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Caricature Controversies Editorial cartooning

Clay Jones vs. Margolis and Cox, Editoonists’ Not-So-Civil War

1 minute 18 comments

It began with the cartooning team of Margolis and Cox drawing Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as a clown which made her look like a representation of Black people in cartoons from decades past.

Margolis and Cox

Liberal political cartoonist Clay Jones saw the cartoon and (“I’m going to get in trouble again”) noted:

There’s a duo who create cartoons together, which is my first issue with these guys…

The cartoons are worse than the vitriolic bigotry shit out by Gary Varvel, Steve Kelley, and Mike Lester (if you think I just pissed some cartoonists off, I’m just getting warmed up, baby). At least those dudes can suck on their own. But the MargoCox goons work for Townhall, a very racist right-wing propaganda outlet. Based on that alone, no legitimate news publication should be publishing their cartoons/propaganda, and no syndicate should be distributing them. Unfortunately, Politico publishes them as they’re syndicated by Cagle Cartoons [link added], owned by Daryl Cagle.

Jones called the cartoon (and their syndicate) out for what he saw it as:

Last week, they produced something extremely racist.

If Margo wrote it, then Cox should have refused to draw it.

Jones passed on the responses to his take from Margolis and Cox on Facebook and X/Twitter:

It’s always the wacko cartoonists who can’t draw for shit who hate our work the most.

I’m not finding a Margolis and Cox rebuttal to the criticism of the Ketanji Brown Jackson caricature, not even a “hey, how else you going to draw a clown.”

Clay Jones revisited the issue a couple days later:

This cartoon is from December 2023, on the death of Norman Lear. I’m repurposing it with a few changes for Margolis & Cox…

Clay Jones

Unintended consequences: I think Jones’ drawing attention (no pun intended) to the Margolis and Cox political cartoon may have at least doubled the team’s hits/readership across their platforms.

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Comments 18

  1. I’m with Clay Jones on this one. And I have to say I am beginning to understand how 1930’s Germany happened.

    1. Thank you. Trump has made it easier for Racists to feel free about their racism.

      1. Just as Hitler made it easy to be antisemitic…

      2. That’s why they like Trump. He lets them be who they always have been. Up until Trump, they had to hide what they were – bigots. Trump is their liberator.

      3. Their cartoons are lame and distasteful but I believe all cartoons should be published. Cartoons of Mohammad are a death wish and political cartoons depicting pedophilia won’t be popular. Art isn’t about permission

    2. I’m happy to see that I’m not the only student of history who’s concerned for what the future holds for our country.

  3. Definitely backing Clay here. Anything else is unthinkable.

  4. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m tired of privileged white people. period. AND I’ve been a white person for 80 years. Wasn’t Clarence a DEI hire?? He cried at his confirmation hearing that they ere asking hard questions “because I’m a black man and this is just another form of lynching. ” sounds like DEI hire to me.

  5. A clown’s a clown…regardless of race or gender. Anyone seeing it differently, are themselves the racist. Margolis and Cox’s caricatures are spot on!

    1. Classic blaming the victim, Joe. if she’s supposedly a clown, where’s the red rubber nose? It looks pretty brown to me.

      1. The nose is red. If it were up to me, I’d do her face in clown white with blue highlights around the eyes — i.e., make her obviously a clown. As it stands, it’s too easy to “mistake” her for a big lipped caricature of the type that Hank Ketcham ran afoul of. That was no doubt M&C’s intent, so they can’t complain if their critics see her that way.

      2. “Victim” is weak, John. Red nose, mouth, cheeks and purple hair screams clown. She was even scorned by the other lib justices for heaven’s sake.

    2. So you find the caricatures of trump as a fat, stupid, brain damaged slob with miniaturized hands spot on as well, presumably. even though it’s not a very valid comparison to Jackson being a clown. She at least speaks English, has a more than seventeen word vocabulary, is aware of history, understands her job, and can form sentences about her understanding of our fairly complex legal system. Unlike our “king”.

  6. political cartoons are supposed to be biting, sarcastic, incisive..that cartoon was simply disgusting. as a 79year old white canadian woman, I am so tired of crass and unfunny cartoons.

  7. They are not only racist but homophobic and transphobic. their cartoons are vile and show the authors are people who are contributing to the downfall of our country to the white fake-Christian authoritarian state it is now. However I’m not sure censoring things we don’t agree with is the answer. How can we bemoan death threats against cartoonists on one hand and then try to justify shutting down cartoonists we don’t like on the other. Book banning is designed to prevent words people don’t like from being shared. Cartoon banning is the same thing in either direction. Surely it is better to know who thinks these things so they could be held accountable, at least ideally, then to quash the creation of the art. I’d rather they don’t exist because there is no demand for it, but it does seem like demanding the removal just gives air to their flames rather than letting their flames burn out. Cartoons serve an important historical record, more impactful then many other mediums. We live in horrific times And these cartoons provide a legitimate record of how horrible many people are.

  8. As a cartoonist, you have to observe other cartoonists work objectively although you draw your own work subjectively.
    My work appears on the Daryl Cagle site, in the World section, but I’m not alone in penning anti Trump cartoons, they’re all over the Cagle site, so it’s a pretty equal opportunity sort of place, I’ve never had my stuff rejected, even showing Trump as a sh*t-chucking chimp standing on his desk.
    One thing I take issue with is the labels “Liberal” and “Conservative” which are only used in the USA. In the UK or Australia, we might use Right-leaning or Left-leaning, but generally our views might swing day by day, in other words a strong unions advocate might also be against trans rights, and a gay rights advocate cartoonist might be pro Israel too.
    “Liberal” and “Conservative” are get-outs, as in “I’m sorry I can’t support that brown-skinned person’s application, I’m a Conservative, you see . . .”
    I’m a big fan of cartooning styles, and whoever draws the cartoons in the Margolis Cox team is an excellent artist, as is Lester, but I wouldn’t want to be sitting next to them at a dinner party, and wouldn’t even talk to them in an elevator, as my distaste for their politics would render me catatonic.
    The drawing of the Supreme Court judge is (it seems to me) a deliberate racial insult which hides behind an excuse. If you point out the visual racial slur, the “Conservative” artist gives themselves a handy exit and might even have the gall to toss a charge or racism right back at you, as in: “she’s drawn as a clown, not a minstrel, maybe YOU’ve got a problem with black people!!”

  9. Is that a photo of Daryl Cagle on the piano? Nice touch.

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