Category: <span>Mainstream Media</span>

The music stopped when Sarah Palin resigned as Governor in a surprise move yesterday. In comparison to this, who cares about Michael Jackson?!

(To be honest, I didn’t remember Michael Jacksn’s Thriller and the claw hands, didn’t know what the lean was until I saw the cutest boy in the world (Derek Hough) do it and post it on Twitter, so then I had to look it up, and found that BoingBoing had an explanation of how Jackson did it in his performances, and it’s taken almost a week for me to learn that Jesus Juice  was a term he invented. (I think it means wine, right?))

But Sarah…That was the season when I actually paid attention to the campaigns and elections, and she was electrifyingly real. In character, and a character. Mesmerizing, even in, or especially in, her most humiliating moments. And I always thought she was beautiful, and I loved her voice.

Sarah Palin cartoon, naked
The Governor's New Clothes - Sarah Palin ©D.Barstow2008 All rights reserved. I drew this in fall 2008, when the ridiculous clothes scandal came down. She never spent too much - have you priced men's suits??

Oh, did I forget to add that she was a cartoonist’s dream girl? A poster girl, a pin-up girl for cartoonists. (Okay, maybe especially for bloggers.) I did this for Slate, but it didn’t run until after the election, so not many people saw it. And she won’t be Governor for much longer, so time, people, time. I’m working on a new cartoon for Monday, so check back!  

Mainstream Media Politicians who aren't Obama

Barack Obama Mainstream Media

dancing with the stars cartoon
Rejected Melisa from The Bachelor joins cast of Dancing with the Stars. And causes our first sonic boom from Reality TV. ©D.Barstow 2009

Why I Did It:   It’s a brand new world. Now I have to read the newspaper – I mean the bits besides interesting murders, the funnies, and local stuff that makes me mad. Because my syndicate, Uclick, is waiting for more, more, more cartoons, with hungry maws. (and I just used that word in a cartoon recently.)

And I have to send in the cartoon by 6 PM my time, so there goes my Sunday afternoon, unless I do it in advance. Today I didn’t know yet what I would do. I had some ideas: that wolves can now be killed in many states (Obama said he would protect them with the ESA, which lasted, oh, about a month) , Obama’s continual pouring out of money into sinkholes, etc. But you know what I was most excited about today?  TV reality shows, people! ABC did a mashup of The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars.

Entertainment Mainstream Media

OOh, great dustup on Time Magazine’s list of Best Editorial Cartoons of 2008!

You’ll have to decide for yourself if they made the right decision, and if these cartoons are the BEST. My opinion? (taking into consideration I only started to read editorial cartoons 9 months ago.) I didn’t understand 2 of them. One is terrible, not even a cartoon, and is only self-promotion by Time. The Oz one is a nice drawing.

Anyway, Ted Rall thinks the editors there suck. Ted is a well known syndicated political cartoonist, radio guy, and no doubt creator of other things I don’t know about. He is also editor at a syndicate (don’t know which one) and president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He got mad at Time’s lame editorial picks, and let them have it! Daily Cartoonist published his letter in full, and here is an excerpt:

Your list of the Top 10 Editorial Cartoons of 2008 is an insult to editorial cartoonists, many of whom are losing their jobs to the economic downturn in the newspaper industry. In 2008 hundreds of brilliant political cartoonists produced thousands of hard-hitting, thought-provoking and hilarious cartoons about everything from the flash in the pan that was Sarah Palin to the rise of Barack Obama, and all you could come up with was this phoned-in crap?

More at the link! Well, when has a cartoonist ever kept his mouth shut when he sees bad work? Not I. One bad cartoonist spoils the place for everyone.

Mainstream Media The Others (cartoonists)

I wrote the post below last February in my Griffith Park Blog. It’s a popular post, so I thought cartoon people would like to take a look at it here. I update it below.

I just couldn’t believe this article in the LA Times and many other papers today.

But for one day — this Sunday — nearly a dozen cartoonists of color will be drawing essentially the same comic strip, using irony to literally illustrate that point. In each strip, the artists will portray a white reader grousing about a minority-drawn strip, complaining that it’s a “Boondocks” rip-off and blaming it on “tokenism.” “It’s the one-minority rule,” says Lalo Alcaraz (”La Cucaracha”). “We’ve got one black guy and we’ve got one Latino. There’s not room for anything else.”

blondiek3
Blondie comic book cover

Mainstream Media The Others (cartoonists)