CSotD: In Search of the Lost Harmonica
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Jeff Danziger is a hip old guy.
Most artists think of themselves as pretty hip, but let's be honest: There is a difference between the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the paintings in hotel rooms, and the fact that you draw stuff to make money does not make you an "artist" in the spiritual sense of the word.
Which is to say that Bill Mauldin paid the rent as a young man by drawing posters of ham and eggs for a diner that put them up over the counter as a graphic menu. That wasn't art and it wasn't hip and he didn't think it was: What it was was money.
When he went to the war and drew Willie and Joe, that was art and it was hip, even though neither he nor his subjects were zoot suiters.
If you think "hip" and "stylish" are the same thing, then you may be stylish but you sure ain't hip.
When I say that Danziger is a hip old guy, I mean that he does something with his cartoons that I expect from much younger cartoonists: He educates and illuminates as well as opines.
Matt Bors, who is not old, is the subject of a Tom Spurgeon interview in which he talks about the current market for editorial cartoons:
Guys who get laid off and only know how to work in that one stilted old style are having a rough go of it. You look at Jack Ohman; one of the reasons I think he got the job at the Bee is he's doing comics journalism, writing columns, doing local cartoons.
He's proving his worth. If all you can provide is a cookie cutter
editorial cartoon on the national debt, go home, you're done.
Confession: I enjoy the cartoon strips that I read each day, but I have to admit that going through the editorial cartoons is often more of a job than a pleasure, because so many of them are "cookie cutter editorial cartoons on the national debt" or whatever issue happens to already be dominating discussion.
The difference between those tired cookie-cutter gags and what Danizger and Bors and a handful of other hip commentators — most of them on the young side — are doing is the difference between Jay Leno's monologue and Jon Stewart's opening takedown.
Which is to say, did you know that the administration had taken Bangladesh off the list of nations with preferential trade status? And did you also know that this won't actually impact the imports whose profits fueled the disaster that sparked the decision? And is that messed up or what?
I didn't, but I saw Danziger's cartoon at the GoComics site and it sent me to Google News to find out what the deal was.
That's the difference between reacting and reporting. The old-school cookie-cutter Jay-Leno-level guys simply react, and, while that does sometimes focus the national conversation (in 1996, when Leno began to make jokes about Bob Dole's age, Clinton was all but guaranteed a second term), it ain't journalism.
Now, this does bring up a problem: If the old-school guys are preaching to their respective choirs, those with a journalistic approach to the medium are preaching to those who are either extremely well informed or who will make an effort to find out what they're talking about.
That's kind of a small core constituency.
Nast took a reportorial approach to cartooning, but much of his work, particularly the Harper's Weekly stuff, was surrounded by editorial copy. Tweed's famous statement that none of his constituents read but that anybody could look at pictures was true, but those who did read wouldn't even have to turn the page to get the background on Nast's latest cartoon.
One solution, which Bors has followed and other journalist/cartoonists like Joe Sacco make their specialty, is the long-form journalistic approach, which they pursue either in pure graphic-novel format or as significant, co-equal llustrations for text-based work.
However, there's a middle ground, in that a lot of these newer style cartoons are seen on-line rather than in print, which means that not only can some, like David Horsey, do entire blogs under their cartoons, but that it's also possible to simply list your sources and let readers pick up some background without working too hard at it.
Specific to the Bangladesh issue, I already had it on my radar because Jen Sorensen had done a cartoon on the topic of the Gap declining to help police the situation, and, at her blog, ran a link to an excellent report on the topic.
Which means, I guess, that if Bors and Sacco and Ohman and Sorensen are the future of political cartooning, that makes Jeff Danziger Mort Sahl or Dick Gregory.
And the rest of the guys, the cartoonists in the Jay Leno School of Commentary, are telling mother-in-law jokes and throwing pies, and they'll always have a place on the bill just as long as vaudeville continues to pack'em in.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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