Conventional Wisdom

President Marc Murphy addresses a sheaf of cartoonists; your humble scribbler, appropriately, at far left. Photo by Angelo Lopez

I mentioned yesterday last weekend's convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, where we voted to reconstitute the organization as the Association of Political Artists. 

From outgoing AAEC President Marc Murphy's letter to the membership:

Of course, the Big News is that the Membership (including those attending in person and via Zoom link) voted to approve the two proposals I described in my last message to you. I won’t speak for them but it’s fair to say, at the least, that the members voted not just to save our organization and take steps to inject it with new life, but also to reposition it to respond more directly to the threats our work and Free Speech itself face. So, as soon as appropriate and necessary bylaw, website, and other changes can be made the AAEC will become the Association of Political Artists (APA) and will become an affiliate member of the vaunted Society of Illustrators. 

The move has been a long time coming. Vulture capitalists have spent the current millennium ripping flesh off the bones of our nation's newspapers, and no profession dependent upon print journalism is going to be around long.

The median age of the AAEC membership is probably around 65; the youngest member at the convention was about 40. Two members who made it to the convention are recovering from strokes. KAL Kallaugher spoke to conventioneers from his hospital bed, where he's waiting for a new heart.

Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher and David Horsey 

Not that you should read anything into that regarding the fate of political cartooning today.

There is no lack of graphic political commentary out there, much of it created by persons in their 20's and 30's. They're just not creating it for newspaper editorial pages. Their work ranges from memes to long-form webcomics, in the cloud or on the walls, static or animated.

The AAEC-cum-APA is going to spend the next year trying to define what a political artist is, hopefully in such a way that we don't have to spend another year defining what it isn't.

But we're not about to welcome the Baltimore Sun editorial board.

Jack Ohman moderates a panel of Joel Pett, Ann Telnaes, and Steve Brodner on "Anger Management."

There were a lot of other presentations and panel discussions over the three days of the convention. Topics included protecting our work from being "scraped" for ai; recovering from being let go or suffering a stroke; and cartooning for a community under siege.

The AAEC's Ink Bottle Award went to a pair of longtime volunteers at our convention. The Rex Babin Award for local-issue cartooning went to Canadian editions Graeme Mackay. Another honor went to one of those cartoonists recovering from a stroke, Clay Jones. (By the way, I reported to Facebook some troll who posted a nasty comment about Clay on a photo I had posted there, and I will not approve any such comments here, either.)

I didn't buy any new books at this convention, so I have no new book reviews to offer. I did, however, get Jack Ohman to sign my copy of his latest book, Weird. Had I known that Steve Sack would make it to Sacramento, I'd have loved to get him to autograph my copy of The First and Only Book of Sack. I wouldn't expect him to fill a whole page, though.

Your humble scribbler next to a display panel that included one of his cartoons.

Speaking of making it to the convention, stormy weather in Chicago disrupted the travel arrangements of myself and several others. I had originally bought a plane trip on American Airlines involving a layover in the City of Broad Shoulders, starting from Milwaukee around 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning, I got American's message that the first flight would be delayed; but I was already packed and ready to leave the house at 6:00, so I left.

The agent at the check-in counter offered me the option of switching to a flight set to take off at 7:30, so I took it — only to see that flight get cancelled. The best I could get when I got to the front of the boarding counter was a noon-ish flight to Dallas connecting to a mid-afternoon plane to Sacramento that would arrive too late for me to make the first day's convention activities.

Not only did I get to watch my original plane take off without me; I had also wasted $80 checking my suitcase and upgrading my boarding group from 6 to 4. I ended up in boarding group 8 of all four planes to Sacramento and back; all four planes were completely full, and due to unavailable overhead bin space, they were begging group 8 passengers to check their bags for free.

Ah, well. Some other conventioneers from the East Coast didn't make it to Sacramento until midnight.

President Marc Murphy opens the Saturday night awards presentations at the Sacramento History Museum

Our next The APA's first convention will be in New York City at the home of the Society of Illustrators.

This Week's Sneak Peek

While we still have the liberty, we editorial cartoonists are having a little fun with that Time magazine cover photo of Donald Trump that has so upset him. Your humble scribbler included:

Jack Ohman, for example, has been drawing Trump with no face this past week, just that vulviform neck wattle. How long he can keep that up only time (not the magazine) will tell; we humans rely on observing facial expression to determine someone's meaning and intention. Not including the face can open up a cartoon to misinterpretation.

By the way, I've been seriously considering forgoing the pig snout in my caricature of Lord Trump for much the same reason. It gets in the way of some facial expressions, as I kept butting up against in this week's cartoon.

But I wouldn't want to end up drawing a "This Shop Gives to Every New President of the United States a Free Rhinoplasty" cartoon, so I'd have to replace the snout with some other visual symbol.

I tried drawing him with Mussolini's cap once, which might have been too obscure a reference these days. It also got in the way of drawing his bizarre hairdo, one of his most recognizable features. A crown or a MAGA cap present the same problem (and could also get in the way of dialogue balloons).

I guess there is some point at which one might as well let Trump symbolize himself. Cartoonists got along just fine drawing Nixon as Nixon and Hitler as Hitler. Future cartoonists (assuming there will be any) are likely to draw future authoritarians with Trumpiform features as a way to signal how crooked, corrupt, dictatorial, delusional, or mendacious they are.

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By the way, when my copy of Time arrived in the mail on Friday, the cover was not that under-the-chin photo of Trump's wattle. The cover story of my issue was the account of one of the Israeli hostages released last week. The alternative covers shown in thumbnails on page six were for a Best Inventions listicle and a feature piece on Stranger Things. 

By the time the next Time comes out, ceasefire violations could well have rendered "His Triumph," "The Leader Israel Needed," and "How Gaza Heals" moot. 

Q Toon: J. Edgar

And the winners in the expletive derby are "Gadzooks" and "Dang."

For all I know, J. Edgar Hoover was as foul-mouthed in private as Richard Nixon. Hoover came across as a hard-as-nails crime fighter, all business, who made it his business to know all the dirt on everyone in the country. That was before Susan Rosenstiel told Anthony Summers that Hoover got dressed up in drag to go out to Roy Cohn's private parties, where he was introduced to her as "Mary."

A little bit more back story to the cartooning here: I wanted to draw Hoover in drag in this cartoon, but after David Simpson's latest plagiarism scandal, I had to be careful not to copy Pat Oliphant's cartoon of J. Mary Hoover -- especially now that I gave This Land permission to cite me as having spotted three previously unnoticed examples of his down-to-the-crosshatch copying of other people's cartoons. (I would note that other cartoonists have spotted the same cartoons; The Oregonian's Jack Ohman also left a comment on This Land's previous article.)

To keep Hoover's garb contemporaneous with Hoover himself, the dress in the cartoon is patterned more after Marilyn Monroe's famous updraft dress or something out of the Folies Bergères. Not that it wouldn't have been fun to have shown him dressed like Snooki or Lady Gaga.