Dan Wasserman steps away from the “wow, what a storm!” pack for a more substantive comment on privatization and localization of FEMA-type relief.Chris Christie’s comments aside, I doubt there is enough time between now and the election for Sandy’s impact to be felt at the polls. Plus, to put a cynically pragmatic spin on things, […]
I don’t know how fresh Will Rogers’s act really was even back in his day, but knee-jerk attacks on Congress and professions of how “they’re all crooks” have certainly become tiresome and dime-a-dozen since. It is not a sign of genius to discover that there are no flawless people in public life and that no […]
South African President Jacob Zuma has dropped his four-year-old lawsuit against cartoonist Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro) for a cartoon that had shown him raping the nation’s justice system.As this cartoon indicates, Zapiro has not decided to shake hands and become friends.As the web site Africartoons says, this is a happy ending to the immediate problem and […]
As a live-alone adult, let me say that Hilary Price has it all wrong in today’s Rhymes with Orange.Bills? Dishes? Laundry? No way those are keeping me from my comfy bed. I wouldn’t mind if something constructive were actually happening in that space between, “Oh, it’s a little early yet,” and “Dear god, how did […]
Someone posted this Clay Bennett cartoon on Facebook yesterday, and a comment quickly came of how well it was done and that it needed no labels.To which someone replied that maybe it needed labels because he didn’t get it.Which is a little like making a reference to “the back of the bus” and having someone […]
Dave Kellett’s been doing a storyline at Sheldon this week, which he doesn’t always do. Gramps has found a camera with a mostly-exposed roll of film among his late wife’s stuff in the attic, and is trying to figure out what to do with it.Dave’s sense of humor, and his geek-element, are on display so often that it’s sometimes […]
Gary Varvel is a conservative cartoonist.I don’t often agree with his point of view, and, more than once, I’ve found his work more mean-spirited than incisive. But I admire this particular cartoon, perhaps more in context than on its own, but on its own as well.The facial expressions are priceless, as are Obama’s flailing fists.All […]
Political cartooning is not only not dead, but, even as some good veteran artists hang up their pens and retire, there are some good young practitioners emerging.I’ve said before that one of the unspoken factors in the shift from print to not-print is that, just as when movies began to supplant live theater (which did […]
As we begin what appears to be an inevitable shift to electronic format, political cartoonists find themselves increasingly at the mercy of deadlines.The shift may be inevitable. Letting it impact the overall quality of work doesn’t have to be. After all, political cartoonists produced brilliant topical pieces back in the days (not so long ago) […]
The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee certainly isn’t the first strip to use an imaginary campaign for president as a gag during an election year, but the premise of the strip gives it an advantage, since Edison’s combination of brilliance and naivete regularly steers him away from undue knee-jerk cynicism while keeping him from being […]
Candorville is close to being a political cartoon, in that Darrin Bell spends equal amounts of time provoking thought and telling jokes. Today, however, he is letting his geek flag fly, as he often does.And — unintentionally perhaps — proving that we will never invent time travel unless we completely and absolutely change our society first. […]
I often find myself weighing one potential CSOTD over another, and, by the time it comes down to the final two, it generally has as much to do with what I’d rather talk about than which one is technically better done or funnier or more insightful.Today, the question is, from which perspective do I want […]
“Monty” explores the world of presidential polls. The back-and-forth in the current campaign is, as suggested yesterday, getting to the point where ridiculous things about binders are crowding out more substantive arguments. But, then again, maybe we really are in a world in which facts and logic are not relevant and smart campaigning should ignore […]
Adam Zyglis made good use of the binder concept.And a few others came close, but the binder meme seems to me a pretty good example of what’s wrong with this whole group-participation form of presidential campaign: A lot of piling on over something of very little significance; a lot of straining over gnats and swallowing […]
As Chris Baldwin notes over at the latest Space Trawler, the two of us went down to Elmira, NY, yesterday to research a children’s story we’re working on. And he’s right that the archivist at the Chemung County Historical Society is a rare resource. Rather than just trotting out the usual pieces and telling us […]