The advantage of the Jan 6 Committee holding a hearing in prime time rather than in midafternoon was that more people were home to watch. The disadvantage for political cartoonists is that it meant they didn’t have time to respond overnight, which Deb Milbrath indicated by simply posting her notes on Facebook in an implied […]
Between countless variations on Putin painting himself into a corner and even more versions of people slapping other people, political cartoonists seem determined to see if they can boost Sturgeon’s Law beyond 90 percent. However, there’s still some interesting and creative work out there. Overseas cartoonists, for instance, have been having a field day […]
Mike Lester (AMS) sums up Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, in which she was asked a barrage of asinine questions that had nothing to do with her fitness for the position, and in which she politely declined to answer those which were clearly and obviously irrelevant. He slips in a few sensible topics there, but […]
Mike Lester (AMC) continues to press the rightwing fantasy that Critical Race Theory is taught in elementary schools, when, as a formal inquiry, it is generally confined to collegiate graduate courses. However, he hits on an element that I agree with, not about the real CRT as practiced by serious historians, but in how it’s […]
Political cartoons aren’t supposed to be funny except when they are, and I got a laugh out of Cathy Wilcox‘s piece, though I recognized the serious point behind it. It is, of course, a double criticism, of America’s erratic policies and of Australia’s response, and I’m betting that not all her readers at The Sydney […]
There’s a full docket today, but let’s start with something specifically timely: Marc Murphy’s commentary on the start of the Kentucky Derby, which will be run Saturday in Louisville, where Murphy is cartoonist for the local paper. In posting the cartoon, he explained, “It’s almost time to sing just the good parts of the old […]
Ed Hall starts us off with this analysis of how Major League Baseball has learned to be fair to Black players and, ultimately, to Black people. But now the umpires are conferring, arguing over what seemed like a clear shot over the centerfield fence. To repeat an astonishing 1921 cartoon from the other day, […]
John Deering (Creators) offers a chilling combination of “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” with the stand-up comics’ critique of being “too smart for the room.” It’s a really good cartoon, except that, in a country where half the people were born after 1982, how many of us […]
We’ll let Bill Bramhall (NYDN) start us off with a ray of hope. Merrick Garland has a lot of clean up to do, but he’s not pretending otherwise, having made clear that he is in office to be Attorney General and not the president’s personal attorney. The fact that he was confirmed by a 70-30 […]
Dream on, Winslow. Prickly City (AMS) has been a voice in the wilderness, trying to put forth conservative views without falling into the mire that seems to have taken over things on that side of the aisle. Trump broke his silence the other day with a rant triggered by his loss at the Supreme Court, […]
Wiley Miller somewhat overstates things in today’s Non Sequitur (AMS), but, then again, overstatement is part of the cartoon toolbox, and, if he’s laying it out in starkly binary terms, he’s certainly correct that anyone who can’t see the choices is astonishingly clueless. Rob Rogers (Ind) keeps it on this earthly plain, and the […]
It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Steve Kelley (Creators), but I sure like this one. Now, let’s not start planning a wedding or anything: I suspect his opinion is tinged with an urge to defend Mike Pence against foolish criticism, while mine is more of an urge to defend political cartooning against foolishness […]
Kal Kallaugher asks a depressing question, but I’m not sure he hasn’t set up a false premise. That is, while I will accept that trying to sell smoothies made from those repulsive ingredients would be hard, I also believe that the health claims of for-real smoothies are greatly overstated. A tall glass of blended fruit […]
Kal Kallaugher captures the current situation, in which Dear Leader feigns bravery by boldly confronting a strawman to the applause of his followers. It does little good to argue whether his accusations are right or wrong or if they make any sense at all, because we’ve shot past the phase where Big Lies were challengeable. […]
Greg Kearney, cartooning for the Atchison (Kansas) Globe, offers a bit of nostalgia and regret for the days when world events happened “out there.” A whole lot has changed, much of it in the past half century but much of that has been a sudden acceleration of a developing trend. One of the things I […]