The Rejects: Obituary Cartoon Division

The cartoons I wasn't allowed to draw when somebody famous died...

Continuing our Whenever-The-Hell-I-Feel-Like-It Series of Rejected Cartoons, today we’re going to focus on “obituary cartoons” which is what you draw when someone dies. Obituary cartoons are extremely popular as long as you draw something sentimental and/or maudlin, but the problems start when a cartoonist has the bad taste to draw something funny.

These cartoon ideas were all immediately rejected, often followed by a request for me to make a copy of the cartoon so the editor, who didn’t think the reading public should see the cartoon, could show it to his friends and family.

So the editors thought the cartoons were funny and believed their friends and family would think the cartoons were funny, but didn’t trust that a couple hundred thousand newspaper readers would find the cartoons funny and now that I think about it, the editors were probably right because somebody somewhere would be sure to have a stick up their butts and complain.

(As you might have already noticed: when Life’s Party Poopers aren’t having fun, they don’t want anyone else to either.)

But now, through the Miracle of Low Internet Standards, I can post pretty much anything I want and my usual response to someone who complains about this blog’s content is to say they should probably quit looking at my stuff immediately because I’ve got no plans to change.

Assuming you’ve decided to continue reading and look at these Cartoons About Dead People, we’ll start with…

Johnny Carson, 1925—2005

If you didn’t live through it, you might have a hard time imagining the impact some people had on the world because that world no longer exists.

But back then…

If the Beatles put out a new album everybody was buying it, listening to it and talking about it, Muhammad Ali was world famous and changed how we saw Black men and professional athletes because he was incredibly talented, smart, funny, charming and angry and the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was the late night talk show and pretty much everybody watched it.

Quick quiz to make a point:

According to Ranker, a website that polled music fans (which is wildly unscientific and might explain their questionable results) the biggest band in the world right now is Metallica.

1. What’s the name of Metallica’s latest album?

2. While we’re at it: who is the current Heavyweight Champion of the World?

3. And who hosts the Tonight Show: Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon or Seth Myers?

For a lot of people, including me, all those late night talk shows blend together and nobody stands out (the Tonight Show host is Jimmy Fallon, but I had to look it up) and there is no one Heavyweight Champion because there’s a WBO, WBC, WBA and IBF champion and three different guys are on the champion list and not one of them refused the draft and spoke for millions when he said he had no quarrel with the Viet Cong and — according to the internet — Metallica’s latest album is 72 Seasons and unfortunately for any Metallica fans now reading I can’t think of that band without also thinking of the documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster which revealed that the band members are some of the dumbest, most-insecure-yet-egotistical guys who ever strapped on a Stratocaster.

Anyway…

Back then if you watched late-night TV you tuned into the Tonight Show because they were smoking and drinking and having fun and you might see Burt Reynolds shave off half his moustache or Dean Martin drop cigarette ashes into George Gobel’s cocktail when George wasn’t looking or Johnny get pissed off that – while guest-hosting – Don Rickles broke Johnny’s cigarette case so Johnny grabbed the case, a camera and a microphone and walked over to the studio where CPO Sharkey was being filled to give Rickles an earful.

Johnny Carson was called The King of Late Night and everybody was familiar with Ed McMahon’s nightly introduction which I used when Johnny died in 2005…

(After writing all that, I checked my book of rejects The Stuff They Didn’t Print and the Johnny Carson cartoon was actually in there, but I’m leaving it here today because I had a lot to say about it that I never said before. The following cartoons did not make the newspaper or my book.)

Ken Lay, 1942—2006

Ken Lay was the founder, CEO and chairman of Enron, an energy company that had a huuuuuuuuuuuge accounting scandal in which Enron was hiding its debt while the people at the top sucked money out of the company. Lay was indicted and found guilty of 10 counts of security fraud, but died before he could be sentenced, the timing of which I explained in this cartoon…

Enron eventually went bankrupt and 20,000 employees lost their jobs and in many cases, their life savings. But – according to the internet – before the crash Lay got more than $220 million in cash and stock out of Enron (Lay said most of his wealth was in Enron stock so he was actually broke, but nobody trusted Lay by then) so it appeared to be yet another case of someone at the top rewarding themselves like they won a state lottery while people on the bottom scuffled.

When Lay died I used the practice of flying flags at half-staff and suggested what flag would be appropriate… 

Evel Knievel, 1938—2007

According to the Billings Gazette, the Guinness Book of World Records claims motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel broke 433 bones during his career, but his son said it was only 40 to 50 and either one is a lot of broken bones which inspired this cartoon…

George Gallup Jr., 1930—2011

So here’s my gripe about polls: a lot of people want the prestige and salary that come with being in charge, but a lot fewer people want the responsibility.

If you’re in charge and have to make a decision, hire a consultant or commission a poll and if your decision works out, take credit for being smart enough to listen to outside expertise and if your decision doesn’t work out, blame the consultant and/or pollster. In my very biased opinion, consultants and pollsters are basically professional scapegoats.

Anyway…

According to the internet, a typical Gallup Poll sample size is 1,000 adults and also according to the internet, in 2021 there were 331.9 million people living in the United States, so about .000003013 of one percent of people are actually being polled and that’s supposed to represent what we all think.

Also according to the internet: over the years Gallup predicted Dewey would beat Truman, Ford would beat Carter and Romney would beat Obama. Polls in general were also wrong about the elections in 2016, 2020 and 2022 and if you roam around the internet you’ll find article after article asking if polling is worth doing because they’re wrong a lot, but then every election year we once again listen to pollsters, mainly because reporters need something to write about.

On the other side of the Are-Polls-Worth-A-Damn issue:

According to the following article from 2019 and the Saturday Evening Post (which I had no idea existed in 2019 so it’s kind of like holding a séance and hearing from your dead grandmother) polls are actually quite accurate, but the article’s author quoted only one source: Gallup’s director of U.S. Social research.

Which is kinda like asking Ken Lay if Enron stock is a good investment and feeling reassured when he says you should buy some.

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/02/is-public-opinion-polling-accurate-a-look-at-gallup-then-and-now/

Chuck Jones, 1912—2002

Chuck was the animator behind the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons and Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote and Chuck’s other creations taught me about comedic timing and what was funny and probably had more influence on my personality than my mother.

I used the Looney Tunes cartoon sign-off to say goodbye to Chuck and I like to think it would have made Chuck laugh, but an editor decided the rest of the world didn’t need to see it…

Betty James, 1918—2008

This obit cartoon was admittedly obscure because most people didn’t know who the hell Betty James was, but I read her obituary and found out she was the one who came up with the name for the toy her husband invented: The Slinky.

Here’s the cartoon that occurred to me…

Lester Maddox, 1915—2003

Lester Maddox was the Governor of Georgia and a Full-time Racist (apparently the two jobs weren’t incompatible) and was famous for using axe handles to threaten and possibly assault Civil Rights activists who might try to integrate his restaurant.

That being the case I imagined what Lester’s reception might be should he try to get into Heaven…

Kim Jong Il, 1941—2011

Kim Jong Il had a heart attack in 2011 and this cartoon was a fast-break slam dunk…

Gerald Ford, 1913—2006

He was the 38^th President of the United States, played on two National Champion Michigan Wolverine football teams, was an All-American football player, had offers from two NFL teams, served on an aircraft carrier during WW2, became minority leader of the House of Representatives, had two batshit crazy women try to shoot him (one was a member of the Manson Family) but despite all those notable achievements, the main thing Gerald Ford is remembered for is pardoning President Nixon…

Ford wrote an autobiography called A Time to Heal which Amazon books describes as portraying Ford’s role in helping the country move beyond the chaos of Watergate and I describe as bullshit because they only drag out that “shouldn’t we all forgive and forget and move on” excuse when the person about to go to prison is a rich White guy.

I saw Ford’s motivation for pardoning Nixon somewhat differently…

Once again, that’s it for today, but I’ve still got a big pile of rejected cartoons and as previously noted, we’ll get to them whenever I feel like it.

(P.S. If you laughed at any of this, then you’re just as insensitive as I am and I gotta tell you I don’t mind the company.)