When the Pulitzer Prize Board announced in June that no one would receive its annual award for excellence in editorial cartooning, many political artists were outraged.
The decision seemingly made no sense, especially since so many cartoonists thought they produced great work throughout a hectic year. The finalists themselves felt insulted.
But elsewhere, there were whispers—well, sniggers, really—that the board hadn’t goofed. It had just robbed the wrong guy. The real reason it didn’t choose a winner, these sniggerers smirked, was not that no one deserved the prize, but that the board couldn’t bear to recognize the one man who did. And to the honest observer, he was the only serious contender. Did anyone else, in a year marked by medical and political hysteria, produce more Pulitzer-worthy work than Ben Garrison?
In 2015 Ben Garrison had reached a low point.
He decided to give up cartooning and began looking for service industry jobs—anything to escape his internet hellhole.
But, Garrison recalls with pride, Tina, who is also a cartoonist, stopped him short of that. She insisted that he keep working while she became his fulltime promoter. Her intervention saved his career. And to this day, their arrangement remains the same: he draws, she tweets.
The other person who put Garrison back on track was, of course, Donald Trump.
The American Conservative interviews editorial cartoonist Ben Garrison.
Garrison to this day believes that Biden, a “demented imposter,” rigged the election against Trump, just as he is convinced that Bill Kristol and his band of neoconservatives robbed Ron Paul of the 2008 GOP nomination.
Even still, Garrison is certain that Trump will return in 2024. And he is holding out hope that the former president will be back much sooner.
Until then, Garrison sees a bleak future, dominated by a corrupt, baby-murdering gerontocracy whose leaders crush average people with their “horrible, Marxist, technocratic tyranny.” He predicts mandatory vaccines and harsh penalties for anyone who dares to resist. Bill Gates will tighten his grip on the country and unleash a mass extermination via on-demand abortion and autism shots.
“It’s almost a Satanic thing,” Garrison said. “But it’s my job to ring the alarm bells.”
© Grrr Graphics
No way! It was Stan Kelly who was robbed, over at the Onion, and he fearlessly took his case to the public in his own cartoon panel. Over at Twitter, Tom (I forget at the moment if it was Mr. Bug or Mr. Tomorrow) said that he had to agree… Kelly was robbed.
And Lady Liberty… wept… (sob)