CSotD: Deep in the heart, shallow in the head
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There have been a couple book-burning cartoons about the Texas Board of Education's dictating changes in history textbooks, a factor that has been known in history circles for decades but got extra emphasis this year, in part because of more changes than usual and probably because editors and reporters are more aware of the conservative uprising in general.
I thought this Clay Jones take was funnier and more to the point than the book-burning ones. I met Clay a few years ago when I did a teacher workshop on editorial cartoons for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., where he is based. I'd done the presentation for kids a few hundred times and for educators more than a dozen, but I'd never done it in front of a professional cartoonist before. He still talked to me afterward, so I guess I wasn't too far off base.
At the time, his paper was running his cartoon on the editorial page and a syndicated cartoon on the opposite page, with columns and letters on both pages. While it was fun to meet Clay, I was even more impressed by his set-up, and in particular his editor, who not only had sympathy for and an understanding of cartoons, but was on the board of the foundation set up by Herb Block's estate. I hope for Clay's sake, and for the sake of the good people of Fredericksburg, that this is still the case. There are few enough papers with staff cartoonists, even fewer where the editors are sympatico.
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