Star's editorial cartoonist makes his case for his craft and for his dwindling peers
By David Fitzsimmons
Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.15.2007
The American Association of Editorial Cartoonists is so old it qualifies for the AARP. A number of newspapers, however, are retiring their cartoonists.
Celebrating its 50th year, the cartoonists association works to keep its members from going the way of the gargoyle carver and the dodo wrangler. The ferruginous pygmy owl of the newsroom, the American cartoonist is a cranky and endangered critter.
A century ago America's papers fielded nearly 2,000 cartoonists. Today there are fewer than 80 staff cartoonists interpreting events, zinging their targets, challenging the perspectives of their readers and making their editors uneasy.
Few journalists can skewer with the entertaining unfairness of these First Amendment cage-rattlers. Searing visual satire is as American as an apple pie in the face.
Cartoonists, right and left, are being erased from newsroom budgets. Kenneling and feeding a rabid local cartoonist seems like a poor bargain when benign drawings scrawled in distant newsrooms about distant topics are available for peanuts.
Therein lies the value of the local cartoon. Occupying a space the size of a Pop-Tart on our nation's opinion pages, the hometown cartoon is a unique local voice addressing issues.
The New York Times has no staff editorial cartoonist because it views cartoons as a grotesque, low art form that oversimplifies and distorts the truth to convey an opinion.
Bingo! A sharp, unforgettable cartoon does all that in an instant.
A cartoon doesn't bother to carefully prosecute the accused with arguments. That is the realm of the editorial writer. A good cartoon condemns and executes on the spot.
Evoking a quick and intense reaction with an extreme and often absurd image, the cartoonist traffics in a unique persuasive art.
In my lifetime, cartooning has evolved from the gray, indignant era of Herblock's (Herbert Block) Mister Atom Bomb and John Q. Public to the burlesque style of my generation, pioneered by Pat Oliphant and Jeff MacNelly. Mike Luckovich and Mike Peters are the current masters of this form.
In this age of war and terror, cartoons have grown darker and pungent.
The cartoonist whispers in the ears of polyester Gods that they are mortal and don't look now, buddy, but your fly is down. The big fish that reign in our little ponds need the satirist's harpoon to remind them that they swim among us, not above us.
The Star values publishing a local cartoonist. As our publisher and editor, John M. Humenik, says, the Star's mission is to be our community's best friend and most constructive critic.
The editorial cartoonist is the friend down at the local coffee shop who isn't afraid to be open and honest because he cares about his neck of the woods. He's the wiseguy who ribs the local yokels and happily takes the heat.
When Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette died on Tuesday, in a auto accident in Mississippi, I thought of the courageous and funny cartoons he drew for the Charlotte Observer about a local issue that had not yet become a national story.
His cartoons about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's mismanaged PTL Club hit the local Goliath between the eyes every time. The marketing and advertising departments and nervous editors undoubtedly cringed. His cartoons served not merely a city and a newspaper, but a greater cause. His cartoons were the epitome of good local opinion journalism.
A local editorial cartoon is one of the things that makes the Star unique to the community we serve, and it encourages our readers to consider events and issues from a different - hopefully, an entertaining and humorous - point of view.
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