A Brilliant Cartoon
by digby
Michael de Adder was born, raised, and educated in New Brunswick province and was a regular presence in its newspapers. Brunswick News Inc., which owns the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, the Moncton Times & Transcript, and the Moncton Daily Gleaner, has now disassociated itself from de Adder.
The above cartoon is apparently the one that went a step too far for Brunswick News Inc.
According to Wikipedia de Adder “draws approximately 10 cartoons weekly and, at over a million readers per day, he is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.”
Can you believe it? In Canada, fergawdsakes.
Political cartooning is under tremendous duress from all sides these days. In fact, all of political satire is under duress. And that’s a shame. It’s an important part of political commentary and has been for a very long time.
Here are some historic cartoons that changed the world from Victor Navasky:
James Gillray
Napoleon once said that the English caricaturist James Gillray “did more than all the armies in Europe to bring me down.” Here’s an example: “Manic ravings, or Little Boney in a Strong Fit” (1803).
Honore Daumier
In 1832, two years after King Louis Philippe famously abolished censorship of the press in France, Honore Daumier produced his famous pear-shaped caricature of Louis Philippe called “Gargantua.” Daumier, his publisher, Philipon, and his printer were all indicted for “arousing hatred of and contempt of the King’s government, and for offending the King’s person.” Only Daumier went to prison.
Thomas Nast
Nast’s depictions of Boss Tweed are justly credited with bringing him and his corrupt Tammany Hall cronies down. Tweed famously said, “I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles. My constituents can’t read. But they can’t help seeing them damn pictures.”
Art Young and Robert Minor:
Young and Minor were two of the artists whose work appeared regularly in The Masses. In August 1917, the Post Office revoked The Masses’ mailing privileges. The Masses was brought to trial twice as the editors (including the cartoonists) were charged with “conspiring to obstruct conscription.” Although Young and Minor stayed out of prison, the lawsuits caused the magazine to suspend publication.
Louis Raemaekers:
During World War I, no cartoonist exercised more influence than Louis Raemaekers of Holland. Charged with “endangering Dutch neutrality,” his cartoons led the Germans to offer a 12,000 guilder reward for his capture, dead or alive. A German newspaper, summarizing the terms of peace Germany would exact after it won the war, declared that indemnity would be demanded for every one of Raemaekers’ cartoons. Example shown here: “The German Tango.”
David Low:
As Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, reported to David Low’s publisher, “You cannot imagine the frenzy that these cartoons cause. As soon as a copy of The Evening Standard arrives, it is poured over for [David] Low’s cartoon and if it is of Hitler, as it usually is, telephones buzz, tempertures rise, fevers mount, the whole governmental system of Germany is in an uproar. It has hardly subsided before the next one arrives. England can’t understand the violence of the reaction.”
Actually, Low had a theory to explain Hitler’s fits. “No dictator is inconvenienced or even displeased by cartoons showing his terrible person stalking through blood and mud. That is the kind of idea about himself that the power-seeking world-beater would want to propagate. It not only feeds his vanity but unfortuntely it shows profitable returns in an awed world. What he does not want to get around is the idea that he is an ass, which is really damaging.” For example, “Rendezvous.”
Der Sturmer:
Every week, Der Sturmer, the notorious anti-Semitic Nazi weekly (whose masthead slogan read: “The Jew is our misfortune”), ran vicious, ugly caricatures of Jews on its cover. A Der Sturmer Jew was easily recognized: ugly, unshaven, short, fat, drooling, hook-nosed. After the war, the Nuemberg Tribunal indicted 24 defendants, who represented a cross section of Nazi leadership, on charges of crime against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (including an overarching conspiracy count). Der Sturmer’s Jules Streicher was the only editor among them. Primarily as a result of running weekly cartoons like “The Satanic Servant Judah” by Fips (1934), Streicher was found guilty, hanged, and cremated at Dachau.
More at the link.