DarylCagle.comToday the house Republicans voted to make Paul Ryan the new house speaker, replacing John Boehner who seems to have taken a responsible turn in negotiating a spending bill.
Paul Ryan was Mitt Romney’s running mate, and he has a history as a budget-cutting-wonk. He also had longer, puffier hair the last time around, which was much more fun to draw.
Bombastic Donald Trump is falling behind Ben “slow and steady wins the race” Carson, which sounds to me like the Tortoise and the Hare fable.
Both of these guys are gifts to cartoonists. People find it disturbing whenever I mention this, but I like Donald Trump, compared to the other Republican candidates – it sounds crazy, but I think he’s more reasonable and moderate than Carson. It is only Carson’s demeanor that implies moderation.
Notice that I avoided drawing a tail on the turtle (most turtles have nice little tails). Given the position of the running turtle, there was no position I could find for a tail that didn’t look like a turtle penis. Self-censorship – its an ugly thing.
This hearing is much ado about nothing. I think my past cartoons about the Republican obsession with Benghazi are just as relevant today. Here’s a selection.
I’ve enjoyed the recent back-and-forth sniping between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush about whether President George W. Bush “kept us safe.” Of-course the answer to that is that he kept us safe, here but not overseas, from September 12th, 2001 going forward – a couple of qualifiers that Jeb neglected to mention.
A “monkey on the back” is an editorial cartooning standard – in fact, my buddy Taylor Jones drew a better George W. Bush monkey on the back cartoon recently, that I noticed just now, after I finished my cartoon above. I might not have drawn it had I noticed Taylor’s excellent work first – oh well, there will be plenty of monkeys on the back to come.
Here’s President George W. Bush as a monkey on the back of John McCain back in 2008, by David Fitzsimmons.
This is one of my favorite monkey-Bush oldies, by Sandy Huffaker, from the good old days of 2005.
The Republicans infighting in congress is pretty crazy – enough for another noose cartoon. 
I seem to draw a lot of nooses. I draw lots of wordless cartoons and a noose is a good, simple, graphic threat. Here are the Republicans with a caduceus noose, from when they were trying to stop the government over and over, to protest Obamacare.
And here’s a more recent Trump tongue noose, when everyone, including me, thought that Donald Trumps provocative statements would knock him out of the presidential race – I was wrong; I guess I was playing too loose with that noose.
In old time comics there was a great thing where, when a character gives a dirty look the cartoonist would draw knives, or daggers, coming out of their eyes, pointing at where they are looking. Urbandictionary.com defines it this way:
It is tough to be an editorial cartoonist in Pakistan. Check out my conversation with courageous Pakistani cartoonist Sabir Nazar who will soon be joining our Cagle.com site. I put some samples of his work below the video.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSHvr9ZBhgo]
Sabir is the staff cartoonist for The Daily Express Tribune, which is affiliated with The New York Times International. He draws color cartoons for The Friday Times, Newsweek Pakistan, Pakistan Today and The Herald, all in Pakistan.
Welcome to Cagle.com, Sabir!
I think all world issues can be boiled down to doggies.
I’ll be giving a lecture with lots of cartoons at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (just south of Nashville). It is a rare opportunity to see the reclusive, elusive Cagle – and it is free to the public! It will be at 4:30pm pon Thursday, October 22nd in the Bragg Media and Entertainment Building, Room 104.
The Republicans in the House of Representative are a real puzzle – so I decided to go with that for today’s cartoon. Perhaps this a little obtuse. I think that readers who are familiar with my work would be able to decipher my GOP elephant from just a tiny little puzzle piece, but this cartoon may go over the heads of many readers.
I thought it was possible that some readers (particularly elderly readers who love old-fashioned jigsaw puzzles) might actually cut the little pieces out and assemble the puzzle – and it actually works! SPOILER ALERT — scroll down to see the solution … or, is that really the solution … ?
The Republican battles for Speaker of the House make great theatre. Here’s my new one – a battle royale.
Here are a couple of oldies that I reposted because they seem so appropriate right now.
The New York Times, which doesn’t have an editorial cartoonist and dropped their weekly round-up of syndicated editorial cartoons years ago, recently announced a contest for budding, young, student editorial cartoonists, who may grow up to not be published in the New York Times.
This story is so tone deaf and ironic that I had to write a bit about it. A judge of the contest is my cartoonist buddy, Patrick Chappatte, pictured at right, who draws for the New York Times owned “International New York Times” which was formerly the “International Herald Tribune.” Patrick lives and works from his home in Switzerland.
The Times runs a lot of illustrations on their editorial pages, and these may look like editorial cartoons to readers, but illustrations are done to the specifications of the client, and are usually depicting the ideas of the writer of the columns that the art accompanies. Editorial cartoonists are like visual columnists, we draw our own ideas, something that clearly makes editors at the New York Times feel uncomfortable.
There are two famous, unattributed quotes from NY Times editors:
1) We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because we would never give so much power to one man.
2) We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because you can’t edit and editorial cartoonist like you can a writer.
Most of the syndicated cartoonists submitted their work to the Times back when they did a weekly “round-up.” The Times would pick perhaps three cartoons, and paid $50.00 each, but only if the cartoonist noticed that they ran his cartoon, and sent them an invoice. When I asked them about this system, they told me that they expect everyone to read the Times, so, of-course, everyone would notice if a cartoon was used.
Suppose I placed a standing order with McDonalds; I would instruct McDonalds to deliver a hamburger to me every day at lunch time. I may or may not choose to eat the hamburger, and if I choose to eat it I’ll pay for it, but only if someone from McDonalds sees me eating it and asks me to pay. Cartoonists went along with a plan that McDonalds would never countenance.
Sometime after dropping their round-up, editors at the Times had second thoughts. They had conducted surveys where readers responded that they missed seeing editorial cartoons in the Times, so the Times decided to bring the round-up back, but this time, without paying the pesky $50.00 fee to the cartoonists. They sent emails to the top cartoonists, inviting them to submit again, for the privilege and exposure that having a cartoon in the Times would bring them.
To their credit, my colleagues revolted, with most of them responding in emails to the Times that they would not submit cartoons for no payment and the Times dropped the idea.
And that’s where we are with traditional editorial cartoons in the New York Times – America’s newspaper of record; they could have any of the best editorial cartoonists jump at the opportunity to work for them, but, alas, we’re not worth $50.00.
The biggest circulation newspaper in America, The Wall Street Journal, doesn’t have an editorial cartoonist either. At least USA Today still pays $50.00 for a cartoon.
