news story. The Internet buzz was so big that the magazines were often sold out when police arrived at newsstands the next day, to confiscate them. Now the cartoon is a phenomenon, having been seen by many millions of people around the world, rather than just the 80,000 readers of El Jueves. Judges should be careful about what they ask for.

The offending cartoon on the cover of the magazine shows Spanish Crown Prince Felipe having “doggie-style” sex with his wife, Letizia, under the headline, “Obviously Elections are Coming, ZP!” (“ZP” is short for Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero); “2,500 Euros per Child” appears in large red type is above the head of the crown prince, who says to his wife, “Do you realize? If you get pregnant … this will be the closest thing to work I will have ever done in my life!” The headline lampoons a recent initiative by the Spanish government, which would give financial help to couples who have children, in the amount of 2,500 euros or about $3450.00 per child.

Spanish judge Juan Del Olmo wrote that the cartoon was “a clearly denigrating act which is objectively defamatory.” It “is a caricature that affects the honor and the intimate nucleus of dignity of the persons represented by it,” Del Olmo said. “It could damage the prestige of the Crown.”

On their Web site, for a few hours before the site was taken down, the editors of El Jueves made this statement, “We are cartoonists, and we are aware that our work, our duty, and what our readers expect from us is for us to explore the limits of our freedom of expression. We understand that, from time to time, we can even exceed them. That’s life. If we exceed them, that’s what courts are for. But… taking the magazine away? The police going from shop to shop all over the country taking away our magazine? Are we really writing this on July 20th, 2007?”

Part of the judge’s ruling was a demand to find out the identity of the cartoonist, who goes by the single name, “Guillermo.” It is common for cartoonists around the world to use one name, a charming conceit that American cartoonists rarely take advantage of – our celebrities have discovered it though, and it works well for Cher, Madonna, Lassie and Flipper. Guillermo’s full name is Guillermo Torres Meana; he also draws for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

In another part of his ruling, the judge demanded that the magazine surrender the “printing plates” that contain the offending cartoon. The judge clearly wasn’t aware that printing plates are not used in modern printing. Guillermo is reported to have said: “They’re going to take the printing plates? Why those haven’t existed for years! The best thing would be for them to cut off my right hand.”

The royal family issued a statement saying that they didn’t ask for the ban. All but one major Spanish newspaper condemned the ban. Al Jazeera showed the cover of the magazine with the racy royals obscured by a black haze. Guillermo’s newspaper, El Mundo, in an editorial commented that the cartoon was “within what is permissible in a society where freedom of expression is a fundamental value.”

The crown prince and his divorcee, TV-newswoman wife have increasingly become the butt of jokes in Spain. El Jueves published a 350 page book of cartoons making fun of the royal family titled, “Tocando los Borbones,” which is a play on the royals’ surname meaning “to be obnoxious,” or that the royal family is obnoxious and the authors will be obnoxious toward them. It may be that the judge doesn’t get out much.

The cartoon kerfuffle in Spain seems more outrageous because it is happening in a modern, EU country where freedom of the press is broadly accepted; but such bans were more common 20 years ago and happened frequently under Spain’s General Franco. In fact, cartoons are one of the best barometers of the freedom of a society; in totalitarian countries cartoonists never think of lampooning their nation’s leaders. Cuban cartoonists never draw Castro. Chinese cartoonists don’t draw their leaders. Don’t even think of drawing the Prophet Muhammad.

When countries teeter on the edge of political freedom the people who test the limits are cartoonists. In recent years: Algerian cartoonist Ali Dilem has been fined and sentenced to jail for drawing his nation’s leaders; South African cartoonist Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro is being sued for millions of dollars by an insulted politician; cartoonist Essam Hanafy was jailed in Egypt for insulting the deputy prime minister; cartoonist Paul “Popoli” Nyemb of Cameroon was chased down by goon squads from the government he ridiculed; cartoonist Musa Kart was sued by the prime minister of Turkey who was insulted by being drawn as a cat. There are many more.

Nations, and judges, are best judged by their tolerance of cartoons.

If your newspaper didn’t print the cartoon with this column, you can see it on Daryl Cagle’s blog at www.cagle.com/news/blog. Thanks to Jose Beltran-Escavy for his help with this column. Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. Daryl 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. He runs the most popular cartoon site on the Web at www.cagle.msnbc.com. 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.

At the editorial cartoonists convention last week I had an opportunity to have a long conversation with Flemming Rose, the editor for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper who commissioned the Danish Muhammad cartoons that sparked a clash of civilizations last year.

One of the Muhammad cartoons was a puzzle to me. There were countless editorials and explanations of the cartoons, but no one could explain one cartoon, which was variously described as “some kind of doodle on a napkin” or “a poem with an inexplicable drawing.” Since the artist had to go into hiding and had a bounty put on his head for this “drawing of Muhammad” that shook the world, I wanted to know more. Were these little Pac-Man characters eating Islam and Judaism? Perhaps Judaism and Islam share a football helmet. Are those motion lines from the little symbols flying up through the air? Where is Muhammad? What the hell?

The cartoon includes a little poem which roughly translates as: “Prophet, you crazy bloke! Keeping women under yoke!”

Rose told me that a retired cartoonist, Erik Abild Sorensen, who is in his eighties, drew this “Muhammad cartoon.” The cartoonist phoned Rose to ask if he was too late to send something in, and Rose told him “go ahead.” The drawing was the last of the twelve to arrive and came in as a sketch on an envelope.

I asked, “Was there anything in the envelope?”

Rose said, “No.”

I asked, “Do you understand this drawing? Can you explain it?”

Rose said, “Well, there’s a little poem there that addresses the general topic.”

I asked, “OK, but the cartoon, what is it?”

Rose said, “I don’t know”

I asked, “Could it be that the elderly artist actually drew Muhammad, and forgot to put his cartoon in the envelope, and just did a little, thoughtless doodle on the envelope, maybe, while he was talking on the phone?”

Rose said, “Yes, that is possible,” and laughed.

For this “drawing of Muhammad,” the cartoonist went under police protection as the world erupted in chaos. I had to laugh too.

I posted the cartoon on my blog and some readers wrote in with the same take on the cartoon; this explanation comes from “Lady Mim” in Switzerland:

“…Now if I may solve this puzzle for you: the Muhammad cartoon you note on your blog that you can’t understand. I had to laugh too, a bit sourly. These are NOT men with a helmet. These are women. The helmet is the head. The lines are the veil. The Jewish star is the eye. The crescent moon is the open mouth. The cartoon depicts angry women who shout at the Prophet … saying that he is responsible for them being kept under a yoke …”

As I take another look I think I might see a little pupil in the Star of David eyeball in the upper left. Maybe not.

Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. Daryl 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. He runs the most popular cartoon site on the Web at Cagle.msnbc.com. 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.