CARTOONS FOR THE CLASSROOM The biggest audience for our site is middle and high school Social Studies classrooms, and we have a great teachers' guide here on our site, but I thought I would give a plug to Felix Grabowski who does a great job with "Cartoons for the Classroom." a weekly cartoon study guide done through the Detroit News' Newspaper in Education (NIE) program, in cooperation with the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Each week Felix creates a handout that teachers can print out and use to discuss a cartoon and a current issue in the news. In the latest handout, Felix discusses the Michael Richards outburst through a Mike Lester cartoon. Download the pdf handout here, and visit the Cartoons for the Classroom site. That's Mike's cartoon below, from the current NIE handout.

Our new MSNBC.com Week in Review Slideshow is up now.

DECEMBER 5, 2006

HOW TO DRAW POLITICAL CARTOONS

I get lots of e-mails from aspiring cartoonists asking questions about how I draw my cartoons: "What kind of pen do you use?" "What kind of ink do you use?" "What kind of paper do you use?" "Do you draw your cartoons on the computer?" I get so many of the same questions that I thought it was time for me to put something in the blog about the particulars of how I draw a cartoon. This is just about drawing, no politics here, so if you visit our site for the politics, you can go to another site now and read no more.

The most frequently asked question is whether I draw my cartoons on the computer, and the answer is "no," I cling to paper for most of the process, and I like having original artwork. That's not true of many other cartoonists, and I challenge our readers to look at the cartoons on our site to figure out which cartoonists use no paper and pen - I can't tell just by looking. One cartoonist who amazes me by using no paper is Cam Cardow. Steve Sack also does everything in Photoshop, making his cartoons look like little oil paintings. Larry Wright just started doing all of his cartoons strictly on the computer. The number of cartoonists giving up paper grows every week. I just heard that Cartoon Network bought Wacom Cintiq monitors for all of their cartoonists and is doing away with paper entirely - it seems that cartoonists and paper are destined for a divorce. Original political cartoons hanging framed on the wall will soon become a thing of the past. (Cam Cardow now tells me that he gave up paper for four years, drawing on his Wacom tablet, but that he went back to paper long ago - no wonder I couldn't tell.)

I start off with a piece of tabloid sized copier paper (11" x 17") and a yellow office pencil, the kind with a little pink eraser at the other end. I start by roughing out the composition using the full size of the paper; this is surprising to some people who seem to expect me to work smaller.

In the sketch below I blocked out where each donkey went, and I came back to draw the details in place, mostly to make sure that the donkeys looked like they were bumping up against each other, and that their arms, legs and hands were correctly attached and bending in the right directions. I make use of that little pink eraser and I draw harder where I see that I need to make something more clear, just because it is quicker to draw harder than it is to erase.

At this point most cartoonists would pull out their pen, brush and ink bottle to draw on top of the pencil in ink; the final step would be to rub a soft eraser over the drawings, softly removing most of the pencil and leaving the ink. Most cartoonists would be drawing on a sturdy bristol paper that would hold up to the erasing and would resist curling with heavy ink. I used to do that, but I found that I liked my sketches better than my finished ink drawings, which looked too stiff to me, so I started working with drafting vellum and pencil to make my final drawings keep the spontaneity of the pencil sketches. (Maryn Turner, Ireland's top editorial cartoonist, read this piece and wrote to me to point out that he uses a hard 4H pencil on bristol, and that the hard pencil line is so light that it drops out when the image is scanned, and he doesn't need to erase his pencil lines at all. Thanks, Martyn.)

I lay the vellum (Duralene, a heavy, plastic paper I prefer, that you can see through like tracing paper) on top of the sketch and I draw on the vellum with a chisel point pencil, the same yellow office pencil that I used for the sketch. I could use the eraser on the vellum, but I don't because I've worked out all of the questionable parts of the drawing in the sketch. I draw with a heavy hand, because I want each pencil line to show up as if it was ink. Then I scan the art - usually in two parts because it is too big for the scanner, and I crank up the contrast to 100% in Photoshop so that it ends up looking like an ink drawing (below).

Then I save the file as 600 dots per inch, 8 inches wide, bitmap (line art), tiff, with LZW compression, which will make a file about 400K big, and I e-mail it out to over 800 newspapers who subscribe to my cartoons. Most of the papers will print the black and white line art version. I usually choose not to use gray tones, because they often don't look good in newspaper reproduction and I think it is more elegant to make my grays out of lines.

More and more newspapers are printing color now, so I usually color my cartoons. I'll take the line art, select the black lines only in Photoshop, and paste the line art into a new CMYK Photoshop file with a transparent background, then I'll color the art in separate background layers, with the 100% black lines on top.

I'm not really happy with my flat colors, and I just bought Painter, so that I can start making my cartoons look like I did them in water color (Nick Anderson does a great job of this, take a look at Nick's fake water color done in Painter). I have to take the time to learn Painter, and I haven't done that yet. I'm slow to change. Learning something new takes too much time.

I save the finished color file as a CMYK tiff at 300 dots per inch and the file will be about 1 megabyte in size. Some cartoonists save their color files in jpg format, but since I do a lot of cross hatching, and I don't like for my line art to break up with a halftone, I prefer to have my line art as a separate, clean, crisp black layer, this is more forgiving for reproduction in newspapers that have often have poor registration. Readers are used to seeing a crisp, separate black line layer in the Sunday funnies. The color image is below.

In the old days, a cartoonist would make a photostat of his ink, line drawing for a line art version, then go back and watercolor the same drawing to get a color version. Visions of my old, pre-computer days as an advertising illustrator are dancing in my head now.

OK, got it? Here's one more recent one. Again, the sketch is on 11" x 17" paper in pencil. The first thing I did was block in the position of the characters, then I came back to sketch the details.

In the old days a cartoon like this would take some time because I would have to collect some different photos of Iraqi President al-Maliki to do a good caracature. Now I can do my research in an instant on Google by typing in al-Maliki's name and clicking on "images." Google image searches are a dream come true for hurried cartoonists. If I was really in a hurry and my Maliki looked lousy, I could draw any old face and put a label on him that says, "Maliki." Anyone who sees a cartoonist doing that should take a step back and say, "that cartoonist is one lazy bastard" or alternatively, "What? Can't that cartoonist draw a simple caracature? That cartoonist is one untalented bastard." Of-course, I came close to resorting to a label by having Bush refer to al-Maliki by name in a speech balloon, but we'll ignore that for now.

When I was happy with the sketch, I traced over it on vellum, again in yellow office pencil, then scanned it at 100% contrast in two parts (because it was too big for my scanner) and I pieced it together in Photoshop. I "reversed" the speech baloons in Photoshop because the drawing needed more heavy blacks. Most people think I work in ink, but that is just a trick of the 100% contrast setting.

This black and white line drawing is the image that most newspapers will print.

Then I selected the black lines, pasted it into a new Photoshop file at 300dpi with a transparent background, and colored it (below).


... and that's it. Any questions? Post them on our forum.

I still do illustrations and I use much the same process for the illustrations. Here is a catalog cover that I just finished for a nice little toy company called Hog Wild. I've been doing their catalog covers for many years. Here, the corporate hog is a super hero, juggling Hog Wild's new products for the season. The little super-heroes are wire-magnet characters called Benders. I did it like an editorial cartoon, first the line art in pencil on vellum:

Here the line art isn't going to be printed anywhere, so I don't have to worry about gray tones or heavy black areas; I'll have color to give the image "substance." Here's the final art with a fancier background than I would do for newspaper reproduction ...

Here's another recent one for a magazine article about Botox - again, done the same way. First the line art in pencil on vellum ...

Then the color on the computer ...


... and here is how it looked in the magazine ...



OK, now I'm done. I'm starting to ramble.

Check out our new Cartoon Week in Review slideshow on MSNBC.com

Here's an interesting follow up article by Romanesko at Poynter on the aftermath of the Jose Verela hostage incident in Miami.

Slate has an interesting column (yes, I still read Slate, even though their cartoon feature is terrible now) on the decline of newspapers and how it was forseen by the industry thirty years ago, before the internet was conceived.

STEVE SACK'S AWARD WINNING CARTOONS

My buddy, Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, just won the Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning, from the National Press Foundation. Since the NPF hasn't posted his winning cartoons, I asked Steve to send them to me, and here they are (below). See an archive with all of Steve's cool, colorful political cartoons here.

WE'RE TOO EDGY

Most editorial cartoons are bland, and getting blander. I've complained here often about the "Newsweekification" of political cartoons, where editors like gags about the news with no real opinions. The quest for bland content is everywhere as newspapers hope to offend no one as a way to keep their dwindling audience.

Cartoonists often blame syndicates for the decline in their profession, complaining about price competition ­ but there is also competition to convey less opinion, to be softer and less edgy. I run into this every day.

I started a syndicate that sells editorial cartoons to newspapers (see my syndicate at Caglecartoons.com); a major reason that I started the business was the softening of editorial cartoons. I wanted to create a haven where cartoonists are free to draw strong cartoons, without facing pressure from their syndicate to "tone it down." Even so, most of our cartoons are not particularly hard hitting - but editors are uncomfortable with the minority of our cartoons that convey strong opinions. Here is a quote from Korrie Wenzel, editor of the Daily Republic in Mitchell, SD, who says,

"My budget can only afford one service. I love your cartoons! I laughed until I cried reading some of them. But they are too far out there to use every day. We need to run a safer mix to appeal to the readers in our area. I don't like to have to do that but we have to be sensitive to our readers. Your cartoons are just too consistently edgy."

Wenzel dropped our service in favor of our milder competitor, King Features' Best and the Wittiest package. King runs their package service differently than we do. King has a dozen participating cartoonists who submit cartoons; King selects from these which cartoons are sent to newspapers. Some Best and the Wittiest cartoonists complain they are frustrated that their strongest cartoons are not accepted by King for syndication. Our service, in contrast, sends out everything that our cartoonists draw.

Many cartoonists face three editors, each with a mandate to insure that readers do not have to suffer from "edgy" cartoons: the cartoonist's own editor at his newspaper, the syndicate editor, and the editors of the syndicate's subscribing newspapers, who typically select the most passionless of the syndicate's offerings of the day.

By trying to please everyone, newspapers are making themselves boring and hastening their own demise at the hands of the edgy internet. Editors will follow the path of least resistance; strong opinions generate complaints; editors who print no strong opinions get few complaints. I would urge our readers to compare the cartoons that you see on our site to the cartoons that you see in your own, local newspaper. Complain to your local editor when he runs dull cartoons that convey little or no opinion. Easily offended, complaining readers are the ones who ultimately are forcing all of us to suffer from bland newspapers.

If readers who are offended by bland content would also complain, newspapers would be very different.

IRANIAN CARTOONIST ESCAPES FROM GOVERNMENT PERSECUTION

Regular readers of my blog know the story of Iranian cartoonist Mana Neyestani, who was jailed for drawing a cockroach that told a mild, ethnic joke. My Iranian cartoonist buddy, Nik Kowsar, had been giving me updates on Mana's situation as he was in and out of prison; Nik has been quiet lately as Mana was trying to escape Iran. Read about Mana's trevails here and see the cartoon that landed him in prison.

Nik just sent me this press release from the Cartoonists Rights Network detailing Mana's escape and quest for asylum.

NOVEMBER 27, 2006 - 23:07 ET Cartoonists Rights Network, International: Exiled Iranian Cartoonist Seeks Safe Haven FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA--(CCNMatthews - Nov. 27, 2006) - Cartoonist Mana Neyestani left Dubai where he had lived in exile since one of his cartoons led to death threats. He is now in Europe where he notified UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations, that he is seeking asylum.

Neyestani left Iran in early September, just days before he was to be imprisoned for a second time because of his cartooning. Iranian authorities arrested Neyestani and his editor, Mehrdad Qasemfar, May 23 on charges that they incited ethnic violence and undermined national security when the newspaper Iran published a cartoon with a cockroach speaking the Azeri language to a boy who was speaking Persian, the language used by about 75 percent of Iranians. Students rioted in the northwestern city of Tabriz to protest the cartoon. Iran, a state-owned newspaper, was closed for months. It resumed publishing September 11 with a new staff.

Neyestani's months-long search for an appropriate visa has been followed by his cartooning colleagues and they are alarmed that UNHCR seems to be his last resort. "Western countries who claim to have enlightened policies in support of freedom of expression like to have their cake and eat it, too," said Nik Kowsar, a cartoonist who encountered Iranian protesters in 2000 due to one of his cartoons. He, too, fled Iran and now lives in Canada. "They position themselves as supporting freedom of expression, but now make achieving asylum almost impossible for the individual who is at risk for exercising it." Kowsar serves on the board of directors of Cartoonists Rights Network, International.

CRNI monitors and supports the well-being of political cartoonists who find themselves in trouble because of the power and influence of their professional work.

Thanks to the Comics Reporter for alerting me to this BBC News article about a newspaper editor from Yemen who was just sentenced to a year in prison for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons.

POLITICAL CARTOONIST HOSTAGE CRISIS IN MIAMI

Last Friday the newsroom of the Miami Herald was evacuated in a hostage scare as their Spanish language cartoonist Jose Varela, brandished a realistic toy gun and a knife, making several, strange demands. I asked our Cuban cartoonist, Ares, if he knows Varela, and Ares tells me yes, that Varela is a well known cartoonist and has won several awards for his work - although I must say that I am not impressed with the quality of his work (There is a sample to the right).

The crazy incident took over the cable news channels as well, last Friday morning, and led cartoonists to speculate about Varela's motives. The disgruntled cartoonist was described as angry about losing his job at the El Nuevo Herald (the Spanish paper published by the Miami Herald), he was also reported to be angry about the newspaper's reporting on the Cuban community, and about his editor in particular. Another article on the Herald site (which requires registration, so I haven't linked it here) describes the recently divorced Varela as suffering from family and financial problems.

Here is an article about the incident from the Miami Herald. Below is an excellent article about all this craziness from our friends at Editor & Publisher; thanks to Dave Astor for allowing us to post articles from E&P.

Who Is Jose Varela, Man in Miami's 'Herald' Drama?
By E&P Staff
Published: November 25, 2006 2:30 PM ET

NEW YORK Jose Varela, the man who holed up at the offices of the Miami Herald and sister publication El Nuevo Herald before being taken into custody Friday afternon -- he had wielded a toy gun -- listed several grievances behind his action, including pay and the need to tell the "truth" about what is allegedly going on at the papers. But who is he?

Varela is an editorial cartoonist for the paper and well-known figure in the Cuban-American community there. He is featured prominently on the El Nuevo Herald home page, with a photo/illustration of him and a list of his latest daily cartoons. He was recently divorced.

"I'm a happy man," he wrote about himself on the Herald web site. "Even though I cry if I see a movie like Titanic. Because I don't like sinkings."

He came to the U.S. from Cuba in the Mariel boat lift.

Varela had his bond increased to $75,000 by a judge on Saturday. He was initially being held on $22,500 bond. Varela was carrying a knife and a black, plastic toy gun that resembled a real semiautomatic weapon, police said. He was taken to Miami-Dade County Jail Friday evening and charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a firearm.

El Nuevo reporter Rui Ferreira said Varela had been in the newsroom a week ago and told former colleagues he had bought sawed-off shotgun and an Uzi submachine gun because he felt unsafe in Jupiter, where he moved recently. Ferreira wrote in a blog that he had spoken to the gunman, who told him, "You are speaking to the new director of the newspaper and I am going to unmask all of the true conflicts in the newspaper."

Varela called the paper a "pigsty," and said it made fun of the Cuban exile community in Miami and that the paper paid poorly.

"They've been making fun of people long enough and today they will see it end in violence. But someone has to pay and that person is going to be (Humberto) Castello." he said, referring to the Spanish-language paper's executive editor -- whose office he would occupy before police got him out. __Varela's work is featured in the book, "Cuban Miami."

This is his mini-autobiography, from the El Nuevo Herald site:

I was born in Cuba, in the country -- which means any place that is not Havana -- more than 40 years ago but it kills me that I do not remember the exact date because I suffer from amnesia due to stress from credit cards.

I remember that I was always a bad student because I spent my time drawing caricatures of the teacher; before long they expelled me from the halls. Since I was not a chief, nor musician, nor a dancer, nor a ballplayer, nor a dissident with projects, I could not leave the country -- so I left on the first boat I could find. That was through Mariel to Key West.

I arrived in Miami and this was a swamp full of crocodiles but later it was dried up. They put up freeways, bridges and cafeterias to sell little Morón cakes and maracuyá juice. Later, a weekly newspaper got the idea (because they were missing the crossword puzzle) to publish my cartoons and later they began to give me prizes.

I really would have liked to enter NASA and become an astronaut, but dreams remain dreams. And in reality, the Man Upstairs gives and takes away. So he gave me a wife who never ages, a daughter who draws better than I can and a stout boy who, if he were to give me a karate chop with his hand, it would send me to the hospital.

What more can I ask of life? What's more, I've enjoyed Fidel's fall: tumbling on the floor, not me but Castro.

I'm a happy man. Even though I cry if I see a movie like Titanic. Because I don't like sinkings.

UPDATE ON THE ORPHAN WORKS BILL

I got this note from the Illustrators Partnership on the current status of the evil Orphan Works Bill:

It's not yet clear how the post-election power shift in Congress will affect the Orphan Works bill. It's possible that one, maybe both, of the intellectual property subcommittees will be chaired by lawmakers who have been responsive to the concerns of visual artists. Yet, as legal analyst David Carney writes in the Tech Law Journal, "the orphan works bill "has broad bipartisan support," and with a full Congressional term ahead, he predicts it "will likely be approved in the 110th Congress."

Last September, the bill died in the House Judiciary committee because Congress adjourned. Had it passed then, a last-minute "manager's amendment" would have delayed the effective date of its application to illustrations, photographs, etc., requiring the Copyright Office to first create a text-based database for visual works.

The manager's amendment was drafted during the August recess to meet the objections of visual artists. Representative Howard Berman (Dem-CA), who may become new chairman of the subcommittee, told the Tech Law Journal that the manager's amendment "satisfied" his concerns about the bill, although he added "Whether it would have been taken up in the Senate, I'm not sure."

The Senate may still introduce a separate Orphan Works bill. Senator Patrick Leahy (Dem-Vermont) is likely to resume chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a photographer himself, he has been especially sympathetic to our concerns. It was Senator Leahy's office that invited the Illustrator's Partnership to testify against the bill last April.

The new Congress convenes in January. We'll keep you posted. Please post or forward this email in its entirety to any interested party. For additional information about Orphan Works developments, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists.

MORE PAUL RIGBY

Paul Zanetti was reminiscing with me about Paul Rigby ...

Daryl,

Here's a picture of me with Rigby taken in the early 1980s with some of Australia's legendary cartoonists at a city pub. Sadly, I am the only one still standing....well, good for me....but.....well, you know what I mean!

Of course that photo was taken 20 years ago.

I am on the left (don't laugh).

Renowned Australian cartoonist and close friend, Bill Mitchell is next (the guy with the thick glasses). Bill was the cartoonist on THE AUSTRALIAN before Bill Leak. Mitchell moved from the Sydney Daily Telegraph to The Australian in 1980. I was straight out of school and I took over from Bill on The Telegraph. Bill sadly succumbed to a long battle with cancer about 15 years ago, at his peak and way too young. He was a quiet, generous, modest and thoughtful man who had an outrageous and hilarious sense of humour. You would literally laugh out loud when you read his cartoons. He was a fellow-West Australian of Paul Rigby's and like all West Aussies, he idolised the trail-blazing Paul Rigby.

Then the jovial and legendary cartoonist, Jim Russell at the front, famed for being on a Hitler 'hit list' if mein furer won the war. They found the list after they went through the dead German leader's files. During the war, Jim Russell did a wonderfully funny comic strip called 'Adolph and Musso', which I believe was also published in the UK.

Next to him is Paul Rigby, and next to him is Jim's brother, Dan, also a cartoonist.

Peeking over our shoulder is Rigby and Mitchell-mate, fellow West Australian journalist, Col Mckay, who was the one who introduced me to Rigby through a drunken phone call from the Evening Star hotel (pub) late one evening, when McKay and I were talking about my forthcoming trip to the USA, and he said...."Aw....I'll just give Rigby a call....and let him know you're coming.". I think it was about 5:00 am in the morning in NY.....the Australian way.

Regards,

Paul Zanetti

PAUL RIGBY DIES FROM HEART ATTACK

I just got word that Australian cartooning great Paul Rigby has died. I followed Paul's work in the New York Post for years. He had a wonderful, unique, wild style and the Post printed his chaotic, detail-filled cartoons across the full width of the page. Read more about Paul's career here. Aussie cartoonist Paul Zanetti sent me this note:

Hi all,

... Legendary iconic Australian cartoonist, Paul Rigby passed away yesterday at Brusselton Hospital in Western Australia. He was 82.

Riggers was a cartooning legend and icon in newspapers in three continents, influencing many young cartoonists. I had the pleasure of staying with him in his New York pad on Roosevelt Island, when I was a young 19 year-old struggling cartoonist. He was a generous and fun person to be with, famed as much for his 'limp-falling' as he was for his cartoons. Limp-falling was the silly and unexpected toppling from a bar stool mid-conversation. I witnessed a then late-50s Rigby practice this craft in a New York bar. What fun!

Rigby started out in West Australia, then moved to Sydney by Rupert Murdoch, then to the London Sun, then to the New York Post.

He recently retired back to WA, indulging in his love of painting.

Most readers will remember his cartoons for the little man and the little dog he hid in his very-detailed cartoons. You could spend hours looking for them...a loved Australian pastime and train-travel filler.

Keep 'em laughing up there in the clouds, Riggers!

Paul Zanetti

I think the sample below is an excellent example of Rigby's incredible work - with details everywhere and all the space on the page that he wanted so he could fill his drawings with details that a typical editorial cartoonist can never hope to draw. (I grabbed this gem Jason Chatfield's site and that is Jason's characature of "Riggers" above. Jason mentions that Rigby was at the Stanley Awards last week to accept the Jim Russell Lifetime Achievement Award.) Rigby was one of the greats; he'll be missed.

NOVEMBER 14, 2006

SIMANCA'S WINNING CARTOON

Congratulations to my buddy, Brazilian cartoonist, Simanca, who won the "Cartoons Bridging Cultures" international cartoon contest in Greece. That's Simanca (right) celebrating at the Byzantine & Christian Museum in Athens. Some 415 cartoonists from 62 countries entered the contest submitting more than 1,100 cartoons. E-mail Simanca. See Simanca's cartoons on politicalcartoons.com. The winning cartoon is below.

THAT BOOK COVER IS JUST TOO BOLD

My publisher is busy printing our new, annual "Best Political Cartoons of the Year" book right now, but last week they freaked out. The colors on the cover were just "too bold" for them and we had a last minute, cover color emergency, which resulted in the "more acceptable cover" on the right. We have a lot of offensive cartoons in this book that will make readers' eyes pop right out of their sockets, and all the cartoons are fine with the publisher - but oooh those colors - the colors were just too much. So, when you see those offensive green and orange colors on Amazon.com (and everywhere else) ... just forget that; the book really looks delightfully inoffensive, like the image on the right. (And you can buy it right now on Amazon.com - it will be shipping soon!) The book is the best of our site for the year, with more pages (288) and more cartoons (1000+) than ever before.

Too, too bold.

Ahh ... just right.

Visit our new MSNBC.com Cartoon Week in Review Slideshow featuring the Democrats' election win and Saddam's death sentence.

BANANA REPUBLIC

I like to give special attention to political cartoonists who break away from the cartoonist pack. Kirk Anderson sent me the anonymous review below and great new batch of "Banana Republic" cartoons that you can visit here. Want to comment? E-mail Kirk here or post a comment on our new forum.

The political cartoon "Banana Republic," that weekly wallow in treasonous cynicism, has turned one year old. Why it has been allowed to fester this long in our nation's family newspapers is a testament to the depravity of the liberal media.

The U.S. as an allegorical BANANA REPUBLIC?! For crying out loud, that's just silly. I mean, really. "Banana republic" means, you know, some authoritarian regime that takes power through extra-Constitutional means, that relies on the military to get its way, that doesn't believe in a democratic "separation of powers." It's a loaded term. Say "banana republic" and you think of insane corruption, crippling debt, massive wealth disparities, crackdowns on dissent, state propaganda, domestic spying, one-party rule, torture, disappearances, secret prisons... does THAT sound like the U.S.?! Hellooo?!

No, if the U.S. was a banana republic, we'd have fishy-smelling elections that require international observers, we'd be fighting an endless guerilla insurgency and we'd have rulers who shoot people in the face and get away with it. Do you even realize how ridiculous that sounds?! Imagine, for a moment, that Kirk Anderson's dystopian meth-induced cheesy B-movie cartoon nightmare was even remotely true. Imagine we all woke up one morning and discovered that the U.S., like some bizarre banana republic, had changed its laws so we could now lock people up and throw away the key, in secret, without a trial, without even giving a reason why. Can you imagine the moral outrage?! There'd be RIOTING IN THE STREETS!!! Americans would DEMAND their rule of law, their habeas corpus, their right to trial, their Constitution! Have you SEEN any rioting in the streets?! NO. There is no moral outrage, because this is America. "Banana republic," indeed.

Should we just ignore reprobates like Kirk Anderson, and hope they and their "harmless" little "funny pictures" go away? My friends, that's exactly what they WANT us to do. No, we must instead shine a light on Kirk's work for all to see, to rob him of the comfort and anonymity of operating in the shadows. His weekly quarter page rantings in the Minneapolis Star Tribune are exposed on his own incriminating home page and elsewhere on the very web site you're visiting. Do it for the children.

Face it, this is a cartoon for tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists who still think the earth is more than 6,000 years old. This is a cartoon for people who don't understand that freedom isn't free, democracy isn't democratic and liberty isn't necessarily liberating. This is what we're up against, people. Happy *$#@ing Birthday to you, Banana Republic, you sick, sick bastard.

-- name withheld

I've added some of your comments below Derkaoui's comments. - Daryl

NOVEMBER 4, 2006

IRAN'S HOLOCAUST CARTOON CONTEST WINNER

During the height of the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy earlier this year, the government of Iran announced that they would hold a cartoon contest in response, which would outrage Western sensibilities as the Muslim world had been outraged by the Danish cartoons. The winner of the contest is Derkaoui Abdellah of Morocco, who is a regular contributor to our site. I wrote to Derkaoui asking him to send me a copy of the winning cartoon along with his comments. The winning cartoon is below, along with Derkaoui's response which I have roughly translated from his French; his original wording in French is below the cartoon.

The winning cartoon shows a crane, which Derkaoui describes as an "Israeli war machine", placing pieces of a wall separating the viewer from the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest Muslim shrine, located in Jerusalem. The wall is covered in photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Iranian contest was conceived to feature cartoons ridiculing or denying the Holocaust, responding to the Danish Muhammad cartoons, even though Jews, or Israel, had nothing to do with the Danish cartoons. The contest was sponsored by the Hamshahri newspaper and the source of the award money for the contest winners has not been disclosed; Derkaoui won a $12,000.00 prize for his cartoon.

The exhibit curator, Masoud Shojai, said the contest will be an annual event and added: "Actually, we will continue until the destruction of Israel." Iran's President Ahmedinejad has called for Israel to be "erased from the map" and has denied that the Holocaust took place. Shojai is a former contributor to our site, see his cartoons here. Shojai didn't disclose the name of a second place winner of the event, a cartoonist from France. Shojai is quoted saying, "You can call the French cartoonist 'Mr X'. If I reveal his name, he may face imprisonment in France."

According to an Associated Press report:

The cartoons, which have been on display at the Museum of Contemporary Arts for Palestine (formerly the Israeli Embassy, before the Iranian revolution, and located next to the Palestinian Embassy - Daryl) since August, have not drawn large crowds though state schools bused their students to the show.

... Iranian newspapers reported the results of the competition Thursday, but gave it no significant coverage. Not one paper printed the winning cartoon.

... Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supported the exhibition. His frequent denials of Nazi Germany's killing of 6 million Jews during World War II have made the Holocaust a feature of Iranian foreign policy.

Two of the top three cartoons did not even deny the Holocaust and could be interpreted as affirming it. The point of Derkaoui's winning drawing and that of Carlos Latuff, a Brazilian who tied for second place, was to compare the Holocaust with the suffering of Palestinians today.

The exhibition was condemned worldwide. The U.S. State Department criticized it and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed his displeasure during a visit to Iran in September.
Hajar Smouni of Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media rights group, said she was shocked by the "very poor taste" of the competition.

Here is my e-mail to Derkaoui and my rough translation of his response:

Dear Derkaoui,

I read today that you won the Holocaust denial cartoon contest in Iran. I wondered if you could send me an image of the winning cartoon along with your comments about your cartoon and the contest.

I'm sure you know that this contest was organized for the purpose of answering the perceived insult against Muslims from the Danish Muhammad cartoons with what would be considered a reciprocal insult in the form of cartoons that would be offensive to Jews (although the editors and cartoonists involved with the Danish cartoons were not Jewish.) This would be an opportunity for you to address criticism of the contest and your participation in the contest.

I hope to hear from you!

Best,
Daryl

As you know, I won first place in the Irancartoon contest which had the theme: "Why do the Palestinian people pay the price of butchery for the Holocaust?"

I took part in this contest to express my support for the Palestinian people and I did a drawing showing the Israeli wall isolating the Palestinian territories being lifted by an Israeli war machine; I added a photograph to the wall showing the Auschwitz concentration camp.

I want to express my total heartfelt sympathy with the millions of Jewish victims of the Holocaust who suffered the greatest crime against humanity under the Nazis. Nobody can deny that more than six million people were massacred during the second world war by the devil Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. But the question for me and for so many others is why the Palestinian people have suffered from so much pain, and massacres, and why they continue to suffer in the current situation.

As a citizen of Morocco it is my deepest conviction that Jews are my brothers; Jews have lived with us in peace and tolerance as fellow citizens in Morocco for 2000 years. I remember that in World War II, Morocco did not cooperate with the Vichy government of France when the King of Morocco stood up to the German demands and refused to send thousands of Moroccan Jews to the German concentration camps. I am proud of Morocco for taking this noble stand. I am proud of Morocco which has been and will be tomorrow, a place of tolerance between Jews and Muslims, who will live here together like brothers.

This is the winning cartoon:

If you would like to comment, e-mail us or post your comment in our new moderated forum. Our website is blocked by the government in Iran and cannot be viewed by Iranian web surfers, so I don't expect much response from Iran.

Derkaoui's original comments in French are below:

Comme vous le savez j'ai gagné le premier prix dans la compètition d'irancartoon sous le théme"pourquoi le peuple palistinien paye le prix de la boucherie du holocaust?"...et pour exprimer mon soutien au peuple palistinien j'ai participé à cette compétition avec un dessin qui démontre le mur d'isolation bati par le gouvernement israelien et j'ai ajouté au sein du mur une photo du camp de concentration d'auschwitz posé par une machine de guerre israelien en démontrant le camp d'auschwitz je voulais exprimer ma conviction totale et ma sympthie avec les millions de victimes juifs qui ont subi le plus grand crime contre l'humanité que les nazis commet.

Personne ne peut nier les massacres du peuples juif -plus de 6 000.000 de victimes -pendant la deuxieme guerre mondiale par le satin hitler et ses sbires nazis . Mais la question , pour moi et pour tant d'autres pourquoi le peuple palistinien subi et encore entrain de subi des douleurs et des massacres quotidienement ? En ce qui me concerne ,en tant que marocain ,vivant au maroc j'ai la conviction totale que les juifs sont mes fréres, des concitoyens qui ont bati le maroc de la cohabitation et de la tolerance et celà depuis 2000 ans ..
Le maroc- mème sous l'occupation française -à dit non au guovernement de "vichy" lorsque celui ci a demandé au feu Mohamed 5 (le roi du maroc) d'envoyè des milliers de juifs marocain aux camps de concentrations allemande.. Ce maroc noble ,dont je suis fier . Ce maroc qui était et sera toujuors la terre de la tolerance entre juifs et musulmans qui cohabitent comme des fréres ..

Here are some of your comments:

Derkaoui's rationalization for his cartoon is inappropriate The Auschwitz concentration camp and other camps were the result of a deliberate Nazi government policy to exterminate all Jews. Whatever one thinks of the Israeli wall - it's purpose is to separate - not exterminate the Palestinians. The Palestinians are not paying the price of the Holocaust but are suffering due to the refusal of their leaders to renounce the extermination of Israel and make a good faith attempt to negotiate some sort of peaceful co-existence.

Marcyl Seidscher

(It struck me as typical, we're used to seeing Israelis equated with Nazis in cartoons in the Muslim world. -Daryl)
________________________________________________________________

I just saw Derkaoui's israeli wall cartoon on your web site and wanted to tell you how much I agree with your choice. Derkaoui's cartoon says it all, a real winner !!!!

Cal Wellander
Saugus, Ca.

I think the picture is right on! I also sympathies with the Jews. No, I am not a Jew. Just a Christian who fells sorry for what happened.
Thank You
Etta

(Jessica, just register, log on and post a message. We have to approve the messages because of spammers, but if your message isn't about where to buy cheap drugs or find pornography, we'll get your message up quickly. -Daryl)

... In your comments you ... criticise, that the Iranian Cartoon Contest officially was a reaction to the Danish Cartoons, although the Danish Cartoons were not related to jews. This may be correct, but it misses the point.
The official rationale for starting the Holocaust Cartoon Contest had been, that "the West" did not clearly raise its voice against the Danish Cartoons with the argument, that they were covered by the right of Free Speech. "The West" (correctly) argued, that even cartoons against the church were covered by this right, and that all of us have to accept to be offended from time to time.

By starting a Holocaust Cartoon Contest the Iranian side wanted to prove, that there are topics, which are holy for "the West", so that cartoons are not allowed - for example the Holocaust. "The West" would rather talk about a taboo rather than about holiness.

The Iranian side argues, that if Holocaust Cartoons are holy (or taboo) for "the West", "the West" has to accept, that other topics are holy (or taboo) for Muslims.

It is correct, that meanwhile the Holocaust Cartoon Contest is more than an argument in the discussion about taboos - but it started like that.

Best regards,

Joachim
Stuttgart (Germany)

(I'll disagree a bit, Joachim.

The Irancartoons Holocaust contest was announced at the height of the Danish Muhammad cartoons controversy both to offend the West as the Iranians perceived that the West had conspired to offend Islam, and to show what the Iranians saw as hypocracy in the West by bringing about what they expected to be a strong reaction against, and censorship of, their Holocaust cartoons.

The arguments made in the Muslim world against the Danish Muhammad cartoons centered on freedom of the press, which is a foreign concept in much of the world; their argument was that Western governments should not allow the press to print images that are too offensive. In the West we take freedom of the press as a fundamental right and our freedoms are not in question. For the West, the argument about the Danish Muhammad cartoons was about the responsibilities of the free press in a free society. Any debate questoning freedom of the press in the West was only in response to the arguments and demands from the Muslim world which were, I think, culturally foreign and not seriously considered. - Daryl)

NOVEMBER 3, 2006

JEEZ, IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING

Mr. Cagle,

Your cartoon today was especially funny. It's good to see references to chess as a mainstream point of identifying superior acuity. One point: the board is always arranged so a black square is at the player's lower left. Your board is rotated 90 degrees. Small point, but the devil is in the details!

Best regards,
Ray West
United States Chess Federation

I'll explain this mistake away by saying that both players don't have a firm grasp on what they are doing. -Daryl

CNN'S CRAZY SMALL PRINT

Don't forget to read the small print! Cartoonists are laughing at CNN's chutzpah today as they posted a call for editorial cartoonists to submit their cartoons to CNN - seems like just the kind of thing cartoonists would want - the chance to sell their cartoons to cable TV - right? Well ... no. Scrolling to the bottom of the page there is a window with CNN's "terms of use" which reads, in part:

By submitting your material, for good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency and receipt of which you hereby acknowledge, you hereby grant to CNN and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit, or any portion thereof, as incorporated in any of their programming or the promotion thereof, in any manner and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without payment to you or any third party. You represent and warrant to CNN that you have the full legal right, power and authority to grant to CNN the license provided for herein, that you own or control the complete exhibition and other rights to the materials you submitted for the purposes contemplated in this license and that neither the materials nor the exercise of the rights granted herein shall infringe upon or violate the right of privacy or right of publicity of, or constitute a libel or slander against, or violate any common law or any other right of, any person or entity. This license shall be governed by the laws of the State of Georgia.

CNN has the right to edit and/or alter any submission. CNN reserves the right not to use the material you submit at all and/or as little of the material as it chooses.

You acknowledge and agree that by submitting your material you are not entering into an employment relationship with CNN and that no relationship is created other than licensor/licensee.

CNN values your privacy. The information you submit is subject to our privacy policy.

CNN's terms are so outrageously absurd that they would make a good cartoon - if only they weren't so wordy. I posted this because cartoonists are always deciding what they think readers will find funny, it is only fair that our readers should see what cartoonists find funny.

SOME MORE RESPONSES ON THE HARVARD CARTOONIST

Dear Mr. Cagle, et al,

The most noted plagiarist in America is Doris Kearns Goodwin who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book on the Kennedys which, of-course, turned out to be plagiarized. After she was found out she had to return the Pulitzer and settled out of court with the original author that she had copied from. Ms. Goodwin sits on the Harvard Board of Overseers. So what is the message to the student body - plagiarism pays? So why are you surprised when a couple of students, bright little buggers that they are, follow the example set by a member of the Board?

Issaquah Jack

Steve Moskowitz
Boston, MA

In response to Yvonne: One anonymous e-mailer who claimed to work for the Harvard Crimson explained to me that the newspaper is entriely student run, with no faculty involvement - if that is true, then this would seem to be a demonstration of amateur ethics, something which is clearly not a good idea. -Daryl

That said, David Brown mentioned in the Cagle newsletter that we're throwing a fuss over a cartoon and "So What as long as they are funny?". Frankly it's more than that David, mainly because we are talking about an artist's hard work. We have companies of all shapes and sizes and genres attempting on a fairly frequent basis to steal the very art cartoonists, photographers, illustrators and sculptors have attemtped to create for their own monetary gain. If I created that art, I deserve payment, and I shouldn't have to chase after that payment.