CSotD: Shackles, Chains and Doggy Cookies
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It's World Press Freedom Day, which seems to be noted in other countries more than it is in the United States. This cartoon is one of several on the topic at Cartoon Movement and is by Egyptian cartoonist Doaa Eladl.
I'll admit I haven't kept up with the specifics of the back-and-forth in Egypt since the Arab Spring, but I like her image of grace and art persisting despite its shackles and I'm certainly aware that cartoonists and journalists of all types must tread cautiously anywhere in the Middle East.
"Journalists of all types" being something we should remember, despite this being a cartoon blog and much of the attention being raised by, and given to, cartoonists. Israel is still looking for ways to justify the shooting of photographer Yasir Mutaja, who was wearing a press vest that had to be clearly visible through the sniper scope of whoever squeezed off the fatal shot.
(Granted, it doesn't help when intelligence agencies pose as journalists, but, then again, it doesn't help when Good Guys torture suspects and expect Bad Guys not to. It's silly to demand behaviors you refuse to model.)
At his blog, Bado shows the winners of the Canadian Committee of World Press Freedom's 18th World Press Freedom International Editorial Cartoon Competition.
I like the confident insouciance of the winner, by Belgian cartoonist Steven DeGryse, and I think there is reason to believe that repression sharpens the will to resist.
In a book I can't find from the 1960s, a sociologist, who had gone among the hippies in the Haight-Ashbury culture before it died, observed that Catholics and Jews were significantly over-represented, his theory being that kids were more likely to rebel against an upbringing with rules and limits than against a more squishy, permissive lifestyle.
That wasn't an absolute — I also knew freaks who were trying to outrage their parents enough to get some kind of feedback — but in applying it to the topic of press freedom, it certainly seems to be the case that the boldest statements come from those with the most to lose.
Though I particularly liked this entry, by a Canadian, Frédérick Fontaine, who wouldn't face literal threats like this, but, then again, wouldn't literally live on a giant keyboard.
It's true that you don't have to be jailed and tortured to be aware that others in your profession are.
It's also true that, if someone wants you to shut up and stop rocking the boat, they don't have to jail and torture you.
When I look at some of the conservative cartoons being drawn by the domestic Watchdog Press, it brings to mind a local situation, where our new postmaster has decreed that letter carriers stop handing out doggy cookies.
Well, I knew a woman in Indiana whose two German shepherds used to run out to joyously greet the letter carrier and get doggy cookies, until there was a change in assignments. The new letter carrier greeting them with MACE, after which she had to keep them confined at mail time, because the betrayal had prompted all-out war.
No such policy in this White House. I use Nick Anderson's cartoon because Trump's administration is being joined by a number of good little cartooning watchdogs who echo Dear Leader's contradictory talking points, loyally attacking his critics, licking his hand and Making Doggy Cookies Great Again.
Fortunately, we seem to have fewer cartoonists running out to get their doggy cookies and more like Nick who assume there will be MACE, and Signe Wilkinson notes that we also have a special prosecutor who doesn't mind a barrage of phony accusations and relentless abuse, some of it echoed unexamined by those aforementioned Good Little Doggies.
It's not simply that Trump and his cohorts and his lackeys attack Mueller. That's to be expected.
But if Trump had the cojones to face the press instead of sending Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to do it for him, we might have more exchanges like this one, which occurred five months before Nixon resigned.
As it is, not only does Trump decline to face the press himself, but, while it's fair game to attack Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan with all the weapons at a cartoonist's disposal, woe be to anyone who says anything mean about Trump's designated speaker.
Better you should insult Melania or even Ivanka.
Jail cells are not the only encroachment on a free press, not when they need only whistle and the trolls and bots and lunatics will do the rest.
Because some editors stand up for their cartoonists and press freedom under that kind of pressure, while others muzzle their cartoonists in the interests of peace and profits.
Juxtaposition of the Day
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(One of the things said at the Satire Symposium last month was that editorial cartoonists don't expect to convert hardliners, but only to encourage the thoughtful and perhaps nudge the neutral.
The revelation yesterday that Trump's personal physician did not write that preposterous letter about the then-candidate's excellent health was only confirmation of what anyone with the intelligence of a sea cucumber already knew.
It's interesting, too, that the semi-literate language in the leaked Mueller questions has caused suspicion that the leaker was a stable genius and soon-to-be Nobel laureate.
And then his new attorney and best pal Rudy announced that, contrary to what Dear Leader had said, and contrary to what Dear Leader's personal attorney had claimed, Trump had, in fact, given said attorney the money to pay off Stormy Daniels.
Which even stunned Laura Ingraham, who may be aggressively loyal but is not an idiot.
She's convinced that the Mueller investigation is bogus, but she knows when she's being lied to.
The question is, is there a lie so blatant and asinine that it will shake the faith of the deplorables?
Maybe today's Non Sequitur has the answer.
Or a picture of where we're headed anyway.
The central issue is not complex
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