Killed Cartoons
Freedom of the press is relative -- relative to how much freedom the press gives itself. There's a great deal of self-censorship in the media, especially of cartoonists. And if you want to see about 100 cartoons that newspaper editors thought were too much for you, pick up the terrific new book by my good friend David Wallis, Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression.
David writes about the editorial squelching of expression on SFGate:
It's not as if we're in Soviet times when the government totally controlled what readers could and could not see. Here, it's the newspapers and magazines that do most of the censoring. Work deemed controversial, sacrilegious, risqué, politically incorrect or simply bad for business often gets killed before publication.It merits mention that understandable motives can drive editors to kill. The world changes so fast that a political cartoon drawn today can become dated tomorrow, and sometimes a promising idea just doesn't work on paper. Editors also keep their creative types from breaking libel laws, flouting industry ethics and gratuitously offending people. Insult should be a byproduct of a reasoned argument rather than a goal in itself.
Too often, editors fail to make that critical distinction. They squelch compelling cartoons out of fear -- fear of angering advertisers, the publisher's golf partners, the publisher's wife, the local police chief or the president of the United States, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, homophobes, gays, pro-choice advocates and anti-abortion protesters, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Midwest grannies -- especially Midwest grannies. They even fear getting noticed. Cartoonist Milt Priggee remembers what an editor told him soon after he joined the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash.: "If you want to survive at this paper, you've got to stay under management's radar. Don't do anything good. Don't do anything bad."
Internal politics dooms many compelling cartoons. Consider Kirk Anderson's 2002 cartoon on the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal, which portrays a Vatican "fireman" rescuing a priest from a burning church while ignoring a screaming child trapped in the flames. Anderson's paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota had irked the local diocese for several years. But it repaired relations with the church after publishing an essay by the city's new archbishop. Anderson, who was later downsized, believes his editor spiked his cartoon rather than risk "rocking the boat" even though that is arguably the cartoonist's job brief.
David continues:
Enraged readers, as many editors have learned, freely express their fury through the Internet. The Web is a double-edged sword, providing cartoonists with a way to distribute censored cartoons, but also making it easy for offended parties to register protests out of proportion to their numbers.Perhaps the specter of full in-boxes factored into the Los Angeles Times' decision to quash Paul Conrad's 1999 cartoon of an angry elephant mounting a startled donkey to symbolize the reality of "congressional bipartisanship." To slip the "Wild Kingdom" humping past his paper's decency patrol, Conrad omitted any hint of genitalia. His editor, who called it "thigh-slapping fun" in an interview with a local alterative weekly, killed it anyway. In doing so, the prudish paper deprived readers of a vintage Conrad spanking of Republicans, who were bellowing about bipartisanship while impeaching Bill Clinton over a sex scandal.
...Mike Luckovich, the cartoonist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, had to wait awhile to truly express doubts about the Bush administration's honesty. In 2003, he was prevented from publishing a sketch, spelling out "W LIED" with military coffins. Luckovich's editor told a trade magazine that she thought "it was too early in the war to lay these deaths firmly at the president's feet."
By 2005, as public support for the war plummeted, Luckovich's paper approved a heart-wrenching cartoon to mark the loss of the 2,000th U.S. soldier in Iraq. Luckovich hand-wrote the names of every dead soldier to craft the word
"WHY."The Why cartoon, which helped Luckovich win his second Pulitzer Prize last year, reminds us that, when freed to deploy the potent weapon of ridicule by supportive editors, cartoonists matter. Powerful editorial art reaches out from the pages of newspapers and magazines, and now the screens of the Web, to poke readers in the eyes. Cartoons sting us in a primitive place, forcing us to question our leaders, our neighbors, our values.
Here's one final cartoon from the book. David e-mailed me a note about this one:
Trostle's cartoon sent up a ridiculous plan by local officials in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to tighten security to discourage revelers from attending the city's annual Halloween street party--an obvious terrorist target!
Bleccchh.. Conrad.... Ptoooie...
Crid at March 16, 2007 8:23 AM
Do you hate his work or just his politics? Whether or not you agree with him, he's great at what he does. Roman Genn has a cartoon in Killed, too -- one of Ariel Sharon as Winston Churchill making a V sign. Spiked by the hometown paper that refuses to run my column, the LA Times.
Amy Alkon at March 16, 2007 8:31 AM
> he's great at what he does
Right. He's illustrative. There's a woodcut of his pipe-smoking, eye-glassed, drunk-driving mug in the dictionary next to "hack."
I can't believe you admire that guy. For the love of Christ: An elephant is HUMPING a donkey. You think that's expressive?
Crid at March 16, 2007 8:37 AM
I've found that the vast majority of editorial cartoons of late (especially from Don Wright, Pat Oliphant, and ESPECIALLY Ted Rall) are so completely divorced of reality that they make me physically ill.
Although in that last case, it could just be the infantile artwork that makes me sick, and not the stupidity.
brian at March 16, 2007 8:41 AM
I just hate Mallard Fillmore.
PurplePen at March 16, 2007 9:28 AM
Well, Crid, I'd have to set my wayback machine to 1999 to catch the veracity (don't rightly recall right now if the GOP really *ahem* rode so roughshod over the Dems at that time). That said, the coupling made me chuckle, regardless of whether I agree with the sentiment. Isn't that what cartoons are supposed to do?
snakeman99 at March 16, 2007 9:46 AM
If you're getting your money's worth, enjoy. See also the earlier thread re: AA radio, Ellen, Sinbad, etc
Crid at March 16, 2007 9:53 AM
Speaking of killed cartoonists, looks like the rebarbative and self-promotional Donna Barstow got the axe from West. Or is she just on vacation?
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at March 16, 2007 12:30 PM
As an ardent Republican, I must say I certainly liked the opening cartoon. Gets the message across "forcefully" and directly. Reminds me of some of the OLD political cartoons when publishers made every attempt to DESTROY the targets of their anger/disdain.
André-Tascha at March 16, 2007 3:04 PM
I've seen costumes not entirely unlike the ones in that last cartoon at the WeHo parade.
LYT at March 16, 2007 6:43 PM
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