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Guantanamo Vaccine and Invitation

I flip back and forth between news channels and I saw the news about the Guantanamo prisoners get COVID-19 vaccine before almost everyone else can get it. And I noticed that this story didn’t seem to exist on the mainstream news channels, and I though the old lady saying “Death to America” was kind of funny.  Imagine my disappointment this morning when the cartoon was almost finished and I hear the news that the military was putting the Guantanamo prisoner vaccinations “on hold” while they reconsider it.

SO, I made a last minute change to the wording.

… and the cartoon isn’t as good.

But what the heck.

Hey, check this out … Our own Steve Sack has won the most recent National Press Foundation (NPF) Berryman Award. The NPF usually has a big, annual banquet for their award winners but this year, because of the pandemic, they are having a free, online event on “Hopin“, and they have invited everyone to attend.

The meeting starts at 5 p.m. Pacific Time ON FEBRUARY 18TH, with the main program at 5:30 Pacific – 6:15 pm. followed by a “break-out-room” from 6:15 pm to 6:45 p.m. where Steve Sack will be speaking about his work. It will be moderated by last year’s Berryman winner, CagleCartoonist R. J. Matson. Register for the event at: https://hopin.com/events/npf-2021-awards-celebration You will receive a Zoom-like email 24 hours prior to the event, which will give you another link OR you can also use the same registration link at that time – it goes to the same place on Hopin.


Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you!  Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.

The world needs political cartoonists more now than ever. Please consider supporting Cagle.com and visit Cagle.com/heroes.  We need you! Don’t let the cartoons die!

 

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Blog Syndicate

Trump and Rep Frederica Wilson

The story about President Trump’s awkward condolence call to the widow of a fallen soldier has dragged on for more than a week. I wasn’t going to draw about it, but as the story droned on and on, with more awkward false tweets and statements from the White House, it looks like I can’t avoid this one.

See more cartoons on the topic here. Here are a few of my favorites; the first is by RJ Matson.

Isn’t the hair nice on this Ed Wexler cartoon?

I think the image of Trump throwing paper towels to the hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, and Trump’s love of walls struck a chord with Marian Kamensky.

Sean Delonas may be our most conservative cartoonist. Here Sean shows his disgust for Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.

Our consistently conservative cartoonist, Rick McKee, seems to like Chief of Staff John Kelly’s statement, even though it contained false accusations about the Congresswoman.

Nate Beeler can sometimes lean to the right too …

Here’s one from Steve Sack.

I think this Pat Bagley cartoon is my favorite.

 

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Blog Syndicate

Killing Teddy Kennedy’s Man-Boobs in Hell

We’re getting a big increase in complaints from editors since Trump was elected. Most of the complaints are about “imbalance” from editors who want to see “pro-Trump” cartoons. I don’t know any “pro-Trump” cartoonists, but we’re thinking about how to be responsive to the complaints and there are other complaints.

Editors complain about cartoons that are too raunchy. The cartoons have gotten a lot dirtier with the rise of Trump. Even though newspaper editors choose which cartoon they want to print, many complain loudly that we even have raunchy cartoons available that they pass over and never print. More importantly we have gotten complaints from schools who want to use our sites in the classroom, so we decided to start cleaning up the cartoons by killing cartoons that have graphic sexual depictions and curse words. Of-course, the other newspaper syndicates have always done this, but as a cartoonist run syndicate I suppose I’ve been a little lax.

One of the first cartoons that got caught up in our new dragnet is the cartoon below by conservative cartoonist, Sean Delonas. My editor, Brian Fairrington, killed the cartoon below because of a bare-breasted “naked lady” in the lower right corner.

Sean amended the cartoon to this version that we have posted now …

I came to this a little late and asked Sean what the story was behind the topless lady. Sean told me that was no lady, that’s Teddy Kennedy. Why the boobs? Sean simply imagined that Teddy’s chest would look like that.

And why is Teddy Kennedy in Hell? Because of Chappaquiddick? No. Sean tells me that there’s no real reason Kennedy is in hell, Sean just he likes to put little Teddy Kennedys into his cartoons and he has done it for years. I guess I didn’t notice.

Sean worked for many years as the cartoonist for the New York Post; he tells me that the folks at the Post really didn’t like Kennedy because of his role in forcing Rupert Murdoch to sell the Post in 1988. Sean’s editors at the Post encouraged him to bash Teddy Kennedy in his cartoons as often as possible, and Sean made it a regular habit that he continues.

Sean adds that he didn’t mind the edit, and that he draws himself bare chested in the same way, because he could afford to lose a little weight. I should add that Cagle Cartoons has no problem with being half-eaten by a worm monster in hell, as long as you’re not topless while being half-eaten by a worm monster.

Gotta love journalism, huh?  See more of Sean wild, conservative cartoons here.

Need a closer look? Here’s the detail …

 

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Trump and Refugees

The media is energized by the “ban” on seven Muslim countries: Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Those are seven nasty places. I’d like to see a ban on refugees from all nasty places without regard to a religious test. There are lots more nasty places to add to this list.

Today’s cartoon is an upgrade to an oldie that I drew a couple of years ago.

Here’s the original, drawn when the GOP was opposing President Obama’s plans to welcome thousands of Syrian refugees.

My starting point for this one is this great cartoon from our Greek Cagle Cartoonist, Michael Kountouris, about the European Union.

 

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Blog Syndicate

Orlando Shooting

Such a horror. I drew this one quickly this morning. Our hearts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

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Obama Kisses Saudi King’s Butt

President Obama has threatened to veto a bill that would allow 9-11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for their support of the 9-11 terrorists and would make public 28 redacted pages from the 9-11 Commission report that likely implicates Saudi Arabia. This week Obama traveled to meet with Saudi King Salman, so I drew this.

obama-kiss-saudi-butt

I’d like to see the bill pass and I’d like to see what is on those 28, top secret pages in the 9-11 Commission Report. The Saudis have threatened to sell all of their hundreds of billions of dollars of assets in America if the bill passes. That’s fine with me.

Here’s the first of two videos of my live stream drawing this one.

In the second video, below, I finish up the drawing and color it in Photoshop as I chat with my live viewers. Come to Twitch.tv/darylcagle to follow me and be notified when I come online to draw the next streaming cartoon.

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Blog

Today’s E-mail Interview with a Turkish Newspaper

When I take the time to write responses to a questions from reporters, I think I’ll post them here. This one is from a Turkish newspaper today.

Hi Daryl,

Thanks so much. Here’s a few questions. I’m really interested in your views and opinions:

Do you think Le Monde cartoonist (Jean Plantureux) purposely left out Turkey – from his recent image?

Do you think cartoonists must ensure that symbols like flags are correctly interpreted?
 
Do you think Twitter and Facebook followers really understand why they are changing their Facebook profiles to various flags etc.

Besides Turkey, Paris and Belgium – there’s been attacks this past year in Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Chad,  Tunisia, Egypt, etc – across the globe. Do you think there are double standards when it come to Western media response to such attacks?

Many thanks


DPlantu france belgiumear …,

Do you think Le Monde cartoonist (Jean Plantureux) purposely left out Turkey – from his recent image?

I think Plantu draws exactly what he means to draw.

Do you think cartoonists must ensure that symbols like flags are correctly interpreted?

 

France Belgium Turkey flag cartoonCartoonists want readers to correctly understand their cartoons. Cartoons that are misunderstood are ineffective cartoons. Cartoonists are in the business of communicating their ideas. There is nothing we can do to insure that readers correctly interpret our cartoons, except to strive to draw good cartoons. I don’t think of “flags” as something to interpret, except that I generally understand that American readers don’t recognize the flags of other countries. Worldwide cartoonists typically use flags to represent countries more often than American cartoonists

Do you think Twitter and Facebook followers really understand why they are changing their Facebook profiles to various flags etc. 

I’m aware of the French flags in the profile pictures on Facebook in response to the attacks in France; the Facebook users intended to make an expression of solidarity with the French in response to the terror attacks. I haven’t followed other instances of flags in Facebook profile pictures.

Besides Turkey, Paris and Belgium – there’s been attacks this past year in Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Chad,  Tunisia, Egypt, etc. – across the globe. Do you think there are double standards when it come to Western media response to such attacks? 

Terror attacks in countries that have frequent terror attacks are not as newsworthy as attacks in countries where these events are a new trend. I suppose this can be argued to be a double standard in the respect that human life should have the same value everywhere.

President Obama reportedly argues that deaths from “slipping in bathtubs” accounts for more lives lost than terrorism. Surely more people die from bathtub falls in China than anywhere else, simply because there are more people in China; by that measure, the news should always be dominated by bathtub deaths in China rather than terrorism. It is the role of editors to decide what news is most important; I don’t consider these editorial decisions to be a “double standard.” I’m more interested in news on the Brussels attacks than I am in news about still more carnage in Chad.

I don’t know the origin of the altered Plantu cartoon that you sent to me, including the Turkish flag character. I’m guessing it wasn’t drawn by Plantu, but rather by a copyright-infringing reader who wanted to make a different point, that Turkey has suffered more terrorist attacks than France and Belgium.

Please send me a copy when you come out with your article.
Best,

Daryl

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Apple vs. the FBI and Third World Despots

The legal battle between the FBI and Apple promises to be epic. I come down on Apple’s side; we’ve seen how important technology is in undermining evil despotic regimes around the world. If courts can force tech companies to become foot soldiers in regime efforts to spy on their populations that will be a loss for freedom around the world.

apple-despots

I drew this one as a live stream. Watch me color it in Photoshop in real time in the YouTube video below (scroll past the timer at the beginning).

Click on the YouTube video below and it should start at 2:48:40 where I start drawing the Apple vs Despots cartoon. This was a long afternoon of work, and I drew the previous cartoon before this one. Sorry for the lack of editing, but hey, you see everything. I have nothing to hide.

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Trump, Polls and the GOP!

I drew today’s Trump cartoon live on YouTube. Here is the finished color version.

trump-polls

That’s the GOP’s tarnished image at the right, as Trump rockets up in the polls. To really be going up in the polls, he should be facing to the right instead of the left – and I thought about that for a bit, as you can see in the video, but having Trump go the wrong way is better.

Today’s Trump news, about how he would ban Muslims from coming into the USA until we figure out “what the hell is going on” is great fun, because Trump’s supporters love what he has to say, while mainstream Republicans and the media are offended, demanding again and again that Trump leave the race. That tarnished GOP brand is starting to look pretty crusty.

Living here in red-state Tennessee I see angry Republicans are all around me; they live in their own news bubble, with their own history of the world, reinforced by their communities of like minded, angry, evangelical conservatives. The typical Republican voters are much father right than their knuckle-dragging candidates. Trump has plenty of room to his right to be even more outrageous.

Oh! Today I learned that the government of Pakistan is no longer blocking access to Cagle.com within Pakistan! Welcome to all of our new Pakistani readers!

COME WATCH ME DRAW THIS THING!

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San Bernardino, Guns, Republicans and the NRA

My cartoon today about the terror attack in San Bernardino, inspired by the interesting front page on the New York Daily News.

Standing in a crowed of bloody, murder victims while saying something ironic or hypocritical is a cartoon cliche that every cartoonist has drawn many times. Here’s a similar cartoon that my buddy Pat Bagley drew recently in response to San Bernardino …

This Steve Sack cartoon is probably my favorite San Bernardino cartoon – it is a response to the New York Daily News  prayer front page and the rejection of another gun control vote in congress, with a wonderful rosary.

Here’s another one of my dead field of victims cartoons about Bashar Assar – as fresh today as it was when I drew it some time ago.

Here’s another one where I used the same victims. I traced the same dead crowd, and changed their clothes to Taliban duds.  There was a story at the time criticizing American servicemen for peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters they had just killed in battle. I got a lot of angry reader response to this cartoon.

This also isn’t the first time I’ve drawn the NRA as a pig. Here is a Cagle classic NRA pig cartoon …

Pigs are a wonderful cartoon standard; they are a symbol of greed. Here’s a standard Cagle piggy oldie …

Pigs and standing among fields of the dead are two of my favorite things! (Maybe that’s another reason why those Islamic extremists don’t like cartoonists.)

 

 

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Blog Columns Syndicate

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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France Weeps

We’ve been receiving a torrent of cartoons from around the world about last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris. I’ve been disappointed by most of the cartoons so far, many of which contain graphic pools of blood, depictions of monsters and broken Eiffel Towers. I think the first few days after an event like this are a time to express sympathy, so I went with a weeping Marianne, the French symbol from the Eugene Delacroix painting La Liberté Guidant le People (Liberty Leading the People). 

Marianne2
Delacroix’s Marianne.

I struggled to think of what I wanted to draw, so I wouldn’t be drawing blood, candles, monsters or Eiffel Towers like the rest of the crowd. I like Marianne as a symbol for France and I like that the French embrace her as their own symbol. It was interesting to see so many of the cartoonists drawing the Statue of Liberty this weekend, the statue was a gift from France but she is a symbol of America.

Marianne has some problems: first, she may not be recognizable enough when she is seen out of the context of the Delacroix painting: second, her face exists only as a profile facing left, which can be a little limiting; third, she has one bare breast (or arguably, two bare breasts) and American editors are reluctant to print bare breasts – even though her bare breast is necessary to define who Marianne is in the cartoon. I suppose it is fitting that I had to struggle with this one.

Below is my rough sketch.

FranceLibertySketch700

I started out thinking of more cliches, like the candle and the flag at half staff – both bad ideas. I also ruminated about how to draw the drapery in her dress, which seems to be a heavy fabric rather than a normal fabric, along with her emerging toes. Here she is in black and white. (Yes, the flag pole covers up her nipple – I debated about that too.)

Then I colored her in – and I was disappointed with the result.

france-weeps-cagle-COLOR

Editors and readers always like cartoons better when they are in color, even in cases like this, where the color only cheapens the cartoon. One of my readers on Facebook, Rod Underhill, made the excellent suggestion that I limit the color to the flag; that was a great suggestion – and voila, a much better cartoon (shown at the top of the page)! I deleted the previous color version and sent a correction out to the newspaper clients.

Here’s another Marianne cartoon, a double breasted version. This one was popular in France where they find President Francois Hollande rather annoying.

This interesting Marianne comes from my French cartoonist buddy, Pierre Ballouhey, who includes characters surrounding the recent Paris attacks.

2015-11ballouhey-700

Marianne is much easier to deal with in a goofy drawing. Here’s a nice Marianne by Angel Boligan, drawn after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

This bloody Marianne is from my buddy, Martin “Shooty” Sutovec from Slovakia. With no side-boob, and no flowing ties on her sleeveless, fringeless dress, her new style beret and blonde hair in a different doo – I almost missed her, but Shooty got me to take another look.

shooty-marianne

Jordanian cartoonist Osama Hajjaj drew a weeping Marianne with an Eiffel Tower in a pool of blood (perhaps he could have thrown in a couple of candles, terror monsters and the Statue of Liberty to make it complete). Osama obscured Marianne’s profile and bare breast issues, and he lost her beret. hmm. OK.

This Marianne is from Taylor Jones, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Here’s a Charlie Hebdo aftermath Marianne from RJ Matson – looks like this one was a quicky to draw in Photoshop.

Visit our big collection of cartoons drawn in response to the Paris attacks.