For editorial cartoonists like Daryl Cagle, the fine line between opinion and controversy can be found in the traces of his No. 2 pencil, outlining images of political superstars President George W. Bush and senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.
Cagle, the daily cartoonist for MSNBC.com, visited the University in October as part of the National Symposium Series hosted by the Center for Politics. Megan Davis, director of programs for the center, said this year, the focus of the symposium is race, religion and gender, three popular themes of Cagle’s political cartoons.
For Cagle, editorial cartoons are a “bash in the face.”
“It’s the loudest thing on the editorial page,” he said. “I get to speak much louder than the text that surrounds the cartoons and I like to take advantage of that.”
Cagle presented more than a dozen examples of his work during his talk, including one of Sarah Palin and her eldest daughter Bristol. In the cartoon, Palin is standing at a podium preaching about abstinence as a very pregnant Bristol stands only inches behind her.
“I love to get the emotion in there,” Cagle said. “I love to get the character in there. When you have a character ... the cartoon is so much stronger.”
And Cagle takes his time to tightly develop his characters. It took him two years to perfect his drawing of Bush.
“Characters, when they evolve, they become richer,” he said. “As you get more background on them, you get much more of the subtle things about them.”
Something as simple as a wink of the eye or twist of the mouth can make characters realistic and recognizable.
For example, “if you have eyebrows on top of beady eyes, you’ve already got the character of George Bush,” he said. “You don’t even have to go any further than that.”
For Obama, thick eyebrows and “thin and dark and expressive lips” are essential components. McCain’s face, which Cagle said is relatively easy to draw, is very pear-shaped.
Cagle stressed that every feature of a cartoon, even the subtleties, are important because they are meant to reinforce a distinct point of view.
“These things don’t happen by accident,” he said.
And while he said he does not want to make people mad when commenting on such controversial issues, he does strive to make a statement. In his experience, homosexual references seem to anger conservatives the most.
In one cartoon, he drew two boys kissing as a mother and father converse in the background. The father watches the boys with a look of concern, but the mother cheerfully continues to wash dishes as she says, “Yes, the boys saw that ‘Brokeback Mountain’ movie, and they’re playing ‘cowboys.’”
Another topic that “generate[s] the hate mail” is anything relating to the Middle East, Cagle said.
In a cartoon titled “Amazing Similarities,” images of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden sit side by side. Surrounding the two men are bubbles containing statements such as: “Both like to blow things up,” “Both know God is on their side,” “Both were born into powerful families,” “Both oppose gay marriage” and “Both mispronounce the word ‘nuclear.’”
Many of Cagle’s cartoons include textual messages; however, the cartoonist said some of his best work involves no written explanation.
“If I can get away with doing no words at all, then I’m happy,” he said. “Editorial cartoonists like to use labels. We like to use standards that allow us to make the point without having to explain something with words.”
To articulate a message more strongly, cartoonists often exaggerate the features of people or situations. And although Cagle said he thinks no person or subject is off limits, “cartoonists do have ethics.”
“We limit ourselves to public figures,” he said. “We don’t take gifts from the people that we draw. We have all the ethics of journalists — except the tell-the-truth part.”
But despite the artistic license most cartoonists enjoy, “we have a responsibility to get things right,” he noted.
But sometimes cartoonists get things wrong. Cagle attributed a typical cartoon controversy to “poorly thought-out, poorly researched cartoons that really shouldn’t have been drawn.”
For visual emphasis, Cagle showed a cartoon by his colleague that received close to 10,000 angry e-mails. It featured an American solider with a target on his back and a Muslim Arab man sitting on the ground reading “Koran for Dummies.” The solider asks, “Anything in there about gratitude?”
“A very large percentage of the angry e-mails come from cartoons that are religiously offensive without having any real religious purpose to the offense,” he said.
Unfortunately for the bulk of cartoonists, Cagle said, it seems like all suffer for the bad choices of a few individuals.
Even cartoons that are intended to be satirical could be dangerous, Cagle warned. He referenced the cover of “The New Yorker” that pictured Obama and his wife as two fist-bumping, gun-packing Islamic terrorists. Cagle said cartoonists should always exaggerate the distinction between what they think and what is fact.
A number of event attendees agreed, citing the growing popularity of cartoons.
Third-year College student Caroline Cannon said she believes political cartoons can have a large effect, “especially in the day and age where no one really has the time to sit down and read a whole newspaper.”
Therefore, Cagle emphasized that cartoonists must properly use their power to make their viewers think.
Generally, he said political cartoonists draw whatever they want, but it is always good to consider how readers will respond.
Not all cartoonists, however, set out to spark controversies. Many of them enjoy praising or honoring people as well.
Obituary cartoons are “the ones that readers love the most,” Cagle said. “They flood the cartoonist with love mail.”
To Cagle, cartoons can convey both positive and negative messages.
“Editorial cartoons have more power than words to make you think and make you cry,” he said.
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