Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.

I’m not sure that’s not the editorial cartoonists’ chant.

 

Horry County calls closed meeting hours after new chairman shares critical cartoon

Newly sworn-in Horry County Chair Johnny Gardner’s first meeting of his new job will happen behind closed doors to discuss a personnel matter. While the meeting will be in executive session, the announcement comes an hour after Gardner shared on Facebook a cartoon criticizing the County Administrator Chris Eldridge and County Attorney Arrigo Carotti.
The cartoon Gardener shared on his social media page was drawn by local Ed Wilson and depicts Carotti and Eldridge using a magnify glass to make a pile labeled “Gardner Extortion Claims.” Eldridge is drawn saying “see it is a mountain.” The cartoon implies Eldridge and Carotti are exaggerating the evidence against Gardner from a memo leaked last month.

Ed Wilson’s edtorial cartoon disrupts county function.
I couldn’t find the offending cartoon, but here is Ed’s cartoon Twitter feed.

 

 

I find that political cartoon to be a despicable act of calumny against our US Border Patrol.

Letter to the editor of the Minot Daily News:

It is a nightmarish job we ask them to perform; no different than the tasks our ICE agents must accomplish from day to day. Beneath the surface of that grotesque insinuation, the cartoonist also wishes to express that blame for the recent tragic deaths of two immigrant children was the result of the President Trump border policy.

Minot Daily News editor Michael W. Sasser explains that the reader misunderstood the cartoon:

The cartoonist’s job isn’t representational and rarely directly expresses his opinion. He isn’t expressing it here and some people are missing the point of it.

The point is that there are some people who actually believe that the President of the United States and the men and women who serve their county covet the death of children; and that Border Patrol are some kind of stormtroopers.

They don’t just say this. They seem to believe that…

The cartoon in question doesn’t advocate the position of the aforementioned off-kilter population. It mocks it. It holds up a mirror to the delusional haters’ souls to show them the shadowy parts of themselves- that some people actually believe the utter bollocks of a viciously, violent White House and Border Patrol.

At least that is how I interpreted it.

Well, I think the reader, not the editor, interpreted the cartoon correctly.
The editor is seemingly unfamiliar with which side of the wall Chris Britt comes down on.

 

 

More letters taking exception with cartoons.

Are you sickos?… Shame on you for allowing this to be printed.

The Jim Morin cartoon being addressed:

 

 

The really funny thing about this cartoon by Danziger – who did serve, and with some distinction – is the contrast it displayed when compared to actual photos of the troops as they met Trump in Iraq.

They loved him. They didn’t care that he never served. They didn’t care about deferments, exculpations, or bone spurs. They cheered as if for George Washington…

The Jeff Danziger cartoon:

 

 

I’d like to congratulate State Journal editorial cartoonist Phil Hands for the amazing lack of insensitivity and, shall we say, ignorance displayed…

The referenced Phil Hands cartoon:

 

 

They cut to the point, and anger readers, like little else we do.

That’s the power of editorial cartoons. In just a few pen strokes and words, a cartoonist can cut to the heart of the matter.

They can also be so cutting that some readers get angry. Which brings us to the cartoons we run in The Journal these days.

Readers today react to cartoons with the same force as their great-great-grandparents did a century and a half ago. And the presidency of Donald Trump has brought that passion to the forefront.

Early in the Trump administration, we would hear from readers who complained that all of our cartoons were critical of President Trump. Which, given that all of our cartoonists — including the conservative ones — hated the president, was pretty close to true.

So to provide balance, Ed Achorn, who edits our opinion pages, added Trump supporter — and Pulitzer Prize winner — Michael Ramirez to our stable of cartoonists. Today, I still hear some complaints that our cartoons are anti-Trump. But I’m more likely to hear from other readers, who view Ramirez as hackneyed and humorless.

And very one-sided. Which, actually, is the point.

Providence Journal Executive Editor Alan Rosenberg explains the purpose of political cartoons.

 

 

Political Cartoons as Critical Commentaries of the Past.

So, political cartoons have the potential to provide a medium for freedom of expression and protest on one hand, but also for stereotyping and misrepresentation on the other. Traditionally, however, political cartoons were seen as critical commentaries of, and resistance to, hegemonic practices and representations and thus provide a window to critical commentaries of the past. This brings me on to the question of, what are the dilemmas for indexing this type of genre in an archive.

Sharon Healy’s academic treatise on editorial cartoons as a window to the past
and the importance of properly indexing them in digital collections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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