Tag: editorial cartooning

Post this, yo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
A snippet of the Ann Telnaes cartoon that the WaPo found objectionable. | © Ann Telnaes

Salud to cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit The Washington Post after a cartoon critical of Management — and by Management, I mean Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Mickey Fuckin’ Mouse, who are all managing to affix their chapped lips to the Pestilence-Erect’s ass at once — got croaked by the WaPo’s editorial-page bots.

At her Substack HQ, Telnaes explains:

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Ho, ho. “Just a cartoonist.” Telnaes knows, as I do, that a sharp pen can puncture a gasbag as thoroughly as a sword, and encourages onlookers to snicker at the well-deserved deflation.

As Boss Tweed once said after getting righteously stuck by cartoonist Thomas Nast:

“Let’s stop those damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

I kinda wish I still had a WaPo subscription to cancel. Mebbe I’ll sign back up so I can cancel the fucker again.

See Mike Peterson at The Daily Cartoonist for more about Telnaes and her stellar work.

No joke, sport

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

We did, too. Before they could fire us.

Whew. Rough week in my old bidness.

The New York Times croaked its sports department, and McClatchy sacked three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists — Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer.

Having worked in one sports department and drawn more than a few editorial cartoons, I naturally view with alarm. Wit is without value but witlessness is rewarded?

When The Washington Post asked for comment on McClatchy’s abrupt erasure of three Pulitzer winners, the company — owned by Chatham Asset Management — supplied this gem from opinion editor Peter St. Onge:

“We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the statement said.

Ho, ho. That’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s definitely on today’s leaderboard.

What local news and information that can’t be gotten elsewhere might McClatchy be relentlessly focused on providing in Sacramento at 3:10 p.m. Thursday Duck! City time?

And who says there’s no such thing as good news!

“The stories you’re seeing on the homepage are chosen by our local editors with help from an AI algorithm. The display includes the day’s important stories and recommendations for readers like you.”

Anyway, here’s a random selection from AI’s random selections courtesy of your friendly neighborhood carbon-based life form:

• “Cirque du Soleil returns to Sacramento this summer: Here’s where, when and how to get tickets.” Sounds like a free ad to me, but maybe the AI got comped tickets.

• “More than 40% of Californians say they were affected by recent extreme weather, poll finds.” Do tell. I imagine the other 60 percent stayed home or attended an air-conditioned showing of Cirque du Soleil.

• “Prime Day is over, but there are still deals galore.” Any cut-rate Cirque du Soleil tickets?

Well, thank Boss Tweed there ain’t none a them damned pictures taking up space on the Bee homepage. There’s not much to read, either. But then the only reading that interests hedge funders and asset managers is of the bottom line, and McClatchy certainly seems to have gotten to the bottom of something here.

• Addendum: Speaking of bottoms, pour one out for Anchor Brewing, which is going down after 127 years, the final few under a disastrous foreign ownership. Anchor Steam may have been the first proper beer I ever drank, and the porter was superb.

The wrong Bozos keep getting kicked off the bus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

Here’s a golden oldie, from my short stint at The Arizona Daily Star. I didn’t stick around to get the sack; I shot out of that place like a rat out of an aqueduct.

As long as we have a cartoon president, how ’bout drawing him up a cartoon Wall®?

We have the technology. Also, the manpower. Newspapers are shitcanning Pulitzer-winners right, left, and center, among them Steve Benson, who was the editorial cartoonist at the Arizona Republic back in 1980, when I scribbled the occasional ’toon for The Arizona Daily Star.

This is nothing new, of course. A J-school prof warned me in the Seventies that there were maybe a thousand editorial cartoonists, tops, and that I might consider expanding my portfolio a tad. This was excellent advice. Because their numbers kept shrinking like a spider on a hotplate, to hundreds and finally dozens.

It was nearly impossible to even make a start Back in the Day® because what few cartoonists there were could be had for chump change via syndication. So the editor of the Frog Dick (S.C.) Daily Lily Pad & Croaker could have Pat Oliphant every day for the price of a tepid cup of Maxwell House at Lulu’s Lunch Bucket.

I still got to draw cartoons, as you know. But I did it as a reporter, as a copy editor, as an assistant feature editor, and like that there. On the side. Onliest time I ever got hired as an honest-to-God cartoonist was when that Boulder-based journal of competitive cycling decided I was too dim to be their managing editor but funny enough to scribble gags about fat masters, dope fiends, and Suits.

In a few short years there won’t be any of us. Robots will be drawing all the cartoons. And you won’t get any of the jokes, because they will be by robots, for robots.

“Ha ha,” they will say. “That’s very logical.”

Paul Conrad, R.I.P.

~ Patrick O'Grady

A cartoon by Paul Conrad, then of The Los Angeles Times, circa 1982, when I was the editorial cartoonist (and a number of other things as well) at the Corvallis Gazette-Times.
A cartoon by Paul Conrad, then of The Los Angeles Times, circa 1982, when I was the editorial cartoonist (and a number of other things as well) at the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

Editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad died today at age 86.

He was one of the greats, deflating blowhards with a stroke of his razor-sharp pen, and won three Pulitzers for his mastery of the art. His first came at The Denver Post, where if memory serves he was succeeded by the even more acerbic Pat Oliphant. Conrad also won himself a spot on Nixon’s famous enemies list.

I met Oliphant once, at the Fine Arts Center here in Bibleburg, back when I was working for the Gazette. But I never met Conrad. However, I do have a signed print of one of his cartoons, a nice rap in the tusks for the Elefinks from when he worked for The Los Angeles Times.

He will be missed.