Mallory's Milieu

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Something deeply meaningful

Last year I felt bad that I hadn't really done any work to pursue cartooning as a career. I made a Jonathan Winters quote as my motto- "if you ship hasn't come in, swim out to it."

I sent columns and cartoons to 8 or 9 syndicates and got rejected by every single one. Boy was I discouraged. This on about the time that I backed out of writing and cartooning for our small local weekly newspaper too (long story, kinda personal) gist of it is it was a hard time for me.

Now realistically I understand that this was only one attempt and most successful professional writers and cartoonists wage campaign after campaign for years before they hit get anywhere. I also have come to understand that most of them also have day jobs. But recently I've been reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and I think I have a very different outlook than I used to. (I know, an existentialist psychiatrist's tale of NAZI concentration camp survival- kind of heavy reading for an aspiring cartoonist right? We're all supposed to be zany and light hearted, right?)

One is finding meaning. I've come to believe that any good artist, and certainly me as a high school Art teacher has the same role as that of a good psychologist- "The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient (viewer/reader/student) so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him."

I know, profound, huh?

Anyway, I also found something else very meaningful in Dr. Frankl's masterpiece:
"Don't aim at success- the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than one's self or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success:you have to let it happen by not caring about it... listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go carry it out to the best of your knowledge... -in the long run- success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."

So in other words, I'm going to start using reverse-psychology on the universe. The freedom is that there's no pressure. I only cartoon what I want to when I want to and I totally get to cartoon however I want to. Cartooning for cartoons sake. Kind of like art for art's sake. The down side is that posting these cartoons here for free all the time is a lousy business model. I only hope that I can forget to think about how I'm trying to play this sly trick on the universe in hopes that God will reward me by making me an obscenely rich and successful writer and cartoonist someday.

Of course, Frankl also really emphasized that bit about it being "in the loooong run," He actually wrote, "Then you will live to see that in the long run---in the long run, I say!---" and between having adult A.D.D. and the fact that my original campaign of mailing cartoons to syndicates was pretty much my version of a midlife crisis- it's REALLY hard to have the patience for anything real long range. It may be pretty tough to forget to think about how I'm trying to convince Providence that I really couldn't care less. Like a watched pot not boiling, I may have to keep peeking over my shoulder to make sure God's noticing how much I don't care if I ever get to write or cartoon for a living, let alone win a bunch of awards and sell a bunch of books.

This dilemma is what Frankl would refer to as hyper-intention, which is where you want something too much so you end up making it impossible to ever get and hyper-reflection, which is a neurosis where you can't stop thinking about something. These what he contends is the cause of most sexual dysfunction in both men and women. Ah ha, but see, writing this somewhat satirical blog entry poking fun at myself for being so over analytical about it all is what he'd call "dereflecting," or engaging in a therapy known as "paridoxical-intention." That means I'm so charmingly self-efacing in my humorous essay about cavalierly and nonchalantly not caring about whether or not I ever get anywhere as either a writer of cartoonist that God's GOT TO see how sincere I am and go ahead and give me what I USED to want but now couldn't care less about (but if He INSISTED on blessing me that way, I guess I'd have to be gracious and accept it even though I don't really want it anymore). He's just GOT TO!

Isn't this the most sincere pumpkin patch you've ever seen? Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.

But seriously, I don't know if this is how metaphysics work, or just how my maladjusted mind plays tricks on me, but I know that all through junior high and high school and some of college I was absolutely miserable because I didn't have a girlfriend and finally I told God, "screw it, I give up!" And that's about the time that He dropped my wife into my life. So maybe there is something to it.

Completely coincidentally, I named my religious cartoons "Sheep in wolves' clothing" before I ever read "Man's Search for Meaning," and it's kind of one of his ideas. I THINK I can get away with it without having to pay his descendants or estate any royalties because he didn't quite use the exact same wording- he said "one may howl with the wolves, if need be, but when doing so, one should be, I would urge, a sheep in wolf's clothing." Of course now I feel OBLIGATED to draw more of them and they have to all be amazingly deep and meaningful and powerful and perfect and all that in order to be worthy of the name, so now I've got THAT hanging over me. Sheesh.

Well, they say that a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words and I always meant to just make this a quick, short little entry here and not bore people with something so flippin' long, so I guess I'll stop now. Dang it! Why can't I ever do ANYTHING right?! Stupid! STUPID!

Part of a dying breed

From Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonist Index's BLOG-

"I was sorry to read that Brian Duffy was laid off today. Brian was famous for being one of only two cartoonists in the nation who's cartoon appeared on the front page of the newspaper every day (the other is Corky Trinidad). Our condolences go out to Brian, who is an excellent cartoonist and we apprciate his contributions to our site. See Brian's cartoon archive here."

What is wrong with Gannett? What is wrong with newspapers all across this country? Think I should mail samples of my work to the Register? Seriously, Duffy is one of the greats. Why would they treat him like that?

Swimming out

I'm trying to compile editorial cartoons, Maladjusted cartoons, and columns and composing a cover letter to send to a number of major syndicates. Wish me luck, I don't handle rejection well. This is a big step since I've claimed to have this be my dream my entire life- yet I've never bothered to put myself out there like this.

But as comedian Johnathan Winters once said, "If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it!"

Who knows what will happen. Maybe I'm still not ready, but then, I've waited more than 25 years to take this step- how much longer can I put it off?

See TONS of cartoons, or even consider joining my mal•toons group on Facebook

See a new editorial cartoon every Thursday on my cartoon blog

I've been cartooning since the fifth grade. Nearly 4260 readers have seen my political cartoons week in the Mapleton PRESS in western Iowa since 2006. I also post all kinds of cartoons at http://tedstoons.blogspot.com every week, from the absurd to the inane, there's something for almost everybody, from simply cute and funny, to social, religious, and philosophical commentary.

See the PDF of Editorial cartoons that I'm sending out.

See the PDF of the 'Maladjusted' and some other cartoons that I'm sending out.

See the PDF of Columns that I'm sending out.

A picture worth thousands of words

Last week a weekly magazine with a pretty small niche market made a big splash in the whole media world, including the 24/7 cable news world, the morning drive time radio world, and especially the still new and relatively untamed world of the web. The splash sent shock waves nationwide, was made by a silly drawing. Yes, a mere funny picture sent pundits and prognosticators reeling.

The cover of the New Yorker depicted Presidential candidate Barack Obama in the Oval office, dressed as Osama bin Ladin giving his wife Michelle a fist-bump. Michelle is dressed as an Angela Davis style sixties militant Black radical, complete with machine gun, camo and afro. A portrait of the real Al Qaeda leader hangs where George Washington should be and the American flag smolders in the fireplace. Describing it here in words makes it sound more offensive than the whimsically sketched caricatures really looks.

Obama expressed disappointment in the magazine cover and his rival, John McCain condemned the cartoon. The tragedy is that the uproar about it reveals that America seems to have lost their sense of humor because most of us seemed to have missed the joke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mallory- you wrote this a couple days after it was a big deal, we’re reading it a week after that, so we’ve heard the story over and over again by now. The cartoonist and the New Yorker were trying to make fun of how many emails have claimed that Obama is really a Muslim, and that his wife is some kind of Black supremacist. That some yahoo on a Fox News morning show thinks that fist-bumping is some kind of gang sign and that some panicky extreme right-wingers think that Liberals are all flag burning America haters. We all know that they were trying to satirize Obama opponents, not slander the Obamas themselves.

Okay, okay. You get all that. And you know that I fancy myself a cartoonist too, and if you read this column regularly, it’s no secret that recent flip-flop on the FISA bill not withstanding, I’m pretty much on the Obama bandwagon. Fine. So what’s my problem?

Is it that some people don’t get that the cover was a joke about Obama’s opponents and find it offensive because they think it only serves to perpetuate the false rumors about him?

No, I understand that it seems to have back-fired. What I don’t get is why didn’t it work? Is it because since the advent of Saturday Night Live back in the seventies, our culture has been so super-saturated with sarcasm that we can’t recognize genuine irony when someone uses it? Nah… ya think? Pshaw-as if!

Or, is it that we’re so up tight and on edge that we’re suffering from some kind of Mid-Traumatic Stress Disorder that we’ve lost our sense of humor? I tell ya, it may only be a recession, but every time I drive by a gas station price sign or listen to the news, I go into depression.

Is it because we’re so polarized and passionate about our positions that we’re too freaked out to tease each other about anything political? That can’t be it, because our friends at the Republican booth at the county fair seemed to be comfortable enough to rib us about offering our kids candy as we ordered supper from the church booth across the exhibit hall.

Maybe those primaries put our teeth on edge about race. Bill Clinton lost his credibility with the Black community with as many not so subtle innuendos and back stabs as he could get in while many Hillary supporters blamed all of her problems the alleged sexism of Obama supporters. Maybe all these years the bullies on right-wing radio have been right, and progressives really are too uptight about political correctness to even have a sense of humor.

But as they say, no publicity is bad publicity. The Obamas got more attention so bad for them turned out to be good for them. The New Yorker, which has FAR fewer reads than People or US or any magazine that features the Spears sisters on the cover, got much more attention then they’re used to. So, even if they look like racist fear-mongerers instead of the Birkenstock wearing, Harvard elite liberals that they are, good for them too, right? McCain gets to look like a good guy for condemning racist fear-mongering instead of benefiting for it for once, that has to be good for him, especially with those independents in the center, right? And we all had something to talk about other than the price of gas for a week. Also good.

All I know is I don’t get it. But then, I understand that there are a lot of people who don’t always get my political cartoons either.

Left-wing blogger has moral qualms

Former Deputy White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book has created a storm of controversy. I’d like to touch briefly on some of the debris being blown around by that storm. But first, let me say a little about the cartoon sitting above this column.

Anytime you employ the NAZIs you're being heavy handed, but then again, cartoons are nothing if they're not hyperbolic. Of course, little Scotty McClellan was never as powerful as Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. Most people might think Karl Rove was more like Goebbels. From a strictly visual perspective Heinrich Himmler has Roves round face and hairline. Himmler oversaw the SS and the Gestapo, so he was a pretty bad guy too.

I’m obviously a big fat hypocrite because last week I cartooned about how President Bush compared Barrack Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who tried to appease Hitler and now I’m comparing Bush Administration members to German monsters. My intention is not to label all right wingers as NAZIs, my intention is to make you think- hmmm, what if we had had cable TV news in the 1930s and 40’s AND to focus on that line from the Karl Rove quote “if he had moral qualms he should have spoken up.” THAT needed the dramatic force of NAZIs to get driven home.

If Scott McClellan had been Hitler’s Deputy Press Secretary, how, when and to who could he have spoken up to? I’m not here to defend him. Most Democrats figure he’s an opportunist making a lot of money for his book. But my point is, if you worked among people with the power and gravitas of the President of the United States, Karl Rove, Collin Powell, Dick Cheney, and Condaleeza Rice while they were beating the drums of war- how easy would it be for you to become a whistle blower? I think it might take me five years to say anything too.

Although, Benito Mussolini said that fascism should more properly be called "corporatism" since it was, under Mussolini, a blending of state and corporate power. Minus the cult of racism that Hitler injected into it, this pretty well describes the political and economic philosophies of President Bush and the Neocons. Which is why I’m always begging my more traditional Republican friends to scrutinize our leaders more closely.

McClellan may prove to be to George Bush what former White House Counsel John Dean was to Richard Nixon. The insider who felt that his loyalty was betrayed so he decided to stop lying and start exposing the lies of his superiors.

Congress has been issuing subpoenas for Karl Rove, Harriet Meyers, Scooter Libby and Anthony Gonzales. Congress wants to know why the anyone in the Justice Department who spoke up about their “moral qualms” got fired. They want to know who ordered the leaking of a CIA agent’s name in retribution for her career diplomat husband having “moral qualms” about the build up to the war. And now, they’re going to want to know who organized the “elaborate propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq war.”

But the Bush administration refuses to testify before congress. Congress may have to exercise their power of “inherent contempt” and send their sergeant of arms out to bring people in to talk because the Attorney General has already ordered area district attorneys from enforcing House subpoenas.

This storm may just dissipate like the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 80’s. Or, it may get a whole lot messier than Watergate.

But Neither Bush nor McClellan is really responsible for the storm.

Cable news anchors rarely practice actual journalism. They present stories that viewers watch, that boosts ratings, which means that they can charge more for commercials. They blow whichever way the prevailing political wind blows. Five years ago we wanted revenge for September 11 so we let the networks beat the drums for war against Iraq. Now, with everyone on both Dems and Republicans weary of the war, Bush approval ratings in the twenties, and we want revenge for rising gas and food prices, the media is realigning to make sure that they continue making money.

There is no true journalism on the national level, only “info-tainers” If corporations didn’t control the media, than Phil Donahue wouldn’t have been fired from MSNBC or Aaron Brown from CNN, or Dan Rather from CBS. But if you think I’m wrong, then go ahead and keep watching those radical liberal-journalists Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Rielly.

We get the media we deserve. The Pentagon has tightly controlled coverage of Iraq, the White House has even prevented footage to be taken of soldiers’ coffins being returned to the U.S. If you’re convinced yourself that the media is liberal or unpatriotic, then you haven’t noticed who really controls the media. Worst case scenario, it’s CEOs protecting the interests of their shareholders. Best case, it’s the free market of consumers- which means us.

McClellan’s book may have been like chum in the water, but the sharks who smelled blood weren’t reporters, they’re we the viewers. Either enjoy the feeding frenzy or turn off the TV and read a book.

Does May 1 holiday make you a basket case?

As I understand it, the tradition used to be that the May basket was supposed to be left on someone's doorstep. When you ring the doorbell, you are supposed to run away. Where I grew up, that’s not what kids left on your doorstep when they rang the bell and ran away.

What I remember about May 1 were scenes on the evening news of the Russians holding big parades where tanks rolled by and the red army marched past a bunch of really old men from the Kremlin. It looked like it was their 4th of July or something. Growing up in the cold war, that certainly didn’t seem like a holiday that any red (er, uh, red, white, and blue) blooded American kid would want to be a part of.

The truth of the matter is, May Day is an American invention. It’s supposed to be about the little guy, the blue collar, working class regular Joe who puts in his 8, 10, or 14 hour day trying to make a decent living for his family. But like so many things that began here, May Day has become an international celebration. And like a lot of things, Americans decided that we couldn’t like it if Europeans did.

Back on May 4, 1886 there was a rally in the Haymarket of Chicago. Workers were protesting low wages and unfair treatment. They wanted the right to organize unions that would be able to bargain collectively, on behalf of employees, with business owners and management.

Someone threw a bomb at the cops who were trying to disperse the crowd and things got out of hand. No one really knows who actually threw it, but eight agitators were arrested and tried for the murders. Four were put to death, and one committed suicide in prison. Five of the eight were German immigrants. Their sentencing set off a huge growth in unions in Europe. And concern for how America treats it’s immigrants.

Okay, okay. May Day isn’t really all that American. Germans and Scandinavians celebrated it long before Christianity came to Europe. May first is the day, according to legend that the Tunic god Oden (the Norse knew him as Thor) died in order to discover some secret magic power from some people called the Runes or something. Europeans celebrated by lighting bonfires, going on runs, drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and dancing around poles. American college students do the same thing only they call it Spring Break.

Neo-Pagans have been trying to bring it back. They call the holiday “Walpurgisnacht,” probably another reason it doesn’t get celebrated her in the states. Can you imagine wishing people “Merry Walpurgisnacht?” Happy Walpurgisnacht. have you made any resolutions for Walpurgisnacht? What are you doing Walpurgisnacht Eve?

As much as I admire the working man, I’m not much for celebrating pagan holidays, so once again (remember February) I would like to offer readers an alternative (if somewhat obscure and esoteric) holiday for the first week in May. Cartoonist Appreciation Week, May 3-10.

National Cartoonist Day is every year on May 5. The very first comic strip, The Yellow Kid, appeared in a newspaper on May 5, 1895. But this year they decided to have it on May 3. I think because they couldn’t get Congress to make it a federal holiday, nobody can get the Monday off, so cartoonists wanted it on a Friday night so they can party.

A highlight of Cartoonist Appreciation Week is Free Comic Book Day, also May 3. Participating comic book specialty retailers around the world give away free comic books to any unsuspecting kids who make the mistake of entering their stores. Sort of like how drug dealers give you the first hit for free because they know they’re going to get you hooked.

If it’s that important to you to hold on to the old holiday’s connection to labor unions, you might be interested to know that cartoonists have their own union. The National Cartoonists Society is the world's largest organization of professional cartoonists, Founded in 1946, one of their goals is "to stimulate and encourage interest in and acceptance of the art of cartooning by aspiring cartoonists, students and the general public." I’m not a member because I can’t afford the dues. Maybe someday.

If you happen to know a cartoonist, you may want to send them a card or something. Preferably with a generous gratuity inside. Or perhaps you should bake them a pie, or a plate of cookies. Chocolate chip or oatmeal would be nice, but cartoonists don’t usually like raisins very much. Or marshmallows. Cartoonists hate marshmallows.

The lease you could do is leave a comment on this blog post and say hi, or maybe an email or poke them on Facebook. You COULD at least visit http://tedstoons.blogspot.com and leave some comments on some of those cartoons.

By the way, the distress call “Mayday, Mayday” has absolutely nothing to do with the first day of May. It comes from the French phrase “venez m'aider,” meaning “come to my aid!” Thought you’d like to know.

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'Ted's Column' has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002 and the Schleswig Leader since 2004. In 2007 the Mapleton PRESS, which published both of the smaller paper, "absorbed" both the Leader and the NEWSpaper. But the PRESS is not exactly a major metro daily, it runs once a week and has an official circulation of 2130 with an estimated total readership of around 4260. So if you're ever in Western Iowa, at a gas station on a Thursday, buy a copy, we appreciate your support.

This week, he REALLY wants you to come see all of Ted's cartoons, some even in color at http://tedstoons.blogspot.com

Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa's 5th District strike's again!

Last night on the local news, my idiot Congressman ACTUALLY said pretty much just what I wrote above about Barack Obama. I was so incensed that I HAD to draw this cartoon.

For God's SAKE, will somebody PLEASE get this guy out of office! Clarence Hoffman, since you're stepping down from the State Assembly, why don't you challenge this numskull for your party's nomination!?! PLEASE!

Of course, due to plumbing disasters, we're temporally living with my inlaws while our home undergoes repairs, so I am without PhotoShop till I go back to school on Monday, so I'm posting it pretty raw. If I use it for the PRESS for March 20, I'll obviously rework it some- but then the incident will also be 2 weeks old, so who knows if I will or not.

Click here to see more of my cartoons about Steve King

Be sure to visit www.kingwatch.org

Dada/Surrealism Today

Wheeler is the creator of the super hero, "Too Much Coffee Man." I love his sense of humor. Maybe that's why nobody gets my jokes.

Online independent-study cartooning class

Online independent-study cartooning class

I have a Senior Drawing student who asked me about offering a cartooning class. I'm not too sure about how good I'd be at teaching cartooning. I've offered it at Boyer Valley before, but I never seemed to put together what I think would be the ideal class. Certainly, I haven't exactly "hit it big" yet myself. But I agreed to give it a shot. If nothing else, between now and Christmas, I should amass a lot of good links and ideas for anyone interested in learning how to cartoon.

Here's the course outline:
1. We'll start off with the grandaddy of all tooning, editorial cartooning. This is my forte' anyway.
2. Then we'll move into "Gag" or single-panel cartoons, this is the stuff of magazines and greeting cards. It's not near as easy as it looks
3. Next, we'll kick it up a notch and move on to the comic strip, the greatest American art form
4. Ultimately we'll gear up for comics and graphic novels. The may just be the most important form of literature and art of the 21st century.

Funny panel

See, I think this is a laugh riot, but no body I know, including all of my family don't get this kind of thing and they think I'm weird. So then I'm discouraged and don't draw cartoons just for the heck of it, so I'll never accumulate enough of them to send off to magazines or syndicates, so I'll never get hired and I'll never actually be able to make a living at it so I'll always just draw one a week for my blog and our small town newspaper and I'll die frustrated and disappointed.

Okay, sorry to be so neurotic. But I still think it's funny.

The media is the message

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I personally am torn. Anyone who knows me or has read this column very regularly knows I’m hard to shut up. Meanwhile I’d wanted to be a cartoonist when I grew up since I was in fourth or fifth grade.

Some look down on cartooning, like it’s too easy or appeals too much to our lowest common denominators and doesn’t require us to read or think as much as writing. Not so, seeing and scanning is thinking just as hard, it just involves a different region of your brain and takes a lot less time.
It takes me almost as long to draw, scan, and process a clean, professional looking cartoon as it does to write a column. More importantly, cartooning has a long and prestigious history that goes back as far as printing itself.

When Guttenburg invented the press, Europe was engulfed in the controversy of the excesses of renaissance and the revolutionary social and political changes of the Reformation. The vast majority of the population couldn’t read, just emerging from the dark ages and all, but they could understand editorial cartoons. So Lutherans drew the pope as a jackass, and Catholics drew Martin Luther as an “instrumental of the devil” (his face as a bag-pipe played by a gargoyle).

Benjamin Franklin, scientist, philosopher, inventor, civic and business leader, humorist, diplomat, statesman, and chick-magnet was also, among other things, one of America’s first editorial cartoonists. His lampoon of the famous “Don’t tread on me” rattle snake flag, that patriot troops flew, featured the snake hacked-up into 13 pieces. His point was the colonies needed to unite if they were going to stand up against British rule.

Paul Revere of midnight ride fame, was also a cartoonist. Yes, you’re right- he was a silversmith. But see, back then cartoons had to be engraved in order to be printed. Whereas today we draw ‘em, scan ‘em and place them into layouts on a computer. So, since he knew how to engrave flourishes and decorative scenes onto his silver tea pots and vases, he also knew how to engrave a cartoon critical of the British onto a printer’s plate.

The real father of modern editorial cartooning had to be Thomas Nast. He was a tubby little German immigrant kid who got beat up in school for not being able to speak English well enough. He discovered that he could win friends by drawing caricatures that made fun of the school bullies.

During the Civil War he worked as a illustrator for Harper’s magazine. They were the Time or Newsweek of the day.

Photography was in it’s infancy. The lens had to stay open for a long time so action shots were impossible. Subjects had to sit still or show up as a blur. They didn’t have digital cameras or even convenient 35 mm rolls of film. Pictures were shot onto big lunky plates of glass. Consequently, publications like Harper’s sent artists like Nast with their sketchbooks to the battlefield, then they’d go home and draw detailed engravings to give readers a realistic picture of the war.

Nast maybe most revered by cartoonists for taking down the corrupt political machine of William “Boss” Tweed run out of Tammany Hall in New York City. But most Americans know him by his symbols.

He’s the guy who came up with the Republican elephant; big rich fat-cat, slow to change, never forgets old issues. He’s also responsible for the Democratic donkey; working class, agriculture, and immigrants, stubborn and sometimes a jackass.

As if those two weren’t enough, he’s responsible for another American icon. In 1884 he was asked to illustrate a children’s poem entitled “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Before Nast, Americans were used to a tall skinny Dutch “Saint Nicholas,” or a tall skinny British “Father Christmas.” Now, thanks to an editorial cartoonist, Americans had their fat, jolly Santa in a furry red suit.

I could go on and on about how cartoonists brought us Uncle Sam and the Teddy Bear or what an uproar it made in the Islamic world when the prophet Mohammed showed up in a cartoon. But instead, I should just encourage you to enjoy looking at funny pictures.

With the new publisher’s indulgence, I’d like to humbly offer you some editorials cartoons along with this column. If you’re disappointed with the political positions they seem to take, be patient. I hope to try my best to be an equal opportunity offender. The Elephants happen to hold power, but that doesn’t mean that donkeys never do anything worth making fun of.

See all my cartoons in color at http://tedstoons.blogspot.com/