My take on The Washington Post spiking an Ann Telnais editorial cartoon and her quitting in protest, by Hal M. Brown

 

Above is my way of expressing what RawStory conveyed in the illustration for 

WaPo staffer resigns after paper spikes cartoon that jabbed billionaires cozying to Trump

Ann Telnaes is one of my favorite editorial cartoonists. Her overseers at The Washington Post spiked a cartoon for expressing an opinion they objected to. Then she resigned in protest.

Ironically, now more people will see the cartoon than would have seen it in the Post. They spiked her, but in the other meaning of the word, interest in her work will no doubt spike. I for one just subscribed to her substack (here.)

This is her column reacting to her cartoon being rejected.

The cartoon depicted Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner bringing bags of cash to Trump. I doubt too many people would be able to identify all, or even any of them, from the drawing. She didn't even need to draw Trump's face since it is obvious who he is from the fat belly and long tie. 

The brilliant part of the cartoon as far as I'm concerned is the dead Mickey Mouse. I am sure it representing cartoons in general. It was drawn in color. I have no doubt many cartoonists of all kinds were inspired as children to take up their profession by Disney. Before beginning her career as an editorial cartoonist, she worked for several years as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering (reference). 

I have been active on BlueSky for over a month but I didn't know that Ann Telnaes was also there. Now I am following her.

Below are the BlueSky posts from three well known people (click to enlarge).

  Thanks to Telnaise I know know that there's a Freedom Cartoonists Organization (she's on their advisory board) and an organization called Cartoonists Rights (she's a former member of their board).

On a personal note, I am a frustrated cartoonist who aspired to draw cartoons for The New Yorker, which my parents subscribed to, when I was a child. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw very well. Now, with the advent of AI, as my readers know I like to use it and photo manipulation technology to make illustrations for my blogs. 

The only good thing that I see coming out of this is that this kind of censorship by media oligarchs doesn't go unnoticed. In the old days before social media and the internet few people would ever know about something that wasn't published.

How many people, for example, would have known that the Los Angeles Times was owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong who was behind its refusal to make a presidential endorsement? He met privately with Trump during between 2016–2017 in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a position in the administration.

When The Washington Post editors weren't allowed by Jeff Bezos to endorse a candidate and staff members resigned in protest, their disappearance might have gone unnoticed if it wasn't for social media and the internet.

Ann wrote in her substack  "I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist." She wrong. It isn't being dismissed and it is causing a stir. Here's the Google News search for the story. Click below to enlarge image.

It even was reported on in The New York Times which doesn't even have a regularly pubished editorial cartoonist.

It must be noted that when The New York Times stopped publishing editorial cartoons in 2019 The Washington Post published The New York Times cuts all political cartoons, and cartoonists are not happy.

Excerpt:

Some political artists view the Times’s decision to end daily political cartoons as a repudiation of the art form.

“It is their clarity and pointedness, the sharpness of their satire, that make them such powerful vehicles for expressing opinion,” Association of American Editorial Cartoonists President Kevin Siers, a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer, said in a statement Tuesday.

“There is no ‘on the other hand’ in an editorial cartoon,” the AAEC continued. “This power, understandably, makes editors nervous, but to completely discontinue their use is letting anxiety slide into cowardice.”

Speaking to the larger landscape, Matt Wuerker, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for Politico, said: “The collapsing space for political cartoons and satirical commentary because editors don’t have the spine to stand up to social-media outrage campaigns is bad for free speech, and bad because political debate benefits from a little humor now and again."

Taking a similar view on the bigger issue is Daryl Cagle, head of the syndicate Cagle Cartoons, which distributes Chappatte’s (he published in the International Times) work to about 800 subscribing clients.

“By choosing not to print editorial cartoons in the future, the Times can be sure that their editors will never again make a poor cartoon choice,” Cagle said. “Editors at the Times have also made poor choices of words in the past. I would suggest that the Times should also choose not to print words in the future — just to be on the safe side.”

There have been quite a few cartoons depicting the Statue of Liberty crying over the loss of democracy in the United States. My own idea for a cartoon about the death of a vital part of our democracy, Freedom of the Press, is a graveyard with a flag flying at half-staff with tombstones with the names of the publications whose content is controlled the corporate owners.

This is Ann's website.

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