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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.

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Blame China! Part 2

Here is part two of our BLAME CHINA cartoons!  See part one with cartoons defending China pushing against criticism. Since we hear so much about China from the Trump administration, it is interesting that most of the China bashing cartoons come from the international cartoonists.


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Our newspaper clients are crashing now as Coronavirus is crushing their advertisers. We need your support for Cagle.com (and DarylCagle.com) now more than ever! Notice that we run no advertising! We depend entirely upon the generosity of our readers to sustain the site. Please visit Cagle.com/heroes and make a contribution. You are much appreciated!



Rick McKee, Georgia


Jeff Koterba, Nebraska


Paresh Nath, India


Nem0, Canada


Bas van der Schot, The Netherlands


Gary McCoy, Illinois


Jimmy Margulies, New Jersey


Manny Francisco, Phillipines, Singapore

 
Marian Kamensky, Austria


Patrick Chappatte, Switzerland


Jos Collignon, The Netherlands

Dario Castillejos, Oaxaca, Mexico


Bob Englehart, Connecticut


Christo Komarnitsky, Bulgaria


Don’t miss my other Coronavirus posts:
School and COVID-19
Broken Quarantine
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 23rd, 2020
Hydroxychloroquine
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 16th, 2020
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Pandemic through May 4th
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 2nd, 2020
Best of the Grim Reaper, Part 1
Best of the Grim Reaper, Part 2
Dr Fauci PART 2
Dr Fauci PART 1
Trump and Disinfectant PART 2
Trump and Disinfectant PART 1
Most popular Cartoons of the Week through 4/26/20, (all coronavirus)
Forgotten Biden – Part 2
Forgotten Biden – Part 1
Most popular Cartoons of the Week through 4/18/20, (all coronavirus)
Blame China! Part Three
Blame China! Part Two

Blame China! Part One
Most popular Cartoons of the Week, through 4/11/20 (all coronavirus)
Planet COVID-19, Part 4

Planet COVID-19, Part 3
Planet COVID-19, Part 2
Planet COVID-19, Part 1
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week, 4/4/20 (all coronavirus)
Toilet Paper Part Two
Toilet Paper Part One
Trump and the Easter Bunny
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week, 3/29/20 (all coronavirus)
Tsunami Coming
Pandemics Compared
See, Hear Speak No Virus
The Best Coronavirus Sports Cartoons
New Coronavirus Favorites
The Most Popular Coronavirus Cartoons (as of May 4th, 2020)
My Corona Virus Cartoons
Corona Virus Quarantine Blues in China

 

Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Blame China! Part 1

President Trump has recently been more vocal in blaming China for the coronavirus, as have many voices in the media. China is blamed for being slow to respond to the virus, for silencing Chinese critics and for releasing dubious statistics and propaganda. There are reports that American intelligence agencies are investigating claims that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan that was studying the virus in bats. China has pushed back hard against these accusations and we can see the blame game clearly in our cartoons.  This is the first of two “Blame China” collections of cartoons.

Cartoon by Arcadio Esquivel, Costa Rica

I’m starting out with the cartoons from Luojie, our CagleCartoonist from Beijing who draws for The China Daily, China’s state owned, national English language newspaper. Loujie draws the Chinese government’s official point of view, pushing back against the criticism coming from America.

Interestingly, most of the “blame China” cartoons come from international cartoonists and few come from American cartoonists, even though China focuses on criticism coming from the USA.

See BLAME CHINA! Part 2


Luojie

Only one other CagleCartoonist takes the Chinese point of view, Hajo from France …

Hajo

All the rest of the cartoonists have jumped on the “blame China” bandwagon …

Alla and Chavdar, Bulgaria

 


Osama Hajjaj, Jordan

The next three come from our Dutch, photo-realistic cartoonist, Bart van Leeuwen …


Bart van Leeuwen


Manny Francisco, Singapore/Phillipines

See Blame China Part 2


Please forward this email to your friends – tell them our Cagle.com email newsletters are FREE and FUN! They can join the newsletter list at Cagle.com/subscribe.


Our newspaper clients are crashing now as Coronavirus is crushing their advertisers. We need your support for Cagle.com (and DarylCagle.com) now more than ever! Notice that we run no advertising! We depend entirely upon the generosity of our readers to sustain the site. Please visit Cagle.com/heroes and make a contribution. You are much appreciated!


Don’t miss my other Coronavirus posts:
School and COVID-19
Broken Quarantine
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 23rd, 2020
Hydroxychloroquine
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 16th, 2020
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Pandemic through May 4th
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 2nd, 2020
Best of the Grim Reaper, Part 1
Best of the Grim Reaper, Part 2
Dr Fauci PART 2
Dr Fauci PART 1
Trump and Disinfectant PART 2
Trump and Disinfectant PART 1
Most popular Cartoons of the Week through 4/26/20, (all coronavirus)
Forgotten Biden – Part 2
Forgotten Biden – Part 1
Most popular Cartoons of the Week through 4/18/20, (all coronavirus)
Blame China! Part Three
Blame China! Part Two

Blame China! Part One
Most popular Cartoons of the Week, through 4/11/20 (all coronavirus)
Planet COVID-19, Part 4

Planet COVID-19, Part 3
Planet COVID-19, Part 2
Planet COVID-19, Part 1
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week, 4/4/20 (all coronavirus)
Toilet Paper Part Two
Toilet Paper Part One
Trump and the Easter Bunny
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week, 3/29/20 (all coronavirus)
Tsunami Coming
Pandemics Compared
See, Hear Speak No Virus
The Best Coronavirus Sports Cartoons
New Coronavirus Favorites
The Most Popular Coronavirus Cartoons (as of May 4th, 2020)
My Corona Virus Cartoons
Corona Virus Quarantine Blues in China

Categories
News Newsletter Syndicate

Annual State of the State of Cartooning Address

This excellent address comes from my cartoonist buddy, David Fitzsimmons of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. –Daryl


During the second World War, British cartoonist David Low was despised by Hitler because he relentlessly refuted the lies broadcast by the Nazi propaganda machine with every stark cartoon. We’re a long way from the age in which internationally applauded cartoonists such as Sir David Low were knighted for their heroic defense of liberty.

When I opened my annual trade journal, The American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Notebook, the bell tolled for my profession, page by page, cartoonist by cartoonist. This year our annual AAEC convention will convene in Ottawa, Ontario, with our Canadian colleagues because our numbers are so small we could meet in an abandoned Fotomat kiosk.

Political cartoonist Bruce Plante called me from Oklahoma when his paper, the Tulsa World, had just been acquired by Lee Enterprises. Needing reassurance I told him, “Lee values cartoonists.” When we began our careers four decades ago there were hundreds of us. Today there are 25 newspaper editorial cartoonists left drawing truth to power in the United States.

A lot of giants have been kicked to the curb. After winning the Pulitzer, Mike Keefe was laid off from the Denver Post. Pulitzer winner Steve Benson was laid off last year from the Arizona Republic. The Houston Chronicle, Knoxville News Sentinel and Indianapolis Star summarily jettisoned their beloved veteran cartoonists Nick Anderson, Charlie Daniel and Gary Varvel.

Most troubling, Rob Rogers, the popular political cartoonist of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was fired by a pro-Trump editor who replaced him with Steve Kelley, a cartoonist who once informed me the most oppressed group in America was white men. Rob relies on syndication and Patreon online subscription patrons to get by.

Scott Stantis has a pseudo-freelance arrangement with his Chicago Tribune. Pat Bagley’s Salt Lake Tribune miraculously survives because it’s owned by a nonprofit corporation. Jack Ohman’s Sacramento Bee is part of the McClatchy chain, which just filed for bankruptcy. My friend and Tucson resident, Chris Britt, formerly of the Illinois State Journal-Register and News Tribune of Tacoma, transitioned to creating children’s books to supplement his syndication earnings.

Syndication is no longer reliable career insurance. Luckily, I’m syndicated to over 700 sites worldwide by Cagle Cartoons. In my AAEC Notebook, Daryl Cagle notes that newspaper chains are consolidating their editorial staffs into one central staff that generates cookie-cutter editorials for the entire chain, adding, “Newspapers are shutting down editorial page staffs faster than they are dropping editorial pages.”

When I was a kid I didn’t listen when the Master Sergeant sarcastically encouraged me to consider a backup plan.

“Doing what?”

“Carving gargoyles. See all the cathedrals in the want ads — hiring stone masons? Your odds of finding work are just as bright, Sunshine.”

I’m glad I didn’t listen. I got lucky. I drew in the last century during the Golden Age of Print and my luck continued through this century’s turbulent transition to digital. These days when young cartoonists ask me for career advice I tell them, “Learn to carve gargoyles.”

It’s impossible for cartoonists to keep up with today’s relentless whirlwind of news. By the time we’ve inked, scanned and uploaded our cartoons our subject’s been eclipsed by 12 new scandals. By the time we upload our hand-rendered cartoon it’s been preceded online by a multitude of memes and YouTube rants; not to mention overshadowed by the comic observers of late night TV. We can see why the producer of “This American Life,” Ira Glass, derided editorial cartooning as “a 17th century medium.”

Ironically, practitioners of our dissed and slowly dying 17th century art form are still sufficiently feared by tyrants to get killed, imprisoned or banished in this darkening century. To the benefit of tyrannies too many regions have become news deserts.

Too many citizens are now completely dependent on the internet for their news, a treacherous cyberswamp teeming with toxic lies and divisive disinformation. The radical right’s war to sow mistrust of the critical mainstream media, which began in the ’70s, along with the rise of Limbaugh, and the billionaire-funded right-wing propaganda mills like Fox, coupled with algorithm-driven cybermanipulation, have all been effective at rendering our citizenry ill-informed and factionalized — two outcomes fatal to democratic republics.

Undaunted by these challenges this “fake news peddler” and “obscene excuse for a mudslinging hack” is proud to be in the honorable company of those persistent resisters labeled the “Enemy of the People” by fascist despots.

Legend has it that David Low had designs for an underground shelter behind his modest London home into which he had placed supplies, a drawing board and a printing press. If his beloved nation were to fall to Nazi occupation, Low had plans to smuggle his family out of the country while he would remain behind, in hiding, churning out anti-fascist cartoons and spreading sedition until his home land was free.

My kind of cartoonist.

See more cartoons by Dave Fitzsimmons.


We need your support for Cagle.com (and DarylCagle.com)! Notice that we run no advertising! We depend entirely upon the generosity of our readers to sustain the site. Please visit Cagle.com/heroes and make a contribution. You are much appreciated!


 

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Gatehouse Guts our Guys

Editorial cartoonists losing their staff jobs has become old news as staff cutbacks at newspaper chains continue, but yesterday was an especially bad day. The Gatehouse chain laid off three staff cartoonists, Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch, Rick McKee of The Augusta Chronicle and Mark Streeter of The Savannah Morning News. They have been regular contributors to our Cagle.com site for close to fifteen years. Gatehouse’s fourth cartoonist, Dave Granlund, was not laid off, apparently because he works under a freelance contract and was not an employee. Beeler and McKee are part of our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate and are among our most popular cartoonists.

Gatehouse is America’s largest newspaper chain in terms of number of newspapers. (Gannett is the largest newspaper chain in term of number of readers.) The three cartoonists who were laid off were part of Gatehouse’s “More Content Now” shared services, distributing their work in internal syndication to all of the Gatehouse newspapers, so their loss will be felt by a large number of newspapers. Even though the value of the creative contribution of the three cartoonists’ work was multiplied across all the newspapers in the Gatehouse chain, making them much more valuable than the other employees laid off in this round of cuts, this cost-cutting move by Gatehouse doesn’t come as a surprise.

Rick tells me he hopes to continue drawing cartoons for the approximately 850 newspapers that subscribe to our syndicate, and I hope the same will be true for Nate. My sincere condolences go out to all three, and I am confident that they will continue to have successful cartooning careers as their work turns in new directions.

Here are the most recent cartoons by Rick McKee of The Augusta Chronicle, Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch and Mark Streeter of The Savannah Morning News.

 

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How to Fight ISIS? With Cartoons

Pundits like to complain that there are few voices from the Islamic world that condemn terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists. I run a small business that distributes editorial cartoons from around the world. With every major attack, including the recent attacks in Paris, I see a chorus of cartoons from Arab countries condemning the terror. The pundits must not be looking at the cartoons.

sack-cartoon
Cartoon by Steve Sack.

Editorial cartoonists are typically the most influential voices in newspapers throughout the Middle East, reflecting the views of their readers. Newspapers remain important in everyday life in the Middle East. Editorial cartoons grace the front pages throughout the Middle East. Arabic language cartoonists are typically anti-American and anti-Semitic, but on issues of terrorism they are largely voices of reason.

I often hear politicians complain about how the war with Islamic extremists is a battle for hearts and minds and we need to step up our role in an information war that we are losing. Editorial cartoons could be a weapon on the
front lines of that battle. By now Americans should see how powerful cartoons can be; clearly the terrorists see this, as cartoonists are among their primary targets. It is difficult for Americans to comprehend that editorial cartoons are important and effective in the Middle East because we view cartoons as trivial jokes, leading us to miss many opportunities.

Until recently, the US State Department had programs that brought American cartoonists on speaking tours to the Middle East to meet their colleagues, and had reciprocal programs to bring Arabic language editorial cartoonists to America. The programs sought to spread common values to countries where persecuted and influential cartoonists typically are barred from drawing their own presidents. These effective State Department speaking programs for editorial cartoonists were dropped at the time of the “sequester” budget cuts. USAID supported journalism education initiatives in the Middle East ignore and exclude cartoonists.

As international respect for America has plummeted, respect for many of our institutions still runs high. American cartoonists are respected around the world, like American jazz musicians and basketball players. Middle Eastern cartoonists are eager to have their work appreciated by American readers and by the star American cartoonists who they respect and emulate. The Arab cartoonists push back against the press restrictions imposed by their regimes and envy America’s press freedoms.

Every act of terror brings new recruits to the Islamic extremists in ISIS; they seek glory, selling an image of bravery, striking back against the arrogant infidels in the West. Brandishing a gun demands a kind of respect. Fighting for religious values, no matter how twisted, demands a kind of respect. ISIS craves respect; what they can’t bear is ridicule. Islamic extremists who are widely seen as the butts of jokes won’t find many eager converts.

priggee-cartoons
Cartoon by Milt Priggee.

Cartoonists are masters of disrespect and are a continuing threat to the Islamic extremists. It is no surprise that editorial cartoonists are prime targets for terror. Along with other web sites around the world, my own editorial cartoon Web site, Cagle.com, is suffering hacker attacks that appear to originate with terrorists and despotic regimes who fear cartoons. Terrorists and despots have a weakness in common; they can’t take a joke.

America needs to wake up, deploy and support the world’s best soldiers in the modern information war, American cartoonists.

This weekend President Obama claimed that he is already doing most of the things that his political opponents demand in the war with ISIS; he called on his critics to contribute new and constructive ideas on what should be done. My recommendation is inexpensive and powerful: bring back and greatly expand the State Department’s shuttered editorial cartoon programs around the world.

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Blog

The Burden of Editorial Cartoonists and Thanks to the CMA

Last weekend I was in New York doing a panel keynote at the College Media Association (CMA) convention with Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis and Taylor Jones.

There was a great, receptive crowd of about 600 college newspaper editors and faculty advisors in attendance. Our panel was sponsored by USA Today, one of our clients. The CMA printed out a nice display of Charlie Hebdo tribute cartoons from our collection (http://darylcagle.com/charlie-hebdo-exhibit) which had previously been on display at Vanderbilt University.

The CMA hired eight security guards just for our event, at a cost of $4,000.00, and they rented metal detectors to screen attendees. Also, the NYPD had undercover officers distributed into the crowd, so there was a public expense as well.

The terrorists have succeeded in making editorial cartooning events an expensive burden; events and exhibitions are being cancelled around the world in response to terrorist threats and security concerns. I have to thank the CMA for daring to host cartoonist keynote speakers given their security concerns and the significant hassle and expense that we burdened them with.SpeakersPromoCMA2015

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Editorial Cartoonists are Like Chickens

ChickenColor600wide Editorial Cartoonists are Like Chickens cartoons

Click to see an even bigger cartoonist chicken.

I’m often asked what editorial cartoonists “are like.”  We’re a rare breed; there are only about 60 of us with full time jobs.  What we do and how we do it can seem strange to most people.

I think the best way to explain it is with chickens.  Editorial cartoonists are like chickens.

A flock of chickens is typically all female, with only one male.  Editorial cartoonists are the opposite, all males in the flock with only a couple of females. We work in little cubicles, for chickenfeed. Editorial cartoonists and chickens are all white (it is possible that you might see a brown chicken, but I don’t remember ever seeing a brown one).

When there is a weak chicken in a flock, the weak chicken’s colleagues will peck it to death. Why?  Social Darwinism.  Killing the weak strengthens the flock – a noble cause.  Chickens are little sociopaths, convinced of their righteousness and operating without feelings of guilt or empathy for what they believe is the betterment of the flock.

Chickens strut around like they are important, knowing their heads will soon be on the chopping block. Like chickens, when you cut off an editorial cartoonist’s head, he will keep running around.  I haven’t tested that last fact, but I’m sure it is true – and it gives us hope for the future of our profession.