How long?

Beware of sharks

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Clay Bennett Chattanooga Times Free Press Apr 24, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Here, I think this is a more cartoonist (& copyright) friendly way to post other people's cartoons on my blog.

I just love Clay Bennett's work. And this is an amazingly clear and potent statement about the abuses of credit card companies. Maybe all the religious--wingers who make such a big stink about gay marriage need to consider these Bible verses too-

Ezekiel 18:13
He lends at usury and takes excessive interest. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he will surely be put to death and his blood will be on his own head.

Ezekiel 22:12
In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign LORD.

Turns out that charging an unconscionable or exorbitant rate interest is a sin! Who would've thunk it? Kinda like torture and unprovoked, unjustified war. Hmmm. Just something to think about.

Again, I REALLY wanted to stop posting other people's cartoons, but wow, this is something I feel really strongly about. Obama may want to play Ford to Bush/Cheney's Nixon and heal our polarized nation and all that, but come on. Right wingers are always going on about moral issues and absolute right and wrong. People need to be held accountable so that we don't fall so far from the ideas we claim to stand for again. Lower-level CIA or Administration officials, lawyers? Fine. I'm not looking for the former Vice President to be handed over to a tribunal in the Huague or anything, but we can't just let it slide and pretend that nother ever went wrong, either.

Wise words for times like our current crisis

"...the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now..."

"in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency."

~From Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address , Saturday, March 4, 1933

Laugh before you cry

I can't get over how much I like Lester's cartoons, I so wish he were a left-winger. This cartoon just gave me a giggle fit. Just the kind of thing you need when you're fighting all the anxiety and depression of these scary days we're living through.

This one speaks to me politically, socially, and spiritually. This is the whole problem with our country. We don't believe in helping everyone and we're never willing to take responsibility for our greed. As funny as that first one was, this one is tragic.


I am a huge Luckovich fan. He's a laugh riot. The visual and comedic tension is perfect, the dorky little caricature of Bush that he's been doing for so long, the absolute and devastating truth behind it all- this is just a phenomenal cartoon. I wish God would grant me even a tiny dash of this guy's genius.

Flip and Flop

Political cartoon for the Nov. 22, 2007 Mapleton PRESS

Islamic Religious Fundamentalist Extremists

Ouch- kind of convicting of the folks who read "you've heard it said 'an eye for an eye'..." but never finish reading the " but I tell you when someone strikes you, turn the other cheek..." go the extra mile, give 'em the shirt of your back, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you parts (Matt 5:38-48)- let alone the bit about "blessed are the peace makers" earlier in in the chapter (Matthew 5:9). Wow. Controversial.

Did you know that Fish's publisher, "Harper's Weekly" is the same magazine that the father of American political cartooning, Thomas Nast drew for? Powerful expression, Whooa Nelly!

Click here to read Cartoonist and Editor Dayle Cagle's Blog about this cartoon

Fear or Hope?

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son^[b] into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for^[c] our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

"13We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother." ~ John 4:13-21

Studies in Fred

Some politicians are harder to draw than others. Top left; Tried upside down, Top right; Starting with the ear and working from the outside of the head to the inside, Bottom left; Tried doing the old draw an oval with an eye axis and a prime-meridian first... And finally Bottom right; started with an eye and worked from the inside-to the out.

I think I still need to work on a caricature though, and exaggerate either his sleepy eyes or forehead instead of his ears or nose. Truly, he'd make a really good hound dog, maybe a basset hound.

So when I got my drawing into PhotoShop, I did go ahead and "warp" his head a little bit. Over all, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

This cartoon was created for the October 18, 2007 Mapleton PRESS.

Some of the best of other people's cartoons

I couldn't believe Bush told the Australian Prime Minister that we're "Kicking Ass," in Iraq. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson had it right when he said, "What does he think this is? A high school football game???" 3,700 American servicemen and women are dead. Their families are irrevocably damaged by their loss. What a twit. Anyway, I thought this cartoon made it clear that he's about as mature and responsible on the domestic front too. When will America wake up to the fact that "Reaganomics" has destroyed our so called American Middle-Class way of life?
I think this one is a thinkin'-man's cartoon. It makes clear the things that the Administration would rather we not pay attention to.
I LOVE the payoff to the set-up for this gag. Anyone with a clue about history, or anyone who lived through Vietnam/Watergate HAS to appreciate the irony here!
Their table is a flag-draped coffin, get it? Took me a while, I must be slow. But once it dawned on me, it is VERY powerful.

Now, if I could just think of something for ME to draw for the PRESS next week....

Some of my work for our small-town newspaper

After our back-to-school teacher meetings, I SHOULD have been cleaning my classroom or getting ready for school to start Wednesday, but I was so excited about the great architect leaving, I had to do this one. This won't run till Aug. 23.

We have friends visiting us from California this week. One of them has his PhD so it's really intellectually challenging to debate politics with him. He suggested the idea for the above cartoon to me. This will run in the Aug. 30 issue.

Several weeks ago we printed color on the front and back pages. Now I didn't design this masthead, our late publisher Mike Lyon did, but I got to colorize it for that edition. It was neat to see it printed, so I just thought I'd like to go ahead and post it here.

See more of my cartoons at http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2/CARTOONS

Steps in the process

So, first I drew each of the baseball legends. Ruth as a little frumpy and tubby, Aaron as pretty much a nice guy, and Barry -as Bob Costas recently described him, "super-human."
Next, I put them together in PhotoShop and saved it as a TIFF to use in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper and Schleswig LEADER.
Finally, I went back to PhotoShop and added color so that it would be a little more fun on by blog and other webpages. Then I emailed it to my favorite baseball fans. Who no doubt, will chastise me because I used the Atlanta Brave's logo rather than the Milwaukee Brave's logo and I got the Giant's uniform all wrong. But hey, like I said on my column blog, if he played for Oakland, he'd be green like the Incredible Hulk that he is.

Case for a dying art

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.

All the President's Men

Political Cartoon for April 5, 2007, Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper and Schleswig Leader

They're all "bad-eggs." Whew! I think this whole process took almost two hours and was pieced together from four drawings. Would you believe my inspiration was Easter Eggs? WIth all that's going on between the U.S. Attorney firings, the Plame/Wilson leak, Libby trial, the Congressional battles over an Iraq exit deadline, and now the saber rattling with Iran, the Nixon-esque Humpty Dumpty/All the Presiden't Men analoy seemed appropriate.

‘Ted’s Column’ has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. Mr. Mallory's cartoons have been apublished there since the summer of 2007.
If you’d like to see any of his editorial cartoons you can visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2

I love teaching, but if you know anyone with any clout at a syndicate, or a major metropolitan daily that actually wants to hire their own cartoonist in this day and age, tell them about me.

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/