I know you guys are dying for some Charlie Sheen cartoons. I know I’m NOT. At first I was curious what he was going to do after Two and a Half Men was cancelled, but then he spun way out of control, and aren’t druggies boring!? The cartoons I’ve seen on him are pretty lame so far – many compare him with Gaddafi, which is just stupid. I’ll cover both of them later in the week.

Best cartoons of the week for the LA Times

I talk about why I’m editing these cartoons at the end of the post.

bob englehart union cartoon

This cartoon by Bob Englehart from cagle.com is an effective simplification of the brouhaha in Wisconsin and other states over collective bargaining power – or, unions, if I may speak directly. (And why doesn’t the media?)

I don’t begrudge unions – I’ve been in IATSE, in the movie studios, and the National Writers Union, which is affiliated w/ the UAW (auto workers!) – and in the studios, especially, unions are really necessary for safety and health issues.

But with state unions, with benefits paid by taxpayers? The rules are different. (The LA Times current “editors”, btw, would never choose this cartoon – it’s too simple. They prefer obscure cartoons, fancying their readers to be like NY Times readers. But since they’re not (after all, I am one of them!) here is a cartoon they SHOULD be using.)

dick locher cartoon on pensions and unions

I haven’t paid much attention to Dick Locher’s cartoons, even though he was on Gocomics with me for 2 years, until I was fired. But I like political cartoons that take place out of the office. Why not the kitchen? And I admire how he managed to fit all that teeny tiny lettering on the milk carton (or milk cartoon!) and still have it be legible.

From this cartoon, it’s not clear where Dick actually stands on the issue of pensions and jobs. Is he saying most companies don’t have pension plans? That it’s better to work for the government? In any case, this is a funny one!

mike luckovich cartoon on Republicans and how mean they are

Mike Luckovich is a card. It’s okay to say that, right? He’s one of the most consistently good cartoonists, so I use his work a lot in these roundups. However, I’m torn on this one; this is a foolish, diversity-obsessed, liberal slanting cartoon that I wouldn’t pick on my own. But I want to edit a balanced selection for the Times, so I’m including it.

Why would unemployed and minorities and unions be grouped together anyway, except that the Dems like to feel sorry for people… Mike draws on the left, in case you were wondering.

The colors are very good, however, and the way the figures stand on the bottom of the frame is good design, and the lamppost touches the top. From Gocomics.

taylor jones cartoon on supreme court justice clarence thomas

Finally, here’s an example of why the LA Times is still respected and great! LA can be very proud that the Times broke this story of  Justice Clarence Thomas never asking a question during arguments in the Supreme Court…for 5 years now!! He says he only goes by what is written down. So when lawyers present their case, he just listens!

The other justices do not agree with him on the value of oral arguments. They said the back-and-forth exchanges with the lawyers give them an opportunity to clarify aspects of the case they find puzzling. Sometimes, they also use the arguments to throw out ideas to get the attention of their colleagues.

And on occasion, the justices say, the answers they hear during the oral arguments persuade them to change their decision in a case. Thomas, by contrast, indicates he has his mind made up prior to the argument.

Investigating this further, it seems that his silence has been going on for several years. NY Daily News says he’s known as the silent member.

When someone on the Supreme Court is acting strangely, this should bother people. Curious, intelligent people (ie, those who ask questions) are smarter and better-educated, and being stubborn has no place in a court of law. Also, he’s a Conservative judge – he should be as well-informed as possible!! How dare he vote on something he has to guess about!

Why is this cartoon by Taylor Jones (Cagle Cartoons) so  important? It’s the only cartoon out there concerning Thomas’s silence. If you don’t get the LA Times, or didn’t notice this news item, this cartoon would make people curious enough to look up the news. In a real sense, this cartoon IS the news. (Just FYI, I did my own cartoon of Clarence Thomas last year, when his wife decided she didn’t like him being the star, so she started her own tea party. I guess his wife talks more than he does.)

nick anderson cartoon on drug violence in mexico

Nick Anderson, from Gocomics, usually colors in pastels, and the drawings can end up rather beige, but red and black and white always hits the spot for good design! Of course, no one wants the violence in Mexico, but he cartoons for one of the Texas papers, so this especially hits home for them – and for California, of course, since we’re border states, like Arizona. That’s Uncle Sam holding the flag – he’s is a tired editorial symbol – maybe I should say lazy – dating from the 18oo’s, but  overall this cartoon is striking.

michael kountouris cartoon of european politics

Michael Kountouris, of Cagle Cartoons,  sounds like a Greek name…and I think the stars mean something in Europe…Beyond that, I’m lost. Does anyone know what this cartoon means?

No matter – it’s already far more amusing and eye catching than any of the forgettable scrawls (pretend illustrations) the illustrious LA Times publishes in place of interesting cartoons. The Times needs illustrations like this one, desperately.

Why I pick cartoons for the LA Times

I started this category almost a year ago,  after getting fed up with the backwards-thinking Los Angeles Times. Six years ago they axed Michael Ramirez, their staff cartoonist (conservative), and not only did they never replace him, they put a fatwa on most cartoons in the editorial pages. One source says that one of the key editors at the Times just “doesn’t like cartoons.” Well, it shows, Mr. Editor. The LA Times opinion section has less cartoons than any of the top 100 papers in the country, although it’s  #3 in circulation!

Image via Wikipedia of The LA Times. Can't tell whether it's recent or very old...

They run about 2 cartoons a week, plus 3 on Sunday. One is by Ted Rall, an alternative cartoonist; his national comics are very good, but his cartoon in  the Times, which is supposed to be local (he lives in NY!)  is  a bust – confusing, trivial, and never funny. Worse, his amusing savage anger is gone! Maybe because LA is a city he’s never lived in, and he just doesn’t care.

The Sunday Times cartoon editor, Joel Pett, is a cartoonist out of Lexington, KY, with no editing experience, who has visited LA once.  He usually chooses obscure international cartoons, or dour liberal sad ones, or he often picks his own, just to spice things up.

Both Rall and Pett are Liberal, but of course that’s to be expected at the Times.

The Times has to pull itself together and pull readers into the Opinion pages; not drive them away with dull shoulds, but entertain them with coulds. Treat the readers like smart adults, please. And hire someone with cartoon experience who actually lives in the city you’re trying to target.

Cartoon Captions

Nick Anderson cartoon of Uncle Sam holding the American flag. It says Mexican drug violence, with a big splash of blood.

Taylor Jones’ cartoon: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is shredding the Constitution with his mouth zippered shut.

Mike Luckovich’s cartoon: Two people are on the street looking at a line of people under a streetlight, with labels of jobless, hispanic, gay, muslim and union member. One person says, “American Federation of Scapegoats.”

Dick Locher cartoon: Couple in kitchen eating breakfast. Man reads milk carton that says: MISSING: Your company’s pension plan. Have you thought about a government job?

bob englehart union cartoon – Unions and State Government (Wisconsin or other) are sitting at the Bargaining Table. The essential Taxpayer is missing. Someone needs to call him.

No related posts.

As happened last week, as I start going through the week’s cartoons I always start thinking – there aren’t enough good cartoons here. Uh-oh. And by the end I’ve picked more than I can use, and I feel very happy that there are so many great, entertaining cartoons out there! In spite of the economy, the foolish newspapers who have let their Editorial Cartoonist go, or use less cartoons than ever (LA Times, I’m looking at you), cartoonists are like crocuses, popping up even in the snow. Very proud to be part of the gang.

Ahmadinejad the Cat nuclear energy cartoon - Christo Komanitski from Cagle Cartoons

It’s funny, I don’t like foreign movies at all, but I do like some of the international cartoonists very much. Look: I’ve never seen an editorial cartoon that is completely wordless! You could use this for Wordless Wednesday! No labels, perfect.

This cartoon is not only quite charming, in a French 1950′s textbook way -  it explains a complicated, sensitive international news item in a way everyone can appreciate. I can’t speak for the cartoonist, but I read this as Ahmadinejad waiting for scraps to fall from the table of the bombs Obama and Netanyahu? are dismantling.

In Los Angeles, we’re of two minds about cats: we pass laws that they can’t be declawed, but also don’t want feral cats to just die…Anyway, I think it’s usually a dog who waits for scraps from the master’s table, and this looks more like a monkey, but the point is clear. Thanks, Christo!

Joel Pett death coal cartoon from Gocomics.com

I thought news teams did a great job this week investigating the Massey scandal of ignoring safety violations in the coal mining disaster in West Virginia. I read one story where one of the men who died, Josh Napper,  had a premonition the weekend before the disaster and wrote letters to his family – perhaps stimulated by gas leaks so bad the day before that the miners got out of work early. UGH to this disgusting company! And I’ll have my own cartoon on coal mining up tomorrow on Slate and Yahoo.

Joel of Gocomics lives in Kentucky, and I think they have a lot of mining there, too. (I don’t know the area that well, just as I’m sure Joel doesn’t know a lot about California, although he chooses cartoons for the LA Times.) Interesting that he didn’t dis the mine owners responsible…just pointed out that mining is dangerous, almost like the deaths are the fault of the meanie coal!!  The little button reads Friend of Coal;the text is a little small, and this is a problem online, and I ignore lots of cartoons because of this – hello, learn your medium, guys.

But Joel did a great job with the menace of the death skull, and the whole idea, so kudos, Joel.

Dana Summers cartoon on immigration from GoComics

Dana Summers has a loose, easy style that I always like. This is the only cartoon of all the ones I reviewed that made me laugh! It’s okay to laugh, even when you’re reading the LA Times. How much of the news this year has been about health care?  Too too much. On to the next White House problem. And, uh, yeah, immigration is always the problem hiding in the corner, in California. Great work, Dana.

Honorable Mention goes to Randy Bish at Cagle Cartoons.

Randy Bish on paying taxes cartoon at Cagle Cartoons

UGH, tax week.

I didn’t read this in the paper, I heard it on talk radio from Tim Conway Junior: that almost half of all Americans don’t pay tax!!! I thought I misheard it. I couldn’t believe it. And filling out forms is the worst part, I think.  I still haven’t finished doing taxes! Too many little receipts floating around and Schedule C is the pits.

Randy’s style and big lettering is certainly ideal for online cartoons! I like the funny little outline around each figure, and even around the orange juice!

Thanks to everyone for participating, and remember to send me one cartoon each week if you think I might not find your cartoons elsewhere. An explanation of this roundup is here.

My own cartoons this week:

Massey coal mine is run by a dwarf. (Sorry, no links now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.)

Earthquake cartoon.

Easter bunny and the Tea party cartoon. No.

Cartoon captions for Mr. Google: Who do we see about switching sides? About half of Americans pay no federal income tax.

Death figurehead is friend of coal mining.

Can we please move on from health care? Si. Immigration.

Silent cartoon: Ahmadinejad the Cat sits at the feet of Obama, another important man, and the nuclear bombs.

Joel’s picks for this weeks cartoon are over here (no, they’re not) – I think. The LA Times has always had a problem linking cartoons, even when I was in there every week.

More cartoons:

1. Editorial cartoons for the Los Angeles Times Opinion section.
2. Obama, pedophile priests, political Cartoons for April, 2010.

They do have 3 cartoons on Sunday, however, here and in the paper (tiny). But they’re edited by Joel Pett, a cartoonist in Lexington, KY. Lexington, really?? As far as I know, Joel has never lived here, and is Lexington in any way similar to Los Angeles? Well, they both begin with L, I guess. Anyway, Joel only chooses cartoonists in his particular cartoon group, which leaves out 15 or 20 of the top editorial cartoonists in the country.

I’m the only New Yorker cartoonist who also does editorial cartoons, so I have a good background in both. As an award-winning cartoonist and editor, and since I’ve been a cartoonist for the LA Times for 6 years, and, maybe, most importantly, actually live IN Los Angeles, I decided it’s time I stepped up to do the job myself. :)  Now, let’s pick today’s winners!

Tony Auth is a great cartoonist. I picked this one for several reasons: he was first out of the gate on this issue,  on the new coastal oil drilling Obama just approved. (boo, hiss, even though I don’t have all the environmental facts yet. Just because I don’t trust Obama.) It seems to be pretty common that editorial cartoonists will pick a name or word and then decorate it like an insane calligrapher. But he did a good job here, and the oil spatters are truly dramatic, spilling over the name itself.

People from other states (like Kentucky) might not realize that in LA oil rigs are common. Not out to sea, but they have baby ones like 12 feet tall in people’s backyards! They call them grasshoppers or some insect, and they are SO CUTE bobbing up and down. I hate driving to the airport, but I take the long way just to watch them.  I love industrial things. (more cartoons below.)

Next, I chose Marshall Ramsey‘s cartoon of an Easter egg hunt, and the big golden egg of Jobs hiding behind the tree! Very amusing! Good spring colors.

I have rarely, if ever seen this style of cartoon in the LA Times, and of course they don’t have color – even online. They rarely have holidays, either. But it’s time to shake things up there, and use cartoons people are AMUSED by – especially when they appear on a holiday, don’t you think?

Also, unemployment is much higher here  in Cali than almost any other state. Staggering.

I also picked this one by Michael Ramirez, the last fulltime opinion cartoonist for the Times. He actually lives here in SoCal. Did anything happen with Israel this week in the news? I don’t know. I don’t know that much about middle east issues. But I assume Michael does. Sometimes cartoons are used to instruct, or point something out to us, and the Times deserves an international cartoon. I like the design and rhythm in this.

Runner up is Walt Handelsman, below, both because I like the message, and I really like jigsaw puzzles. (I just saw some in Costco for like $17. Yowza.) Obama has a lot of work in front of him, but you know, life is more fun when you look at it as a game.

More on why I’m doing this: I edited a Barnes & Noble calendar and 2 books, and I was recently invited to be a judge for a national cartoon contest, so this is a piece of cake. I’ll edit the cartoons for the LA Times, thanks, and post my selections right here! I’ll pick from Gocomics.com and from Politicalcartoons.com, neither of which Joel covers; but if you are a cartoonist in another venue, and would like to be considered for my weekly roundup, by all means submit your best cartoon of the week (only one per week, please) to me at my email on my Contact page.

Also, Joel often picks his own cartoons for the roundups. I won’t be doing that. You can see my California cartoons, most of which appear in the Sunday LA Daily News in print, here or in CalWatchdog, and my Slate cartoons are both here and in Yahoo.

Thanks for playing, everyone, and more next week!

And let me know what you think of my choices!

My own cartoons this week: (Sorry, no links now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.)

Bad priest cartoon.

Canary cartoon.

Evil health insurance cartoon.

No related posts.

I asked him why, and he said “Johnny Depp is on the front page.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t like him either, but…”

“No, his face was all over the front page. They did this once before, and it just makes the paper look so trashy.”

I had no idea what he meant, but I wanted to tell him about a trashy editor of a woman’s magazine who had been so rude to me today, so we changed the topic.

Now I just heard John and Ken on KFI talking about the same thing! I ran to get the paper out of the plastic bag, and, um, it does look pretty bad. It’s a fake front page, with a hideous photo of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in the new release of Alice in Wonderland. (Does Johnny Depp have a big space between his teeth? Euwww. His hair is wild orange like Carrot Top.)

The photo and the ad, all in color,  covers the entire front page, except for a few paragraphs on either side and the top pretend masthead. It really looks like the front page – they call it a cover-wrap.

Unattractive, but this is an industry town. I’m not offended.

Oh My Gah, I just saw that the NY Times reported on this!

The top editor of The Times, Russ Stanton, and several of his deputies vigorously opposed the ad before it was published, but they were overruled by the paper’s business executives, according to people with direct knowledge of the dispute, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

John Conroy, a spokesman for The Times, said, “Stretching the boundaries was what we were going for.” He said Eddy W. Hartenstein, the publisher and chief executive, and other executives would not comment.

Mr. Conroy noted that however unorthodox the ad may be for print, it mirrors a common practice online of having an ad cover part or all of a Web site’s home page for a few seconds.

Well, that’s true.

The “Alice in Wonderland” ad, which also wraps around the paper, introduces a new wrinkle, lending the name and work of The Times to an advertiser.

Oh, fun, the LA Times is spinning this as a creative success story!

Timed to coincide with the release of the highly-anticipated “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Johnny Depp, The Times is the only major newspaper in the country to carry the innovative ad unit, conceived to launch the film in the most creative and unexpected manner to Southern California’s key movie-going audiences and creative community.

No, I’m not going to make a dumb joke about the Times going down the rabbit hole. Unh unh.

More cartoons:

1. People who don’t read a newspaper are dull.
2. LA Times forgot Dilbert, but readers didn’t.

All they do is rewrite real journalists, or use the news verbatim published elsewhere, and slap a provocative (and usually misleading) title on it. Now PuffPo has gone local, with a Los Angeles subsection. Watch out, LA Times, for plagiarism and attribution without links.

But the part I take personally is that they don’t pay anyone!! They are the biggest blog in the country now, if not the world, run by one of the richest women. Check out this article in the LA Times. Arianna Huffington is quoted:

Huffington said ads will run on the site, and the Huffington Post and Causecast will split the ad revenue. Any money donated to any cause goes directly to the cause, with nothing coming out of it.

Her site continues to expand, reinvesting its proceeds in the product. “We’ve had a very, very good advertising year,” she said. “We would be in the black if we were not expanding. Whether you are profitable or not depends whether you’re standing still or expanding. This is a window we need to take advantage of.”

The article is about how the PuffPost is adding a bunch of news about causes, called Impact, because they’re so liberal and they want to help. Well, wanting to help is a good thing. Yet…her own writers and worker bees get NOTHING, NO MONEY, in their best year yet!  Yet she wants them to donate from their non-existent wages. This doesn’t sound liberal to me, it sounds like a medieval caste system. Ugh, PuffPo is pathetic.

It’s been a cliche for a few years now – everyone online loves to write how they never read a real newspaper anymore. Like this is something rare, unusual, and quite cool. They have Twitter, all the news websites, social media, etc, and newspapers are dead. Um, yeah, right.I’ve been doing Slate editorial cartoons for a year now, and most of my best ideas still come from the hardcopy newspaper. I get the LA Times delivered Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun, for some very low price. (I miss the Weds food, though!) Newspapers are dirty, and take space in an apartment, and aren’t as much fun as a book or TV. But damned if I don’t find interesting, important, informative info that I really need and enjoy, all the time.

I’m all for saving time and taking shortcuts. And when I don’t have an idea for my next Slate cartoon, I cruise right on over to the New York Times, Washington Post, and usually, but not always, the LA Times.

But papers are better. Since I now mine news both online and in the paper, I’ve decided that reading the hardcopy paper is like getting a Bachelor of Arts degree instead of a Bachelor of Science – it makes for a more well-rounded, educated, interesting person!

This site, Compete, says Huff Post got particularly big after the 2008 election.

Site design and architecture likely factor into this widening gap, as sites like DailyKos and Crooks and Liars post their content in-full on the landing page, where the Huffington Post requires a few more clicks to read complete articles.

A commenter there had a GREAT point:

The Huffington Post employs some smart guys who know how to milk the Big-G. They create pages with great titles which are hot in the news, and then inside, there’s just a photo and a link to an article on the subject from the AP or some other MSM paper. (my bold)  Plus, they’re heavily focused on celebrity pics and entertainment. So you can’t really compare HuffPo to the other liberal blogs.

That undelivered promise was going to be my point, but thanks for writing it up! This is a major reason why I despise the PuffPost, and pity the fool bloggers who keep quoting from it: It seems like almost every “article” there is a lifted photo, with no link, a ridiculous title, then a link to a real newspaper, where they get the actual facts, (If you’re lucky! Recently I’ve been seeing news stories with no link at all! Thieves!) and then the writer adds some lame, uninformed opinion, or, worse, a pathetic try at humor. I have never gotten any original news or even a new point of view from PuffPost.

The problem with online is you always have to be specific and drill down. Everytime you pick one thing, you miss all the rest. Sure, you can get your movie reviews, stocks, tech news, science, whatever grabs you. But you never see the entire paper that way, and it’s dissected like an unfortunate frog.

I’m constantly running into odd little items in the paper that I wouldn’t see taking the online, laser beam route. New analysis, in depth investigations (like the one I recently did about poor Mr. Broom) and other stuff that is too tedious to read online (ie, longer than 3 paragraphs). Crimes and mysteries are my secret indulgence.  But I don’t want to go to those weird creepy sites like News of the Weird – I want the LA Times to vet things, clean things up. And I like the entertainment business news – I even got Slate to start a section of Entertainment cartoons that they never had before!

Huffington Post, eat it.

Cartoon caption: “You’ll start a great knitting blog, but Arianna Huffington will find it, and squish it.” This was my very first cartoon for Double X, Slate’s sister site!

And I haven’t done any knitting for the longest time, but I love it, and I have a pattern for a rug in mind, once I get time. And find the right color yarn.

No related posts.