CSotD: Do Your Job
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Last night was the Super Bowl, but I missed all but the last two minutes of each half, plus that tiny slice of overtime, because I was in airplanes.
Tank McNamara nailed my situation perfectly this morning — I'm a Houston fan, so I can schedule air travel on Super Bowl Sunday early enough to get good rates and not worry too much about missing anything.
I wasn't blown away by Clay Jones' cartoon this morning except for its existence, but that's enough for this observation:
There are a handful of editorial cartoonists who respond to the news quickly, a lot who respond on a fairly appropriate schedule and another handful who respond on a ridiculously inappropriate schedule.
As it happens, Jones discusses his process for today's opus, and this is a good cartoon for that because he took something totally trivial and, because he made it ultra-timely, was able to work in a political point anyway.
It's good to riff on things that dominate the public discussion, but strip artists have to craft — as Bill Hinds did for this Tank McNamara day-after Super Bowl strip, as we saw a few days ago for Groundhog Day — a kind of evergreen gag that doesn't depend on specifics.
Editorial cartoonists have, potentially, the power to respond with more precision.
Potentially.
I'm disappointed that so few bother to take advantage of that potential.
Granted, there are barriers, but it's hard to claim they can't be surmounted.
There are cartoonists who do a lot of cartoons only their local readers see, and, if they do a national cartoon on Sunday and then local cartoons on Tuesday and Friday, I don't need to see their commentary on the local sewer project.
But that's not the same as a situation where the tech people at their papers don't dependably post them to GoComics or Comics Kingdom.
When your cartoon on GoComics is dated November, you should (A) care enough to notice, and (B) should slam your fist down on somebody's desk.
Or step up and ask an 11-year-old how to post the things yourself.
If you're going to comment on today's news, how's about you learn today's technology?
And, if you are going to offer your work nationally, how's about you take responsibility for building and protecting your brand?
Patriots' coach Bill Belichick's motto is "Do Your Job," by which he means you don't have to be a hero but you do have to do what you're paid to do, and, if you simply do that, things will work out.
But the minimum is not enough. Not at that level.
And it shouldn't be at yours.
You may have an assigned schedule in which you do a national piece Sunday and then local cartoons Tuesday and Thursday, but if you are genuinely required to wait until Sunday to comment on a nuclear explosion that happens on a Monday, then what you produce on Sunday needs to totally rock.
Don't sit back for five days and then turn in some lame donkeys-and-elephants bullshit.
And, especially, don't sit back for five days and then turn in the identical, obvious donkeys-and-elephants bullshit six or eight of your competitors did three or four days ago.
Because while you're doing yet another Lady Liberty getting her crotch grabbed, Victor Ndula (via Africartoons) is doing this:
Which is, y'know, his job.
At least mix some genuine humor into your observation, like Sousa and Machado, over at Cartoon Movement …
… or work your own community into an international issue, as Adam Zyglis has.
Look: Tom Brady didn't have to be the Patriots' quarterback. He could have been a gym teacher or worked in a sporting goods store.
But he wouldn't have been in the Super Bowl, or even in uniform, if he'd said he wanted to be an NFL quarterback and then sat back with some Doritos and watched reruns of "Gilligan's Island."
One thing the superstars of sports have in common is what their teammates say of them:
"He's always the last one off the practice field."
"He's always the first one in the building in the morning."
"He's always in the film room."
"He's always in the weight room."
And if you hate sports, take that same intensity and devotion and apply it to ballet dancers or opera singers or Keith Richards.
Talent isn't enough in any profession.
When I was in TV advertising, back before computer graphics and suchlike, we had an artist at the station whose job was to do artwork for slides showing the sponsor's logo with some kind of caricature of the owner or picture of the building or the product or whatever.
He was fast and he was good, but he did his best work in the morning because he was drunk by about two or three in the afternoon, and maybe it was because he had thought his talent would take him somewhere it didn't and maybe it was because he had always been drunk by two or three in the afternoon instead of putting in the work and effort it takes to be great.
The reason Belichick can simply say "Do Your Job" is that he doesn't hire the guy who won't spend all that extra time in the weight room or watching film.
He hires the guy who willingly does what it takes to be great.
Who considers it part of his job.
The fact that so few papers have editorial cartoonists on staff is less concerning to me than is the number of cartoonists who have that rare, enviable job and aren't out running the stadium steps when the guy who makes advertising slides has gone home for the night.
(Note to editorial cartoonists: I'm talking about someone else.)
Now here's your moment of zen
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