The cliff is such a natural cartoon that I have to keep drawing it.  This cartoon (right) was from December 20th, when the fiscal cliff negotiations were going nowhere, and I was drawing John Boehner hanging off the cliff where the elephant is, and my son came by and asked me who that was.  It was fine when I explained it, but he didn’t know John Boehner, and I thought I needed to draw and elephant.  We’ve had lots of Boehner cartoons, even a great Boehner section - but he hasn’t risen to the level where young people know him, and I’ve been sticking to the elephant in his place. I hate that our cartoons are puzzles for schoolkids to suffer through.

I’ll draw Boehner soon enough.

The two cartoons below were drawn about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I hate that I have to draw cartoons about heinous crimes, because we all agree on how awful the murders were and the issues are all side issues … comments about grieving, and cartoons about gun control are appropriate, I just wasn’t inspired for another round of redundant gun control cartoons.  Then I watched a horrendously insensitive interview on Fox News with parents of a surviving child, and a couple other, awful interviews with grieving parents that made me angry. The hype around this was pretty ugly, and inspired the media vultures cartoon below.  I think it is good to bash another bad guy than the shooter in cartoons – best not to mention the shooter at all – the few news outlets that don’t mention the murderer’s name are being responsible journalists.

The next cartoon is another riff on the same theme. I got a lot of response to these cartoons from readers who were also disgusted by the media reaction to the tragedy.  Ugly stuff.

The next cartoon was about the passage of “right-to-work” legislation by Michigan’s Republican governor and legislature. I know this cartoon won’t get reprinted much, but when you gotta pee, you gotta pee.