I can always tell who is having a bad week.
You see, in this job you are surrounded by political posturing of all shapes and sizes. You are caught between the rock of sky-is-falling proclamations and the hard place of the world being filled with unicorns and rainbows. Between letters to the editor, and emails from spin doctors, and the endless stream of strident opinions that can be found on the news wire and on the Internet, I spend my work day immersed in cajoling from both sides of any particular issue.
Sometimes it seems as though you need a lightsaber to cut through the crud and find the truth, and yet there is one surefire way to determine whether one party or the other is having a particularly horrid week: The political cartoons.
Oh, I’m not talking only about the cartoons we actually run in the newspaper and at Columbian.com each day. I’m talking the ones that are at our disposal from various syndication services. We receive probably two dozen new cartoons each day, with artists from all over the country poking fun at the foibles of President Barack Obama or the intransigence of congressional Republicans. With artists providing poignancy to emotional situations such as police shootings and riots. With artists lending perspective — and, ideally, a little humor — to important issues.
In choosing which cartoon to publish each day, The Columbian is diligent to represent all sides of the political spectrum. I assess each published cartoon as either liberal, conservative or neutral, and make sure that we have a balance of liberal and conservative. Neither side, after all, has a monopoly on doing stupid stuff.
That’s where it becomes easy to determine if one of the political parties is having a Charlie Brown kind of week. Sometimes, finding a cartoon that reflects the thinking of a particular side can be like trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone. You are bound to have some periods where everything goes sideways for a party, and nearly all the available cartoons reflect that.
That can make our job difficult, and yet we persevere — with the occasional misstep along the way. A couple weeks ago, I received a call from a reader complaining that a cartoon we had published was anti-Christian. I personally didn’t agree with the complaint, but I appreciated them sharing their point of view; it will make me think twice next time.
A few weeks before that, I received a call from a reader complaining that a cartoon was egregiously unfair to former Vice President Dick Cheney. That complaint I agreed with, knowing that the choice was a misguided effort to find a liberal cartoon during one of those weeks when the Democrats were spitting up all over themselves.
And then there is the reader who unfailingly emails a conservative cartoon under the subject line “counter-thrust” whenever we publish one that has a liberal point of view. He might have more credibility if he removed his blinders.
Historical impact
Political cartoons date back to the mid-18th century, and they grew to prominence in the American newspapers and magazines of the mid-19th century. The cartoons of Thomas Nast famously helped expose the corruption of New York’s Tammany Hall and strongman Boss Tweed. Today, the fact that political cartoons endure in nearly every newspaper in the country is a testament to the persuasive power of a well-drawn cartoon and a pithy punch line.
As Italian philosopher Umberto Eco once explained, “Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny … Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.” And as Paul Conrad, who was an editorial cartoonist from 1950-2008 and won three Pulitzer Prizes, once said, “I have no idea what readership is of written editorials, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to the readership of editorial cartoons.”
That might or might not be true. But the collection of cartoons certainly can tell you who is having a lousy week.
