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Trump and Taylor Swift!

Now there’s a highly unlikely couple.

On our most recent Caglecast podcast we asked three great editorial cartoonists to discuss drawings that depict the famous duo’s politics, cultural influence and, of course, their hair.

I’ll spare readers what Jeff Koterba, Rick McKee, Taylor Jones and I said about Trump or his politics — except to confess that we coupled him with Swift just because nobody watches if we don’t have the Donald to mock and skewer.

Joined by Jase Graves, a nationally syndicated humor columnist and Swiftie whom we syndicate at CagleCartoons.com, we concentrated on about 27 Swift cartoons.

Don’t miss our new TRUMP CHRISTMAS SPECIAL podcast on YouTube!

We old guys generally agreed that she was a talented and beautiful person who  despite being hard to caricature was fun to draw. Plus, I like Taylor Swift’s kind of politics just fine.

She too criticizes Trump. She is a pro-choice feminist. She supports LGTBQ rights and gun control. She voted for Biden-Harris in 2020. And she’s all for the removal of Confederate statues in Tennessee, where monuments to racist traitors are ubiquitous.

I’m a Swiftie – mostly for political cartoonist reasons. Another Swiftie is Jeff Koterba, who has drawn for over 30 years for the top newspaper in Nebraska.

We discussed his cartoon that showed a wall poster of Taylor on stage in a young girl’s bedroom and a poster in her brother’s bedroom that showed a busty Dolly Parton on stage in shorts with a bare midriff.

Jeff said he was looking for an upbeat and pleasant take on a world filled with awful terrible things like war overseas and nasty partisan politics at home.

Speaking of which – or should I say “drawing of which”? – Rick McKee’s Swift cartoon showed Uncle Sam buried under an avalanche of 20 important boulders like “Inflation,” “Ukraine War,” Govt. Corruption.”

A news reporter is bent over asking semi-crushed Uncle Sam, “How do you feel about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift?”

McKee, who was the cartoonist for decades for the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, was reacting to the Taylor Swift frenzy in the national media last summer. Though not a devout Swiftie, he admits being  “a recent convert” to understanding her massive appeal.

Taylor Jones, who draws for the Hoover Digest at Stanford, showed Taylor Swift on stage surrounded by a bunch of birds. She asks, “Are you my fans too?” and one says, “We’re chimney Swifts — the original Swifties!”

When I said I found it hard to draw attractive people like Taylor because their features are, by definition, too normal, too smooth and boring looking, Jones disagreed.

“To me,” he said, “Taylor Swift is pretty distinctive looking…. She’s got very thick hair” and there’s hardly “any space between her bangs and her eyes.”

I added that in addition to her great smile, her teeth are not just distinctive, they are cute. Usually you’d think teeth should  not be noticeable.

Jace Graves, the writer among us, said, it’s not just that Taylor Swift is beautiful. It’s that “she’s aware of her imperfections and she’s very real. I think that’s one thing that draws people to her.”

We discussed other cartoons from around the country starring Taylor Swift, including one by John Darkow that played off the fact that Time magazine named her its Person of the Year.

As two AI robots are looking at the Time magazine with Swift’s face on the cover, Darkow has one saying, “We’ll let them have this one” and the other saying, “But it’ll be the last.”

Eventually we picked up on the subject of Taylor Swift’s gigantic impact on the sports world because of her romance with K.C. Chiefs star Travis Kelce.

Dave Whamond’s cartoon had Taylor Swift named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year – and the NFL’s MVP.

We spent most of our  40 minutes focused on Taylor Swift and the impact she’s had on the economy, culture, sports, politics, the music industry and the hearts, minds and bodies of young girls.

We had virtually nothing negative to say about her – which was a refreshing change for our profession.

Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers.

Watch our latest video podcast!

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War, Peace and the Spirit of Christmas

‘Tis the season to be jolly – but it hasn’t always been so jolly. There is a dramatic history of battles at Christmas time.

Not just the skirmishes that pop up at our family’s Christmas dinner table when a crazy MAGA uncle drops a bomb about the “Biden Crime Family” as he passes the potatoes. And not the phony “War on Christmas” that conservatives have been claiming for years that liberals are waging on Christianity. There’s been genuine, yuletide warfare. Like the terrible wars we have now between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.

A quick Google search shows that wars seem to heat up or cool down at Christmas.

George Washington famously celebrated Christmas in 1776 by sneaking across the Delaware river to defeat the “Hessians,” the soldiers from Germany that Britain hired to help them lose the Revolutionary War.

On Christmas Day in 1831 about 60,000 slaves in Jamaica bravely went on a non-violent strike against their British oppressors, demanding freedom and wages. It ended badly for the slaves – 500 were killed or executed in the ensuing violence. But the brutal way the Brits treated the rebels is said to have influenced Britain’s decision to abolish slavery within its global empire.

Christmas time was also a popular time for acts of war in the 20th century.

The bloodiest battle ever fought during Christmas began Dec. 23, 1916, in Riga, Latvia, when Russian and German troops collided.

A horrible example of how awful trench warfare was, 60,000 Russians and 6,000 Germans died in a battle that achieved nothing for either side and ultimately helped bring on the Russian Revolution.

And who with a Netflix account can ever forget Christmas 1944, when Hitler launched his famous last gasp – the surprise counter-attack in Belgium that became known as “The Battle of the Bulge”?

Christmas isn’t always a good time for war, though. Every once in a while it’s a good time for peace.

For example, the War of 1812 ended in a truce as the USA and Great Britain signed “The Treaty of Ghent” on Christmas Eve in 1814.

On Christmas Eve in 1914, when World War I was still young, German and Allied soldiers on the Western Front held a spontaneous armistice that we’ll probably never see again.

In what became famous as “The Christmas Truce,” they walked to the middle of “No Man’s Land,” shook hands, sang carols and even exchanged gifts before going back to slaughtering each other a few days later.

Even Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro used Christmas as an excuse for doing something nice.

In 1972 Nixon called a 36-hour halt to a major bombing campaign over North Vietnam. And in 1998 Cuba’s most famous atheist, Fidel Castro, “celebrated” the birth of Baby Jesus by ending the ban on the holiday he had instituted 30 years earlier.

China has also changed its communist mind about Christmas, which was once banned by Mao and Co.. Under modern China’s later, somewhat less-dictatorial leaders, Christmas has made a comeback as a useful gift-giving holiday and economic booster.

Elsewhere, Christmas celebrations are still against the law in joyless places like North Korea, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Celebrations of Christmas were illegal in Saudi Arabia until recent years when the murderous Saudi Prince Muhammad Bin Salman loosened the Christmas reigns.

After the English Civil War, the British Parliament passed a ban on Christmas. A 1647 law, championed by conservative Puritans, forced stores to remain open on Christmas and punished people for attending Christmas services and celebrations. The next time a MAGA relative brings up the “War on Christmas,” be sure to remind him of Oliver Cromwell and his Christmas-banning, right-wing, conservative buddies. Conservatives have short memories at the dinner table.

There’s nothing like spending an afternoon on Google to put me into the wartime Christmas spirit. Now I’m mad.

Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers.

Watch our latest video podcast!

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Great New Global Warming Cartoons!

We have a cool – yet hot – new Caglecast about Global Warming with three brilliant, award winning cartoonists discussing their cartoons about our growing climate apocalypse. See the podcast here:

Pat Bagley has been the brilliant, cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah since 1979. Pat has won a ton of awards including the Herblock Award and he’s also a shining star in our profession.

Graeme MacKay is the brilliant cartoonist for the Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada and he’s won a ton of awards too.

Rod Emmerson is the brilliant cartoonist for the New Zealand Herald since 2003, before that he was an Australian cartoonist and he’s won tons of awards too, including two Australian Stanley awards for best editorial cartoonist.

Come take a look on YouTube –it really is a great one with great cartoonists, and it is fun to see the faces behind the cartoons.

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Blog Newsletter Syndicate Top 10

DEBT DEAL: TOP TEN CARTOONS OF THE WEEK

After months of brinksmanship, House Republicans and President Joe Biden came together raise the debt ceiling and avert an economic calamity. Republicans got some of the cuts they wanted, Biden kept most of his economic policies intact, and editors got a flood of debt ceiling cartoons.

The bad news? Cartoonists will be back drawing more debt ceiling cartoons in 2025… unless we’re all replaced by AI.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Jeff Koterba

We have a great new Caglecast about Artificial Intelligence! Watch it on YouTube or on Caglecast.com!

We just added closed captioning and different language sub-titles on YouTube, and we’ll have that soon on CagleCast.com too! In this episode see me and our CagleCartoonists Jeff Koterba, Andy Singer, Rick McKee and our anonymous cartoonist, Rivers!

#2. R.J. Matson

 

#3. Jeff Koterba

 

#4. Guy Parsons

 

#5. Rivers

 

#6. John Darkow

 

#7. John Cole

 

#8. Rick McKee

 

#9. Dick Wright

 

#10. Ed Wexler

Support our Popular, liberal, funny Cartoonist, Bob Englehart –We Need to Keep Bob Drawing!

Or you can support our Cagle.com site!
Become a Cagle.com HERO!

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Tucker Carlson Cartoons

You can learn more about this cool Ed Wexler, Tucker Carlson cartoon and thirty more on our new Caglecast podcast!

Watch the video! We’ve got cartoons about tanned testicles, Swanson TV dinners, Tucker’s lies from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit discovery, snuggling up to Putin and denying the violence at the January 6th insurrection –we’ve got a Cartoon Tuckerfest!

Cartoons are a great insight into the news, distilling complex issues into images. We have the best cartoonists to explain what’s behind the cartoons, giving their witty insights on the Fox News and Tucker, who we now know were lying the whole time. This is a great Caglecast –don’t miss it!

Our three great cartoonist guests on the video podcast are:

GARY McCOY, who draws two newspaper comics strips, The Flying McCoys and the Duplex in addition to drawing editorial cartoons for our CagleCartoons.com syndicate and lots of other stuff. ED WEXLER, who is a brilliant caricaturist who worked for 30 years as a creative director at Disney. For 12 years he was a regular cartoonist for US News & World Report magazine. Ed is known for his caricature cover art for The Hollywood Reporter’s Academy Awards and Emmy Awards issues also for 12 years. And ADAM ZYGLIS, who is the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for The Buffalo News in New York.

The discussion turns into an argument with our conservative cartoonist friend, Gary, about whether the January 6th insurrection was even an insurrection at all, or just a pleasant day for tourists in Washington. We also have a close examination of Tucker’s testicles and Tucker’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Be sure to visit YouTube.com/@caglecast to subscribe!

Here are a few more great cartoons from the Caglecast. Tune in to see them all, and see the cartoonists argue about them! And we really would appreciate your clickin g the “subscribe” button on YouTube.com/@caglecast!

by John Darkow
by Pat Bagley
by Bart van Leeuwen
by Adam Zyglis
by John Darkow
by Dave Granlund
by Chris Weyant
by Adam Zyglis
by Dave Whamond
by Pat Bagley
by Gary McCoy
by Pat Bagley

Much more from the cartoonists behind the cartoons at: YouTube.com/@caglecast!

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Become a Cagle.com HERO!

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Conservatives Gary McCoy and Rivers – Drawing Amongst Liberals

On this week’s Caglecast we’re joined by two of our most conservative cartoonists, Gary McCoy who also draws two comic strips, “The Duplex” and “The Flying McCoys”; and Rivers, who draws anonymously and joins us with a disguise and an altered voice.

The vast majority of editorial cartoonists are liberal so the few, conservative cartoonists stand out as unusual, and often stand alone voicing ideas that seldom find their way into general circulation newspapers; Gary and Rivers are among the best among the few conservative cartoonists, and they talk about living in a world of liberal editors which includes their liberal editor who is hosting the podcast, me, Daryl Cagle.

Gary and Rivers show lots of their favorite cartoons, they enjoy denigrating Dr. Anthony Fauci; they deny the efficacy of COVID vaccines; they complain about the ignorance of liberals who watch MSNBC; they let us know that we wouldn’t have this war in Ukraine now if Trump was in office; they tell us about how the insurrection wasn’t an insurrection at all, and how most of the MAGA folks on January 6th were out for a peaceful stroll.

We could have titled this “Cartoons from the Bizarro Dimension.”  …but we love Gary and Rivers. Really, we do.  Here are a few of the images that are discussed in the video.

Please subscribe to Caglecast on Apple Podcasts! Thanks!

Support our endangered profession!
Become a Cagle.com HERO!

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Cartoon Complaint Campaigns

Tempers run short in turbulent times, so it is no surprise that provocative editorial cartoons sometimes get blowback from readers. Cartoons generate angry conversation on social media, but they seldom generate complaints to us, or to the newspapers that run them – unless there is an organized campaign to solicit complaints. These campaigns usually take the form of Facebook pages that demand that an editor or cartoonist is punished, or simply demands an apology, and newspapers are often quick to apologize.

Sometimes editors blame their choices on poor editorial cartoons in general, as when the New York Times dumped the little Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate that they hosted and announced that they would stop running editorial cartoons entirely in all of their editions. One of our CagleCartoonists, Patrick Chappatte, lost his regular gig for the International New York Times with this editorial overreaction, over a cartoon that Patrick didn’t draw.

Back in July of 2016, a complaint campaign against the St Louis Post-Dispatch targeted this Dave Granlund “itchy trigger-finger” cartoon and elicited a typical apology from the editor.

This week there was a similar campaign of complaints and demands about the “Bad Cops Under the Bed” cartoon of mine that ran in the St Louis Post-Dispatch, but this time the newspaper, to their credit, didn’t apologize and stood behind me and the cartoon in an editorial.

The offending Antonio Antunes cartoon that lost a job for CagleCartoonist Patrick Chappatte, crushed a little syndicate and lost a top venue for all editorial cartooning as the New York Times banned cartoons.

Earlier this month there was yet another complaint campaign about a Gary McCoy cartoon in the Florence SC Morning News. This longtime CagleCartoons subscribing paper prints just about every cartoon that opposes abortion rights and there aren’t a whole lot of those, so when one pops up it is no surprise that it gets ink in Florence. The abortion topic doesn’t mix well with Black Lives Matter (I thought the cartoon was offensive myself) and the paper apologized, going the New York Times route of announcing that they are no longer running any editorial cartoons at all. They still like our columnist Michael Reagan though, so they continue to be a good subscriber and we hope to woo them back with more, great conservative cartoons. (Those anti-abortion cartoons are pretty hard to resist in Florence.)

Also earlier this month, our CagleCartoonist Rick McKee suffered a complaint campaign with this cartoon in The Columbian newspaper in Washington. The newspaper took the usual route of apologizing for the cartoon, but didn’t ban all cartoons.

There are more recent examples with cartoons from cartoonists who aren’t represented by my little syndicate generating complaints campaigns and newspaper apologies, but I’m not posting them here because, well, they aren’t represented by my little syndicate.

This is the new normal:

1. A reader is offended by a cartoon she disagrees with in her local newspaper and puts up a Facebook campaign soliciting complaints demanding an apology, the firing of the editor and/or the firing of the cartoonist.

2. The Newspaper apologizes for their poor choice of cartoon; or they stop running all cartoons. No other newspapers get complaints about the cartoon, only the one paper that has a campaigning reader gets complaints.

3. Repeat.

It was nice to see the St Louis Post-Dispatch break that pattern this week, standing by my cartoon. Editors should have the guts to stand behind their decisions.

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Favorite Cartoons of the Decade

Here is my selection of my favorite cartoons of the decade. See them on the USA Today site here.

I pitched the idea to Gannett of running collections of favorite cartoons of the decade every day in December, the last month of the decade, with a selection by a different cartoonist each day. We, along with USA Today, selected the CagleCartoonists we would invite to participate and we asked them each to choose their favorite cartoons from the past ten years. I submitted twenty-nine batches of cartoons, selected by each of twenty-nine of our CagleCartoonists.  USA Today plans on showcasing their own Gannett employee cartoonists, Thompson, Marlette, Murphy and Archer, through Thursday, with our CagleCartoonists finishing out the month, starting this Friday with Pat Bagley.

USA Today started off their daily, decade slideshows today with their talented cartoonist, Mike Thompson, who also did the work of laying all of these collections out for The USA Today Network sites (that includes the individual Web sites for all of Gannett’s 100+ daily newspapers). Visit USA Today’s Opinion page online to see these every day this month. Click on each cartoon in each slideshow to see a full-screen, high-resolution version of each cartoon, which is very nice.

It is very difficult to select a small batch of cartoons to represent an entire decade!!

Getting twenty-nine CagleCartoonists to each select a decade of favorites was challenging. Obama certainly got shorted as many cartoonists are obsessed with Trump now. A couple of cartoonists selected only Trump-bashing cartoons, which made for a poor representation of the decade –but hey, the fact that the cartoonists chose their own favorites made this project interesting.  Some cartoonists, who have been with us for less than ten years, had to dig into their personal archives to cover the whole decade, so some of the cartoons haven’t been seen on Cagle.com. New Yorker/Mad Magazine/graphic-novelist Peter Kuper joined CagleCartoons.com just a couple of months ago and had to dig up his whole collection from his magazine gag cartoon archives. Dave Whamond and Ed Wexler, who joined us more recently, reached into their vaults for some of their early-decade cartoons; Ed selected some from when he was regularly drawing for US News & World Report magazine. Mike Keefe and Bill Schorr came out of their recent retirements to contribute their selections of favorites.

I wouldn’t call these selections the “best” of the decade, they are just the artists’ choices. I also can’t say that they represent the decade well (but what the heck).

Look at our other, great collections of Cartoons Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.
Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade! 
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!


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My Cartoon Decade With Microsoft

 

Ten years seems to fly by!

I notice that nbcnews.com still has my “decade in review” posted –from back in 2009, with 45 of my cartoons telling the story of the decade from 2000 through 2009 as seen from my old msnbc.com perch.

 

Come take a look –it brings back memories!

 

I’ll do another “decade in review” in three or four months, covering 2010 through 2019. Time flies!

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I’m Emerging From My Hermit Lair to Give a Lecture!

It is rare that I come out of hiding to give a talk, but I will do that on Monday September 23rd at Art Center College in Pasadena. I’ll be speaking at Michael Dooley’s comics history class; I’ll show lots of my work and explain how everything I do works. Here’s the announcement – it is open to the public and free.

I met Michael at our local National Cartoonists Society Los Angeles Chapter where I heard about his impressive class at Art Center; the class is titled, “Design History of Comics and Animation”. Michael brings in lots in interesting guest speakers, who he announces on his Facebook page. I’m going to start going to these, they look great.

I’ll talk about my varied career, as an illustrator in New York, as a toy inventor, as a political cartoonist, and now running a little syndicate. I’ll cover the world scene for editorial cartoons (internationally our art form is much more highly regarded than it is here). And we’ll have lots of time for questions – Michael wants to talk about the future of editorial cartooning and how the business works. OK.

I guessing the crowd will be small, so if you can make it to Pasadena, don’t hesitate to come and ask lots of questions! Its FREE and open to the public! 


Read more old stuff about my career as a cartoonist on DarylCagle.com:

When I was President, PART THREE of three

When I was President, PART TWO of three

When I was President, PART ONE of three

Was I Sunk by Submarines?

Baptists, Gay Marriage, Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, Bert and Ernie

Genies Turned me into a Political Cartoonist

Muppet Mob Scene

CagleCartoonists in France

Amazing

TRUE Color

TRUE Stupid Stuff 2

TRUE Stupid Stuff

TRUE Sex 3

TRUE Sex 2

TRUE Sex

TRUE Life Stuff

TRUE Crazy Stuff 4

TRUE Crazy Stuff 3

TRUE Crazy Stuff 2

TRUE Crazy Stuff

TRUE Devils, Angels and YUCK

TRUE Kids 3

TRUE Kids 2

TRUE Kids

TRUE Health Statistics 3

TRUE Health Statistics 2

TRUE Health Statistics 1

TRUE Women’s Body Images

TRUE History

TRUE Marriage 2

TRUE Marriage

TRUE Business

Garage 8: MORE!

Garage 7: TV Toons

Garage 6

Garage 5

Daryl’s Garage Encore! (Part 4)

Still More Daryl’s Garage! (Part 3)

More Garage Art (Part 2)

Garage Oldies (Part 1)

29 Year Old Oddity

Daryl in Belgium

Cagle in Bulgaria

CagleCartoonists Meet in France

Cartooning for the Troops in Bahrain

RoachMan

Answering a College Student’s Questions about Cartoons

Punk Rock Opera

 

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Blog Syndicate

TRUE Sex 2!

Another new collection of a dozen of my old TRUE cartoons about SEX! Take a look below!

  

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TRUE Crazy Stuff 4!

Here’s a new batch of my old TRUE cartoons. This first one is a self-portrait of younger me, sitting on the toilet, talking on my land-line rotary phone. Looking at the old True cartoons makes me feel young again, until I notice details that make me feel old.