Last updated on January 3, 2023
When I started cartooning for Slate, they labeled me as a cartoonist on the right. I wasn’t totally comfortable with that, and yet I was mostly conservative… Well, no one is totally liberal or conservative, they told me. But cartoonists on the right are rare, and they wanted to put someone else in that category, so…
“You’re fiscally conservative,” my very liberal friend Candy told me.
That’s true. I’m liberal on women’s issues and especially on conservation or animal issues. Yet I often make fun of Democrats – it’s easy, isn’t it? (And every time I do, I lose my subscription ranking in Gocomics, for a week! Well, I used to, but not now.) And I disagree with Obama most of the time.
Why is the category of being on the right or the left important for a cartoonist? Because it’s important to newspaper editors. I’ve talked to dozens of editors this year, who tell me they want either conservative or liberal, or want a balance of liberal and conservative (and they count ’em!)
Since I began my roundup of cartoons each week for the Los Angeles Times, reading almost 300 cartoons each week, I realize how true it is that there are hardly any conservative cartoonists out there. Making fun of everything Obama does isn’t conservative, it’s lazy writing.
And illegal immigration is such a hot-button issue, with every liberal blogger in the universe hoping to point a finger or etch a K three times, that I didn’t find more than one or 2 cartoons saying illegal immigration is wrong, because, oh yeah, it’s illegal! Everyone’s afraid of being called a rac-ist! (Hyphenated because Google is terrified of that word, too, and takes away my ads.)
It took me a few days to figure out how to approach this issue, but I finally got it: Arizona is right, and the other states should man up and take control of the situation, if it’s happening in their state. Sadly, Republicans hire illegals instead of legal older folks looking to supplement social security or legal teens looking for college money, who are both just as cheap, and equally as deserving of a job. Even though in their hearts they know it’s wrong. Liberals follow their own self-satisfied and sanctimonious path.
Still, I do ask the question! And who else is drawing Jack and Jill? No one. What a crazy pair.
You can find all of my cartoons on Yahoo!News or Slate. (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.)California cartoons are here.
Cartoon caption: The question is, why is illegal immigration still allowed in the other 49 states?
(left) We like illegal immigrants! They give us the votes we need!
(right) We love illegal immigrants! It’s cheap labor, and undocumented!
Oh, okay, then.
Great style. I would like to write that way.