Our nation’s cartoonists are divided between those who see the ascension of Trump as a disaster and those who consider it a shining moment, but I’ve found little support for the fellow among foreign cartoonists. Morten Morland (UK) captured the swearing in with Trump about to press the plunger carried by Melania, in her Natasha […]
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 […]
Gary Markstein comments on the decision to move tomorrow’s inauguration inside. Or possibly on the entire process of making Donald Trump president. Both interpretations work, though the former is less partisan and potentially more constructive. There’s plenty of speculation and commentary about the decision, including people pointing out that the Kansas City stadium was packed […]
I could launch a separate blog titled “Cartoon Maps,” given the number of cartoonists who have reimagined the Western Hemisphere according to Trump. Some were pretty good, some were not. But Bob Englehart went for simplicity rather than cleverness, and wins for going to the heart of the matter and pointing out the arrogant jingoism […]
Pat Bagley expresses the situation well: As firefighters struggle to control the wildfires in Southern California, the press also struggles with disinformation about those wildfires. The press wouldn’t be stuck with a mere squirtbottle if the only problem they faced were the normal flow of rumors and misconceptions that plague every major news event. 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 […]
Bliss (Tribune) comes to my rescue. It’s been extremely cold here, but it’s also been extremely necessary to get out with the dog and away from the idiots, which sounds like an arrogant judgment, but it’s actually the most polite and charitable. After all, we’re not just seeing our incoming president insult and threaten our […]
This is one of those “Where do we begin?” moments. The torrent of horrifying, dishonest, ridiculous nonsense that has poured out over the past 48 hours or so seems overwhelming, and I ended up with so many links to so much argumentation that I had to sort through them to come up with a reasonable […]
The tribute cartoons marking Ann Telnaes’ courageous departure from the Washington Post continue to appear, and DD Degg has links to several. This one is by Tjeerd Royaards, editor at Cartoon Movement, and that organization has released a statement on the situation which is worth a read, because it talks about the state of political […]
Dave Whamond offers a thought-provoker that would make a good prompt for a government seminar. The Founders took steps to prevent an immigrant from heading the government, but they assumed a nation guided by the votes of responsible citizens. They made no law about race, gender, age or wealth of voters, though individual states subsequently […]
You’ll note Santa’s helmet at the left. This banner was from 1944, 80 years ago, six months after D-Day and right in the heart of the Battle of the Bulge, which explains the light in the window at the right. The war was also in the heart of most comic strips on Christmas that year. […]
I very much disapprove of artificial intelligence, but I also very much disapprove of letting an unelected plutocrat run the US government, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx), who posted this, gives me hope. It would be nice if there were some Congressional cartoonist who could be recruited for such moments, but if we can’t rustle […]
There is such a thing has having too much good material, and while Pat Bagley was able to squeeze in seven examples of supremely unqualified Trump appointees, cartoonists strain to keep up. Like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, just when you think there can’t possibly be another in there and that there’s no […]
Jeff Stahler (AMS) ruins all our fun by pointing out the obvious, which is that there are a lot of theories about drones that are downright screwy and that Occam’s razor continues to rule: The simplest explanation is generally correct. One night in the depths of winter, a group of us were on a hilltop […]
Spanish cartoonist Christian Mirra (Cartoon Movement) poses a problem: In English, the Sixth Commandment is normally translated as “Thou shalt not kill,” but he uses the term “murder.” Is it an intentional distinction or a matter of someone for whom English is a second language? When I went to doublecheck which commandment that was, I […]