CSotD: Freedom, opportunity and shrimp
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The last event of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention was a dinner and awards ceremony for which I put on a tie for the first time in a couple of years, but that symbolizes much of what I liked so much about this convention: You were expected to wash behind your ears for the big finish, but you didn't have to rent a tux.
The other thing I liked a whole lot was that the keynote speaker cancelled but, naturally, Kal Kallaugher had a huge green puppet in his car and Bado had his harmonica, so instead of a long speech telling us how important blah blah blah, we had a puppet singing a blues song.
If I were quicker on my feet, I'd have videoed the moment for you, but there were all sorts of moments you missed if you weren't at this convention, and, if you're a cartoonist, then that's on you.
It would also be inaccurate to highlight the funny stuff at the expense of the more serious, because even things like the Mad Magazine presentation were stuffed with technique and theory and marketing and pragmatism.
That is, even the fun stuff was work.
Here's the Big Takeaway, when it comes to editorial cartooning: First of all, we're damn lucky to live where we do, and the discussion of Falwell v Hustler makes that clear.
As one foreign cartoonist said to me, speaking of Matt Davies' poster for the conference, "If I draw my leader like that? Three years!"
However, while press freedom truly matters, it wasn't long ago that being an editorial cartoonist meant having a full-time job at a newspaper, which paid the rent and groceries, and then syndicating your cartoons in order to have an occasional rib roast or vacation.
Today, there are very few editorial cartoonists with that full-time job, and the income that once added frills often can't cover basic living expenses.
Which means that having the freedom to criticize our government is coming into conflict with having the opportunity to do it, which is why I was proud to have been asked to moderate the panel in which we presented some alternative approaches to simply putting an editorial cartoon on the editorial page.
And as much as we laughed over having Matt Davies don a hipster hat (photo courtesy swiped from Ann Telnaes) so he could read Keith Knight's text messages to the group during that panel discussion, Keef's name came up again and again as someone who is doing — not "planning" or "hoping to do" — what cartoonists are going to have to do if they want to survive.
Again, let me not undercut the horrors of actual repression.
One of the cartoonists honored at that dinner was Ramón Esono Ebalé, who cartoons as "Jamon y Queso" but is currently imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea, and whose wife and child were present to accept his "Courage in Cartooning" award from the Cartoonists Rights Network International.
Next to him, and after talking to some other cartoonists who would get, at a minimum, three years in prison for depicting their leader as King Kong, saying that you can't do cartoons because it doesn't pay enough seems more than just a little chintzy.
Granted, at my stage of life, as I have put it before, it's just me and the dog, and he thinks sleeping in the park and eating out of Dumpsters would be a blast.
I would note also, however, that these Third World cartoonists cannot rely on newspapers but utilize the Net and social media, and, no, I don't know how they pay their rent, either.
All of which boils down to what the creator of a well-known political cartoon is alleged to have said: "We must, indeed, all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
And, while he was (if he said it at all) speaking literally, we should take it — and the phrase "Join or Die" — seriously: Editorial cartoons matter and editorial cartooning matters, and, at this point, it's necessary to strategize together and to share whatever survival skills we can find.
No, American cartoonists do not face jail, but they can be silenced simply by the amalgamation of media into large, soulless, profit-driven corporations, where the sort of bland pap you see on prime-time television is the general rule, and where offending anyone is a mortal sin.
Dr. Franklin may not have made that pun about hanging separately, but he did say "If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
So here we are, where, as covered before, an editor decides to run "uplifting photographs" rather than editorial cartoons, even though the public tells him they prefer the latter.
Nor is commercial pressure the only thing cartoonists face: Another award given out that night went to Jake Thrasher at the University of Mississippi, whose cartoons about topics like Mississippi's flag and "Confederate Heritage Month" have earned him death threats not in the Middle East or in Equatorial Guinea but right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
All of which is to say that I've had a blast over the last several days, and really enjoyed meeting people whose work I've long admired as well as having smart, funny conversations one after another.
And, certainly, congratulations to Joel Pett and Duane Powell, also honored with awards for their fine work.
But I hope I haven't left the impression that it was just a festive get-together, because it was very much a working vacation.
Though, to graphically bookend my reportage appropriately, it really was a lot of fun, and a crew snuck out to find a white jeans jacket which everyone signed and doodled as a gift to outgoing President Ann Telnaes, and don't she and the previously featured Pat Bagley make a delightful pair?
Next year in Sacramento.
(I'm pretty sure Dr. Franklin's dialogue here is authentic):
Come on and put your signature on the list.
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