Quiet the Hate: Top Ten Cartoons of the Week
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Obama is Going to Win
Last week, my daughter Susie Cagle, a journalist and cartoonist, sat down with Cartoonist Rights Network International’s Executive Director, Robert Russell, to discuss how she was wrongfully arrested twice by Oakland, California police. In fact, a charge from her first arrest, failing to leave the scene of a riot, has never been dismissed by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
Susie also talks about the state of media, and how paid reporters who have been laid off have been replaced by citizen journalists, individuals who are personally passionate about the topics they’re covering and documenting, which allows police and government officials to ignore their rights as journalists.
“The mayor of Oakland in February or March, called them fake journalists, fake media, and we need to figure out a way to separate them from the real journalists,” Susie said. “It really goes to show a deep misunderstanding of what’s happening in media right now.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZVjE-lH6HM]
And here are some of Susie’s drawings. To see more, visit her Web site or follow her on twitter @susie_c.
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Hyderabad – I Didn’t Forget!
I was so rushed with the end of my India trip that I neglected to do a post about my visit to Hyderabad, the huge, hi-tech city in the middle of India. The Hyderabad cartoonists were great, and I enjoyed drinking with them through the night in the backyard of the Press Club, where I had some particularly hot Biriyani that made me sweat and shake, to the amusement of my colleagues. I especially enjoyed meeting renowned, veteran Hyderabad cartoonist, Mohan, who moved on from being a local, Telegu language political cartoonist for the huge Sakshi newspaper, to running his own animation studio.
The US Consulate put on a lovely show of my work in cooperation with the Muse Art Gallery at the Marriott Hotel in Hyderabad – they did a great job. I was impressed that they included my more edgy cartoons that would have gotten me thrown in jail, if America suffered the same, poor press freedoms as India.
I gave speeches at the Sri Venkateswara College of Fine Arts and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and at each a bunch of girls ran up to me after my talk to tell me how they have known my work for years because my cartoons appeared in their high school textbooks, which was fun.
There has been a lot of talk in India recently about banning some cartoons from high school text books, in particular, this one (below right).
This textbook cartoon controversy was much more interesting to the Indian cartoonists that I met than the brouhaha about the jailing of Aseem Trivedi, which was raging at the time. The cartoon was the subject of debate in the Indian Parliament, where it was described as racist, for showing former Indian Prime Minister Nehru, supposedly whipping Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a lower caste politician who is riding a snail. In fact, Nehru is not whipping Ambedkar – both Nehru and Ambedkar are whipping the snail, because they want the process of writing India’s new constitution to go faster.
In America we have idiots who fight to take evolution out of science text books all the time, so the idea that the Indian cartoonists were so invested in this debate, when one of their colleagues was thrown in jail for drawing their Parliament building as a toilet, seemed to be misplaced priorities to me.
I was very impressed by the colored pencil work of Shri Shankar Parmarthy, the staff cartoonist for the Sakshi newspaper, who did this great caricature of me standing in front of Hyderabad’s historic Charminar (top right).
I’ve posted Shankar’s brilliant Mother Teresa and Dalai Lama caricatures below. Impressive stuff.
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Mitt Romney and his Mormon 'Garments'
Recently, Mitt Romney has been harshly criticized in the media over his comments to a group of fundraisers labeling 47 percent of Americans as “lazy” and “entitled” to government support (view all our Romney gaffe cartoons). In an attempt to sidestep criticism, Romney recently called out President Obama for his desire to “redistribute” wealth, something of a dog-whistle to conservatives convinced Democrats are modern day socialists. Here is my cartoon:
I thought the classic phrase “the Emperor has no clothes” worked well visually for the point I was trying to convey, but it occurred to me afterwards that by drawing Romney naked, I omitted something important that is at the core of his beliefs – the religious “garments” he wears as underwear.
For Mormons, these temple “garments” are a special piece of clothing worn to represent a symbolic gesture of the promises they have made to God, and are seen as either a symbolic or literal source of protection from the evils of the world.
There’s a long tradition among editorial cartoonists of drawing politicians in their underwear, but not religious underwear like this. For instance, many cartoonists illustrated President Clinton’s sexual dalliances by drawing him with his pants around his ankles and wearing boxer shorts with a pattern of little hearts.
The same underwear treatment is given to serial adulterer politicians like Newt Gingrich, Arnold Schwarzenegger and too many members of congress to list. Even Batman and Superman wear their underwear on top of their tights. As an editorial cartoonist, I cherish my right to draw anyone I want in their underwear.
Here are a couple of cartoons I’ve drawn featuring Romney wearing his Mormon “garments.” I have gotten a bit of flack from readers about drawing the mysterious underwear on Romney, but not as much as I expected:
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Fox News and Possible Romney Bounce
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Romney Mosquitoes
Sipa news agency is reporting that French police have detained a man who is suspected of threatening to decapitate Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor-in-chief and cartoonist of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, after publishing naked caricactures of the Prophet Muhammad.
According to the report, the 43-year-old man is suspected of making the threat on an Internet forum, allegedly writing, “The essential thing is not to let him live in peace.”
Speaking about the cartoons, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration believed the cartoons “will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory.”
“We don’t question the right of something like this to be published,” he said. “We just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it.”
Charbonnier, who goes by the pen name “Charb,” defended the cartoons to the AP in part by telling reporters that Muhammad isn’t sacred to him.
“I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings,” he said. “I live under French law. I don’t live under Quranic law.”
He also said he doesn’t regret publishing the cartoons, nor does he take responsibility for any violence that may ensue.
“We’ve had 1,000 issues and only three problems, all after front pages about radical Islam.”
Watch the video from the AP here:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-059HXuW1E]
Previously: France Closes 20 Embassies Over Naked Muhammad Cartoons
Related: Cartoons about the reaction to drawings of the prophet Muhammad
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Best Cartoons of the Week
Every Friday, we collect the best political cartoons of the week and stuff them into one big, glorious slideshow.
So just relax and catch up on a week’s worth of news with our Best Cartoons of the Week slideshow.
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Rush Limbaugh and Shrinking Penises
An Italian study released this week found that due to weight gain, smoking, stress and environmental factors, the average male penis was 10 percent smaller than just 50 years ago.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who got into trouble earlier this year for calling Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke a “slut” for her advocation of birth control, blamed the male “shrinkage” on a group he dubs the “feminazis.” (view all our Rush Limbaugh cartoons)
“I think it’s feminism,” he said. “If it’s tied to the last 50 years — the average size of [a male’s] member is 10 percent smaller than 50 years — it has to be the feminazis, the chickification and everything else.”
According to our terrific caricaturist Taylor Jones (whose cartoons I syndicate in our Cagle Cartoons package), that “chickification” has effected Limbaugh too:
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Romney Distraction
Less than a year after their offices were firebombed for publishing a caricature of the prophet Muhammad, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has created a controversy in France for publishing cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad naked in their latest issue.
Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, says the cartoons were an attempt to poke fun at the furor over the anti-Muslim film causing protests throughout the Arab world, and will “shock those who will want to be shocked.”
According to the French newspaper Le Monde, one of the cartoons inside the magazine, entitled “Muhammad: a star is born,” depicts a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.
The front-page of the magazine features a cartoon of an Orthodox Jew pushing a Muslim man in a wheelchair, who is saying, “You mustn’t mock us!” under the headline “Untouchable 2,” a reference to a popular French film about a paralyzed rich man and his black assistant.
NBCNews.com has reported that France is temporarily closing its embassies and schools in 20 countries, fearing a violent backlash from protestors over the cartoons. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France Info radio, “Is it relevant and intelligent in this environment to add fuel to the fire?”
Charlie Hebdo is available on news stands all over France and is a top publishing venue for many top, French gag cartoonists. “Hebdo” is French for “weekly” and “Charlie” is a reference to the iconic cartoon character, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Hebdo’s web site went down yesterday because of a hacker attack. Our own site at cagle.com went down for a time yesterday in response to an unusually sophisticated, denial of service attack.
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Cartoonists React to Middle East Protests
Here’s my new cartoon about the protests going on throughout the Middle East and Asia over an anti-Muslim film posted on YouTube:
Most American cartoonists have spent the past few days drawing about Mitt Romney, after a grainy video was released of the Republican Presidential candidate telling a group of fundraisers almost half of the country feel they are “entitled” to government benefits and “lazy.”
So I thought I’d share a handful of cartoons by foreign cartoonists weighing in on the growing protests and outrage in the Arab world:
