Q Toon: The Arc of the Moral Universe

Q Syndicate✒Oct 16, 2014

Well over a week after the fact, here's my response to the Supreme Court's decision not to overturn lower court rulings finding marriage discrimination unconstitutional.

It's not often that I put out something with no attempt and humor, irony, or at least sarcasm, but I decided that was the way to go this time. Nick Anderson's cartoon the morning after the decision portrayed the judicial situation better than most, although I thought it would be funnier to show Justice Roberts -- or perhaps several justices -- slapping a hand over an apoplectic Justice Scalia's mouth. But then Mike Keefe drew this one, so that idea was out.

And the judgments keep rolling in -- Idaho, Alaska, Nevada, North Carolina -- and suddenly one wonders which state will be the last to withstand the tide. Alabama?

Weiners in Cartoons

Yesterday, I discussed how a story like Anthony Weiner's boxer tweet spawns many very similar cartoons. It also inspires cartoon ideas that no responsible newspaper will ever print.

I guarantee you will not see this cartoon by Sandy Huffaker in your local newspaper:

American editors are ever so careful these days not to offend. They're not so worried about the blue-haired ladies who might cancel their subscriptions in a huff as they are about advertisers who will cancel their advertising for fear of the wrath of Blue-Haired Americans for Decency Dot Org.
Editors in Europe are less prudish than their American counterparts. Here's a cartoon by Giorgio Forattini. The subject of the cartoon is Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini, who was about to succeed himself as head of a second coalition government:

Editors, advertisers, and cable TV newspersonalities would be shocked, shocked, I tell you, to see that cartoon on the editorial page of an American newspaper. Would you believe that the cartoon ran on the front page of a prominent newspaper?
(front page of La Stampa, Turin, August 17, 1982.)

The Denver Post killed a 2000 cartoon by Mike Keefe depicting the state of Florida dangling from Uncle Sam's groin ("Electile Dysfunction"). The St. Petersburg Times spiked a Clay Bennett cartoon in 1994 showing Bill Clinton wearing an "I'm With Stupid" t-shirt with the arrow pointing down at his crotch -- and the cartoon didn't even show any portrayal of anything penile. These, and other classics, found the light of day in David Wallis' Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression (2007, W. W. Norton & Company). It's a wonderful read, and I thoroughly recommend it.