Daryl Cagle writes on his blog about the “Hannity and Colmesification” of editorial cartooning – where in cartoonists are labelled liberal or conservative despite taking the same position about 90% of the time. It’s an interesting read (scroll down to the April 13 posting).
We thought we would try a little experiment. We started labeling our cartoons: “liberal” or “conservative.” The first thing we noticed was that 80% of the cartoons could not be labeled, such as cartoons about Katie Couric, Barry Bonds, March Madness and the death of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosovic. There was no discerning liberal from conservative cartoons when Anna Nicole Smith went to the Supreme Court, when high oil company profits were disclosed, when Muslims around the world were rioting about Danish Muhammad cartoons, when Hamas won the Palestinian election, when North Korea and Iran bluster about nuclear weapons, when a new study tells Americans that they are too fat and when we all suffer preparing our income taxes. The recent immigration debate defies classification as President Bush and Senate Republicans support legalizing the illegal/undocumented people who are already here. When Cynthia McKinney slugged a policeman all of the cartoonists pounced on her equally. The cartoonists are also in lock step when they ridicule Saddam’s courtroom antics. Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham had no conservative defenders. What is most noteworthy about our survey is that cartoonists agree about most issues in the news.