April 25, 2005

ANOTHER CONTROVERSY ABOUT OUR CARTOONS AND ISLAM

Here is a note I received from the Opinion Editor of the Sacramento State University's newspaper, the State Hornet, along with an editorial and a response from an angry Hornet reader, all regarding the cartoon below by Sandy Huffaker.

Dear Daryl,

Attached is my article printed as a follow-up to the firestorm over the Huffaker cartoon, "New Pope", and a Guest Commentary from a member of the Muslim Students Association. Since the article I've had some time to think even more about the issue and part of me wishes I wasn't so diplomatic in my response.

In retrospect, it's clear that the State Hornet was the victim of a coordinated attack by Muslim supporters, many of whom probably never saw the cartoon, but whose main interest was to elicit an apology for what they considered an offensive image of Islam. Evidence of that comes from e-mails that arrived from as far away as San Diego and Portland.

Part of what drives me to write you today is the story last week about the commercial helicopter that was downed last week in Iraq--one of the bloodiest days there in months. In a video broadcast on al-Jazeera, one of the surviving crew members is helped to his feet and then promptly executed as the Muslim insurgents chant "God is great". I guess the contrast of that image against the relatively benign Huffaker cartoon is what incenses me the most.

Why aren't the Muslims regularly denouncing this type of behavior? It seems much more damaging to their cause to allow this type of image to make it to the mainstream media. People are being brutally executed every day and allover the world in the name of Islam, yet there seems to be little Muslim denunciation of those acts or the images that make it to the media.

I mention that the Muslims have a PR problem, which is clearly understatement given the circumstance and the threat of terrorism that haunts us all. If their god is so great, maybe he ought to stop all of the killing in "his" name.

Best Regards,

Art Ballard, Opinion Editor
The State Hornet,
Sacramento, CA

Editor's Note: Cartoon invites lively, passionate discussion
by Art Ballard
Opinion Editor, State Hornet

April 13, 2005

Last week I ran a cartoon by caglecartoons.com artist Sandy Huffaker that tapped a nerve with some of our student and non-student readers. Cagle provides us with a wide variety of mostly satirical political content and there isn't much that is taboo with its artists. Huffaker is no exception. I'm a fan of his 'nothing is too holy' approach, because his work, while controversial, invites passionate discussion.

I like that.

I wish we had more lively discussions on campus; since I find myself disappointed weekly by the lack of response to much of what we print in the State Hornet Opinion section.

Even the somewhat controversial column by Andrew Stewart entitled, "College Greeks got all the 'freaks'" generated a paltry 11 responses from a community that numbers in the thousands. This, after I was assured that a hell storm of response was forthcoming. But that is another story and not what this column is about.

In case you missed it, the cartoon depicted a caricature of President George Bush, an Islamic extremist with a knife and the word "Islam" written on it, and two careless wine swilling Europeans sitting in front of the "New Pope's" office door. After the publication of the cartoon, four members of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) dropped by the Hornet offices to discuss what they perceived as dangerous stereotyping. Their concern extended to the alleged violence and future violence against Muslim students.

I wanted to make sure I understood the artist's intention so I went right to the source, Huffaker himself. He said by e-mail, "The cartoon criticizes Bush's faith and Europe for not having much faith at all, as well as Islam's problems with violence and revenge. The most vicious E-mails I get are either from the NRA or Islam ... " Whether you agree with him or not, the message is provocative and played out satirically in a way that certainly displays the worst characteristics of all the characters.

Let me state right up front that I am not about, nor is the State Hornet Opinion section in the business of intentionally perpetuating stereotypes. We will, however, in the proper context, use every means possible within the framework of the First Amendment to convey a message or make a point. Satire often serves that purpose well. The problem with any sort of satire is that inevitably someone is going to be offended.

Dictionary.com defines 'satire': "a literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision or wit."

In the offensive category, the cartoon in question had a number of stereotypes to choose from. George Bush carrying a missile and a bag of money to the Pope's office would surely rub a few Republicans and maybe even a few Catholics the wrong way since it could have implied that the Pope was for sale or maybe in danger.

The partying Europeans oblivious to the piety of the Pope's position flirtatiously ignore anyone around them, instead focusing on their own selfish needs. And finally, the image in question, the Islamic fundamentalist staring down the viewer menacingly waiting for the chance to perpetrate his next heinous atrocity in the name of Islam.

In all three cases Huffaker paints an extreme picture of the protagonists in his cartoon. On the surface, this is a free speech issue. We have a right to print what we like with few apologies, especially in the name of political satire. In the words of this week's guest columnist, John Kincaid, "In political satire people's feelings get hurt, no apologies made." By its very nature satire is meant to exaggerate, caricaturize and in some cases, incite an emotional reaction.

If I were to worry about each and every group I offended when I printed a cartoon, I wouldn't have any cartoons to print. I print them because I think they are important and even in this case they have inspired a dialogue. My intention is never to hurt or offend.

In the case of the MSA, they were concerned that if the cartoon were critical of Catholics, Jews or blacks, I would have censored the material. Not true. The numerous cases of alleged abuse of children by Catholic priests surely would have been a concern had it been topical during my tenure here at the Hornet and given the opportunity to highlight the other groups in a satirical way would surely be explored. And we certainly have taken our shots at President George Bush whenever appropriate.

In some ways, I think this cartoon was perceived as especially offensive because of the acknowledged difficulties faced by Muslims since 9/11 and the rise of the Muslim insurgency in Iraq. Five years ago it may not have garnered even one letter from the Muslim community. That I understand, and I am more than sympathetic to the issue. In business or political terms, the Muslim community has a real PR problem on its hands for which I don't have a solution.

Sadly, we cannot deny that a lot of violence has been perpetrated in the name of Islamic extremism just as the Irish Catholics and Protestants have had their violent issues. As a journalist, how am I supposed to present these stories if I have a fear of offending a certain group of people? As I write this, three suicide bombers and an American contractor kidnapped in Iraq are leading the news.

I know that most Muslims don't relate to the violent extremist factions who represent themselves as Muslims, but sometimes it's hard to separate the religion from the act, even if those extremists represent a fringe faction of the religion. The same could be said for the large numbers of Catholic priests who have never molested a child. As unfair as it is, it becomes guilt by association. I do agree with Kincaid when he says America has a problem. Americans don't like those who are different from themselves, which in this case, means white America. I'm not proud of it, but it's one of those sinful situations that has been around since the first Europeans started exploiting the real Native Americans. Again, that's a column for another day.

I'm sure that none of the above comes across as an apology to the Muslim community, but I hope it explains my position and the position of journalists who print political satire. But I also hope that those reading this get the fact that the Muslim majority is concerned about its image. If there is anything good that can come from this, please take notice that Muslims are not content to allow the negative stereotypes to continue and that the majority of Muslims are nothing like the awful stories we read about emanating from the Middle East conflict in Iraq.

Art Ballard can be reached at opinion@statehornet.com

---------------------------

Guest Commentary: Hornet discriminates against Muslims

by John Kincaid
Sac State Student

April 13, 2005

About four years ago, The State Hornet ran an article with the headline: "Sac State Muslims Not Immune to Prejudice" (September 17, 2001, News section). The article was written about a week after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001; two separate incidents were documented, one where a Muslim student wearing a headscarf was spit upon by another student, and another where a Muslim student was told "we should bomb you all."

Last week the Hornet illustrated that Muslims are still subject to discrimination when it ran a pair of editorial cartoons it received from Daryl Cagle's professional cartoon service (A6-A7, April 6, 2005). One depicted the waiting room for the new pope. In it, between a pair of oblivious Europeans and a drawing of President Bush sitting on a nuclear missile and a pile of cash, was the typical misleading image of a Muslim. He wore a long black robe, had a bushy white beard, a hooked nose and a mad, crazed look in his eye. In his hand was a long, curved sword with the word Islam written on it.

The next cartoon showed various evil-looking animals devouring each other. A snake labeled "Shia," a camel labeled "Kurd" and an unidentifiable creature labeled "Sunnis."

So what's the problem here? Of course these are stereotypes; they're meant to be. In political satire people's feelings get hurt, no apologies made. But these cartoons cut a little bit deeper than political satire, and in fact reveal a troubling pattern - not just about the Hornet, but about American society.

The picture in the first cartoon is not just of the "typical" Muslim we are used to getting in the media: it's of the "typical" Arab as well. With a lecherous grin, he waits to do violence in the name of religion, the very picture of fanaticism. We as American viewers are quite used to getting this picture. From movies to T.V,. we are confronted with it over and over again. When was the last time you watched "True Lies," staring our current governor? He kills enough of these stereotypical Muslim Arabs to fill a morgue. What about "The Mummy?" or "The Siege" with Bruce Willis? All of them rack up the body counts and the stereotypes.

It doesn't stop with the movies. On Fox news, Bill O'Reilly tells us that the "vast majority of the Muslim world thinks we're infidels, that Allah wants them to kill us and no matter what we do, we're not going to change that." He goes on to compare the Quran to Hitler's "Mein Kampf," while a few hours later, Geraldo describes Arabs as "these dogs, these pigs; I call them animals," (remind anyone of cartoon number two?) and that we should clean out the "rats nest." What we have here is not just the Hornet staff making a poor choice of cartoons; unfortunately, it's a much bigger problem than that.

These destructive and ultimately dangerous Arab and Muslim stereotypes are accepted as the norm by most of us. While many of us would immediately be outraged by a cartoon depicting a black "Sambo" or minstrel character, we barely bat an eye at the same portrayal of Arabs and Muslims.

This blind eye toward Arab/Muslim stereotypes leads to the type of behavior the Hornet documented four years ago. It's not just the Hornet that's at fault here; it's all of us.

I just received this note from Brian Fairrington who tells me that he is the new cartoonist for the Arizona Tribune. I wish the best to Brian in his new role, he is a very talented guy. Mike Ritter is also a great guy and a great cartoonist. I'm sure Mike will be missed at the Tribune.

Daryl,

On Monday, April 18th 2005 it was announced that Mike Ritter has left the East Valley Tribune after 13 years there and that the Tribune wishes Mike the best of luck in his new endeavors.

I will begin working with the Tribune sometime this summer as the dust settles on the recent turn of events and I complete my move into a new house in Gilbert Arizona, an East Valley suburb of Phoenix, with my wife and three children. I have had an ongoing relationship with the Tribune since I was a student at Arizona State University in the late 1990s and I look forward to this opportunity. In the mean time I will continue doing my national cartoons which are syndicated and distributed through Cagle Cartoons.

Brian Fairrington

BASHING THE POPE

Here's my newspaper column for the week, on the cartoonists bashing the new pope.

CARTOONISTS BASH THE NEW POPE
by Daryl Cagle

The selection of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope has been treated politely by the American press, but cartoonists around the world have been bashing the pontiff in ways that most readers would find shocking.

Mixing the words "rat" and "Nazi," the British tabloid "The Sun" dubbed the new pope "Papa Ratzi" in a banner headline. American newspapers are more polite to the conservative pontiff, criticizing him in editorials but avoiding Nazi metaphors. Growing up in Germany in the 1930's, Ratzinger was compelled to join the Hitler Youth and the German Wehrmacht. As a defender of conservative church doctrine, he was labeled as Pope John Paul II's "rottweiler." Cartoonists have seized on these images, portraying the pope as a snarling dog, and putting him in the role of the Fuhrer, reviewing troops of goose-stepping sheep or cardinals.

Readers usually see only one editorial cartoon in their daily newspaper and have to wander onto the internet to see what the political cartoonists are doing. Editors typically subscribe to many syndicated editorial cartoonists so that they have a large selection from which to pick a favorite cartoon of the day. In recent years, the trend among editors is to choose more cartoons that are cute little jokes which do not express a strong point of view. Editors want to avoid controversy; strong cartoons draw a strong reaction from readers. Cartoonists call the trend to opinionless cartoons "Newsweekization," as Newsweek Magazine is notorious for showcasing funny, pointless, inoffensive cartoons. Cartoonists still draw the strong cartoons, but readers see only the bland jokes that editors select. Cartoons that bash a pope will rarely be seen in the US, simply because too many readers would take offense.

The recent cartoons criticizing the new pontiff come from cartoonists who don't like his conservative views. Australian cartoonist Paul Zanetti depicts the pope saying, "Forward to the future" as he leads his sheep down a hole labeled "the past." Canadian cartoonist Michael DeAdder portrays the pope's vestments decorated with symbols that say "no condoms", "no reform" and "no women." Cartoonist David Horsey of the Seattle Post Intelligencer draws the pontiff invading a woman's bathroom, scowling as she holds a birth control pill. Cartoonist Nate Beeler of the Washington Examiner draws the new pope with an accordion singing, "Are you ready to party like it's 1299?"

I drew a breathless television reporter, with her finger on her ear-piece, delivering the breaking news from Rome: "...WAIT ... I'm now being told that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the new pope, is NOT ... repeat NOT called a 'German Shepherd,' he's a 'Rottweiler'. He WAS in the Hitler Youth, but he did NOT, repeat NOT, play Cliff the mailman on 'Cheers.'"

Foreign cartoons are always more harsh than those from America. Brazilian cartoonist Lailson de Hollanda shows an evil-looking pope at the window, with a crowd chanting "Heil Pope! Heil Pope!" Slovakian cartoonist Martin Sutovek shows the pontiff wearing blinders, like a race horse. Brazilian cartoonist Simanca draws the pope as a shark, about to chew up little fish labeled "homosexuals."

Cartoonists are bomb-throwers. If this column runs with no cartoons, I'm sure there is nothing to worry about. If this column runs with sample cartoons, I know that somewhere, an editor is hiding under his desk.

(Credit Steve Berlin-Chavez for the funny note about the Pope's name being similar to that guy who played Cliff the mailman on Cheers. You're a funny guy, Steve.)

Want to see the reclusive Daryl Cagle rear his ugly head? Daryl will be doing a book signing this Saturday at the Barnes & Noble in Valencia California (by Magic Mountain) from 12:00 to 3:00pm. The address is:

Barnes & Noble
23630 Valencia Boulevard
Valencia, California 91355

The easiest way to get there is to take I-5 North, exit Valencia Boulevard turn right, continue approximately 1.5 miles. As you pass Magic Mountain Parkway, you'll see it on your right. Continue until the next signal (Applebee's) and make a right onto Creekside, turn right into our parking lot.

Free drawings! Books! Oh to be in California!

CALL ME FISHMAEL

Ever since I found the front-page newspaper clipping from The Gettysburg World Gazette in my grandparents' attic describing the death of my Great Uncle Lloyd Taylor in 1933 by what appeared to be spontaneous internal combustion as fantastic and terrifying and unforgettable, I wanted to be famous.

I remember seeing the faded photograph of the living room blackened by the greasy flash of light and the charred armchair that my great uncle had been sitting in and the single remaining slipper still containing his foot standing defiantly just beyond the radius of the explosion. "Wow," I thought to myself, "to still be standing after that! What a freaking superman!" My grandmother told me that the foot, still inside the slipper, was buried in my one of my great aunt's flower boxes while my great uncle's receptionist from the insurance office where he worked, a 400 pound woman who wore an eye patch named Bunny Tinkle, played Yankee Doodle on a row of drinking glasses and relatives cried and the children of relatives tried to keep a straight face and raccoons, already in face masks, waited for nightfall.

"The thing was eventually yanked out of the flower box by some animal," my grandmother said, "and chewed into a pile of, I don't know, a kind of meat loaf and smeared all over the front fender of the car. Aunt Minnie tried to comfort everybody by insisting that that's the way Uncle Lloyd would've wanted it. 'He really loved that car,' she would tell them, 'particularly that front fender.' Her smile was intolerable when she spoke, like a toupee. You had to look away. And then, to top it all off, in order to protect the memory of her late husband, she had specifications put into her own will indicating that after she died she too would be ground into something like a meat loaf and smeared on the front fender of the car." My grandmother told me how days following the heart attack and coma that would eventually kill my great aunt the family sold the car and replaced it with a box of trash bags.

Listening to her talk while she changed the diaper on her 22-year-old cat, Roosevelt, his cloudy eyes rolling around in his tiny, wizened head looking hard through the fog for a bus to jump in front of, all I could think of was, "Geez, if only I could grab the spotlight like that for five minutes I could change the world." How? Well, when I was seven-years-old I had some definite ideas, all of which seemed to suddenly coalesce into a cohesive whole the morning after I'd first heard about Great Uncle Lloyd's miraculous disappearance.

Sitting alone at the breakfast table, I found myself obsessed with trying to imagine what must've gone through his head in that final millisecond just before he was suddenly blasted into smithereens. I wondered if he'd said anything and, if he had, was it something that was unpublishable by The Gettysburg World Gazette? I wondered what I might say in a similar circumstance. I then remembered back to several months earlier, on the Saturday before Easter, how I walked into the dining room and sat down at the table lined with newspapers and leaned forward and picked up a hard-boiled egg from a plate of a dozen or more, unaware that they'd all just been removed from the stovetop not a full minute before I entered the room. I remembered how I yelped and let go of the egg and how it dropped into the open fly of my speedboat pajamas and how I let loose with a line of curse words so intense that afterwards it was discovered that the Jesus in the upstairs hallway had to have His hands pried away from His ears and re-nailed to His tiny cross before Sunday dinner. It was my punishment to do the hammering while everybody else crouched behind the furniture with their fingers in their ears.

Peeling a banana as if disassembling a metaphor, I started thinking about how I'd always been immune to the deleterious effects of dirty words and how I was able to repeat them over and over and over again inside my own head without personal injury, shame or, truth be told, even revelry. Why? After all, according to the ethereal lore of acceptable behavior dirty words when spoken were supposed to explode like firecrackers of varying size depending on the military rank of the word and like firecrackers were largely illegal except in the South and only to be used by responsible adults ­ although, to talk to my mother, it seemed that only the less sensible adults used them with any regularity, typically of the beer drinking, my-life-ended-when-I-left-high-school, I-haven't-worn-dark-socks-and-hard-shoes-since-the-Senior-Prom type. She had a name for a person like that: Your father! (The inferred explicative in the extra long f sound whenever she mentioned my father usually made it necessary for me to wipe her saliva off my glasses with my shirt.) But with me, dirty words were simply part of a forbidden language that seemed completely non-threatening and undeserving of its menacing reputation, particularly when every dirty word that I knew had a corresponding regular word that named the same thing that the dirty word did, however, without the obscenity, suggesting that maybe the obscenity of dirty words was imaginary and that the harmful effects of them was self-imposed.

P-o-o-p, for example, referred to the same thing that s-h-i-t did and while one was as safe as a piece of ice cream, the other was not ­ again, why? I knew that the thing that both words described might not be something that the average person typically regarded with deep affection or even a vague respect, but was it obscene? No, of course it wasn't; it was inert and non-malicious and utterly indifferent to how it might be perceived by the vanity of the animal whose life it helped to sustain as nobly as breathing. So did the obscenity of s-h-i-t come from the thing that it literally described? No, not if the thing that it literally described could also be talked about using the word p-o-o-p without offending anybody.

It was as if the conceptual obscenity of the dirty word had been made into the equivalent of its written and spoken form the same way that the conceptual value of a cent had been made into the equivalent of a penny and people had somehow become confused and made both of them synonymous with each other, ignoring the fact that when one sees a penny one does not also see a cent; the cent must be imagined, it's reality conjured out of one's ability to pretend that something is there when it really isn't. Specifically, a dirty word presented outside the country of its origin, like currency, is meaningless, just as Americanism outside of America is meaningless and the precepts of Christianity outside the Christian faith are meaningless and all notions of racial and sexual superiority outside the circumstance of their particular prejudice are meaningless. Obscenity is always imposed and never intrinsic.

Obscenity, then, I came to realize, isn't only about shock and upset. Some obscenity is about elation and arrogance and narcissism and pride, which might be the most dangerous sort since it lacks the physical or even spiritual discomfort necessary to label it convincingly as bad for the health of society.

"What are you doing?" asked my mother, passing me on her way into the kitchen to rinse out her coffee cup in the sink.
"Huh?" I said, attempting to hide my banana by making its angle less confident.

"Oh, no," she said.

"Oh, no, what?" I said.

"Jesus, don't tell me that you're turning into your Cousin Penelope," she said, referring to the nineteen-year-old ultra-hippie daughter of my father's brother who had just spent the weekend with us on her way to the Peace Corps and had done nothing but argue nonstop with my mother about everything from why she wasn't at least giving our family the option of hibiscus leaves instead of toilet paper to the virtues of bad breath, body odor and armpit hair, not the least of which was all the alone time that it afforded for self-reflection and the meditative picking of syphilis scabs.

"If that banana is singing Kum-by-yah to you or telling you that you're an incomplete person because I didn't eat your placenta like a hyena when you were born don't pay attention!" she said, turning off the water and drying her hands on a dish towel. "That crackpot cousin of yours told me that she wanted to be a lyricist for whale songs and I told her to give me a call when she found a word that rhymed with unemployment."

"Hey, Mom?"

"Hey, what?" she said, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

"Is there any difference between your middle finger and your ring finger?"

"Huh?" she said, pulling a cigarette out of the pack with her lips like a cowboy.

"Is there any difference between your middle finger and your ring finger?"

With her brow clenched around my question like a fist around an empty tube of toothpaste, she picked up her hand and looked at it. She looked at her wedding ring. "What do you mean?" she said, squeezing the empty tube.

"I know that one's bigger than the other one, but is there any difference besides that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, lowering her hand satisfied that I was an idiot.

"Hey, Mom," I said again.

"What," she said, looking around for something to light her cigarette with. I held up my ring finger as if flipping her the bird.
"Does this mean anything to you?"

Predictably, my gesture fell into her brain like a cherry bomb into a box of kittens, however, unpredictably to somebody having never been in the company of more than one cat at a time and unrehearsed in the herding of such existential animals ­ the one cat that I had any experience with being 22-years-old and as likely to run anywhere as it was to pilot an airplane ­ I watched while my mother's intellect exploded into shrapnel and scampered out of the room in all directions to cower beneath various pieces of furniture throughout the house, in absolute incommunicado with one another.

And while I was being dragged down the hallway to my bedroom still clutching my banana and demanding that I be allowed to call either the ACLU, my lawyer, or a cab, I began to realize that perhaps it might be necessary for me to remove my body, or more precisely my ring finger, from my method of instruction and to make my gift of p-o-o-p and s-h-i-t to the world much more of an anonymous offering.

Sitting on my bed and listening through the floor to my mother slamming kitchen cabinets and yelling at the dog in the hell that I'd made of her morning, I uncapped a pen and wrote with my left hand, so as not to make my penmanship immediately traceable to myself, six words so small as to be nearly invisible on the sole of my left slipper, space being of the essence:

Hello, my name is Mr. Fish.

E-mail Dwayne at applesandcheeses@verizon.net and visit his work here.

CAGLE ON HANNITY & COLMES

Yes, that was me on Hannity & Colmes last night. Thanks to all of you who wrote to say that I don't look like what you thought I'd look like.

I was invited on to rebut the position of "conservative media watchdog" and Fox News Analyst, Brent Bozell, who argued that the Pulitzer Prize Committee must be biased because most Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning go to liberal cartoonists.

Of-course, readers of our site know that most editorial cartoonists are liberal. If the Pulitzer Committee considers excellence without regard to politics it is no surprise that the award winners reflect the proportions of liberal and conservative cartoonists in the pool of cartoonist-applicants. If we were going to have an equal number of liberal and conservative winners, the Pulitzer Committee would need an affirmative action program with quotas for minority conservative cartoonists. The thought of that makes me laugh.

Scott is a long time contributor to our site. See his cartoons here. I've posted a story from Editor & Publisher about Scott's departure from the Best and the Wittiest package, followed by Scott's story in his own words, from his blog.

King No Longer Syndicating Scott Bateman's Editorial Cartoons
By Dave Astor
Published: March 29, 2005 2:05 PM ET

NEW YORK Editorial cartoonist Scott Bateman and King Features Syndicate have parted ways.

Bateman was one of about a dozen editorial cartoonists in "The Best and the Wittiest" package distributed by King. He said the syndicate was "using fewer and fewer of my cartoons, and especially shying away from the harder-hitting ones" -- including a March 20 cartoon pointing out the hypocrisy of President Bush and many Republicans in the Terri Schiavo case.

King Editor in Chief Jay Kennedy, when contacted by E&P, said in a statement: "Contrary to misconceptions expressed in some online discussions, Scott Bateman and King Features did not part ways because King Features objected to his political stances. 'The Best and the Wittiest' purposefully offers a range of divergent editorial views. King Features and Scott Bateman parted ways at his behest because he was unhappy with how few of his cartoons were being used."

Kennedy added: "Scott is a talented guy. His editorial pieces expressed a lot of carefully thought-through views, but they are lengthy and are better described as illustrated editorial columns than as editorial cartoons. The larger sizes required to legibly print Scott's pieces are a problem for many daily newspapers."

Bateman's March 20 cartoon showed a woman saying, in part: "The recent bankruptcy bill that Bush supports will make it nearly impossible for families that suffer a major illness or injury like Terri Schiavo's to ever get back on their feet again. ... The tort-reform bill that the president wants would put an end to malpractice claims like the one that's paid for Terri Schiavo's care all these years. ... And when he was governor of Texas, Bush himself signed a law that gives hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient can't pay." So, the cartoon concluded, Bush and many Republicans are interested in "the culture of life ... only when it doesn't interfere" with the desires of big companies such as the ones that supported the above three pieces of legislation.

The cartoon subsequently appeared on many more Web outlets (including blogs and bulletin boards) than a typical Bateman drawing, and it generated a lot of online discussion. But King didn't distribute it via "The Best and the Wittiest." So Bateman e-mailed the syndicate to tell it how popular the cartoon was on the Web and said he'd be willing to quit the package "if King continues not to distribute my best work."

In its reply, King said it was "best" that Bateman leave the package.

Bateman said he joined the package in 1997, and, for a time, had an average of 10 cartoons used per month -- at $55 per drawing. He added that this income was very important to him because, unlike the other cartoonists in the package, he doesn't have a staff job at a newspaper. Bateman said King started using fewer of his cartoons, and, by last month, only picked up three.

"Granted, my work's been getting edgier in tone and design, but still, in terms of content, it's nothing worse than, say, 'The Daily Show,'" commented Bateman.

What's ahead for Bateman in terms of editorial cartooning? "Currently, I have no future plans," he replied. "It's going to take me some time to figure out what's next."

Meanwhile, Kennedy said a decision has not yet been made about who might replace Bateman in "The Best and the Wittiest" package.

Dave Astor (dastor@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.

From Scott Bateman's Blog ...

First, here's the preamble:

I'd been getting increasingly dissatisfied with King Features over the past several months.

They were using fewer and fewer of my cartoons, and especially shying away from the harder-hitting ones.

I should add here: my work had been running as part of King Features' "Best & Wittiest" package since 1997, The Best & Wittiest package includes about a dozen cartoonists, all sending their stuff to King each day hoping to have one of their cartoons be one of the six King sent out to clients every day, five days a week--an average month for me had been right around ten of my cartoons being included in the package a month, at $55 per cartoon (syndication is NOT where the money is, yo). I was currently the only cartoonist in the package NOT on-staff at a newspaper, which meant I depended on that scant syndication much more than my peers in the package.

Granted, my work's been getting edgier in tone and design, but still--in terms of content, it's nothing worse than say, The Daily Show.

This culminated with them using only three (out of nine I submitted) in February.

And since I get paid per cartoon they pick up, that meant a very scant payday in mid-March.

And so on Sunday, March 20, I drew and submitted this cartoon:

This cartoon struck a nerve online and by Monday it had appeared on numerous blogs, bulletin boards, and LiveJournals, generating a whole lot of discussion of President Bush, the Texas Futile Care Law, and Dubya's hypocrisy in the Schiavo case.

In fact, within 24 hours, the cartoon had been seen about 15-20 times as many times as a typical new cartoon of mine would have been, according to my web logs--and that doesn't count those who saw it on the Slate political cartoon site, or people who posted the cartoon to their own server to post on their blog or web site.

Also by the end of the day Monday, it was clear that King hadn't used the cartoon in the Best & Wittiest package, so I sent this email to King:

You'll be using my Schiavo cartoon from yesterday in the Best & Wittiest package, right? It contributes a HELL of a lot more to the debate than that Shelton cartoon, yo. And it has already become one of my most popular cartoons on the web ever, and inspired a large discussion on DailyKos.com.

If you don't use it, I will want an email explaining why.

And after you guys only used three of my cartoons last month, I'll be happy to quit the Best & Wittiest package if King continues to not distribute my best work. I'm starting to think I need someone a little braver backing my work...

 

24 hours later, on Tuesday, I sent another email:

Hi--
Still waiting for an answer re: my Schiavo cartoon.

I should re-iterate that the cartoon has already appeared on many blogs and message boards online--by far, my most popular cartoon of the past year. Newspaper editors should have the chance to use it in their papers.

I should also re-iterate that a) the facts in the cartoon are absolutely true, and b) I'm willing to walk over this, cuz, hey, if you're only going to use three cartoons of mine a month (as you did in February), do you really think I'm going to miss the monthly check for $165...? I'm pretty much the only political cartoonist in America who actually lives on his meager syndication income, and I'm sure I can do better than $165/month SOMEwhere.

 

That prompted this response from King:

Scott:

      I am not the person who makes the BEST & WITTIEST selections.  The selections are made by a group of editors.

      I did ask to see what you have submitted in the past two months. Having looked at the batch, it is not surprising to me that so few of your cartoons were selected for inclusion.  The bulk of our clients are still print clients - daily newspapers.  Daily newspapers are unlikely to print cartoons with endings such as: "Remember, America -  you can't spell "B*s**" without "Bush!" and "Screw unto others!"

      You do interesting work that you obviously put a lot of thought into, but your cartoons are generally so verbose that they are better described as illustrated opinion columns than as editorial cartoons.  That approach works better on websites where newsholes aren't physically limited by page counts, as is the case with print publications.  The trick with websites of course is figuring out a viable business model to support the creation, marketing and distribution of the work.

      I'd like to see you do well and I want you to do well.  Your involvement with The BEST & WITTIEST feature is clearly upsetting to you, so at this point I agree, it is best that you move on and leave the BEST &
WITTIEST.

      I'm sorry that the experience has been frustrating for you, and wish you the best.  Hopefully, you'll find a paying staff editorial cartoon position on some website.

 

I pinged back with an email agreeing that yeah, it was probably time to move on.

So now, I'm out of work, and nobody's beating down my door to hire me.

Email Scott Bateman at batetoon@yahoo.com Visit his cartoons here. The Editor & Publisher article and Bateman's blog entry are posted with permission.

Our own R.J. Matson has been hired to be the daily editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The Post Dispatch subscribes to our Cagle Cartoons syndication package and got to know RJ by running his cartoons. RJ joined Cagle Cartoons in January.

RJ asked me not to mention that he won the job until today, when the new position was announced by the Post Dispatch. RJ plans to move to St Louis in June, from his home in Connecticut. He has a new baby boy and a two year old daughter. He's looking forward to raising his family in Missouri. RJ tells me he has already scoped out his new office at the newspaper. RJ currently draws one cartoon per week for the New York Observer and four cartoons a week for Roll Call; he plans to continue drawing for both, in addition to his new cartoon commitments at the Post-Dispatch.

The Post-Dispatch is one of the nation's largest newspapers and the fact that they had no cartoonist was often cited, during the last year, as evidence of the decline of the editorial cartooning profession. The empty cartoonist position at the Chicago Tribune is the biggest remaining hole in our long-suffering profession.

The Post-Dispatch has a rich history of great cartoonists, but their drawing table has been empty since December of 2003 when John Sherffius resigned in a dispute with the paper's new editor at the time, Ellen Soeteber. We reprinted an article from the Chicago Reader about the events leading to Sherffius' resignation. Sherffius was hired in an unusual, high profile contest when the Post-Dispatch solicited entries from cartoonists across the nation and had a panel of Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonists select the "winner" of the job. The newspaper was flooded with resumes from job seeking cartoonists for that contest, and was also deluged with portfolios during the past sixteen months.

I asked RJ if he was worried about editorial interference given the reports of Sherffius' experience at the Post-Dispatch, and how he might handle pressure not to pick on Republicans too much. RJ didn't think that would be a problem, noting that the editors liked the fact that his cartoons were "unpredictable" and were impressed that he has been able to skewer both political parties with equal verve in the cartoons he has drawn for Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill with a strictly non-partisan editorial policy. If anything, RJ expects that working at the Post-Dispatch will allow him to cover more issues in a more biting way than ever before.

Congratulations to RJ on winning the job! I look forward to continuing to syndicate his excellent work for a long time to come.

THE POPE CARTOONS

I just put up a big collection of cartoons marking the death of Pope John Paul II. Readers respond more to obituary cartoons than to anything else that political cartoonists draw, and I'm sure the cartoon memorials to the Pope will be the same.

There were a couple of cartoons that didn't quite fit with the ... erm ... respectful tone of the others ... so I didn't include them in the Pope memorial section and I thought I would put them here. Cartoonists tend to travel in packs, but there are always a couple of strays.

Rainer Hachfeld, Berlin, Germany, Neues Deutschland E-mail Rainer. Visit an archive of the artist's most recent cartoons in the drop menu at the right. For reprint requests, e-mail Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate at cws@cartoonweb.com Click on the cartoon to e-mail it to a friend.

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