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Ilhan Omar

Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar has become a gift to Republicans and a favorite on Fox News. She seems to be unaware of anti-Semitic tropes and stumbles into repeated, ugly slurs against Jews. Many Democrats defend her and an awkward attempt to condemn her statements was so watered down in the House that it was laughable.

Editorial cartoonists have a special responsibility regarding anti-Semitic clichés given the history of Nazi cartoons leading up to the Holocaust. At Cagle.com we have received many ugly cartoon tropes from worldwide cartoonists over the years, particularly from Arabic language cartoonists and Latin American cartoonists.  When I talk to the cartoonists about it, they tell me that they were unaware, that it wasn’t their intent; they are generally happy to take the cartoons down and they tell me they appreciate being told about why their cartoons were offensive to an American audience. The most common images depict a Star of David representing Judaism, rather than the Israeli Flag representing Israel, and use images that equate Jews with Nazis, that show Jews crucifying Palestinians as they “crucified Christ,” Jews as rats, as spiders, Jews killing babies, or like vampires drinking baby blood – the whole Nazi panoply of Der Stürmer clichés in cartoons gets repeated frequently around the world, and these cartoonists aren’t used to hearing any push-back from their local readers. Nancy Pelosi seems to see it in the same way with Omar, who Pelosi thinks simply wasn’t aware and hasn’t been educated about the bigotry.

Whatever the reasons are behind Omar’s ugly comments, she is a gift to Republicans, Trump and Fox News. My cartoon from last week shows Democrats wrapped up in Omar’s hijab, to the delight of Republicans.

 

 

Here are some more Omar favorites from last week. This one is from Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune …

This is from RJ Matson …

 

This is from Nate Beeler of the Columbus Dispatch …

 

This one is from Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle …

 

This is from Taylor Jones …

 

And this one is from Dave Granlund …

 

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Trump Giddyap

My new Trump emergency cartoon is inspired by the pushmi-pullyu  character from Doctor Dolittle and is something of a cartoon trope. Cartoonists have all drawn this kind of thing before. Still, it is fun to have the Jack-ass be an ass.

Not much different from an old Nickelodeon show I liked, CatDog. I drew CatDog way back in 2002 when HP merged with Compaq.

Things don’t change much.

 

 

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Women’s March Overshadowed by Shut-down

This weekend’s women’s march would have been much bigger news if the government shut-down hadn’t dominated the news.

I think that’s disappointing. The march deserved more attention. Any participants in future women’s marches are welcome to use my cartoons on their signs – just e-mail me, ask and I’ll e-mail you the high resolution image file. I’ll ask you to send me a photo of yourself with your sign to post on my blog. Here’s Cagle.com fan Shelly Carpenter who did just that at the women’s march in Seattle this weekend.

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Racist President

I read what was pretty close to the donkey’s quote this morning in the Los Angeles Times, attributed to Cristina Jiménez, the founder of United We Dream.

This is about where we are now, I think.

 

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Trump’s Wandering Eye

President Trump surprised the pundits and his own Republican party when he sided with the Democrats this week. Trump hasn’t been getting much from the grouchy, ineffectual Republicans, so it shouldn’t be surprising that his eye starts to wander.

That Democrat is quite a cutie.

This cartoon is similar to one I drew many years ago, when President George W. Bush was looking to jump into wars around the globe.

Men don’t change much, huh?

 

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The TrumpCare Cliff

I love those little lemmings who all commit mass-suicide by leaping off of cliffs in the Arctic. The lemmings metaphor is a standard for editorial cartoonists and I’ve drawn them a few times myself. Here is today’s cartoon with the Republican elephants running off of the TrumpCare cliff.

Gotta love those lemmings. Here’s one I drew for the “Arab Spring” revolution in Egypt …

Seven years ago when congress was debating ObamaCare, I drew this Democrat lemmings cartoon …

This is one of my most popular and most plagiarized cartoons, about graduate lemmings and unemployment …

I drew these lemmings in 2007 when we had the mortgage and housing collapse …

I’m sure I’ll be drawing plenty more lemmings during the Trump administration. Want to see me draw the new TrumpCare lemmings cartoon in real time? Watch the video below. You can watch it at 1.5 speed which makes it 150% more interesting!

And here is the video of my coloring the GOP lemmings cartoon in Photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq …

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New Cartoonist: Ed Wexler

I’m happy to announce that we’ve added a new editorial cartoonist to Cagle.com and our newspaper syndication package – Ed Wexler. Here’s Ed’s first syndicated editorial cartoon …

In this stodgy old profession it is rare to see new face that looks so polished. Ed has been a creative director at Disney Television for decades and the recent caucus politics inspired his leap to the editorial pages. Ed also had a long stint as an illustrator of US News and World Report (replacing our own Taylor Jones). Here are a few of my favorite Wexler oldies. The first is Reince Priebus surfing with his GOP buddies …

Ed draws everything on his Wacom tablet. Here’s our new Energy Secretary, Rick Perry …

Here’s Washington in action …

Looks a little like Ed Sorel, huh? Wexler studied under Sorel at Cooper Union. This Ronald Reagan portrait impressed me …

Cool stuff. Welcome aboard, Ed!

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Democrat Guernica

There is horror and anguish in the ranks of the Democratic Party these days. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is probably the best known visual icon for horror and anguish.

Here’s a detail …

democratguernicadetail

Eight years ago I drew a similar cartoon when Democrats won the presidency and congress – to the horror of Republicans.

I’ve had the GOP version up as the top image on my Facebook page for years, And I’ve gotten lots of complaints about it, usually from very literal conservatives who write things like, “Guernica is about the Spanish civil war – it has nothing to do with Republicans!” I also got lots of criticism from conservatives who wanted to point out that I’m not as good an artist as Pablo Picasso. Here’s an image of the real “Guernica.”

guernica750

This David Fitzsimmons oldie about George W. Bush painting Iraq is a nice one.

fitzsimmons-guernica

Worldwide cartoonists like to use flags in their cartoons – the problem is that the American audience doesn’t know their flags. Here’s our Greek cartoonist, Michael Kountouris drawing a combination of the Syrian flag and Guernica.

Here’s my Cuban cartoonist friend in Mexico, Angel Boligan, with Violence in Video Games …

Here’s another nice one from Boligan, simply titled, “Insurance.”

boligan2-guernica

Gotta love Guernica.

 

 

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Scalia’s Empty Chair

I don’t like Antonin Scalia and I was originally going to draw Lady Liberty and Lady Justice dancing on his grave – but that was nasty and I went a softer route with the empty chair. I understand that in the upcoming Supreme Court cases his chair will be draped in black. The idea that Scalia was a doctrinaire “originalist” who was dedicated to the constitution over his own conservative views flies in the face of his Bush vs. Gore decision. Scalia was a hypocrite.

This is a revision of a cartoon I did some years ago, about the Supreme Court being partisan. I think it is better with the empty chair.

Here’s the video of my day drawing this cartoon and the one after this one! Sit back and take a look.

 

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New Years BITE

Happy cartoon New Year! I was busily drawing my New Years Day cartoon, with Obama going out and coming in for the year, and with little biting GOP elephants, when the news started blaring about North Korea calling Obama a “monkey.” I am a slave to the news, so I had to do a second version with L’il Kim. Here’s the GOP …

And here is the L’il Kim version …

L’il Kim may be a plague to the world, but he is a gift to cartoonists.

The “Father Time and Baby New Year” thing is standard cartooning fodder. Here’s my New Year cartoon from last year …

Back in December, 2012, all the talk was about the “Fiscal Cliff” budget fight in Congress; it looked like doomsday. I drew this one …

At the end of 2010 the house had fallen under Republican control, and it looked like the GOP was eager to jump into more war – instead, Congress didn’t do much of anything, and Obama got us into more war. Oh well …

At the end of 2008: Obama won the presidency, George W. Bush was out of a job, and my drawings of Obama needed some more time to mature.

As 2005 turned into 2006 George W. Bush’s Republicans had lost the mid-term elections, but Bush was doubling down on the Iraq War anyway. There was lots more war to come.

Back in 2001 all the news was the 9/11 attacks as our troops poured into Afghanistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

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“Like a Red Flag in Front of a Bull”

Today’s cartoon is inspired by a quote from incoming Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who said that if President Obama does immigration reform with an executive order, over the objections of Republicans, that would be like, “waving a red flag in front of a bull.” Kind of obvious, but it was fun to draw McConnell and Boehner as bulls.

The drawing was a bit more difficult than usual. I think this is the first time I’ve ever drawn McConnell and I’m not really comfortable with him yet. My rough sketch is below.

MatadorSketch600wide

I was going to label the “red flag” as “immigration reform” but I decided that was unnecessary. I struggled with McConnell and I did a little patch to draw his face over until I was happy with it. Those marks between Obama and the bulls remind me to reposition them when I do the finished line art.

I also struggled with how to draw the bulls’ penises in a way that editors could stand, without killing my cartoon. I like how bull penises seem to come out of the middle of their bellies, and I tried to be discreet.

I like to do line art for the black and white version of a cartoon, without gray tones. There is something more elegant about lines – although it is hard to call this cartoon “elegant.” Here is the color version …

I played a bit with making Boehner orange, and with making the bulls have more light and shadow, but whatever I tried was too busy and I ended up with dull bulls. I’m not really happy with the color on this one. In fact, I’m usually never happy with my color.

I’m looking at doing a video of my drawing my cartoons to post on the site, or possibly to do live as a rather long and boring podcast. It is cartoons like this one that give me podcasting pause, because I fiddled around with it for a long time before I was happy with the caricatures – and cartoonists like to give the impression that drawing everything is quick and easy. I’ll have no secrets. On the other hand, the videos may be so boring that no one will notice.

I looked around for some other bulls and I found this one by Georgia cartoonist, Mark Streeter, who beat me to the matador punch.

Here’s an oldie by RJ Matson.

There was a big Yahtzee of matador cartoons about the European Union, back when Spain was having big financial problems and needed a bail-out. Here’s one I drew then.

This is a nice bull-fight cartoon from John Cole that is probably better now than when he drew it back in 2006. I like the blank, Orphan Annie eyeballs.

There are a whole lot of matador cartoons out there, but there’s always room for more.

And thanks to Jerry Moore for sending me this nice shot of the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times today.
Cagle-LAtimes-Bullfighter-Cropped