In the debate over whether Dear Leader is a knave or a fool, Peter Brookes chooses the latter, aping Rembrandt’s painting, though I use the term “aping” advisedly. I like the pun on Homer, but it would be a cheap gag if it weren’t accompanied by the self-satisfied smirk on the face of the other […]
Somehow Captain America looks kind of ridiculous in Andy Bundy’s cover illustration for Realpolitik, though I can’t find that the magazine has any on-line presence. But he adds the slug “Captain America-First” unleashes tariffs against China but also Canada and Mexico, bullying his allies and neighbours while turning away from many of the real threats to global […]
Walt Handelsman sums it up: The demolition crew is here to begin taking apart America. It may be metaphorical, but it’s not theoretical: Trump has already begun spinning and, to use an old phrase from Jonathan Swift’s era, “to say the thing that is not.” To accuse him of lying requires reading his mind. But […]
Garth German makes a good point, though I suspect he’s too late and we can’t reverse the process now. Here’s a relevant quote from Herman Wouk in the Caine Mutiny: The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you […]
Jeremy Banx’s old couple welcomes in the New Year with the same attitude I did, having seen it several times. I just went to bed at my usual time and the calendar managed to do its thing without my assistance, as it often has. So no cartoons today about people falling asleep before the ball […]
Kevin Necessary offers the first of a planned sequence of cartoons going through the stages of grief, and he seems to speak for a lot of his fellow political cartoonists, as well as a lot of civilians. Kyle Bravo expresses much the same feeling on behalf of those outside the trade, who face different challenges […]
Gary Varvel (Creators) offers a sensible if not groundbreaking reminder that democracy belongs to the voters. Such messages don’t need to plow a whole lot of new ground, but they have value, particularly in a bizarre world in which people are being urged to distrust the system. We’ve seen school budgets get shot down by […]
Austrian cartoonist Leopold Maurer (Cartoon Movement) provides an opening piece for today’s look at tonight’s debate. Note that he doesn’t predict that Trump will go off the rails. Rather, he depicts a perfectly calm, rational debate, but notes the underlying tensions that nearly every observer has also suggested. On the other hand, he shows the […]
When Joe Biden announced his decision to step aside yesterday, I posted on Facebook “Political cartoonists to your drawing boards. I’ll be looking for material in 12 hours.” I needn’t have prodded them, because at 3 a.m. I found far more material available than I could use, and not nearly as many repeats of the […]
David Rowe offers the most appropriate response to last night’s assassination attempt. As is often the case, Australians got first crack at the story because of the time difference, and some did better than others, which is always the case and why I have something to write about each day. Rowe nails it, because “Sigh” […]
As suspected, waiting 24 hours brought in more cartoons about the debate than can possibly be used here, which, by-the-by, is a good indicator of how little cartoonists are really constrained by schedules, deadlines and rules. A more critical factor is evident in Nick Anderson (Tribune)’s piece: The immediate reaction for Democrats was, indeed, a […]
I don’t mind opposing points of view, but I get tired of citing Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and I get particularly tired of political commentators who make it hard to distinguish avoidable ignorance from intentional lying. In case you missed the impetus for Lisa Benson (Counterpoint)’s current cartoon, President Biden attended a conference in Europe that […]
I’m tempted to say “So here we are,” between Swift and Moynihan, but we sure seem willing to slip even lower at any moment. Moynihan suggested a chance for things to improve, while Swift seemed resigned to the belief that they wouldn’t. In fact, Swift, who was advising a younger clergyman, extended the thought: Reasoning will […]
Michael Ramirez (Creators) starts us off with a tough one, because the facts appear to be hung up between history and hope. A large problem with the question of who gets audited is the age of the data. The General Accounting Office, which should be an impartial source, relies on data from 2019, which is […]
The primaries are all but over, and now we’re off to the November elections, though, as Adam Zyglis notes, not before the Supreme Court has taken a good long look at things. It seems unlikely that SCOTUS would decide presidents are immune from prosecution for criminal conduct, but, as Zyglis notes, it seemed highly unlikely […]