The Editorial Cartoon
I’m not necessarily a fan of editorial cartoonist David Fitzsimmons—I think he’s a little smug and kind of boring—but last week (I’m always behind) he offered an opinion in the Arizona Daily Star in which he asserted the historical significance and the modern importance of American editorial cartoons, and lamented the dwindling of their artist-creators in the nation’s newspapers. “Searing visual satire is as American as an apple pie in the face,” he asserts of the medium that stretches from Thomas Nast to Gary Trudeau, “A cartoon doesn’t bother to carefully prosecute the accused with arguments. That is the realm of the editorial writer. A good cartoon condemns and executes on the spot”. And all this, Fitzsimmons affirms, in the space of the size of a Pop-Tart.
American political satire of all forms has a storied history, and finds its modern expressions in programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, probably the most popular among others in the television field, and we’re fortunate that we have the liberty to speak and criticize publicly. New Zealanders aren’t so fortunate: recent legislation was passed that effectively banned the use of images in media to satirize of political figures. And of course, editorial cartoons can lead to more than bruised egos as we witnessed last year with the publication of satirical images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in the Netherlands.
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