© Clay Bennett – Chatanooga Times Free Press
B.B. Bell, General, U.S. Army (Ret), for The Patriot Post, is saddened by Clay Bennett‘s “disgraceful political humor” cartoon from early September:
…when I looked at your political cartoon depicting the president awarding a “Loser Medal” to a decorated soldier, I welled up with deep sadness for America. While I celebrate your right to publish editorial cartoons, you chose to portray a presidential presentation of a Medal of Honor in a trite, disdainful, and wholly disrespectful manner.
City Pages is a Minneapolis Star Tribune Media Company publication
The alternative City Pages has released its annual Comix Issue.
For the latest edition of City Pages’ Comix Issue, we asked local artists to play off a potentially too-real theme: The end of the world as we know it. The following apocalyptic comic strips are the best of the bunch.
Their webpage featuring the comic strips; read the entire issue here.
Average Mohamed © Mohamed Ahmed
While we’re in Minneapolis reading the City Pages:
On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department recognized Minneapolis resident Mohamed Ahmed as the 2020 recipient of its Citizen Diplomacy Award.
Ahmed created Average Mohamed, an anti-extremism cartoon, to counter propaganda from ISIS, al-Shabaab, and other terrorist groups in 2014. At the time, recruiters were trying to convince Somali-American teens to abandon their families and fight abroad. Average Mohamed videos aimed to correct misconceptions about Islam, and promote democracy over theocracy.
above: Ben Garrison’s original cartoon (©grrrgraphics.com) and the Advance NZ alteration
A US political cartoonist says Advance NZ/NZPP has promised to delete his art from their social media, after altered versions of his cartoons were repeatedly uploaded to the party’s Facebook page.
[Ben] Garrison told Newshub he was contacted by someone from Advance NZ/NZPP saying they wanted to use one of his works with two changes – which he declined.
“I never allow anyone to alter my work.”
Newshub reports that a New Zealand political party was not authorized to use, and certainly didn’t have permission to alter, American cartoonist Ben Garrison‘s work.
Advance NZ has apologized for the misunderstanding:
We respect copyright laws and understood from our prior communications with Ben that simply removing his name was what he wanted.
Ben Garrison says it’s all cool, and may be doing some special cartoons for them:
We talked to them and everything has been worked out. They are good people. Have something in the works stay tooned!
cartoon © Steffon Moody
A Steffon Moody cartoon for the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber showing both sides to blame apparently gave rise to a preemptive editorial foreseeing letters from both sides of the aisle complaining that their side is more guilty than our side.
self portrait © Pedro Molina
The Ithaca Times talks to Pedro Molina about cartooning leaders:
“You can use humor to bring people who believe they are above everybody down to Earth. Once you can take that leader to your level, then you can see that you can defeat them — he’s just another person that you can laugh at,” said Molina. “You lose your fear, which is one of the advantages of this weapon against tyranny.”