You also can’t tell when something smells
Plus, I provide a way to see conservative cartoons...
When I heard the coronavirus could destroy your sense of taste and smell, the cartoon above became pretty obvious, even though I knew some people wouldn’t like it…and those people’s complaints often fit a pattern.
One of the most common responses I get to cartoons like this is: “Oh yeah? Well, what about CNN?”
If I draw something critical about Donald Trump, someone might ask: “Oh yeah? Well, what about Joe Biden?”
Take a minute to analyze those complaints and what those complainers are really asking is why I didn’t draw about the people they don’t like rather than the people I don’t like, which strikes me as just a bit unreasonable since my name is on the cartoon.
If those people really want to see a cartoon critical of CNN or Joe Biden, they should learn to draw.
This isn’t a piano bar; I don’t do requests – I’m drawing my opinions, not theirs.
That doesn’t mean I’ll never criticize a liberal or a Democrat. In the past I’ve drawn hundreds of cartoons critical of people like Bill and Hillary because they provided lots of cartoon material.
I liked Obama better, but would still do the occasional critical cartoon.
I recently did a cartoon critical of Joe Biden and if he gets elected I expect to draw a lot more critical cartoons in the future.
But currently my main target has been and will continue to be Donald Trump because I think the guy’s dangerous and appealing to our worst instincts. I’m doing what I can to keep Trump from being reelected.
Joe Biden is no day at the beach either, but right now I’d vote for a werewolf if he were running against Trump, because a werewolf would only be dangerous once a month.
But what about balance?
When Philadelphia Inquirer political cartoonist Tony Auth was asked why his cartoons were so one-sided, he asked a question in return: if he were working in 1942, should he draw a few pro-Hitler cartoons?
And that brings us to the difference between news and opinion.
The people who present the news have some obligation to present both sides of the story; the people who express their opinions do not.
You don’t expect one person to be on both sides of an issue, although a lot of editorial writers give it a valiant effort. Balance on the opinion pages is achieved by presenting lots of different opinions by lots of different people.
At least that was the theory.
These days a lot of people struggle to appreciate the difference between news and opinion and no wonder; news organizations like Fox and CNN include a heaping helping of opinion when they present the news.
The line between news and opinion has gotten extremely blurry.
Back when my work appeared on the Kansas City Star’s opinion pages, if you didn’t like something I drew, I could point to a conservative column or cartoon that appeared nearby and provided balance; if I took the liberal point of view I could point to the work of conservative cartoonists like Glenn McCoy or Lisa Benson.
Now I’m working on my own and don’t have that option.
But here’s what I will do.
From now on when I post a cartoon I’ll also provide a link to King Features. That’s the syndicate that distributes my work – and the work of other cartoonists – around the country.
Here it is:
http://kingfeatures.com/digital/comicskingdom-com/
If you feel like you need to see some conservative, pro-Trump cartoons to provide balance to my work, you can now go look for them.
It might be a pain in the ass, but look at it this way…it’s helluva lot easier than learning to draw.
Stay safe, everybody.
Excellent. Thank you for going there, for saying it, for just putting yourself out there.
The facts lost out to the “both sides” movement. And we all lost when that happened.
Well said Lee