It takes courage to speak out against racism, bigotry in all its ugliness, especially if you live in regions dominated by Trump extremism. Take Greg Kearney. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas, a town he describes as “a little dot of blue in a sea of red.” Yet Kearney, a political cartoonist, uses his pen to […]
The Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards honor outstanding reporting on issues that reflect Robert Kennedy’s concerns, including human rights, social justice, and the power of individual action in the United States and around the world. The 2020 RFK Award for Cartooning is presented to JD Crowe of the Alabama Media Group “for his use of […]
above: “We could say he threatened us with a knife… If we had a knife!”The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum has posted a blog entry featuring original art of cartoonists looking at police brutality. Mostly from the 1980s and 1990s with a couple recent ones and a couple from The Sixties. That Billy Ireland post […]
Steve Sack threads the needle, speaking from Minneapolis where the whole thing started and carefully making the memorial for George Floyd substantially larger than those of other factors in the city.That seems to be well-earned, by the way: Floyd is very warmly remembered in his hometown of Houston, where he was a standout athlete and […]
Somebody reposted this David Rowe cartoon from November, 2016.It was bad enough then, the feeling of “What have we done?”, but it felt like just a bad one-night stand, one of those regrettable times when you just throw on your clothes, get the hell out, swear you’ll never drink again and try to forget it […]
From Junkee: The Australian has a long and storied history of just appallingly racist cartoons. There’s something about cartoons being racist that just hits differently — they feel like they should be a more cheery medium, and they are being misused somehow. Anyway, since The Australian’s resident cartoonist Bill Leak went died in 2017, the paper […]
The Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre and Gallery has been presenting a series of webinars (online seminars) about the Covid-19 pandemic. Their latest is the Thursday, June 4, 2020 MLC WEBINAR # 6: Coping with Crisis through Humour, Art, and Performance. What remedies can art and performance offer during COVID-19? What is the role […]
RJ Matson offers a great take on “Blind Justice.”Blind Justice is an ideal that we’ve never achieved. The idea of a system in which everyone who comes before it gets equal treatment, in which Justice does not see who is on either side, is something to strive for even if we know in our hearts […]
Newspaper cartoonist and illustrator Joe Yeninas has passed away. Joseph John (Joe) YeninasMay 10, 1934 – May 29, 2020newspaper cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic editor From the Joseph J. Yeninas Creative Arts Fund: In 1953 Joe Yeninas joined the Marine Corps, deciding to pass up an opportunity to play Minor League baseball. Shortly after his return from […]
Juxtaposition of the Day(Bob Gorrell)(Tom Toro, June 2012)And let me add that those who pretend to study history talk about the riots of 1968 in terms of the tumultuous demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention that summer.Which were not riots except in the sense of “police riots,” stirred up by Mayor Daley who explained it […]
There’s no point in trying to discuss the current situation chronologically, so let’s start with Matt Wuerker’s cartoon, which assumes a moment midstream.And it assumes an old-fashioned view of calling in the National Guard, because that was how you tamped down vicious local cops back in the days of Little Rock and such.But it was […]
There’s not a lot going on over on the editorial side. Statues of Liberty being knelt upon, but not much new insight.But politics have leaked over onto the funny pages, so we’ll look there.First:Will no one rid me of this troublesome website?This Nick Anderson cartoon was taken down at the Red Bubble site at the […]
No Counterpoint over at Twitter. Also no explanation. The comics group was suspended, apparently for violating “the Twitter Rules.”Which you can read here, but which won’t explain what happened.UPDATE: The account has been restored but, as of 7 pm EST, now has only 96 followers. It had previously had some 10,000.Go give’em some love.
I’m giving JD Crowe top billing because less is more and he kept it plain, but managed to sweep in what happened and why it matters.He didn’t swap in the Statue of Liberty or the Statue of Justice or otherwise adorn a scene that speaks for itself, nor did he ask an obvious rhetorical question […]
Editor’s Note: I’m going to begin floating what has been the “Friday Funnies,” which this week falls on Wednesday. I’d like to schedule two set installments a week, but given a seven-day week, it’s impossible to get more than two days separation on both ends and the locker doesn’t always refill that quickly. So you’ll […]