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OCTOBER 27, 2005
OH, THAT ROSA PARKS YAHTZEE
Mike Lester writes:
DC,
Sometimes you can see a yahtzee coming
like a...oh, I don't know, maybe...A HURRICANE! In the world
of editorial cartooning there exists no greater visual metaphor
or device than the "Pearly Gates" cartoon. Actually,
it's not an editorial cartoon at all. It's a greeting card. On
the day Rosa Parks died I predicted (correctly) to my editor
that the over under on some version of "Come on in, Rosa.
We've got a seat right up front" pearly gates / bus
cartoons would be ten. I took the over. I won easily and began
to wonder if something else wasn't at work here.
I'm curious and -not that they need
defending, but I would like to believe that a great many in our
profession are dictated their cartoons and the heft of the message
by some cleverless editor who assumes to feed readers what they
think readers need to be fed. Since when do we give people what
they expect? It's my belief that no job pays enough to illustrate
opinions that are not ones own but the true pity is that we'll
never know what kind of work would be produced without creative
constraints.
Lastly, I'd like to report that my personal
completely scientific study and tabulation of the second greatest
visual metaphor being used by cartoonists today is... a resurrection
of any Jeff MacNelly imagery in the hopes that no one remembers.
BOOYA
 OCTOBER
26, 2005
CAPTION CONTEST WINNER
This was the 4th REYNOLDS
UNWRAPPED gagline contest and we had a record number of entries.
It seems everyone had something to say about two fannies floating
in space. I'd say at three quarters of the entries thought the
"analiens", as one contestant labeled them, had something
to do with plumbing or some connection with a political figure.
I had a tough time picking a winner,
because frankly, any of the last contestants standing could be
considered a winning line. You all did a great job! Anyone who'd
like a 7 x 10 inch color REYNOLDS UNWRAPPED cartoon can order
one they're $40, suitable for framing and I will personally sign
them.
My original line for this cartoon was
"This planet is perfect for our colon-ization."
Dan
Reynolds
WINNER:
"We're almost there. Let's make
sure we have our stories straight. You're a plumber and I'm Ted
Kennedy."
Darla Spaetgens
RUNNERS UP ...
"I heard they're a bunch of faceholes
down there."
Louie Morrow
"Butox 1, this is Butox 2, we have
a visual of the unknown plant. Prepare to gas them!"
CHIRSITNA LEMONGELLO
"You butthead! That's not Uranus!"
Joe
Heller
"I hear they call neurologists 'proctologists' on this planet."
Chancey Boye
"This is the planet our reconnaissance
team found intelligent life on. At a place called Earl's Plumbing
& Heating in Sheboygan Wisconson."
Toby Dougherty
"My God! Think of the plumbing opportunities!!"
Keith Bider
"On that planet, our species is called 'politicians'."
Magil W Duran
"Whatever you do, don't let them see your nose!"
Richard Baker
"Hey! Did they just flash their Ozone Hole at us?"
J Mallory
"I see London. I see France. I see
a lot of people with underpants. We've come to the right place."
Karilee
"I still say that any planet with only one moon will revere
us as GODS!"
Doren Fronterhouse
"Our scout ship, "Plunger One",
has discovered that three fourths of this planet is water, and
over 3 billion inhabitants don't have plumbing, it's a workers
paradise."
Lou G. Nelson
OCTOBER 18, 2005
DURST ON MIERS
Today we have a brand new column by our political satirist,
Will Durst! Click
here to see our Harriet Miers cartoons. The cartoon at right
is by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The Stealth Judge , Raging Moderate, By Will Durst
 Can
someone please have the simple common human decency to help me
understand why all the usual suspects on both sides of the aisle
are on such a high twitch concerning the Harriet Miers nomination
to the Supreme Court? As a liberal hearing that Charles Krauthammer
has contempt for her appointment, my first reaction would be
"hey, sign her on, she's my kind of woman."
Besides, isn't it kind of "neat"
the president picked someone who thought he was "cool?"
That's what Ms. Miers called the president. She also said; "He
is the smartest man I've ever met," which is, admittedly,
a bit disquieting. Makes you wonder just how many gentlemen the
lady has actually met in her life. I'm guessing a number in the
low double digits. Thirty tops. A majority of whom must have
been encountered at bus shelters on the way to Rocky Mountain
Oyster eating competitions.
Defending the selection of his longtime
personal consultant, President Bush said; "I picked the
best person I could find," which begs the question of how
hard he was looking. Perhaps it was part of his famous multi-tasking
philosophy and he went with the best person he could find while
still hanging on to the leash walking his dog in the Rose Garden.
Or maybe it was one of his charming country boy practical joke
searches and she was the best person he could find blindfolded
on his hands and knees in 20 minutes. Or it was a test of the
emergency justice network and at the sound of Dick Cheney making
"whoop whoop" noises, he went with the best person
within range of the Oval Office cordless phone. Who knows, maybe
she won a spot check of the cleanest tray in the White House
Mess and an appointment to the Supreme Court was first place.
White House spokesperson Scott McClellan
acknowledged a few candidates pulled their names from consideration
due to the nature of the confirmation process. This is a shame
because one of them apparently was a better "best person"
than Miers if not the bestest "best person" Bush could
find. But their demurrance is totally understandable, since all
DC confirmations these days are akin to throwing raw meat between
cranky lion cages. McClellan said "it was just a couple
of people" who asked their names be withdrawn, but Scott
has been known to be a bit unreliable concerning his grasp of
figures, so some people are questioning whether his "couple"
might actually mean 142. Okay, the some people are me, but still.
Slapping at the feistiest Dobermans nipping
at his far right flank, the President got conservative broadcaster
James C. Dobson to announce he supported Miers based on "things
that I know, that I probably shouldn't know." Ooh, that's
good. Super secret double cryptic wisdom. Unimpeachable confidentiality.
From Bush or God himself, doesn't matter, since one channels
the other these days. Which way the direction flows is a subject
still up for debate.
Harriet Miers' major qualifications seem
to be loyalty and friendship, which sounds more like a background
check for First Pet, but he's the President. He gets to pick.
Since she describes herself as a born again Christian evangelical,
I'm sure he considers her stealth stance on Roe v Wade to be
a slam dunk, but the wearing of the robes does funny things to
a person. Although she claims not to have an opinion on abortion
rights. Unh- hunh. Yeah, I believe that. The same way I believe
those lions lack an opinion on that meat.
Political comic Will Durst likes his raw
meat cooked.
Will Durst is a political comedian
who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on
television. His two CDs are available at laugh.com. Look for
Will's collection of columns "Raging Moderate" in a
bookstore near you soon. Email Will at willdurst@sbcglobal.net.
©2005 Will Durst.
OCTOBER
16, 2005
ANOTHER CAPTION CONTEST
By popular demand, we have another Dan
Reynolds caption contest. We get a surprising response to these!
The rules are the same:
The writer of the funniest caption will
receive a 7 x 10 color reprint, signed by me, with their caption
in the cartoon.
Entries should be sent to cartoonist89@hotmail.com
Also, anyone interested in buying reprints or an original of
any REYNOLDS UNWRAPPED cartoon from Reader's Digest or from www.reynoldsunwrapped.com
can contact me at the same email.
Dan Reynolds
OCTOBER
14, 2005
THE FORBIDDEN COLUMNS
I'm in a unique situation here on MSNBC; as an independent
cartoonist, blogger and columnist, I am my own editor. I have
editorial freedom to do what I want on my site and in my newsletter,
and that was also, largely the case with my previous corporate
partner, Slate.com.
Today I read an interesting column in the Los Angeles Times by David Gelernter
about former Colorado Governor, Dick Lamm, who is now on the
faculty of the University of Denver. Governor Lamm wrote an article
for a University publication that the University refused to print.
Lamm recounts his experiences going through the University administration,
trying to get his article published, with no success. (Read the
forbidden article here and here.) University officials told Lamm his
article (which noted the success of Cuban immigrants in America
compared to the relative lack of success of Mexican immigrants)
was too controversial to be printed. Despite what they told Lamm,
the University's official reason for refusing to publish the
article was, "more an issue of editorial space than academic
freedom."
I had a remarkably similar experience.
In my newsletter I once included a column by Governor Lamm titled,
"The High Cost of Cheap Labor," which took a point
of view that might also be considered politically incorrect.
Lamm wrote the column for my newspaper syndicate. I was partnering
with Slate.com at that time and, although I was editorially independent,
Slate managed the distribution of my newsletter and refused to
send out this newsletter unless I agreed to remove the Lamm column.
When I refused to take it out, Slate refused to deliver the newsletter.
(If you're still wondering why you didn't get a newsletter that
day, this is why.) At this time, Slate was under new management
as a part of the Washington Post.
I regularly put articles and columns into
my daily newsletter on all topics; this was the only one that
Slate's editors and publisher objected to, and the only time
they edited my content. Slate's reason for refusing the Lamm
column was that they wanted my newsletter to contain content
that was only about cartoons, and not about other topics. The
forbidden column from the missing newsletter is posted below.
The High Cost Of Cheap Labor
Richard D. Lamm
It is easy to see why illegal immigrants
are attractive to employers. These are generally good, hard working
people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or less), who don't
generally get health or other benefits, and if they complain,
they can be easily fired. For some employers it is an abused
form of labor. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from
countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.
But it is not "cheap labor."
It may be "cheap" to those who pay the wages, but for
the rest of us it is clearly "subsidized" labor, as
we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health, and other
municipal costs imposed by this workforce. That has become a
substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration
patterns has changed.
For decades, illegal immigrants were single
men who would come up from Mexico or Central America alone, pick
crops or perform other low paid physical labor and then go home.
They were indeed "cheap labor." But starting in the
1960s, these workers either brought their families or smuggled
them into the country later. They become a permanent or semi-permanent
population living in the shadows but imposing immense municipal
costs.
Illegal immigration today isn't "cheap"
labor, except to the employer. To the rest of us it is "subsidized
labor," where a few get the benefit and the rest of us pay.
These costs ought to be obvious to all, but the myth of "cheap
labor" and "jobs Americans won't do" persists.
It is hard to get an exact profile of the
people who live in the underground economy, but the average family
of illegal immigrants has 2 to 4 school-age kids. It costs U.S.
taxpayers more than $7000 a child just to educate them in our
public schools. Now no minimum wage workers, or even low wage
workers, pay anywhere near enough in taxes to pay for even one
child in school. Even if their parents were paying all federal
and state taxes, Colorado's estimated 30,000 school-age children
of workers illegally in the U.S. impose gargantuan costs on other
taxpayers.
The dilemma is compounded by the fact that
approximately 50 percent of illegal workers are paid in cash,
off the books. Go to any construction site almost anywhere in
America, and you will find workers paid cash wages. Virtually
every city in America has an area where illegals gather and people
come by to get "cheap" cash-wage labor.
The health care cost of this "cheap"
workforce is also significant and subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.
The total cost of this "subsidized" labor is impossible
to ascertain and difficult to even estimate, but it is immense
and growing as our population of these workers grows. A few benefit,
many pay.
Americans pay in more ways than taxes.
Cheap labor drives down wages as low income Americans are forced
to compete against these admittedly hard working people. Even
employers, who don't want to wink at false documents, are forced
to lower wages just to be competitive. In many ways it is a "race
to the bottom," fueled by poor people often recruited from
evermore-distant countries by middlemen who profit handsomely.
Professor George Borjas of Harvard, an
immigrant himself, estimates that American workers lose $190
billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding
of the labor market from newcomers.
Let me suggest that correctly analyzed,
the fight against illegal immigration is both a liberal and conservative
cause. There is no moral or legal justification for this abused
form of labor.
Richard D. Lamm is Co-Director
of the Institute for Public Policy Studies and a professor at
the University of Denver. He is a member of the Board of the
Federation for American Immigration Reform. He served three-terms
as governor of Colorado, and is the past president of Zero Population
Growth. Email Dick Lamm at rlamm@aol.com.
OCTOBER 13, 2005
MORE PROBLEMS WITH MUSLIMS AND CARTOONS
This interesting article from the Copenhagen (Denmark) Post is
reprinted with permission.
Cartoons have Muslims threatening newspaper
By The Copenhagen Post
Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten has been forced to hire security
guards to protect employees from angry Muslims, after it printed
a series of cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed
Death threats have forced daily newspaper
Jyllands-Posten to hire security guards to protect its employees,
after printing twelve cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed.
The newspaper has been accused of deliberately provoking and
insulting Muslims by publishing the cartoons. The newspaper urged
cartoonists to send in drawings of the prophet, after an author
complained that nobody dared to illustrate his book on Mohammed.
The author claimed that illustrators feared that extremist Muslims
would find it sacrilegious to break the Islamic ban on depicting
Mohammed.
Twelve illustrators heeded the newspaper's
call, and sent in cartoons of the prophet, which were published
in the newspaper earlier this month.
Muslim spokesmen demanded that Jyllands-Posten
retracted the cartoons and apologised.
'We have taken a few necessary measures
in the situation, as some people seem to have taken offence and
are sending threats of different kinds,' the newspaper's editor-in-chief,
Carsten Juste, told national broadcaster DR.
The same day as the newspaper published
the cartoons, it received a threatening telephone call against
'one of the twelve illustrators', as the caller said. Shortly
afterwards, police arrested a 17-year-old, who admitted to phoning
in the threat.
Since then, journalists and editors alike
have received threats by email and the telephone. The newspaper
told its staff to remain alert, but then decided to hire security
guards to protect its Copenhagen office.
'Up until now, we have only had receptionists
in the lobby. But we don't feel that they should sit down there
by themselves, so we posted a guard there as well,' Juste said.
Muslim organisations, like the Islamic
Religious Community, have demanded an apology, but Juste rejected
the idea. He said the cartoons had been a journalistic project
to find out how many cartoonists refrained from drawing the prophet
out of fear.
'We live in a democracy,' he said. 'That's
why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire
is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures. Religion
shouldn't set any barriers on that sort of expression. This doesn't
mean that we wish to insult any Muslims.'
Juste's opinion was not shared by Århus
imam Raed Hlayhel, who gave an interview to the internet edition
of Arabic satellite news channel al-Jazeera to protest the newspaper's
cartoons.
Hlayhel told al-Jazeera's reporter that
he considered the cartoons derisive of Islam, and described one
of the drawings as showing Mohammed wearing a turban-like bomb,
and another as brandishing a sabre, with two burka-clad women
behind him.
Hlayhel said he did not understand how
such illustrations could be printed with reference to freedom
of expression, when Denmark did not tolerate the slightest sign
of anti-Semitism.
Al-Jazeera concluded that the drawings
seemed bizarre.
 OCTOBER 12, 2005
HAUNTED HOUSE
The most popular feature we've ever had on our site is Steve
Sack's Haunted House. Steve did the House back in 2000, when
we first started with Microsoft and it shocked the corporate
folks when it got tens of millions of page views. The Haunted
House has since taken a vacation, but we have it back this year.
Click
on the front door to enter, if you dare.
The idea with the Haunted House is that
you click around and explore. Find the hidden characters and
you win. Regrettably, Steve hasn't done any more of this kind
of thing. Now, in addition to his editorial cartoons, he does
oil paintings. That's
a loss for the internet, I'd love to see more of this kind of
stuff, but his oil paintings
are great. I'm a big Steve Sack fan. See
Steve's political cartoons here.
OCTOBER 10, 2005
The Schmendrik Awards
My buddy Yaakov Kirschen has been
a long time contributor to our site. He draws a feature for the
Jerusalem Post in Israel, called, "Dry Bones." Yaakov
has a wonderful blog where he posts his cartoons and readers
post comments. Visit
Yaakov's blog here.
Yaakov has an interesting format where the reader comments are
attached to each cartoon/blog entry --something I would like
to incorporate into our site, so that readers can comment on
individual cartoons. (I'll have to figure out how to get that
done on our "subsistence budget.")
Yaakov takes suggestions from around the world for his annual
"Schmendrik Awards." Yaakov writes,
"The annual awards "honor"
those who most distinguished themselves by their seemingly unwitting
support of anti-Semitism."
Yaakov makes the poster, that you see here,
available as a high resolution poster for download in PDF format;
just click here for your own Schmendrik Awards
poster, suitable for framing. See Yaakov's Dry Bones archive here. See the Dry Bones web site
here.
I think Yaakov is doing a great job with his Schmendrik Awards.
I find it interesting that any mention of anti-Semitism on our
site (even just to say that anti-Semitism is a bad thing) drives
a ton of nutty e-mail to our doorstep. I'll be interested to
know if the mention of Yaakov's Shmendrik Awards here stirs nutty
email pot. E-mail us here.
And e-mail Yaakov here.
OCTOBER 7, 2005
The Winner ...
Dan Reynolds writes that the winner
of his caption contest is Milo Johns, c/o Cindy Johns, and the
winning caption is:
"Looks like another case of Mad Cow Disease. Makes me
glad I'm a penguin."
Milo's Mom sends this comment:
Milo is going to be so thrilled!!! I'm
his mom...he's in school right now. The really ironic thing about
this is that I was sitting here at my PC trying
out different captions for your contest for about an hour.
I came up with 5 variations and I asked Milo's opinion. He wasn't
enthused with any of them and he asked me if he could try. Within
2 minutes he came up with that. I nearly busted
a gut laughing when he said it and I immediately told him that's
the one to send in.
Thanks to all who submitted captions!
 OCTOBER
5, 2005
New Caption Contest
Our greeting card cartoonist buddy, Dan
Reynolds, has given us yet another cartoon for another caption
contest. His caption contests have proven to be quite popular,
so we'll keep doing it until you get tired of it. Dan writes:
The writer of the funniest caption will
receive a 7 x 10 color reprint, signed by me, with their caption
in the cartoon.
Entries should be sent to cartoonist89@hotmail.com
Also, anyone interested in buying reprints or an original of
any REYNOLDS UNWRAPPED cartoon from Reader's Digest or from www.reynoldsunwrapped.com
can contact me at the same email.
Dan Reynolds
OCTOBER 3, 2005
This just in, from Cagle Cartoons' political satirist, Will Durst.
Put The Hammer Down
Raging Moderate, By Will Durst
The old adage is, any halfway-decent prosecutor
can convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. And that
old saw may just be true because this week a grand jury in Travis
County, Texas indicted a hammer.
Not just any hammer but "The Hammer."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted on a single count
of criminal conspiracy and multiple counts of "cranky old
man" and "doesn't work well with others." To say
he's not happy now is like saying barium enemas are not highlighted
on many resort spa menus. And ironically enough, when I speak
of a barium enema I think of Tom DeLay.
In his press conference denying the charges,
Teflon Tom channeled some stoic beast from the Bible probably
named Balthabazar or something. His righteous indignation was
enough to smite evil-doers right through the TV screen as he
characterized his indictment as one of political motivation.
What? Politically motivated? In D.C.? No!
You can't be serious. What next? Lobbyists with tassels on their
loafers? What's ludicrous is that in terms of the politically
motivated, Tom DeLay wrote the book. District Attorney Ronnie
Earle may actually be responsible for royalties to be paid to
the subject of the indictment.
DeLay also called Mr. Earle's indictment
of him "one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in
American history." Wow. In American history!?! Say what
you will about Mr DeLay faults, a lack of self esteem is apparently
not among them. Although it does seem a bit histrionic coming
from the man personally responsible for reigniting the Bill Clinton
impeachment train just when it seemed most everybody was willing
to shut up, go home, and launder their own blue dresses. "Lying
to a grand jury is an impeachable offense" was his exact
quote. Hmmm, interesting. How 'bout bribery, extortion and general
venality?
What I'm delicately hinting at here is
Mr. DeLay and ethical lapses are not unfamiliar dance partners.
They go together like Chaplin and jerky film. Like grease and
skids. Like Spiro Agnew and brown paper bags full of cash. The
guy is a walking "12 days of Corruption." "Fiiiiiiive
trips to Palm Springs. Four admonishments, three reprimands,
two censures and an indictment in the Lone Star State."
September. Not a good month for Republicans.
Bush's spiritual advisor, Karl Rove - still under a cloud in
the Valerie Plame leak. GOP Lobbyist Jack Abramoff - indicted
in one case and under investigation in others. Top White House
procurement official, David Safavian - charged with obstruction
in Abramoff probe. Majority Leader Doctor Senator Indian Chief
Bill Frist; under investigation due to questionable stock sales.
And in his talk to the nation from New Orleans, President Bush
mis-buttoned his work shirt. That's right. The president of the
United States can't even dress himself anymore.
This is not to say that DeLay is screwed
dead in the water. For all we know, he could pull a Martha Stewart
and come out of this smelling like a rose - go to prison, lose
some weight and end up with a spinoff of "The Apprentice."
Instead of Trump's "you're fired," or Stewart's "you
don't fit in," he could lift the favorite kiss-off of his
ideological twin, Dick Cheney: "Go f*** yourself."
I smile every time I imagine him practicing
that line in front of a mirror.
Political Comic Will Durst thinks it would
be splendid to bring the same decorum for which the US Senate
is so justly famous, to network television.
Will Durst is a political comedian
who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on
television. His two CDs are available at laugh.com. Look for
Will's collection of columns "Raging Moderate" in a
bookstore near you soon. Email Will at willdurst@sbcglobal.net.
©2005 Will Durst.
Ham Sandwich by RJ Matson
FROM OUR MAILBAG ...
Swiss cartoonist, Patrick Chappatte writes to complain about
my characterization of foreign cartoonists' reactions to Hurricane
Katrina. In
my column, I wrote that foreign cartoonists used the hurricane
as just another metaphor to continue their criticism of the USA
and I gave Patrick's cartoon as an example of the first hurricane
cartoons from Europe, which unanimously blamed the hurricane
on global warming and President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto
treaty. I should note that although Patrick is the regular cartoonist
for the International Herald Tribune in Paris, he drew
the
cartoon I cited for the Le Temps newspaper in Geneva.
Daryl,
I read your interesting piece titled
"Worldwide
Cartoonists Take Pleasure in America's Pain". Frankly,
I don't feel comfortable about the way you describe world cartoonists'
approach to the subject. Here are two quotes I find hurting:
The devastation of Hurricane Katrina
has done nothing to elicit sympathy from the world according
to cartoonists around the globe who are finding pleasure in America's
pain.
Bashing America is a daily job for the
world's cartoonists, and it will take a lot more than death,
devastation and widespread human suffering to jar them from their
routine.
Seriously, Daryl, this is such a misrepresentation.
You know very well that most of the criticism you describe is
about this administration's policies, and that it has
nothing to do with the nation, neither with finding pleasure
in America's pain!! I'm not talking about those disgusting few
hatred-filled cartoons you see sometimes, especially in the Arab
press. But you suggest we're all part of that trend.
Look again at that Hajjaj cartoon: frankly, it is not as
horrible as you want to make it look. It makes in a subtle way
a point that has been made all over US media: that the superpower
looks all of a sudden fragilized and helpless like a third-world
country.
The critics you see in these cartoons
from around the world match the view of lots of US cartoonists
and editorialists, so why do you want to draw a line here, and
consider that because it's foreign, it's anti-American? (I know
those critics inside the US are also dubbed anti-Americans, but
I don't imagine you sharing that sort of judment.)
Now I agree that linking global warming
to Katrina is a stretch. You might also say it's self-serving
and of poor taste. But still, even amid sadness and empathy,
you have the right if not the duty as a cartoonist to address
that kind of questions - raised by experts, including one MIT
guy, who link warming of the oceans to stronger hurricanes.
I don't see what this has to do with being American or not. Come
on!
This all said, I send you my friendly
regards.
Patrick
MORE ON MARLETTE AND THE HOLOCAUST
One of our readers in Israel started
a flurry of e-mail with her criticism of a Doug Marlette cartoon that made light of
the Holocaust. Yocheved Menashe has received a lot of email in
response to her response,
and she writes:
Dear Mr. Cagle:
Thank you so much for posting my letter
about Holocaust abuses.
I have been getting the most wonderful
email messages since you posted my letter to Mr. Marlette on
your blog. Some have been from Holocaust Survivors or their children,
others from people who lost most or some of their family members,
WWII Veterans who fought in Europe, and Jews, Christians, and
"regulars" from all over the world who shared their
similar feelings and adding their personal comments as well about
Mr. Marlette's cartoon and what it represents. My email box has
never been this full before -- it was stuffed.
Your having posted my letter has been
a blessing to all those people, but especially to me because
I received so much love and support from people who have been
directly affected by the Holocaust. I have spent many years studying
Holocaust and Antisemitism and it is a most special honor to
be recognized by Survivors and their families.
I did get a couple of negative letters,
probably the same group who have difficulty figuring out your
cartoons since they totally misunderstood or didn't read what
I really said. One in particular was a very long letter in big
pink bolded letters on how to solve MY problem with the Palestinians
with a complete political agenda for solving this 4000-year conflict
between ME and the Arabs. Excuse me, but my letter did not say
anything about our political situation nor the war over here!
Anyway, I sincerely hope that you do
not get anything abusive over posting my letter. Antisemites
can sometimes be quite mean and illogical in their ignorances.
In closing, I also want to say how touched
I was by all the tributes to Simon Wiesenthal. I especially enjoyed
Mr. Matson's artistic representation of the Devil's file room.
Also impressive were the number of tributes -- he topped Judge
Renquist!
You have endeared yourself to me and
at least all those who took the time to express their love, gratitude
and kinship with me in the last two days.
May you live to 120,
Shalom from Jerusalem,
Yo
Yocheved Menashe, yo.menashe@gmail.com
Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies of the New Jersey Record
posted this comment about the Marlette cartoon on our bulletin board:
I thought the cartoon was in horribly
bad taste, and it takes a lot to offend me. No matter how miserable
a situation is, it does not compare to The Holocaust. And certainly,
the unpleasant aspects of college definitely do not. Nobody is
being killed in college due to their religion, disability, or
sexual orientation.
Not only was the cartoon in abominable taste, but doing a cartoon
like that is shooting oneself in the foot. Instead of provoking
discussion on the point that college may have unattractive qualities,
the use of such an inflammatory metaphor shifts the focus to
a question of taste.
I am surprised the cartoon was permitted to be published. I don't
think that there should be much that is off limits, but The Holocaust
is one of the very, very few, when used in a way as it was in
this cartoon.
Jimmy Margulies
OCTOBER 2, 2005
BILL BENNETT
Every so often I cheat a little and steal from myself. I drew
the cartoon below when Bill Bennett's high stakes casino gambling
habits were revealed, and the cartoon came in handy today for
an entirely different story --I just changed the words. Bennett's
comments are in the news because he said this on his national
radio show:
"It's true that if you wanted to
reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose, you
could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime
rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and
morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would
go down."
As a political cartoonist I have license
to make up any words I want to put into the mouth of a public
figure, but sometimes I can't do any better than an actual quote.
And I also have license to steal from myself --if nobody notices.
Cartoon by Daryl Cagle
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