Here, the editor of the Hattiesburg
American explains their newspaper’s
decision to run my "mean spirited" Palin cartoon (even though the cartoon is
just awful) in the face of angry reader reaction.
War, Peace and the Spirit of Christmas
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I am “mean spirited”
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Three New Cartoonists
We just added three new cartoonists to
the site. Actually, they are three old cartoonists who are coming
back after some time away.
The first is Brian Duffy of the Des Moines
Register. Brian is one of only two cartoonists whose color cartoons
appear every day on the front page of a large metropolitcan daily
newspaper (the other is Corky Trinidad of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin).
Welcome back, Brian! Click to see more of Brian’s work.
Next is Jonathan Shapiro, the mega award-winning
cartoonist from South Africa who draws under the name "Zapiro."
Jonathan was the winner of the Cartoonists Rights Network’s courage
in Editorial Cartoonists Award for drawing in the face of threats
to his safety. Click to see more of Zapiro’s work.
And next is
Sepideh Amjarooz, a rare woman editorial cartoonist from Iran
(where our web site is blocked by the government). Sepideh has
a charming style which is very different that what our Western
eyes expect. She didn’t update her cartoons for a while, and
we dropped her slot, then she wrote to say, "put me back
up!" and that’s what we’re doing. Click to see more of Sepideh’s work.
It looks like I’m not the only one getting
lots of angry reader response to my Palin cartoon.
Here is a column by the Boulder Daily Camera
Editorial Page Editor, Erika Stutzman, defending my Palin cartoon
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The Fickle Media is Always the Same
The fickle media is always the same – no
one has ever noticed that, so I thought I would demonstrate.
Here’s my latest cartoon, showing the fickle media "changing"
from their fixation on Obama to Sarah Palin.
But it wasn’t long ago when we started
the primary season, and the media went from blanket coverage
of the Iowa Caucuses to the New Hampshire Primary.
This was quite a popular cartoon, but it wasn’t good for very
long. Once the New Hampshire pirmary was over, I needed a new
one.
Hey, every state is cute, and nobody notices that the fickle
media is always the same. Remember when that nutty pedophile
in Thailand confessed to the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, and
the media all chased after him?
Then there was the time that the heat was
on Karl Rove over his role in outing Valerie Plame, and Rove
was saved from media attention by President Bush announcing a
Supreme Court nominee, and then everyone lost interest in Rove.
Yes, the same fickle media.
Now, remember way back to the last presidential primaries, when
Howard Dean started losing, and John Kerry started winning …
Then there was the end of the Bill Clinton administration, when
Bill stepped out of the White House, Hillary stepped into the
Senate.
And, two years before that, here in California, the fickle media
dogged Senator Barbara Boxer, as she was running for re-election,
avoiding questions about Monica Lewinski.
The fickle media never changes over the
years – but they sure are easy to draw.
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My Art for the First Debate
The
first presidential debate is going to be held at the University
of Mississippi, which hired me to do an illustration for the
event – here it is on their current "Ole Miss"
magazine cover. They will be using it for other stuff associated
with the debate too, probably the programs or a poster or something.
It would be fun if they would blow it up big as a backdrop (somehow
I doubt that they’ll do that, but thanks, Ole Miss!)
My book publisher (Que/Pearson Education)
liked it too, and it will also be the cover of our upcoming BIG
Book of Campaign 2008 Cartoons, which is slated to be in stores
in a month. Today, my loyal assistant, Stacey, and I did an urgent, last
minute edit to fit more Palin cartoons into the book.
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Bristol Palin is OFF LIMITS
Republicans operatives are screaming that
Sarah Palin’s family is off limits and the media should lay off; even Barack Obama agrees. What they don’t seem to realize
is that by saying that, they are only encouraging the cartoonists
to draw more. We just put up a Palin’s pregnant daughter collection; we’ll
keep updating it as new cartoons flood in. Here are some of my
favorites, by Peter Nicholson, Nate Beeler, Mr. Fish and Pat Bagley.
The editorial cartoonist community is buzzing
with the news that Jim Borgman will be retiring from editorial
cartooning at the end of the month. Borgman draws the comic
strip "Zits" with Jerry Scott; it looks like a lot
of work to hold down both jobs, so the decision doesn’t seem
surprising. Borgman took a buyout from the shrinking Enquirer
and will draw a new, local weekly cartoon for the newspaper as
a freelancer.
We have comments in the blog now and quite
a spirited discussion on my pregnant Bristol Palin
cartoon below. It is fascinating to see the outrage from
the conservatives over my choice to depict the pregnant teen
in a cartoon. I would remind the righties that it was Sarah Palin
who chose to put her family in front of the camera and who has
been so vocal in her opposition to birth control and sex education
in schools; the abstinence-only sex education that she supports
doesn’t work, and the pregnant teenage daughter she chose to
have stand behind her on stage illustrates the point.
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SARAH PALIN’S PREGNANT DAUGHTER CARTOON
I’ve been getting an interesting response from editors to my cartoon that features Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter. Conservative editors write to me in disgust, saying that I was "over the line" by drawing the girl; liberal editors are writing to me to say "right on!" and "finally! Great cartoon!"
I can’t remember getting a response like this from editors before, so I thought I would post the cartoon here for comment. Click here to comment on the cartoon.
Of-course, the cartoon isn’t about the daughter, it is about the Palin’s opposition to birth control and sex education in schools, and her "abstinence only" stance. Social conservatives like to make the point that "abstinence" as birth control "always works," but realists can see that "abstinence-only" sex education works only as well as it did with Palin’s daughter.
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NEW CAGLE CARTOONIST!
I’m pleased to announce that we have added
a new cartoonist to our newspaper syndication package, David Fitzsimmons
of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. I’ve been a fan of David’s
work for a long time on our site. He draws the gag cartoons that
editors prefer (David is a stand-up comedian) and his cartoons
have a real, toothy bite! Some samples are below. See David’s archive on our site here.
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Dueling Toon-Ops
The quality of my local Los Angeles Times has sunk so low that I’ve switched to reading the competing Los Angeles Daily News, which employs a full time cartoonist (Patrick O’Connor) and runs great editorial cartoons every day of the week. The LA Times now goes without any editorial cartoon three days a week, prints only one cartoon three days a week, and no longer employs a cartoonist. The Times even dropped their Sunday opinion section and runs Editorials and Op-Ed in the back of the front section on Sundays, like they do on weekdays.
On Sundays, the LA Times runs three cartoons and a little blurb by cartoonist Joel Pett describing the cartoons. The Times calls it "Toon-Op." The competing Daily News has copied the "Toon Op" format and runs the same thing, in the same format, with a similar blurb by Patrick O’Connor describing his three cartoon picks. The Daily News‘ "Toon Op" ran at the top of the page today, and the Pett "Toon Op" ran at the bottom of the page.
Both run the cartoons too small, and both apply a halftone screen to cartoons that are delivered in perfectly good, crisp, line art, degrading the print quality of the cartoons. (Newspapers often do this because they give the layout work to careless, low-paid, graphic-grunts who treat all images as though they were photographs from wire services.)
Which is better? Patrick’s choices today included three Cagle Cartoonists (Fairrington, Cardow and Beeler) while Pett’s included only one Cagle Cartoonist (Beeler) – so I’ll go with the Daily News – yet another reason not to read the LA Times.
Patrick O’Connor’s "Toon-Op" in the LA Daily News:
Joel Pett’s "Toon-Op" in the LA Times:
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Kazakhstan and Yellow
Yipes! It looks like we need to make last minute changes to the book cover, and the back cover will be yellow. So much last minute book stuff to do! Our campaign 2008 book will be in stores in about 6 weeks.
And a weekly magazine in Kazakhstan just subscribed to our cartoon service. I’ll bet they don’t see many Western cartoons there.
Remember to follow me on Twitter. I’ll try to keep it up with trivial cartoon news tidbits that don’t quite warrant a place on the blog. I think the Twitter format is interesting in that everyone has so much more to say when we don’t have to say anything worthwhile. I’m at twitter.com/dcagle.
Mike Keefe will have an animation on ABC World News Tonight tonight or tomorrow night, he’s doing it specially for them in his “Talking Heads” format, we’ll post it on the site in Mike’s Animation collection when he’s done.