I’ve had cause in many commentaries on the Trump presidency to cite the aphorism
If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.
But equally relevant in this context is the aphorism
A picture is worth a thousand words.
And there’s no gainsaying that nothing makes us laugh while speaking volumes more than cartoons. That’s why I’ve been publishing them every weekend since I launched this weblog 15 years ago.
The New York Times is the world’s most influential newspaper. Moreover, it publishes “All the News That’s Fit to Print” – even if it says so itself. Therefore, just imagine my dismay when it decided that cartoons were no longer fit to print.
The New York Times is yanking daily political cartoons from its international edition after it stirred controversy by publishing a drawing deemed anti-Semitic.
The Times released a statement that said it had been considering ending the cartoons and will stop publishing them in July. It already has ceased running them in domestic editions.
(The New York Post, July 11, 2019)
This is the kind of recrimination we’ve come to expect from radical Muslims – whose self-righteousness has completely subjugated their sense of humor. I decried this in “Avenging Jihadists Attack ‘Charlie Hebdo’,” January 8, 2015.
But even Western newspaper publishers are firing cartoonists for daring to make readers laugh. This has been the case most notably when their subject was the buffoon currently playing president of the United States. I decried this in “Michael de Adder Is the Latest Cartoonist Fired for Lambasting Trump,” July 2, 2019. But I hailed those daring cartoonists in “Cartoons Best Explain Trump’s Policies on Guns, Vapes, and Everything Else,” September 21, 2019.
Granted, some cartoonists take cutting-edge humor over the edge with cartoons drawn to trigger more hate than laughter. And, when they do, they should be condemned. But yanking all cartoons because one transgresses raises this proverb-vs-idiom conflict:
One bad apple spoils the whole bunch (with all due respect to the Osmonds) vs Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
I side with the idiom. Granted, this Times decision does not mean the end of editorial cartoons. In fact, anyone with a computer can access thousands on a daily basis.
The concern is that any hint of controversy might move many local papers to follow its lead. And without cartoons to make us laugh, politics these days will surely make us cry.
Related commentaries:
Charlie Hebdo…
lambasting Trump…
Cartoons best explain trump…