Cheap Shot Theater

[the_gneech]

I am very proud to say that I am not a political cartoonist.

I happened to be clicking around various sites and I came upon a gallery of "the nation's top political cartoonists," organized by subject. Basically you had:

• Cheap shots at Dan Rather
  
• Cheap shots at Martha Stewart
  
• Cheap shots at Michael Jackson
  
• Cheap shots at George W. Bush
  
• Cheap shots at Bill Clinton
  
• Cheap shots at anybody in the Middle East
  
• Cheap shots at airport security people
  
• Cheap shots at anybody overweight

Even given the smug, self-congratulatory air that political cartoonists as a body have, actually looking at their work portrays them in an even worse light. As pleased as they are with their own cleverness, they're not even imaginative! On any given topic, half of them make exactly the same damn joke. Talk about moving in lockstep; I don't think it's a case of some external figure feeding them a party line, tho ... I suspect it's just that they all think the same mean, vicious, small-minded way.

I don't want these sleazebags sullying the term "cartoonist." Ugh.

-The Gneech

Comments

[softpaw.livejournal.com]

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/JohnnyCarson/2.asp


an example of the same joke bit

[willowanderer.livejournal.com]

Actualy, I had a theory that there were only one or two of them outthere. that's why their work is so much alike.

[docwebster.livejournal.com]

*snort* I have very little sympathy for the neo-cons getting slammed in the cartoons. I'm sorry, but I refuse to get out of kilter over the cartoon fate of the same party whose most visible mass media voices want people like me shot or deported because *we* don't march in lockstep with the party line about the Iraq folly.

I call it using the very tools they themselves brought to the dance. Face it, Gneech, they're the very party who made the politics of personal destruction a viable and legitimate tool of American political discourse when they went after Clinton for lying about a blowjob, but refuse to even so much as arch an eyebrow over the commander in thief's merry band of thugs myriad lapses in ethics, to put it extremely mildly.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Did you even read my post?

-TG

[docwebster.livejournal.com]

I think I just this second realized what I replied had exactly nothing to do with what you said. Hell of a place to have a brain dump.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it was temporary insanity. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately...

-TG

[vverevvolf.livejournal.com]

How can you tell the temporary insanity from the regular kind?

/.-, VVolf

[jamesbarrett.livejournal.com]

If it doesn't go away after a while, it's not temporary? -Frisk

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

but you could coin a completely stupid term like "gerrymander" and have it become a permanent part of the lexicon! who could resist that power?

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've got people saying "SET CHEER = WOOHOO!"

I wield all the power I can handle. ;)

-TG

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

w00t =};-3

[mortonfox.livejournal.com]

They have to cartoon based on what's in the news, so naturally they'd tend to focus on the same subjects.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, they could go pump gas instead. I know I'd rather do that... ;)

-TG

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't a cheap shot, it wouldn't be funny. Personally, I think Tom Toles r0xx0rz.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the next Oliphant, the next Herblock, the next Conrad, and all I'm seeing are the next Garfield with campaign buttons.

[hollyannvix.livejournal.com]

I was planning on doing one of my comics about the fact that I'm over-weight, and about some of the things I have to deal with whenever I go out in public because of the fact I'm over-weight. The thing is, I want to do this particular comic to show others who might be ignorant towards us "fat people" and maybe even get an idea of what I go through (and maybe what others go through too), yet, at the sametime, I'm hoping that I don't get a sympathy thing "Poor you!" *patpatpat* sorta thing...

[frostdemn.livejournal.com]

Well, you get patpats for being you. :3
*patpatpat* ^.^

[kamau-d-lyon.livejournal.com]

Go for it. There's a difference between making fun of someone for their political stand and pointing out a problem that hurts others. Someone needs to do it (point out insensitivity to weight) and I think you have a good way of getting a point cross in your art. I also think your style might make it more acceptable to some who would other wise ignore it or just blow it off.

Hope that came out positive the way I meant it.

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

I never have cared for political..."caricature artists". :P

I'd rather read a day of SJ than a week of "the nation's top political cartoonists".

[wolfyisms.livejournal.com]

Jay Leno would be a great political cartoonist by that list's standards :)

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

*shrug* If political cartoonists want to make stabs at people/groups let them, as long as they admit to being 'politcal cartoonists'.

Its the ones that claim to have no political bias, and just draw funny, after the 500th picture of G.W.Bush drawn as a monkey, or Clinton without pants that irritate me.