Category Archives: Newpapers
My Charlie Kirk Obit Cartoon
My agenda as a cartoonist is basically free speech. That made Charlie Kirk my kind of guy. He took on leftwing cancel culture by engaging college students where they were. His method was simple and brilliant, he promoted free speech using the Socratic method on college campuses. He would answer any question and then the student questioner had to respond. And so it went,
By the age of 31 Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, had 900 college and 1,200 high school chapters.
Sadly, Charlie Kirk became a free speech martyr when he was shot dead while taking the first question last week during a Utah Valley University engagement themed “Prove Me Wrong.”
Already since that dark day, Andrew Kolvet, the Charley Kirk Show producer says he has received 37,000 inquires seeking new chapters. Sounds to me like a possible turning point for the USA’s rotten politics.
Unfortunately some of the rotten politicians didn’t see it that way. U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) demanded an apology from Newsday and my termination (first they’d have to hire me.) Jesse Garcia, chairman of the Suffolk County Republican Party, criticized Newsday. He said the paper “crossed a line” and that the cartoon mocked tragedy, caused division, and encouraged political violence. He called it a “reckless, partisan attack” and said it silenced free speech.
Here’s my apology: I’m sorry Charlie Kirk isn’t around to give these guys a free speech lesson.
Big Voice on the Right, Rush Limbaugh 1951 – 2021, RIP
Rush Limbaugh was “The Big Voice on the Right.” He earned his self-proclaimed title when Ronald Reagan dismantled the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. That allowed radio stations to broadcast Limbaugh’s raucous conservative opinions without giving equal time to offended liberals. It was a winning formula, and in the process he saved AM radio.
And he continued to dominate conservative talk until he died yesterday of lung cancer.
Big Voice on the Right
He was an entertainer who knew and respected his audience. But he also had an uncanny knack for stringing together news items and ideas to make a witty point. Almost always mocking the left. The left is lucky he didn’t draw.
Rush claimed to know liberals like “every square inch of his glorious naked body.” And, thanks to “talent on loan from God,” he claimed he could beat them with “half his brain tied behind his back.”
So that’s why I figured I had an original cartoon idea – yesterday. Rest in peace, Rush…
More great minds….
I, for one, say thank you to Rush for airing those views all these many years with his “talent on loan from G-d,” with the hope that it remains “on loan” for many more years to come.
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, Jewish World Review
Oy.
N-Word Costs Veteran Reporter his Job at NYT
Respected New York Times science reporter Donald McNeil used the n-word. Not in a hateful way but in an instructive way. He used it in a discussion about racism with students on a Times sponsored trip to Peru. Apparently, the instruction didn’t take.
And it cost him his job.
Power of the N-Word
An editorial in Quillette has an interesting take on how a word used without intent can have any power. It must have power in its own right, like a magical incantation.
And here’s Joe Concha, media columnist for The Hill, on the power of the Times’ woke mob:
The “woke” mob has really racked up some victories lately at the nation’s famed newspaper of record, getting award-winning editors and reporters ousted for some of the most questionable reasons. The first win came last June, when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote an op-ed for the Times advocating the deployment of national guardsmen to American cities to help control last summer’s violent protests — a pretty prophetic suggestion, considering what we witnessed during the horrific riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Yet, Cotton’s opinion piece provoked a severe public backlash from other writers at the Times, with Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion editor James Bennetbeing forced to resign as a result.
Big Tech Lends a Tentacle to Progressives
Big Tech is putting the squeeze on free speech. And it’s being embraced by progressives, as long as someone else’s speech gets the squeeze. Early progressive’s battled trust octopi. But no more.
Big Tech
In the 19th century, “progressives” sought to curb the power of monopolies and trusts on the logic that the proverbial people had only the railroads or telegraphs to travel or communicate, and should be freed from their octopus “tentacles.” The railroad argument, “Ride a horse if you don’t like us,” never washed.
Now progressives enlist social media monopolies to ensure that they alone can control, censor, and cancel incorrect communications over the publicly owned airspace. “Just email or use your cell phone, if you don’t like us” won’t wash either. Progressives are no longer the watchdogs breaking up trusts. They are the trusts breaking up watchdogs.
Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness Jan 10,2021
The Very Bad Year in Cartoons: Best of Bok 2020
