I really love fooling around with my WordPress blogs, but it has always bothered me that when people are looking for cartoons on a certain topic, whether it’s Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, or Dancing with the Stars, that they may not be able to find all the cartoons on that topic.

Sure, there are Categories in the sidebar, and tags underneath each post, and even 2 search buttons, but still, I’m not sure that everyone finds what they are looking for.

New way to index the cartoons

So I was superexcited last week to find a plugin that would help me get organized…at least on this blog! It’s AZIndex, and you can find it on WordPress. I’m not sure how long it will last, since it’s been abandoned by the author, and isn’t getting updated to new WordPress versions, but I hope something like this is taken up by some other smart WP plugin author.

Unattractive portrait of Obama via Wikipedia

Sarah Palin via Wikipedia - just lAY OFF the hunting, Sarah.

All the cartoons on this site are on the page now, which you can find in my tab on the top  under All Op-Ed Cartoons or in the sidebar link called Index of Cartoons. Cartoons are organized by tag names (which you can also see underneath each post). While I was putting this together, I combined or deleted some tags (law, lawyer, and laws are kind of similar), so I’ll have to go through and tag some of the cartoons more appropriately. Some of my most used tags are Obama, oil, Sarah Palin, LA Times, TV, and, of course, death. :) I also have more than I thought on armed forces and military, which I will probably combine…

Of course, I really have to upload a lot more cartoons on this site, anyway – this is just a small portion of what I’ve been doing the past couple of years. (For instance, I have a hella lot more California cartoons that I do for CalWatchdog.) But before Uclick laid me off I was in 3 venues: Slate, Yahoo, and Gocomics. Seemed like that was enough, and I didn’t add that many here. But when they laid me off they took down all 2 years of archives there, just gone. so…

I’m also not sure what to do about my cartoon roundups that I’ve been doing for the LA Times. I haven’t been tagging all the various cartoonists I include. Maybe I should.

How to buy these cartoons

Anyway, hope this is fun and helpful. Here are terms for using these cartoons. Everyone is welcome to enjoy the cartoons or make comments, or share with a friend, but it’s illegal to reproduce or use cartoons  (or any image) without permission,  EVEN IN SCHOOLS, and is subject to hefty fines. And as you know, I always go after people. ;)

As I was writing this, a little post by Steven Hart caught my eye. He says Tom Tomorrow has left the building at Salon, and:

One of the many ingenious things the newspaper industry has done to destroy itself is to dumb down op-ed pages, shrink comics down to postage-stamp size, and shy away from political cartoonists. There was a time when Pat Oliphant, Herblock and Paul Conrad were as well known as columnists like Art Buchwald and David Broder.

(Why did he include Oliphant with Paul Conrad?) Anyway, I’m not included in his little group, but that’s okay. I’ll always have my pen and my flights of imagination.

No related posts.

soldier's grave and ipad cartoon

This cartoon cracked me up, but I am dark, so dark.

I don’t know who gets my cartoons, really. I’m just grateful that most editors do. But my editor at Slate didn’t put this really interesting drawing, with toned colors and mood and a really funny joke, on the front page! Astounding! Also, annoying.

Yes, I know Memorial Day is to honor downed military. But not everyone gets the gravity, especially young people.  The fact that the delayed health care plan may have killed this guy… and that getting his new iPad was equally as important (and it’s purple, which seems to be allowed at Apple)… This is Saturday Night Live humor, at least in my eyes.

Caption for blind Google: Gramps, thanks for protecting our country…I’m sorry Obama didn’t get the health bill done in t ime for you…and I finally got that iPad I wanted… JACK SHEPHERD, SOLDIER, LOST, HUSBAND and Here lies Politico.

Have a peaceful, honorable, and, yes, funny Memorial Day.

Also, I’m kind of behind in doing my LA Times editorial roundup, but look for one tomorrow.

More cartoons:

1. In which I get syndicated.
2. Ink spill cartoons for the LA Times for May, 2010.

The oil spill got me the maddest, so let’s start with that. The media kept calling it An oil spill, as if it were natural, and not a huge MANMADE disaster by BP, which is cleverly hiding its name: British Petroleum.

matt davies cartoon of oil spill, of politicalcartoons.com

Some very good cartoons are starting to come in – Signe Wilkinson perhaps the best so far, and certainly more moderate than mine on Friday! – but I chose this one by Davies for the Times. I just love a little sarcasm with my coffee! And Matt Davies’ style certainly matches the subject. I would have dropped the labels, which I’m sure he added just out of habit. I mean, who can’t tell it’s oil? Nice round edges of the thick chemical crawling up the beach.

daryl cagle of political cartoons.com on Arizona's illegal immigration law

It’s funny, Daryl is quite mild-mannered in person, and also reasonable and fair. He’s a good person to run Political Cartoons.com, and I’ve told the Times he would also make an excellent cartoon editor there. Yet his cartoons are often rather violent, so there may be another side to him! Here is an excellent example, with a huge nail embedded on the stick held by Arizona, and the destroyed pinata looking like a possible corpse with a sombrero… Daryl is very liberal, and, well, you’ll have to interpret this one for yourselves.

Great colors and design, Daryl! And we certainly need more cartoons about candy.

michael ramirez cartoon of gocomics.com on arizona illegal immigration

I found this cartoon amusing! This is the 2nd cartoon of Michael’s that I’ve chosen – he was the last editorial cartoonist for the LA Times before they decided to drop cartoons as a regular, important feature.  Immigration is a huge issue in California, of course, and both Daryl and Michael are locals, so I think it’s only fitting that their cartoons are spot on for this Times roundup. (Michael Ramirez is conservative, and I wanted a take opposite Daryl’s, so that’s why there are 5 cartoons in this collection rather than 4.) Michael is Hispanic himself (I assume, and also having met him) so it’s a particularly interesting perspective, and one I haven’t seen anywhere else. Oh, and I agree with it.

cameron cardow cartoon of politicalcartoons.com on the good samaritan failure story in nyc

Because we had some big upsetting issues this week, I thought I would throw in Cameron Cardow‘s cartoon on a more human story – the homeless man who acted as a Good Samaritan and then died as everyone ignored him.

Police say the 31-year-old was stabbed to death after intervening in an argument between a man and a woman. In a video released late last week, Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax is seen falling to the ground in Queens after intervening in a fight and running after the suspect.

For nearly an hour, he lay on the ground as passers-by turn their heads to look at him, gawk or pause and walk off.

Is not this one funny?! I laughed out loud! In fact, out of the 300 or so cartoons I reviewed for this roundup, this is the only one that made me laugh. Maybe you have to be on Facebook to get it, but that is exactly how that stupid Farmville stuff works!

Well, it’s not exactly unusual to ignore a homeless man on the sidewalk. But I’m pretty sure Los Angelenos fancy themselves kinder than New Yorkers, so they’ll enjoy doing a little quiet gloating.

I like Cameron’s style a lot, and what a nice example of good perspective. I often disagree with his politics, so we’ve gotten into some tiffs on Facebook, however. :)

clement cartoon of gocomics.com on goldman sachs and volcano

For Honorable Mention this week, here’s another cartoonist from Canada: Clement, the cartoonist with one name. I’ve seen some very good cartoons on Goldman Sachs – Sleazeballs, Inc – , but of course they all say the same thing: GS is bad. This cartoon is rather an odd juxtaposition of both Goldman Sachs and the Iceland volcano. Well, Goldman Sachs did erupt. But mostly I just liked the look of this beautiful little watercolor (or Photoshop facsimile), and darn it, the LA Times deserves some good artwork! Dig those leaning buildings, too. Thanks, Clement!

As always, thanks to everyone for several hours of amusement, surprise and occasional delight this week. How and why I am doing these roundups is explained here, as well as how to submit your own cartoons.

My own cartoons this week:

goldman sachs cartoon by donna barstow

Comments on Facebook cartoon are here. (Sorry, no link now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.)

delta smelts fish cartoon by d. barstow

Comments on fish cartoon are here. (no link now, see above)

bp oil spill cartoon by donna barstow

Comments on first PB oil cartoon ever published!

And your own comments and critiques of the cartoons are most welcome!

Captions for blind Google:

Oh great. As if I have the time or inclination to help a dying homeless man…What’s this? Sally needs a bag of fertilizer for her Farmville Farm? I better get right on it.

Fortunately, sophisticated machinery, techniques & expertise can be used to ensure that the delicate offshore drilling component of the energy bill is unharmed. Big Oil.

Arizona swings at Mexican pinata, Goldman Sachs erupts like volcano

I love Mexico immigrant has Illegals Boycott Arizona sign and guy says Mission Accomplished.

Delta smelts in California waterways, bp plc is a liar about oil spill, goldman sachs facebook group

More cartoons:

1. The beach, the surf, and California’s political campaign. Aah.
2. Have you ever tried to wipe oil off your soul?

Gizmodo and iphone cartoon

I was interested in the news about Gizmodo and the iPhone last week, even though I don’t read/have either one, just because I like tech news.  It took me a couple of days before I had time to read the details.

Gawker Media’s Gizmodo blog dropped a bomb on technology enthusiasts Monday with information and pictures of what looks like a prototype for Apple’s next iPhone. Gawker paid for access to the device from a person who found it at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., Gizmodo editor Jason Chen said. Gawker founder Nick Denton coyly acknowledged in a tweet Monday that his company has paid for exclusives before.

I was outraged at this! And happy to find this article from Daily Finance on how Apple could easily sue Gizmodo for knowingly buying the stolen iPhone. The author actually talked with Nick Denton.

Gawker Media has admitted — boasted, really — that it paid $5,000 to get its hands on a prototype of a fourth-generation iPhone for its gadget blog, Gizmodo.

Now that I’ve had a few hours to digest all this, I am somewhat scandalized, even outraged. Put simply, Gawker Media brazenly, publicly flouted the law. It subsidized a crime: the selling of stolen merchandise.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/aGnF2V

What Jeff  Bercovici doesn’t bring up, however, is how Gizmodo also stole and used intellectual property, known as trade secrets.

Business Insider says that Denton now claims he LOST money because of this big scoop! 

With characteristic humility, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton describes his company’s acquisition of an iPhone 4Q — two months before Apple (AAPL) was set to unveil it — as “pretty much the biggest tech scoop ever.” But while there’s no question the story brought Gawker millions of page views, what it hasn’t brought so far, Denton says, is money…

Today the LA Times says the police raided the house of the blogger who wrote on Gizmodo. ‘Bout time. Not exactly police, it was a REACT task force.

Wiki describes Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, as British and openly gay. Well, he’s openly bitchy, that’s for sure. He has a bunch of blogs, some worse than others. Defamer is his most famous. Nice graphics, boring gossip. (I guess sites like this are for people who don’t live in Hollywood and are jealous.)

But the first blog of his I even noticed was Wonkette, which is supposedly Washington DC gossip. Well…I guess. Lots of slurs, sexual innuendo, and just plain swearing. Reading the comments and the ad demographics, when I had to, which I’ll explain, I think the average reader is a college-educated 25 year old male who is pretty sure he knows everything and is the center of everyone’s world. If this is not your favorite demo group, stay away.

Anyway, there is a blogger on Wonkette who calls himself the Comics Curmudgeon. He reviews (says hateful things about) editorial cartoons each week, and his posts get about 15,000 views. That’s popular, in my little world. Mean comments follow his posts. I would never have found him, but he included my cartoons in his roundup the first week I went on Slate. The 4th time he posted a cartoon of mine he called me “the mysterious D. Barstow.” Well, mysterious would be a good description if one had never learned to use google, I guess, or read what Slate says about me ON THEIR SITE.

I got hundreds and hundreds of hits on my blogs, but it took me half a day to figure out where they came from. Because he didn’t bother to link to me. Not to Slate, Gocomics, or any of my blogs. In fact, Wonkette hardly ever links to any place, I noticed. Bad online etiquette and extremely greedy. (also bad self-esteem, worried someone will leave Wonkette and never go back.)

At first I thought it wasn’t Fair Use, for him to be using all of our cartoons without pay. I changed my mind on that. Even though he doesn’t actually review them, or even mention any of the cartoonists by name (except for me that one time – on purpose, I suspect), he does at least refer to the cartoons.

But then there’s his hotlinking. Yes, illegally. Cartoonists on Slate don’t get paid at all. We get paid only by hits. So because he hotlinks (making Uclick/Slate’s server pay the bill for 15,000 looks at each cartoon), we don’t get paid a penny for all those views. Wonkette uses the Uclick servers, and doesn’t give us one gold-darned penny for the creators or eyeballs for advertising.

The Comics Curmudgeon did agree to stop using my cartoons, at my request. A small example of grace from a low-class thieving company.

You can also view this cartoon on Yahoo or read comments on Gocomics.

Oh, and Dooce? I hate that blog, don’t you? I think she got pregnant again just for the hits – have no idea if she ever birthed it. As soon as I read her introduction of herself  – “I’m always constipated” – I knew we would never be friends. And she used to live near me, too!

Captions for blind Google: Gizmodo Nerd:“Yeah, I bought stolen merchandise, and sold trade secrets. So?” Lawyer:“Your honor, my client was practicing his religion – worship of iPhones.” JUDGE: “GUILTY!!! I sentence you to unusual punishment online, reading only Dooce!”

No related posts.

This made me laugh last night when I wrote it. It still makes me laugh! Maybe I’m just a morbid cartoonist who likes accidents and death, or maybe I am amused by the hoax that that one guy has been pulling on us. Kind of suspicious from the beginning, yet I couldn’t put my finger on why…

From the LA Times:

Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that its preliminary investigation into a runaway Prius incident a week ago resulted in findings “inconsistent” with the driver’s account.

The automaker said at a San Diego news conference that two days of testing failed to reproduce driver James Sikes’ reportedly stuck accelerator, leading to a nearly 30-minute ride on Interstate 8 before he could get the car stopped.

Okay, it was a Prius, not a true Toyota this time. Big diff – sue me, I’m a girl.

Over the weekend, Gomez said his client was sticking to his story and that a “ghost-in-the-machine” type of software failure, if to blame for the incident, would be difficult to reproduce in testing.
Toyota executives steered clear of saying that Sikes was not being truth- ful.

That’s a weird hyphen in truthful. Sikes’ story is here.

I love the part where the CHP said it was washing its hands of the whole story hoax! (for some reason, the AP rewrites stories constantly, so a great quote I remember from one story is gone from the next version of the exact same news story. But here is the cached quote.)

Toyota said it believes a CHP officer’s account that he smelled burning brakes while guiding Sikes on the freeway.

“That is the puzzling aspect of this,” Michels said.

Brian Pennings, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, said his agency’s view that there is no evidence of a hoax is unchanged. The CHP does not plan to investigate the incident because there were no injuries or property damage.

Just the facts, ma’am. However, the CHP is blushing on the inside.

Back to me being mean. There is a theory on the internet that all a creative person needs to survive is 1000 true fans. The idea is that those 1,000 true fans will buy $100 each of your album, posters, tshirts, etc, in such abundance that you will be set for life. This ignores books – many writers write just one – paintings, and many other kinds of art, but this is the internet we’re talking about, it’s fanboys, and music is their game. I just love pyramid ideas like this. [/sarcastic]

Well, in Gocomics, they have a list of how many subscribers you have next to your name or feature, if you hover on the name. It’s free to subscribe – it just means you get it in your mailbox, or on your home page. They used to put them in order of popularity, which was more convenient or also more embarrassing, if you’re new or unliked, but now they just have the top 10. Since it’s always the same top 10, they remain the top 10, since they sit there and more people click on them, since they ARE the top 10… ad infinitum! (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.)

I have 3,539 subscribers as of this hour. That would put me in the Gold Record Label group if I did music, but as a cartoonist, not so much. The syndicated guys automatically get thousands more – not sure how that works – and the top man in editorial is Ted Rall, with 19,600 subscribers.  The regular comics guys have many more, with top strips like Non Sequiter and Garfield with 59,000 subscribers.

Every time I do a cartoon about Democrats my subscribers go down. They hate that! Today wasn’t partisan at all, just Toyota runaways, but my subscribers still went down by 7. That’s a lot in one day. So do they hate spring, or Toyota, or getting up in the morning? Or aren’t I supposed to talk about deadly car accidents in opinion cartoons? Hard to tell, with that surly lot.

Cartoon caption: It’s spring! The birds, the bees, the runaway Toyotas flying down the freeways!

More cartoons:

1. Deny, deny, deny, saith Toyota.
2. Does Toyota hate immigrants?