Last week someone emailed me complaining that I “explained” my cartoons. Let’s call him “Chris.”

Well, my main issue is that not only do I often not understand them, it’s that you often admit in the commentary below your cartoons that you have grave doubts that your audience will understand them. I think there was one in which you said you didn’t even get it yourself. Other times, you go to great lengths to explain the cartoon and why you think it’s funny. Chris

ESL cartoon English as a Second Language

Another man wrote me to complain about the cartoon above. (We’ll call him Anthony, since his name is Anthony.)

I saw this cartoon and decided immediately that you are out of touch with reality.  For you information, even school districts in Kentucky, (not known as a bastion of education reform) require all students in high school to take Spanish as a second language. It’s obvious from your cartoon your are a RACIST AND BIGOT!

Spanish is spoken by thirty four million Americans in the U.S. and that number is growing. Only right wing, Bible thumping school districts, like those in Texas, would not teach the fastest growing second language in the U.S.!

A little education for you, since it’s apparent you failed your ESL!

Spanish was the language spoken by the first permanent European settlers in North America. It was brought to the territory of what is the contemporary U.S. in 1513 by Ponce de León. In 1565, the Spaniards, by way of Juan Ponce de Leon, founded St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest, continuously occupied European settlement in the continental U.S. …

Your Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh mentality is apparent!

Chris, meet Anthony.

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Will BP PLC do anything they promised? We’ll see. I wish they’d save the money they spend on their TV ads, and spend it by helping clean up their mess, but that ship has already sailed. Losers.

Nothing funny about this environmental and financial disaster, but cartoonists have a way of pointing their pens in a way that the newspapers and sources have only begun to do the last month or so. News sites were so neutral before, it was disgusting! That’s not reporting, that’s siding with the enemy! I think cartoonists are more honest.

daryl cagle oil spill at the dance cartoon, at cagle.com

I was really impressed by Daryl Cagle’s cartoon of Obama dancing with the devil BP (who looks rather like a Smurf. And is that a Snidely Whiplash mustache on Obama?) I’ve seen dancing steps before, but not in oil!

Side note: I wonder if Daryl is a fan of Dancing with the Stars…:)

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Yay, sparklers! They’re illegal in California, or at least LA. Does that mean I don’t have any? Want to take a guess?

2nd amendment cartoon on the 4th of July

They’re not legal in Philadelphia, either, but they have them in the Amish counties! Yup, Dwight Schrute territory. Right next to the special quilt fabrics and needles.

The writing on the corner is a soupcon of Outsider Art. What crazy people and others do – lots of word and writing to get the idea across.

That little boy looks so happy.

More on gun control to come, of course.

Cartoon caption: Amendment 2a: The right to bear sparklers. Happy 4th to our troops.

It’s a beautiful new week for cartoons! This roundup for the LA Times is for cartoons published the second week of June, 2010.

Since I’m editor here, I shan’t go into my personal  stuff – like my car accident, dealing with 2 insurance companies, aftereffects of the accident, a new problem in the car, which wouldn’t start, and now is in the shop for a possible VERY expensive bill, which may or may not be connected to the accident, my dentist as a result of the accident, and the fact that malware infected my computer for 4 days, and completely disabled my internet connection as well as my Task Manager, which I finally eradicated through an antivirus program with the regrettable name of SuperAntiSpyware Free Edition. But it worked. Most of the others wouldn’t.

All is calm today, anyway, so I hurried to the new cartoons to see what had happened this week while I was missing! (I explain how and why I do this roundup over here.)

hagen cartoon on nuclear disarmament from gocomics.com

This cartoon by Hagen from gocomics.com,  made me laugh out loud! Mr. Hagen, from Norway,  might not be interested in partisanship, but this is EXACTLY how I view Democrats 99% of the time! Tossing off a loud reproof in the general direction of a problem and not doing a thing about it.  The chasm separating the Dems from taking action is astounding.

I love Obama’s little squat here as he tries to speak a little louder, to get his point across. The man on the other side is holding a nuclear weapon. Who is that guy? Is it just Iran? I don’t know, and so I declare right this moment that I won’t do a cartoon on nuclear bombs until I figure out who this important person is.  Read more »