Sherry Chandler

Cartoons

Here is a snippet of op-ed from Steve Bell, a British cartoonist who offended me mightily with his lampoons of Hillary Clnton a few weeks back. He is writing in The Guardian:

So should we tread warily, lest we are misunderstood? Of course we should. Cartoonists are some of the most painstaking, careful, shy and sensitive people on earth, yet we do play with fire, toying with other people’s (and of course our own) most deeply held beliefs and most cherished illusions. Is it possible to go too far? Of course it is? Should we go too far? Of course we should. That’s what makes our job so interesting. There’s no better feeling than, having taken a risk in a drawing, seeing the thing in print and knowing it works. The converse is also true, which is why I work in a bunker on the south coast.

When I first saw a tiny thumbnail of the offending Barry Blitt New Yorker cover I thought, for a fleeting moment, that I could understand why Obama supporters would be so pissed off. After all, here was a drawing depicting the worst possible caricature of their man: a smug Muslim and his gun-toting black-power wife who would burn the flag in the Oval Office beneath a portrait of Osama bin Laden. But then, surely that’s the point? If you take it that literally you literally turn yourself into an idiot (though not quite a psycho). I didn’t think it looked a particularly good drawing, but I couldn’t judge from a thumbnail.

Now, having seen the full image (along with unimaginable numbers of idiots and psycho-paths worldwide), I can say that I rather warm to it. I look at it, and it works, for me anyway.

I particularly like the expression on Michelle’s face. Cartoons don’t work as shopping lists of points to be made with labels tacked on to clarify things for the culturally deprived. Too much cartooning operates on that level, especially in the US. Cartoons need to be disturbing, and they should also dare to ask questions. People in the US aren’t generally fools (even though the fools have been over-represented of late, particularly in the current administration), though some may be a little over-literal, and these are not always the psychos. Not so long ago I drew a cartoon of Obama as rifle-range target, and received a torrent (OK, a very heavy trickle) of emails, mostly from concerned liberal supporters asking me if I really wanted him dead.

I am probably going to get myself into trouble for saying this but, while I wasn’t particularly amused by the New Yorker cover (I am not the best audience for satire as my satiric husband will tell you), I am not ready to join a letter-writing campaign to protest it. Liberals seem to deal in “stern letters” of protest and see where that has gotten us.

Instead, I invite you to view this David Horsey cartoon. And this from Kentucky’s own Joel Pett.

The Curious George parody of Obama is racist; this New Yorker cover is not. (Thanks to BoGardiner for reminding me.)

See also The Poor Man.

1. Bushymandias
2. The NYer Cover that Wasn’t
3. Why I remain angry…
4. The New Yorker Poem?
5. The voters, not the press, pick the winner

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