BECY 2014

Pelican Books' Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year for 2014 is out, and I'm pleased to say that I have four cartoons in this year's edition.

The 2014 edition skews conservative when it comes to the Obama administration. It is tempting to attribute that to its editor, Dean Turnbloom, a naval civilian who was, briefly, a dogmatic conservative cartoonist. (To the best of my knowledge, at least, he no longer draws editorial cartoons.) A conservative bias on Turnbloom's part might explain why there is only one cartoon in the book by brilliant liberal cartoonist Pat Bagley.

But 2013 was, on balance, not a good year for President Obama, so there are plenty of cartoons in this book attacking him not only from the right but also from the left. Yet for all the cartoons lambasting Obama for the clumsy launch of Obamacare, drone strikes, and supposed scandals over the IRS and Benghazi, there are no cartoons lampooning Chris Christie's Bridgegate, Senate Republicans' abuse of the filibuster, or the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the ensuing Republican push to disenfranchise voters. *

Self-selection could also be a factor in a conservative bias in this year's BECY. The cartoonists themselves pick some of their own cartoons to submit to the book's editors (as contrasted with the Best Political Cartoons of the Year, published from 2005 to 2010, for which editors Daryl Cagle and Brian Fairrington determined which topics would be in the book and selected cartoons from Cagle's stable of cartoonists to illustrate those topics).

To demonstrate how this self-selection process plays out, here are the topics of the five cartoons in Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year 2014 by rigid conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez:

• Mocking Obama's claims that he had no prior knowledge of "Fast and Furious," leaks of national intelligence secrets, a Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting conservative groups, or Justice Department phone taps of Associated Press reporters.
• Blasting Obama as a fake Superman amid a rubble of debt, incompetence, scandals, lies, foreign policy, spending, IRS, jobs, and economy.
• Depicting the problems of the Obamacare website as merely the tip of the iceberg.
• Showing Obama blithely riding an Iranian nuke a la Slim Pickens as it falls toward the U.S. Capitol.
• An anti-abortion cartoon.

Compare that with the cartoons by persistently liberal cartoonist Joel Pett:

• Decrying an ineffective social safety net.
• Alleging that the Republican elephant would deny Pope Francis a green card over his statements on social issues.
• Lamenting the illegal ivory trade.
• Apologizing to Martin Luther King Jr.'s statue for the plight of African-Americans 50 years after his "I Have a Dream" speech.
• There are only four Pett cartoons in the book. Son of a gun. I thought there were five.

Yes, there are cartoons criticizing Congress, albeit mostly from an "A pox on both your parties" standpoint. And, yes, there are cartoons criticizing the Tea Party, but mostly in a generic sense; there are but two cartoons critical of Senator Ted Cruz and only one cartoon critical of Michele Bachmann. There is no criticism of any Republican that quite equals the harshness of Mike Lester's cartoon of President Obama feeding a huge, vicious IRS attack dog from a bag of "Pure Tyranny."

The BECY series has always been edited by a conservative, and for the most part, it showed. From its initial 1972 edition until his death, it was compiled by Birmingham (Alabama) News cartoonist Charles Brooks. Last year's edition was edited by Steve Kelley, late of the New Orleans Times Picayune, earning him praise for a well-balanced tome. I've been trying to find R.C. Harvey's review on line, but apparently it's behind a subscription wall. (It should be at the February 13, 2013 post's link down this page.) I'd like to quote from the review anyway:

"To the extent that Kelley's selection reflects a bias, it is probably a bias in favor of cartoons that attack, which editorial cartoons are better at than they are at supporting a particular point of view. Based on the content of this book, I find it impossible to determine which side of the political aisle Kelley favors, which is undeniably a desirable outcome."

I look forward to Harvey's review of the Mr. Turnbloom's work.
* Rereading the book, I see that there are one cartoon about the Supreme Court decision and one cartoon about the new voter disenfranchisement law in Texas.

Crazy Eyes Cryin' in the Rain

With Michele Bachmann's announcement yesterday that she would not run for reelection to Congress in 2014, America loses one of its most colorful and loony legislators. She announced her retirement on YouTube -- looking straight into the camera this time -- speaking over a looping recording of a simulated orchestra and choir.

Wouldn't you like to have a soundtrack to your life?

My only cartoons of Ms. Bachmann were drawn during her flash-in-the-pan run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. In the first (above right), I relied too heavily on the model set by Minneapolis Star Tribune cartoonist Steve Sack, who draws her with a tall, thin, figure-8 face. It works for him, but did not work for me. (See Sack's brilliant retrospective of Bachmann's career at the Strib's site, here.)

  

I was much more pleased with the cartoon at left, drawn a month or so later. In the first place, she appears larger and not crowded in by a row of other caricatures. Upon further review, I found her face more rectangular than Steve Sack does. By completely disregarding proportionality, I was able to convey her "Crazy Eyes" by drawing the irises so that they extend out beyond the confines of the rest of the eye.

I made sure to include this cartoon on my drawing board for my Facebook page cover photo.

My last Bachmann cartoon was prompted by her claim on the Today Show that someone told her that the vaccine against human papillomavirus causes mental retardation: "I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the [previous night's Republican presidential] debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. It can have very dangerous side effects. … This is the very real concern, and people have to draw their own conclusions."

The medical and pharmaceutical community loudly protested that there was no connection between the HPV vaccine and mental retardation, so I suggested that Bachmann could find some other side effect closer to her heart.

Q Toon: Bachmann Tooner Overheard

This week should, I suppose, have been time for a cartoon about the end at long last of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," had I been confident enough that there wouldn't be some last second maneuver from out of the blue to stop its repeal. Happily, the transition to equal opportunity in the military has been achieved smoothly and without a hitch -- which doesn't make for a particularly funny cartoon, but perhaps Chuck Asay or Michael Ramirez will draw some cartoon heralding the End Times that will inspire a cartoon next week.

So here instead is another Michele Bachmann cartoon. In case you missed it, Bachmann claimed in a TV interview that some woman at a campaign appearance had told her that the woman's daughter had been given the vaccine to prevent the cancer-causing Human Papillomavirus, and the daughter had subsequently become mentally retarded. Medical authorities swiftly condemned Bachmann's claim, and Bachmann retreated slightly by saying that she was just repeating what some anonymous woman had told her. (But in these days when everybody and their dog has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a blog, don't you think someone would have already found some trace of this phantom mother by now?)

Meanwhile, it looks like Bachmann is Last Month's Flavor of the Month, so I'm now working on my Rick Perry caricature. Tune in again tomorrow for my first attempt.

Almost This Week's Q Cartoon

This is the cartoon I was drawing for Q Syndicate last week in hopes of being able to send it to Q Syndicate before the July 4 weekend. My preference was to have something about Rhode Island's new civil partnership law, but I wasn't happy with the ideas I had been working with. Eventually, of course, I came up with the idea for the cartoon I posted yesterday; that idea was more relevant to LGBT issues than this one, so I put this cartoon aside.

I've commented before that I find women harder to caricature than men. Beyond the age of, say, 25, men don't change their hairstyles as often as women do (except insofar as nature forces change upon us); and women wear make-up to alter the perception of their facial contours.

So far, the best caricatures of Michele Bachmann I've seen have been by John Branch, Taylor Jones, and, not surprisingly, Minneapolis Star Tribune cartoonist Steve Sack, who has had the most experience drawing her. (The June 16 cartoon linked to above, however, isn't a great example, but she has not been inspiring him much lately, I guess.) The rest of us cartoonists are still flailing about trying to fit her features together.

Meanwhile, there is this bizarre cartoon from Terry Wise, trying to nominate himself for a Pulitzer. (It would run counter to the conservatives-get-no-respect meme to remember that doctrinaire conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez is a two-time Pulitzer winner, as are Steve Breen and the late Jeff MacNelly.) His point, aside from Any Two Things Make a Cartoon, seems to be that it's sexist for liberals to point out the ditzy things that come out of the mouths of Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin.

Conservatives, as you will all remember, have been perfect gentlemen about female politicians. Conservatives in the media have never said a sexist thing about Hilary Clinton, Janet Reno, Sonya Sotomayor or Nancy Pelosi, have they?