The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

https://www.chappatte.com/en/the-end-of-political-cartoons-at-the-new-york-times/

by tin7in • 7 years ago

234 175 7 years ago

starik362• 7 years ago

The decision to no longer have political cartoons reminds me of something from earlier days. Someone at the multinational I worked at did a prod a deployment and it went pretty badly. There was downtime of about 15-20 minutes. So immediately an edict comes from up high - we shall never have deployment during hours of x to y. Just massive CYA.

The guy isn't wrong about twitter mobs mowing down everything in their path and that's stupid. But he is speaking about it now, when it affected him. He had a great podium - should have said something when it was directed at someone he didn't like.

sgift• 7 years ago

The guy isn't wrong about twitter mobs mowing down everything in their path and that's stupid. But he is speaking about it now, when it affected him. He had a great podium - should have said something when it was directed at someone he didn't like.

Seems like he did. From the post:

Over the last years, with the Cartooning for Peace Foundation we established with French cartoonist Plantu and the late Kofi Annan - a great defender of cartoons - or on the board of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, I have consistently warned about the dangers of those sudden (and often organized) backlashes that carry everything in their path.

starik362• 7 years ago

Ahhh, you are right. My bad. Good catch.

Bakary4• 7 years ago

I don't think people can be blamed for only having an interest in things when affected by it. There's only so much time and energy available to each of us.

mamurphy• 7 years ago

Relevant tweet that links to this same article and has a self-referential political cartoon: https://twitter.com/PatChappatte/status/1138145415604449280

The linked article is currently down for me, as is the Google cache; does anyone have a mirror? I presume the article explains the Netanyahu cartoon that the tweet references.

My hot take without (being able to be) reading the article: No more political humor because of an internet mob seems like quite the shame.

heegemcgee• 7 years ago

Wayback Machine cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20190610203116/https://www.chappa...

unethical_ban2• 7 years ago

Was there an announcement by the New York Times to do this? I am not calling him into question; I just wonder with what silence and shame they have made this decision.

Should they next ban their op-eds for their sometimes offensive ideas expressed?

dlivingston• 7 years ago

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in."

This is a significant problem, not just for newsrooms, but for companies and individuals.

Nuance is not permitted in 2019 - this is simply the latest flavor of puritanical outrage that grips humanity. From the Salem witch trials to the Red Scare to the Harry Potter book burnings of the early 2000s, we are now privy to the latest incarnation of something as old as homo sapiens themselves.

The issue now is that the puritanical outrage stretches past the pulpit and Letters to the Editor and directly into your notifications, your DMs, your timeline; broadcast across the world and sending newsrooms and corporations scrambling with half-arsed apologies.

gfodor• 7 years ago

It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist. You can, in fact, log out of Twitter and never log back in again. Most of the time doing so will have zero long term negative impact, since the mob is fickle, trapped in their filter bubbles, and will move onto the next outrage in days if not hours.

The mobs that cause doxing or have credible threats of harm upon on individuals (like job loss or even violence) do in fact wield incredible, terrifying power though.

the_snooze• 7 years ago

Is there really much of a difference between the two? A sufficiently large angry only mob is bound to have at least a couple people who are willing to take things too far.

_vertigo• 7 years ago

What is confusing? Even if you yourself log out of Twitter, other people are still looking at it. In that sense, they don't cease to exist when you put your phone down, because other people are still paying attention to them.

Sure, as long as they don't know who you are, then it's not such a big deal. An online mob that's mad at you but doesn't know who you are is easy enough to ignore - just log out, as you said. But increasingly it feels like it is less and less likely that the mob does not know who you are. A Twitter mob knows that its outrage is for naught unless it can cause lasting harm to its target, and so it goes to great efforts to dox those targets. Almost always, it seems, the target is doxxed and then their life is ripped to shreds.

quietbritishjim• 7 years ago

It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist.

If you are a company then bad stories on Twitter could cause a significant drop in business. So if you just choose to ignore Twitter, that does not mean that it may as well not exist.

detaro• 7 years ago

The criticism of the NYT cartoon wasn't just on Twitter, but had demonstrations in front of their office, other large organizations weighting in, ...

colechristensen• 7 years ago

the latest flavor of puritanical outrage

For some time I have been searching for ways to express how the worst characteristics of religion people give for leaving persist widely with nonbelievers. This expresses it nicely.

youeseh• 7 years ago

Oh man, I think what you're trying to say is: You're trying to figure out how the worst characteristics of religious people also exist in nonbelievers. Is that right?

There will always be people who have varying amounts of commitment to their inherited and / or adopted value systems.

For example: I'm pretty gung ho about surfing. I'm all for property rights but turning beaches into private property... well now, shut the front door!

yellowstuff• 7 years ago

"Moral panic" is probably the term you want.

cm21872• 7 years ago

Except that the said newsrooms are more often than not the ones that amplify and give a legitimacy to these mobs by printing their reactions as if it was somehow the reaction of the people. The NY Times itself actively participated in many of these lynchings, like the Covington kids.

To me it looks more like a newsroom that likes playing with fire, got burned itself, and decides to cut its exposure so it can keep playing.

jdoliner• 7 years ago

This is how I see it too, things like the Covington kids create a backlash against the newsrooms that promulgate them. And NYT gave them too perfect of an opportunity when they published a remake of a Nazi propaganda comic that could easily be portrayed as antisemitic.

hn_throwaway_99• 7 years ago

If anything, that's the thing I hate most about Twitter. A journalist who wants to write a story with a particular angle can easily find tons of supporting viewpoints on Twitter, and usually at least a few of these are somewhat clever or snarky.

So the journalist writes the article and then uses these examples from Twitter to show that "the masses" agree, or are equally outraged as the author.

Since when do we start giving every rando who can shout something from Twitter equal weight?

Chazprime• 7 years ago

Yup, media outlets like the NYT did this to themselves really.

At some point they decided that a story could be manufactured from a few outraged individuals, even if those sources were random or completely unknown users. Bam...there's your instant moral outrage. It didn't matter that their story might be a grossly inaccurate sampling of readers or have little factual basis, the only thing that mattered was that suddenly a mob formed around them, instantly amplifying their message.

I suppose this has done wonders for those sites looking to increase ad revenue, but I wonder what the actual damage is to political discourse in this country.

rdtsc• 7 years ago

The issue now is that the puritanical outrage stretches past the pulpit and Letters to the Editor and directly into your notifications,

I think many people have realized that they can control the discourse by pretending to be offended. And it is not easy to figure out if someone is genuinely distraught at seeing a cartoon like that (or anything really) or they are just claiming they are.

acqq• 7 years ago

And it is not easy to figure out if someone is genuinely distraught at seeing a cartoon like that (or anything really) or they are just claiming they are

We should just not care. Somebody is always going to be offended with something. You can't please everyone. Somebody being offended in not an excuse to publish something. That's what's wrong with the present expectations -- the acceptance that "offending" someone is an excuse enough not to print something.

We should simply stop accepting that somebody being "offended" is enough to produce a veto to publish anything.

If anybody is scared they should also just admit that. But not accept that those who threat him or her have any right to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Draw_Mohammed_Day

"Molly Norris drew the original, poster-like cartoon on April 20, 2010, which declared May 20, 2010, to be the first annual "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day". The drawing showed various anthropomorphized objects, including a coffee cup, a cherry and a box of pasta, each claiming to be the likeness of Muhammad."

"FBI officials reportedly notified Norris warning her that they considered it a "very serious threat."[143][144]

"Norris has since changed her name and gone into hiding. According to the Seattle Weekly (her former employer), this decision was based on "the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI.""

"As of 2015, Norris is still in hiding and jihadist threats against her life continue."

We should publish exactly what is "offensive" until there is enough of it that nobody's life can be threatened.

Otherwise we accept to be bullied.

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting

"The gunmen burst into the meeting room and called out Charb's name to target him before opening fire. The shooting lasted five to ten minutes. The gunmen aimed at the journalists' heads and killed them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_director)

"Van Gogh was shot with a HS2000 and stabbed by Mohammed Bouyeri while cycling to work on 2 November 2004 at about 9 o'clock in the morning."

https://www.salon.com/2004/11/24/vangogh_2/

"On the morning of Nov. 2 in a busy street in east Amsterdam, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri pulled out a gun and shot controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was riding a bike to his office. Van Gogh hit the ground and stumbled across the street to a nearby building. He didn't make it. As the Moroccan strode toward him, van Gogh shouted, "We can still talk about it! Don't do it! Don't do it." But the Moroccan didn't stop. He shot him again, slit van Gogh's throat and stuck a letter to his chest with a knife. He was slaughtered like an animal, witnesses said. "Cut like a tire," said one. Van Gogh, the Dutch master's great-grand-nephew, was 47 years old."

mratzloff• 7 years ago

I wonder how different humanity would be if anger and the fight-or-flight response could be disconnected, or the dopamine response from self-righteousness could be severed.

mistermann3• 7 years ago

Psilocybin may provide somewhat of a reasonable approximation of this at appropriate dosages.

naveen99• 7 years ago

I wonder if there are any interesting flame wars between emacs and vim supporters on twitter.

mc32• 7 years ago

Sure there is ridiculous posturing and fake outrage on Twitter....

But this is the NYT (who stood for journalism at one point) and political cartoons — which is satire and lampooning of the political class and politics.

Shying away from that is indicative of something gone wrong.

I know the NYT only started political cartoons in the last few decades, but this can’t be good for political freedom.

nine_k• 7 years ago

The underlying issue is the assumption that nobody may have their views put to doubt, or worse, criticized. The right not to be offended, not written anywhere, somehow became holy.

Not that I would offend people on purpose: it usually hampers real discussion and leave people more polarized and striving less for understanding.

But for some, feeling offended and demonstrating that feeling as loudly as possible became an easy publicity tool. It exploits the natural propensity of people to help those who are hurt.

It's very sad that few (or no?) large media ever was able to say: "Suck it up. Your opinion and this guy's opinion are different. This is how freedom works: by giving equal rights to people you don't like." (But freedom is not very valued by many, it seems; often definitely not as much as being right, or at least having the upper hand.)

ianschenck• 7 years ago

Nuance is not permitted in 2019

Also, screwing up, learning that, changing your ways, admitting you were wrong, adapting is not permitted either. It will follow you forever, regardless.

dosy• 7 years ago

I really want to read the perspective of some great contemporary thinkers on this. Who were the thinkers writing about this in a compelling way and who it's likely that in 20 years or 50 years we'll be able to look back on and say their essays really understood the zeitgeist?

What shocks me is how companies and organizations have reacted to this. Every time a significant decision is deferred to mob rule I feel a little bit of power departs civil and ordered society and is transferred to the mob. Which seems to me to validate the notion that we ought to be afraid of mobs. That's a pretty scary society to live in and doesn't really mesh with the principle of rule of law.

The only reference point I have for this is historically the utilisation of and empowerment of angry mobs has coincided with times of great political turmoil such as a revolution. And that historically at least you could say that these mobs are created by breaking down the existing structures of authority. I think you can find a reference for that in Western society where the power of traditional moral authority or institutional symbols of authority have declined or been dismantled.

Probably the least controversial idea I have as to a cause of all this is that there must be a huge amount of potential emotional energy present in the population that is being directed towards are tapped by these expressions of outrage and mob outburst. I think it's reasonable to say that this potential emotional energy was not created by these topics it was created elsewhere by foundational issues such as economics but it's being directed towards these topics perhaps as cathartic outlet.

Noos• 7 years ago

Said journalists and publishers try and whip up moralistic mobs in service of their goals, though. Then when it doesn't go their way, the shock and outrage happen.

Everyone is happy when puritanism is what they like...HN's endless preening about riding bicycles, outlawing cars in cities, outlawing sugar, getting rid of facebook, and more are good examples. When their enemies use it though, watch out. Unfortunately the realization that a person themselves can be like that is hard won and hard to counter even when knowing it exists.

blueboo2• 7 years ago

From the Salem witch trials to the Red Scare to the Harry Potter book burnings

some how a master of nuance missed that one of these things is rather not like the other...

mAEStro-paNDa• 7 years ago

Here's an article over the cartoon mentioned here that sparked outrage in April which led to this:

https://nypost.com/2019/04/28/new-york-times-condemned-for-a...

benj1112• 7 years ago

Is it actually anti Semitic to portray a (Jewish) head of state as a (guide) dog?

I'm going by the description here, rather than the actual imagery, but as described it doesn't seem to me to anti Semitic.

jeremyjh• 7 years ago

I haven't see the cartoon, but the link above describes it as "Netanyahu as a guide dog leading a blind President Trump in a skullcap."

If you want to make a statement that the US blindly supports Israel, that is not in itself anti-Semitic. But why put Trump in a skullcap?

diydsp• 7 years ago

No. Antizionism, anti-Israel, etc is not Anti-Semitic. Israel is a politic nation-state, subject to critique just like Zimbabwe or Australia. It's not equivalent to the culture, race or religion of Judaism. Many Jews disagree with the Israeli government's actions.

But don't just take my word for it. This has been a long-debated topic. take a look at both sides: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=antizionim+is+not+antisemitic&t=ff...

refurb• 7 years ago

The sensitivity is around similar images being used by Nazi Germany to depict jews as rats, lice, etc. I can see why people see the parallels.

naasking2• 7 years ago

It does play into the common anti-Semitic narrative of Jews "controlling everything".

nerpderp82• 7 years ago

Can someone explain how the cartoon is antisemetic? Calling it such doesn't make it so. If I blend Putin into a Cassowary crossed with a Peacock would it not be apropos? Cartoons are supposed to be edgy and uncomfortable.

It looks like like the NYT succumbed to the mob whipped up by the Trump administration, it meerly doesn't want the criticism.

Chlatstibur• 7 years ago

I would recommend this article [1] that explains the background of why the cartoon is problematic.

For an analogy: Drawing Trump as a banana eating ape would not raise eyes, while drawing Obama like this undoubtedly would.

[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/285781/sov...

Rebelgecko4• 7 years ago

Showing a non-Jewish world leader in a yarmulke put it a bit over the top for me. I think the star of David was fair game because it's a symbol of Israel as a country, but depicting Trump as some sort of crypto-Jew felt like imagery you'd see in Nazi propaganda or an illustrated version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

njharman• 7 years ago

Anything that does not praise Israel is antisemetic. More accurately such will be labeled as antisemetic by various special interest groups to further their own agendas and occasionally get picked up and amplified by the rage mob.

prepend2• 7 years ago

I don’t think it is directly anti-Semitic, but is similar to other things that are. So it makes me uneasy that perhaps the author was trying to cloak anti-semitism.

I felt similar when political cartoons were made picturing Obama as a monkey even if the surface was non-racist. I thought I remembered a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” cartoon but could not find it. Even though the cartoon wasn’t technically racist, I didn’t like it because it could easily be cover for genuine racial bigotry.

hestefisk• 7 years ago

This reminds me of the famous Muhammad drawings in 2005 in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (JP). Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East. Had it happened again today, the Puritan twittersphere would have been all over it and JP would likely have had to follow same route as NYT. Very sad.

praneshp2• 7 years ago

Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East

Was this an universal viewpoint in the West? As a non-Muslim teen in India I saw it as mocking Islam (I get that others' mileage varies).

cm21872• 7 years ago

In the case of Charlie Hebdo the intention was clearly to mock Islam indeed. But I am mystified that we are questioning in 2019 the right to blasphemy in a modern, western, free, secular society.

unethical_ban2• 7 years ago

It does both. It is not acceptable in the West to call for someone's death over a cartoon. So more than mocking Islam per se, it is meant to say "We are allowed to do this here".

sonnyblarney3• 7 years ago

" As a non-Muslim teen in India I saw it as mocking Islam (I get that others' mileage varies)"

Yes, it kind of was.

But should people be able to 'mock' a religion?

Should they face death threats becauase they 'mocked' something?

This is the whole point.

I have a slight inclination towards a specific religion and I can assure you it's 'mocked all day' and I don't care, as long as it's not done in a vile way. And even when it is, I'm not calling for suppression.

marcosdumay• 7 years ago

It was mocking that rule prohibiting images of their god. Mocking a stupid rule is not the same as mocking an entire religion.

DiogenesKynikos• 7 years ago

I saw it as right-wing, quasi-fascist xenophobes making a big show of standing up for freedom of speech by mocking a religious minority that they want to kick out of Europe.

They have a right to publish those cartoons. I view them the same way as I'd view an anti-Semite who published cartoons with stereotypical, negative portrayals of Jews, while advocating for kicking Jews out of Europe. I'd hold my nose and believe in their right to free speech, but I wouldn't lionize them.

belorn• 7 years ago

Mocking implies that the purpose was to make Muslim people feel bad, and I don't think that is the case. I see it in the context of works like The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (1995), The Meaning of Life (1983) by Monthy Python, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), and South park episode Trapped in the Closet (2006). The point is to illustrate and highlight the superstitious believes of religion in the context of existing culture that gives it enormous power and influence.

Among those four, two use comedy as the medium. Three of them has been banned in various countries. The only exception is the south park episode and I suspect the only reason is because scientology is not the majority religion in any country or state.

okmokmz2• 7 years ago

Yes, I know many people who believed that it was some semblance of "a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East"

seventhtiger7• 7 years ago

What would happen to a couple of Muslims burning a US flag in some parts of the US? I won't jump straight to murder, but I'll say physical violence would be highly likely.

This is not whataboutism. I'm not saying it's ok because it happens elsewhere. I'm just arguing against the portrayal of it as a uniquely Muslim problem. I think we would be able to find some icon or symbol in every culture which some subset of people consider murder a valid reaction to disrespect of that symbol.

jlawson• 7 years ago

I think this just shows you believe some ugly stereotypes about 'some parts of the US'.

Your example is wholly imaginary, where Muslims murdering people for mocking or criticizing their religion has many many examples in modern and old times.

Theo van Gogh got his head cut off. Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives in hiding with armed guards. So do Robert Spencer and Salman Rushdie. Charlie Hebdo staffers slaughtered. Draw Mohammed contests in Texas attacked by armed terrorists. And on and on.

And this stuff isn't happening in rural Pakistan. It happens in places with very few Muslims. They travel to Connor these crimes. In your analogy it would be like a hillbilly southerner traveling to Morocco to mutilate someone who insulted George Washington. It would be like that happening consistently over and over for decades.

There's no comparison. Islam is unique in this.

IdontRememberIt• 7 years ago

A few weeks before that event, he was on Swiss TV (he lives in Geneva) saying that he never felt pressure and did not care... Sad...

donohoe2• 7 years ago

To be clear, the NYT never did a lot of cartoons nor was it known for them.

I really don’t think this is a big deal.

If The New Yorker or sone other publication did, then maybe.

colpabar• 7 years ago

My issue isn't that they no longer have political cartoons, it's why they made the decision to remove them. And to be fair, we don't know yet. I haven't found an official statement from the NYT on this; I've only seen tweets and this guy's piece on it.

donohoe2• 7 years ago

There is no ‘official’ Statement because this isn’t a big deal. This is in the realm of deciding what freelances to go with given budgets and other factors.

To this guy, this decision is clearly significant. For someone at NYT it was just another Tuesday.

mevile2• 7 years ago

Political cartoons are, in my opinion, reductionist garbage that fail to take into consideration nuance and complexity and context. The caricature that inflate the size of ears and chins and lips and noses is not dignifying and doesn't add any value to whatever argument is being made, and can sometimes even be racist. There's no rebuttal to a political cartoon, there's no dialogue. They're cheap and easy to make and easy to consume and are just as easy to forget.

I don't care if they exist or not, either way I don't read them, but standing up for political cartoons as being a thing worth defending, I don't think it is. I think they hurt more than they help.

Go look at political cartoons from the sides of opinions you disagree with and see how they make you feel. Are they convincing you of anything or are they just making you mad?

Hoasi• 7 years ago

Political cartoons are, in my opinion, reductionist garbage that fail to take into consideration nuance and complexity and context.

Not the good ones. As with everything, the good ones are rare and difficult. On occasions, the form even raises to an art form. Also, the point of a good political cartoon is usually not to influence of skew your opinion.

awithrow• 7 years ago

Do you have some examples of good ones? I tend to agree with the parent but would like to see examples of the contrary.

ikeyany3• 7 years ago

either way I don't read them, but standing up for political cartoons as being a thing worth defending, I don't think it is. I think they hurt more than they help.

I don't understand how you can understand their effects without reading them. What exactly brings you to this conclusion?

sonnyblarney3• 7 years ago

"Political cartoons are, in my opinion, reductionist garbage that fail to take into consideration nuance and complexity and context. "

They don't have to.

They can just be stupid and funny (to some) as well, that's fine too.

jmbi• 7 years ago

Political cartoons are, in my opinion, reductionist garbage that fail to take into consideration nuance and complexity and context.

Ironically, so are most news publications today, fueled by blue check journalists living in the same three cities...

roenxi• 7 years ago

Standing up for free speech is a great thing to do; to reframe what you are saying we are dealing with one of the mildest outlets for anger that a demographic could possibly express. We want people to do that rather than escalating to, eg, yelling at people in person.

People get angry all the time and a lot of them don't know how to deal with it. A political cartoon may not be a shining example of debate but it is a great way to let people see that their feelings are understood and broadly communicated.

If it doesn't cover expressing an unpopular, offensive and unimportant opinion as an image, what does free speech mean to you? Are we only to have free speech on topics are declared important by popular survey?

Just to make it clear why that is a ridiculous idea, the principle of free speech is ultimately not for majorities, it is for minorities. You don't really need a concept of free speech to talk about things that are widely recognised as important and worthwhile by everyone. It is top protect things that are generally believed to be better left unsaid. Things like purposefully upsetting people with a cartoon.

mevile2• 7 years ago

A newspaper not publishing political cartoons is not a free speech issue. If the government were banning political cartoons, then it would be. A newspaper can print or not print whatever it wants.

meruru3• 7 years ago

I actually agree with you and I wouldn't mourn the loss of political cartoons, but the fact that a Twitter mob can do that to a major news outlet is troublesome and scary.

rawTruthHurts• 7 years ago

"Are they convincing you of anything or are they just making you mad?" They give me a reasonable overview of the zeitgeist.

"... fail to take into consideration nuance and complexity and contex" It's up to you to do your homework and dig into such specifics.

"... lips and noses is not dignifying ..." Not that conflicting written political pieces tend to dignify the opposing side either. Now, if caricatures make your heart bleed, you're very entitled to your opinion.

"There's no rebuttal to a political cartoon, there's no dialogue" Not until the internet came up and made communication 2-way.

"They're cheap and easy to make and easy to consume and are just as easy to forget." Like pretty much 90% of nowadays "journalism". Maybe the word should be "infotainment"

pgodzin• 7 years ago

This is the era of images. In a world of short attention span, their power has never been so big.

Given the reach of social media with respect to images, cartoons, memes, etc, do we need newspapers to be the distributors of political cartoons? Does it simply add legitimacy to some cartoons to separate them from the huge amount of low quality social media content?

NE2z2T9qi2• 7 years ago

I think this piece is a great example of smug, establishment romanticism which grossly overvalues form over function. A political cartoon hasn't made me laugh, think deeply, or--most importantly--change my worldview in years. It's the most self-satisfied, pretentious, and outdated medium I know of. The author's notion that the loss of political cartoons is a serious loss of visual political culture is a self-absorbed joke. Visual political memes have become a massive and persistent grassroots social phenomenon with far more influence and engagement than too-clever-by-half political cartoons... not to mention certain animated shows with extremely sharp political and social satire. I don't think the author really regrets loss of political discourse. I think he regrets no longer being considered part of the political chattering-class establishment, even as that establishment loses its influence in a world of democratized information flow and opinion-sharing.

number_six• 7 years ago

I would recommend Bruce McKinnon - he's great https://www.artizans.com/browse.htm?artist=2

enraged_camel2• 7 years ago

>A political cartoon hasn't made me laugh or think deeply in years.

This probably says more about you than about political cartoons as a medium.

Is it possible that you have become so used to over-the-top memes and shallow animated shows with instant-gratification "satire" that you have lost the ability (and/or patience) to pause and ponder the subtler, many-layered messages underneath traditional cartoons?

jimmaswell• 7 years ago

Could you post one of these alleged subtle and multi-layered political cartoons, with a short analysis?

NE2z2T9qi2• 7 years ago

Yes, it must be the subtlety and witty nuance that throws me off. https://www.chappatte.com/en/images/trump-overdose/

Bakary4• 7 years ago

The traditional cartoons aren't subtler and multi-layered though for the most part. The commentary usually defaults to some tautogical theme along the lines of "wouldn't it better if world had more of peace or some other good quality and less of war or some other bad quality".

It's then interspersed with some self-referential pieces about their own profession where characters have pencils replacing weapons or whichever object you'd expect instead. They all too often have to label the elements in the picture to make it comprehensible, which ruins its impact.

Some of the funniest cartoons tend instead to have a cynical or absurdist take on things, which is not too far off from a high-quality meme.

hybrids2• 7 years ago

Putting giant labels on top of everything and making grotesque caricatures of political figures is not what I would call subtle

your-wrong• 7 years ago

For a number of reasons, I don't think you're a real person. I think you have an agenda. I think you're here to provide artificial tone and voice to a conversation on The Internet, in an insubstantive matter.

If drawings and charicatures accompanied by text captions and word baloons in print media haven't appealed to your tastes in some time, it is less the fault of the medium, and more likely founded in massive social and cultural shifts fomented by the potent emerging technologies currently changing the world.

unreal37• 7 years ago

"Political memes" is the new "political cartoon".

And now anyone can be a cartoonist.

elihu• 7 years ago

This is similar to comics and webcomics. It turns out that if you have your own website, you don't have to satisfy the censors in order to post anything.

Sometimes editors have good reasons not to let cartoonists put anything they like in the funny pages or the political cartoons, but the end result is usually very sterile. There's a lot of things you can say in that medium (e.g. the work of Bill Watterson or Gary Larson), but also a lot of things you can't.

That's a problem especially for political cartoons, because they usually poke fun at specific people, but you can't poke fun at just anyone because readers might get mad. The idea that there's an Overton window for people it's socially acceptable to ridicule should make us at least a little bit uncomfortable. Sometimes it'll be the emperor with no clothes and that's fine, but we might want to include the guy that sold him an invisible robe (but they own the newspaper too), and to exclude the kid who told everyone the emperor wasn't decently attired.

blueboo2• 7 years ago

anyone can be a writer; abolish media

raxxorrax3• 7 years ago

I withhold any opinion until I see a XKCD that expresses my feelings towards your statement.

ehvatum2• 7 years ago

The drastic step of eliminating all political cartoons carries a very specific and misleading implication, if one assumes that the NYT is impartial. Which they are not: https://nypost.com/2019/04/30/anti-semitic-scandal-at-the-ne...

With that in mind, ceasing publication of all political cartoons evidences extremely poor editorial discretion at the NYT. What, they are incapable of excluding Palestinian propaganda? Apparently: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/middleeast/christma...

ehvatum2• 7 years ago

To elaborate on my comment, by eliminating all cartoons, the NYT invites one to think that politically correct over-sensitivity is the cause. Otherwise, why would they not simply avoid publishing anti-Semitic cartoons? Indeed, the author of the blog post suggests that "Twitter mobs" are at fault. But the NYT has an extensive, dark history of profoundly harmful anti-Semitism, including the editorial stance that the Holocaust was not occurring, as it occurred. This is extensively detailed in Buried by the Times, and is supported by that book's absolutely mammoth bibliography: https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Times-Holocaust-Important-News...

kristianc• 7 years ago

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in."

It's strange, and perhaps unfortunate, that having pinned the blame on "Twitter Mobs", the examples he chooses to give are where cartoonists have been silenced by autocratic regimes (Turkey, Venezuela, Russia). The solution in these cases is to push back and defend press freedom, not to cave in and blame faceless social media mobs.

And when it comes to 'social media' mobs, is anyone really going to come into bat for the NYT and claim that the below is not really anti-semitic or homophobic? If you need to lean on anti-Semitic or homophobic tropes let me suggest you're not as funny, incisive or subversive as you think you are. Comparing yourself to CH in such circumstances is to claim a martrydom you don't really deserve [1] [2]

[1] https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/new-york-times-antisemi...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-york-times-trump...

xeeeeeeeeeeenu2• 7 years ago

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/new-york-times-antisemi...

Criticising Israel and pro-Israel policy != antisemitism

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-york-times-trump...

I don't see how it's homophobic. The cartoon portrays Trump and Putin as lovers, supposedly to mock their alleged closeness. It doesn't attack homosexual people.

If the cartoon were portraying e.g. Merkel and Putin, in similar roles, would you call it "heterophobic" (is that a word?), or would it be perfectly acceptable?

legostormtroopr• 7 years ago

The cartoon portrays Trump and Putin as lovers, supposedly to mock their alleged closeness. It doesn't attack homosexual people.

It does attack homosexual people. You can't use "gay" as a slur or as a punchline to a joke anymore. The punchline of the joke isn't "they're close", its "they're so close they're gay".

That makes "being gay" an active of derision or humour, which is an attack on gay people.

icebraining3• 7 years ago

And when it comes to 'social media' mobs, is anyone really going to come into bat for the NYT and claim that the below is not really anti-semitic

Yes, an Israeli: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-that-netanyahu-cart...

apexalpha2• 7 years ago

Honestly, and I'm not trying to anger people here but. I don't think it's anti-semitic at all. It's a cartoon that encapsulated the fact that Trump(s policies) are guided by Netanyahu and Israeli interests. And that Trump follow this blindly (hence the guidance dog image).

I don't really see anything else other than critique of the current Israel - US leadership relationship.

hybrids2• 7 years ago

This seems less like a case the "oh, the PC Police want to do away with political humor!" and more just shifting tides in media - i.e. that the conventional newspaper political cartoon is a form trending towards obsolescence. Political comedy is very much alive, at least in terms of its popularity and range across the political spectrum, attracting from the far left (e.g. Chapo Trap House) to liberals (e.g. most late night hosts) to all your various forms of conservatives (e.g. Crowder). To me the "political cartoon" as we once knew it seems like a dated formula, one that might be argued has already been replaced by the format of internet memes which can serve similar political function.

(Also personally I have never really cared for political cartoons, they've always seemed unfunny and too reductionist. Although I suppose the Stan Kelly Cartoons from The Onion might be an exception.)

vlozc2• 7 years ago

I thought they had to close because they ripped off a Ziggy.

enterx• 7 years ago

This is what you get when you let the mob rule.

babyslothzoo• 7 years ago

How depressing.

stickfigure• 7 years ago

The actual cartoon, in case anyone (like me) is missing context:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ny-times-deeply-sorry-for-anti...

Balgair• 7 years ago

Thanks!

Overall, this seems fairly tame to me. What am I missing? I'm honestly at a loss here.

humanrebar• 7 years ago

It plays into a lot of anti-Semitic tropes. Imagine a cartoon of a black leader depicting him as a dumb violent ape with big lips.

frittig• 7 years ago

it reminds people of this https://mobile.twitter.com/kishkushkay/status/11222905077141...

hnick2• 7 years ago

Caricatures that exaggerate various racial features are fairly risky these days. I have no idea if they stepped over the line here, but you get away with a lot less than you could in the past.

100100010001• 7 years ago

The New York Times is the best paper in the world? Sounds like an absolute without any parameters or qualifiers...

CptFribble• 7 years ago

Social media isn't the problem, low-information mob behavior has always been a thing. Pretty much all of the lynchings that ever happened in the USA occurred way before Jack Dorsey was a twinkle in his father's eye.

The problem is the structural flaws built into our brains.

Consider vision. If I showed you a wall of visual noise with a human face somewhere in the middle, you'd likely pick out the face in an instant. That's because we have physical structures in our visual cortex that specifically filter the information coming down the optic nerve for human faces.

What's funny is that higher judgement seems to work the same way. For most of the history of homo sapiens, we've lived in relatively small groups, and only interacted with comparatively limited amounts of information (compared to the typical internet feed). Think about all the things represented by scrolling down instagram: products and their place in your life, hundreds of people you've met over many years, trends and fads and memes which are themselves complex multi-layered ideas requiring lots of insider knowledge to grasp.

All of this is way more information than what a typical person had to deal with until about 100 years ago at the earliest.

So what's a brain to do? Our minds filter the incoming information until it's distilled down to the simplest possible version, the one with little nuance and zero subtlety. That's the idea that catches, because we lack the machinery to process 10,000 minor details for every little thing we do all the time.

Apply this to political discourse and you'll see why major political candidates spend precious minutes arguing over whether "socialism is bad," or "capitalism is bad." I'm sure many here understand it's way more complicated than that, but if you tried to get a real discussion going about nit-picky policy stuff, it'd go nowhere.

I'm not about to decry "attention spans these days" or anything, because frankly I don't think people are any different than they were 500 years ago, not really. And that's the problem. The only thing that's changed is what amounts to "common knowledge" these days, which is usually also an oversimplification of scientific reality.

The problem is that the world is just too big and too complex for our ill-adapted chimp brains to fully grasp, at least at the population scale, and Twitter and the like amplify this effect.

I don't have any solutions. But I know that we should keep doing the one thing humans are good at: building better tools. We can't exactly make society less complex, but we can probably make tools to understand it without losing (as much) nuance.

That's the only option I can see for fixing this sort of thing in the near-future, because even if these social media problems created selection pressure on humans (which I doubt), it'd be a long long time before we were cranking out baby Homo Interneticus.

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

Yes, this.

Politically correct mobs are changing the world for the worst. In today's world, Eddie Murphy wouldn't make it out the door. And we would be worse off for it.

The great irony is that the very comedians who are being retroactively condemned were cutting-edge for breaking barriers in their day. John Cleese is a glaring example.

I have high hopes the pendulum will some day swing back the other way, and we will all be able to laugh at today's overzealous critics.

smsm425• 7 years ago

It it not just irony, it is on purpose. The PC party has largely captured the media, the academy and the polite society. There are still some local resistance here and there, but in a large measure they won this round of cultural war. So they do not need any troublemakers anymore, they don't want people that constantly test and push the boundaries of acceptable and reveal the absurdity of power and the nakedness of the kings. They are setting the boundaries now, they are the power and they are the kings - why would they tolerate some jackasses questioning what they have struggled so long to achieve? They done their part in the revolution, now to the re-education camps with them! If you read the history of any recent revolution, you'd see this pattern repeated over and over.

b_tterc_p• 7 years ago

Non political comic about political comics that I think about sums up the value of political comics (language warning, I guess)

http://smbc-comics.com/comic/2008-07-02

rdiddly• 7 years ago

So the Times was like "Hey everybody we found the problem: It's the fact that we have political cartoons?"

TomMckenny• 7 years ago

The article raises a very important point but unless I'm missing something, the comments here are identical to the twitter mob being talked about.

Are not statements quickly ripped of in a heat of emotion and consisting solely of impressions, rumors, opinions, hyperbole and intentional bias exactly the problem?

Fjolsvith2• 7 years ago

I am mildly curious if the recent publication of Mark Levin's "Unfreedom of the Press" has any bearing on the changes happening at NYT.

The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

Related Stories