Cagle World

‘Tis the season to be jolly – but it hasn’t always been so jolly. There is a dramatic history of battles at Christmas time.

Not just the skirmishes that pop up at our family’s Christmas dinner table when a crazy MAGA uncle drops a bomb about the “Biden Crime Family” as he passes the potatoes. And not the phony “War on Christmas” that conservatives have been claiming for years that liberals are waging on Christianity. There’s been genuine, yuletide warfare. Like the terrible wars we have now between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.

A quick Google search shows that wars seem to heat up or cool down at Christmas.

George Washington famously celebrated Christmas in 1776 by sneaking across the Delaware river to defeat the “Hessians,” the soldiers from Germany that Britain hired to help them lose the Revolutionary War.

On Christmas Day in 1831 about 60,000 slaves in Jamaica bravely went on a non-violent strike against their British oppressors, demanding freedom and wages. It ended badly for the slaves – 500 were killed or executed in the ensuing violence. But the brutal way the Brits treated the rebels is said to have influenced Britain’s decision to abolish slavery within its global empire.

Christmas time was also a popular time for acts of war in the 20^th century.

The bloodiest battle ever fought during Christmas began Dec. 23, 1916, in Riga, Latvia, when Russian and German troops collided.

A horrible example of how awful trench warfare was, 60,000 Russians and 6,000 Germans died in a battle that achieved nothing for either side and ultimately helped bring on the Russian Revolution.

And who with a Netflix account can ever forget Christmas 1944, when Hitler launched his famous last gasp – the surprise counter-attack in Belgium that became known as “The Battle of the Bulge”?

Christmas isn’t always a good time for war, though. Every once in a while it’s a good time for peace.

For example, the War of 1812 ended in a truce as the USA and Great Britain signed “The Treaty of Ghent” on Christmas Eve in 1814.

On Christmas Eve in 1914, when World War I was still young, German and Allied soldiers on the Western Front held a spontaneous armistice that we’ll probably never see again.

In what became famous as “The Christmas Truce,” they walked to the middle of “No Man’s Land,” shook hands, sang carols and even exchanged gifts before going back to slaughtering each other a few days later.

Even Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro used Christmas as an excuse for doing something nice.

In 1972 Nixon called a 36-hour halt to a major bombing campaign over North Vietnam. And in 1998 Cuba’s most famous atheist, Fidel Castro, “celebrated” the birth of Baby Jesus by ending the ban on the holiday he had instituted 30 years earlier.

China has also changed its communist mind about Christmas, which was once banned by Mao and Co.. Under modern China’s later, somewhat less-dictatorial leaders, Christmas has made a comeback as a useful gift-giving holiday and economic booster.

Elsewhere, Christmas celebrations are still against the law in joyless places like North Korea, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Celebrations of Christmas were illegal in Saudi Arabia until recent years when the murderous Saudi Prince Muhammad Bin Salman loosened the Christmas reigns.

After the English Civil War, the British Parliament passed a ban on Christmas. A 1647 law, championed by conservative Puritans, forced stores to remain open on Christmas and punished people for attending Christmas services and celebrations. The next time a MAGA relative brings up the “War on Christmas,” be sure to remind him of Oliver Cromwell and his Christmas-banning, right-wing, conservative buddies. Conservatives have short memories at the dinner table.

There’s nothing like spending an afternoon on Google to put me into the wartime Christmas spirit. Now I’m mad.

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast “Caglecast” about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

Elf on the Shelf? Meet Bot on the Cot. 

Jeff Koterba’s A.I.-inspired twist on an annual holiday tradition was our most popular reprinted cartoon this week, as we inch closer and closer to Christmas.

A number of our cartoons carried a holiday theme, including Bob Englehart’s funny take on Santa being accused of weaponizing Christmas and Rivers’ amusing image of Joe Biden getting uncomfortable with St. Nick.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Jeff Koterba

#2. Bob Englehart

#3. Chris Weyant

#4. Rick McKee

#5. R.J. Matson

#6. Gary McCoy

#7. Rivers

#8. John Darkow

#9. Pat Bagley

#10. Dave Whamond

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

A majority of voters in both parties have said in polls that they are not happy about the prospects of a Biden-Trump rematch.

But not many editorial cartoonists will mind seeing Trump’s high-wire political act back in the center ring of our national political circus. Whether he’s in or out of office, Donald Trump is a precious Christmas gift to editorial cartoonists that keeps on giving 365 days a year.

America’s voters can argue the political plusses and minuses of Trump vs. Biden until Election Day 2024, and probably will. But now matter how much you love Joe Biden for saving America from four more years of Trump, there’s no denying that Biden cartoons are boring and Trump’s are not.

Whether they show Trump getting coal in his stocking or complaining about being at the top of Santa’s naughty list, Trump cartoons are extremely popular online, often going viral –especially at Christmas.

I do an editorial cartoon video podcast called Caglecast about political cartoons and the stats show that online viewers on YouTube are crazy about Trump themed cartoons. In fact, my Caglecasts that have featured a cover image of Trump are just about the only thing that my online viewers want to see, with up to 100 times the audience of Caglecasts focused on Biden, climate change, Ukraine, the Israel/Hamas war or just about anything else. The Trump stats are visible with my podcasts on youtube.com/@caglecast and they are astounding.

For my most recent Caglecast, four brilliant political cartoonists joined me to discuss our favorite Trump Christmas cartoons and express the holiday joy they felt drawing a political figure that they – like the vast majority of editorial cartoonists – dislike very much.

Rick McKee, a brilliant cartoonist who worked for decades at the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, has done more Trump Christmas cartoons than any of the others. As a conservative who turned against Trump because of the damage he said he did to the Republican Party, Rick drew Trump sitting on Santa’s lap and responding to Santa’s question “Have you been a good boy this year?” with the word “Witchhunt!”

Rick also has drawn Trump trying to fire Santa Claus and holding a piece of mistletoe over his rear end as a Republican elephant is encouraged to kiss it.

One cartoon I liked was by political cartoonist Pat Byrnes, who is best known for his cartoons in the New Yorker. Pat threw a lot of puns into his cartoon of a man in a MAGA hat looking at the Jan. 6 date on a calendar. The father is telling his daughter that “This is the day the MAGA followed a reality TV star to the east with grifts of gold, frank nonsense and merch.”

Viewers write to me suggesting ideas for Trump-Christmas cartoons. One reader suggested that I draw Trump in the manger of a nativity scene with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus – and Trump says, “I prefer babies who weren’t crucified.”

I didn’t draw that one.

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast “Caglecast” about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

We’re about a month away from the first votes in the Republican primary being cast in Iowa, and it’s safe to say the country isn’t very excited about the likely choices for president. 

Joe Biden, the incumbent, will likely face Donald Trump in a rematch of the 2020 election, which Biden won by more than 7 million votes. Our two most popular cartoons this week were about the lack of enthusiasm at the top of both presidential tickets. It’s going to be a long year.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Chris Weyant

#2. Rick McKee

#3. John Darkow

#4. Doug Plante

#5. Dick Wright

#6. Jeff Koterba

#7. John Darkow

#8. Chris Weyant

#9. Adam Zyglis

#10. Dave Granlund

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

The editorial cartoonist community is global, but it’s a tight knit group.

When one of us is fired for drawing something that is unfairly or mistakenly deemed racist or anti-Semitic, we unite in our outrage – and we rally to the defense of our colleagues.

That’s what happened with the firing of the great Steve Bell, formerly of the British newspaper The Guardian.

On Oct. 16 Bell was summarily “cashiered,” as the Brits say, after more than 40 years with the Guardian, for submitting a cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that someone said contained what some could see as an anti-Semitic trope.

The fatal cartoon – which was never published by the Guardian but which Bell later posted on X (formerly Twitter) – showed Netanyahu preparing to operate on his own stomach while wearing boxing gloves.

On his stomach was an outline of the Gaza Strip.  The caption read “Residents of Gaza, get out now,” which referred to Netanyahu’s harsh evacuation order for Gaza residents.

Bell said his editor thought the cartoon could be seen as playing on the “pound of flesh” line spoken by Shylock, the stereotyped Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, explained with the cryptic words, ‘Jewish bloke; pound of flesh; anti-Semitic trope.’”

That was a stretch, to say the least.

It’s not unusual for cartoonists to have their drawings spiked or edited, but it is unusual for a cartoonist to get so unceremoniously and simultaneous fired and charged with drawing a possibly anti-Semitic cartoon.

When I interviewed Bell for my Caglecast podcast, he said he thought he was let go because he was going against the Guardian’s editorial line.

“My cartoon had nothing to do with the Merchant of Venice,” Bell said, “so it’s pointless discussing that because it’s not there.

“I haven’t been anti-Semitic. I’ve actually just gone against what the Guardian sees as their editorial line. The trouble is, I don’t really understand or know what their editorial line is.”

Bell was a freelancer under contract, not an employee of the Guardian, since 1981 (an arrangement that is common for editorial cartoonists). He’s had a few controversial cartoons over the years that his editors decided not to run for various reasons. That’s par for the course for any newspaper cartoonist.

But only a handful of his cartoons were stopped:

“There’s taste indecency, there’s bad language, there’s all that kind of stuff – but very rarely has it been for political reasons. This is an instance of political censorship, I think.”

Another problem, he said, echoing many of his fellow cartoonists around the world, is that newspapers are run by writers – “word people.”

They are timid people generally uncomfortable with cartoons and infamous for being over-cautious, too literal-minded and prone to seeing deeper meanings and “-isms” in cartoons that are not actually there.

“They tend to misunderstand images almost on purpose,” Bell said. “And this, I think, is a case of that.”

As he said, “It’s not merely a matter of sensitivity, it’s hypersensitivity. They’re apologizing before they’ve actually said anything. That’s the problem.”

Now that he’s been sacked for allegedly being anti-Semitic, Bell says he’s now “in a strange pickle.”

“The hint, the imputation, that my work is anti-Semitic is very damaging, and I’m not likely to find work anywhere else, especially since I’m so closely identified with one paper, i.e., The Guardian.”

When I interviewed Bell, the Israeli cartoonists Michael Kichka and Uri Fink were also on the call.

Both are big fans of Bell and his work, and Fink is president of Israel’s National Cartoonist Association, which has 40 members.

Kichka said they and their Israeli colleagues have drawn “much more extreme and terrible cartoons on Netanyahu” than the one Bell supposedly was sacked for. “None of us was fired, and none of us was accused of anti-Semitism, OK?”

The Israeli cartoonists held a unanimous vote, asking their cartoonist president, Uri Fink, to write a letter defending Bell and his cartoon. Kichka said, “So there’s not one single Jewish Israeli cartoonist who thinks there’s one ounce of anti-Semitism in your cartoon.”

Ironically, it sounds like if my friend Steve Bell needs to find some remote cartooning work, he should be able to find it amongst his fans in Israel.

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Cartoon ©Steve Bell, reprinted here with permission.  Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast “Caglecast” about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

DOWNLOAD CARTOON

Steve Bell has given permission for this cartoon to be reprinted with this column. Cartoon ©Steve Bell.

You know what’s fun about the holidays? Being stuck in traffic.

Chris Weyant captured the frustration of holiday travel in a funny cartoon that was popular among editors. Probably because they can relate to being stuck in stop-and-go.

It was a smorgasbord of topics for our most popular cartoons this week, everything from the growing presence of A.I. to the continued high cost of housing.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Chris Weyant

#2. Bob Englehart

#3. John Darkow

#4. Chris Weyant

#5. John Darkow

#6. Dave Granlund

#7. Joff Koterba

#8. Chris Weyant

#9. Monte Wolverton

#10. Bruce Plante

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and that means one thing – leftovers. 

Rick McKee drew a funny cartoon about political leftovers that was popular with editors this week, but his most-reprinted cartoon was a humorous look at how artificial intelligence will destroy us all.

I also chuckled at Dave Whamond’s cartoon about family dysfunction during the holidays, featuring all your favorite Star Wars characters.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Rick McKee

[download cartoon]

#2. Rick McKee

[download cartoon]

#3. Rick McKee

[download cartoon]

#4. Rivers

[download cartoon]

#5. Dave Whamond

[download cartoon]

#6. Dave Whamond

[download cartoon]

#7. Jeff Koterba

[download cartoon]

#8. Jeff Koterba

[download cartoon]

#9. Jeff Wright

[download cartoon]

#10. John Darkow

[download cartoon]

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

I don’t pretend to know if Donald Trump actually wants to throw his enemies in prison, overthrow our democracy and set up a Trumpocracy that will make America great again, again.

But with Trump’s recent crazy rightwing bluster and political threats, he has been doing a fine job of supplying his enemies with evidence of his inner authoritarian.

Political cartoonists made up their minds years ago that Trump is a cartoon Hitler – a cartoon fascist. When editorial cartoonists think evil dictator or nasty fascist, they immediately think of Hitler and that signature dumb moustache. Hitler is the easiest fascist to draw.

Trump doesn’t fit the World War II mold of fascist dictators as mass murderers, and cartoonists don’t draw Trump as Hitler’s fellow mass-murderers, Mao or Stalin. They don’t even think of Mussolini who coined the term “fascist” in 1919 to describe his thuggish political party in World War II Italy.

And unless you’ve seen Guillermo del Toro’s wonderful animated remake of “Pinocchio,” in which Mussolini appears as a short, stumpy dictator who orders his henchmen to shoot Pinocchio, you probably don’t realize what a cartoonist’s dream “Il Duce” was.

Trump is a “cartoon Hitler” because everyone knows who Hitler is at first sight. Stalin and Mao need to be labeled by editorial cartoonists because so few newspaper readers under 80 recognize them. And Trump-as-Hitler works well to make a point or disturb the reader; it requires no explanation, and doesn’t even require a good caricature – just a little, square moustache.

Political cartoonists like disturbing images that make readers think, or react, as much as they like cartoons that make readers laugh.

The Washington Post ran a recent article about Trump’s Veterans Day speech – headlined “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini” – it was hardly subtle, quoting several political experts and historians who said Trump’s rhetoric about rooting out his left-liberal opponents reminded them of history’s most notorious fascist despots.

Here are “Ten Reasons Why Trump is a Cartoon Hitler”:

Leader of a personality cult.
Strongman leader.
Theatricality and massive political rallies.
Hyper-nationalist (MAGA).
Calls to ban or deport immigrants.
Fetishization of masculinity. Vengeance. Weaponization of the DOJ.
Lost Golden Age Syndrome.
Promises to purge the disloyal from government (the “Deep State”).
Readiness to use violence in politics.
Demonization of political opponents as “vermin” or worthy of being deported (illegal immigrants) or prosecuted (“Lock her up”), or blocked from entering the country (Muslims) or “poisoning the blood.”

Despite the many real and imagined comparisons, however, you’ll rarely if ever see a Hitler cartoon on the opinion pages of your favorite newspaper.

That’s because editors hate Hitler analogies in cartoons as much as cartoonists love to draw them. They generally think Hitler cartoons are too easy to make, too obvious or unfair, or too incendiary – and they’re not always wrong.

It’s generally true that there’s only a small percentage of cartoons that cartoonists draw that editors want to publish.

Newspaper editors, as their industry continues to shrink, have grown much more timid and soft. At the same time the Internet has grown much more unkind and siloed and willing to let cartoonists be the meanies they wanted to be all along. There’s a culture that exists among editorial cartoonists; most are kind of macho and like to draw harsh cartoons.

Like any good editorial cartoonist, I like to hit people over the head with harsh images and make them think or react. But I’m just a political cartoonist and probably not the guy people would come to for answers to important or complex issues – or, for that matter, for answers about whether Trump is really Hitler without the mustache.
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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

The government once again flirted with a government shutdown this week, with Democrats once again bailing out Republicans to pass a short-term spending bill to get us past the holidays.

Unfortunately, we’ll be right back into this mess in January, when funding will run out for some government agencies. So many of these cartoons – especially Dave Whamond’s funny riff on “Groundhog Day” – will sadly remain relevant come the new year, and probably beyond.

Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:

#1. Dave Whamond

[download cartoon]

#2. John Darkow

[download cartoon]

#3. Chris Weyant

[download cartoon]

#4. Chris Weyant

[download cartoon]

#5. Dave Granlund

[download cartoon]

#6. Dave Granlund

[download cartoon]

#7. Jeff Koterba

[download cartoon]

#8. R.J. Matson

[download cartoon]

#9. Dave Whamond

[download cartoon]

#10. Bob Englehart

[download cartoon]

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

 

People who like to draw serious political cartoons for a living – people like me – have to be extra careful in these divisive times.

In just the last month three major newspapers – the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Guardian in Britain – have pulled down or decided not to publish cartoons drawn by the best editorial cartoonists in the world.

Michael Ramirez, Monte Wolverton and Steve Bell each bravely applied their talents and opinions to the brutal war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas that started Oct. 7.

For their troubles, they were charged with being Islamophobic, anti-Semitic or racist by readers, their fellow journalists and editorial boards. Bell was even fired.

The most recent example was at the Washington Post, where my good friend Michael Ramirez ran his caricature of a Hamas spokesman, Ghazi Hamadi, in a suit with five women and children roped to his body.

“How dare Israel attack civilians…” the Hamas spokesman was saying.

You’d think it’d be easy for anyone to get the point Ramirez was making. Many cartoonists have used the same idea of Hamas or Hezbollah wearing children as human shields, including me.

But many readers immediately expressed outrage on social media and bombarded the paper’s comment section from their silos.

Ramirez was charged with excusing Israel’s war crimes and pushing Israeli military talking points and accused of being a racist for his malicious, offensive and “grotesque caricature” of a Palestinian.

The reader outrage was so intense that the boss of the Post’s opinion section, David Shipley, “re-evaluated” his decision.

He didn’t just pull it down from the paper’s web site. He issued an apology for having “missed something profound, and divisive” and published a selection of critical comments by readers.

Ramirez ably defended himself on Michael Smerconish’s Nov. 11 show on CNN.

Calling the charges against him “ridiculous,” he said, “The cartoon was very specific. It pointed out the hypocrisy of an organization that uses civilians as shields” and said his critics “used the race card as a way to eliminate a contrary political opinion they don’t agree with.”

I agree with Ramirez. It was outrageous how quickly – and abjectly — the Post caved to the complaints of its noisiest, most partisan and most sensitive readers.

What happened last month at the Philadelphia Inquirer to my good friend Monte Wolverton was another example of how careful editorial cartoonists have to be today.

My small business represents Wolverton and syndicates his work. His Oct. 18 cartoon showed an oversized Israeli army boot crushing Hamas terrorists.

It ran in many other newspapers without any complaints, but the Inquirer reconsidered and decided to take it down and apologize because its editors thought the cartoon reinforced “pernicious anti-Semitic tropes about Israeli aggression.”

I suggested to Monte that he withdraw the cartoon and apologize for it because I think any big military boot in an editorial cartoon could be seen as a Nazi boot and portraying Jews as Nazis is an anti-Semitic trope.

The most outlandish – and unjustified – case of cartoon cancelling happened to the highly respected Steve Bell of the Guardian newspaper in Britain. He was fired after 40 years at the paper, over a cartoon that was never even published.

His fatal cartoon depicted Benjamin Netanyahu carving the map of Gaza on his bare belly with a scalpel and saying “Residents of Gaza get out now.” The cartoon drew upon a famous photo of Lyndon Johnson, lifting his shirt to show a scar from a recent surgery, which formed the basis for a famous cartoon by David Levine, with LBJ showing a scar shaped like Vietnam on his belly – an image familiar to all cartoonists and a good analogy. Gaza is Netanyahu’s Vietnam.

Bell quoted his bosses as saying the cartoon could be seen as anti-Semitic because somehow they believed it was playing on the “pound of flesh” line spoken by Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s 1596 play The Merchant of Venice.

On my “Caglecast” podcast I asked the top three editorial cartoonists in Israel if Bell’s cartoon qualified as anti-Semitic and they agreed it wasn’t even close. Declaring Bell’s cartoon anti-Semitic was a ridiculous stretch.

But it shows how political cartoonists of today really have to know where to draw their lines.

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com