In his introduction to the event, Pat Bagley, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, demonstrated both the theme of "The State of Our Satirical Union" symposium and the passion behind the mission of those cartoonists who attended it.
The reason the gathering mattered, he said, was that "the American people decided to elect a malignant clown leader of the most powerful nation in the free world."
As to what therefore seemed like the futility of the effort and why political cartoonists continue their work, he explained that they seem to cling to a Platonic Ideal, believing "that the perfect cartoon is out there somewhere," and that, if someone can only find it, they will succeed in bringing down Trump and restoring order to the world.
As it happened, one of the least academically intense presentations of the day provided some backup to that hopeful thought. Sophia McClennen, a professor and author on the topic of satire (as well as a Salon contributor) brought in a high-energy piece, "Why Satire is Good for Our Democracy," that argued against a widespread feeling that satire did more to comfort the afflicted than it did to afflict the comfortable.
Her concept of "Satirical Intervention" included the way Tina Fey had ended Sarah Palin's political credibility simply by portraying her on Saturday Night Live with an accuracy that put her folly into focus. Similarly, she said, Colbert had turned his sharp satire against a lazy, indulgent media at the White House Correspondents Dinner and introduced the term "Truthiness" before anyone thought to make a claim of "Fake News."
And John Stewart, through a storm of mockery on the Daily Show, shamed Congress into passing legislation restoring benefits to first responders harmed in the September 11 attacks.
Satire, she suggested, sharpens critical thinking skills, and, while she didn't show strong evidence that a fool could be made wise through satire, she did list a number of attributes that satire brings out in its consumers. To boil it down, the effort to understand the joke requires that you analyze and question the premise being spoofed.
And she cited a 2007 study showing that steady viewers of The Daily Show and Colbert were better informed than average, while Fox News viewers scored near the bottom of tests on current events.
Again, she didn't offer the conclusion that these were causual, only that they were indicative, but with the clear message that satire has impact.
What I found most persuasive was her argument that SNL, Stewart and Colbert, and the flood of satirical programs and publications surrounding them, had made not just iconoclastic humor popular, but had spurred political activism particularly among young people, with a fun piece of proof being the satiric nature of the signs being carried at the Women's March, the March 24 turnout and other demonstrations.
As a veteran of the anti-war years, my personal reaction is that these signs are more angry and less winsome than "War Is Not Healthy For Children And Other Living Things," but more constructive and less anarchic and nihilistic than the Yuppie activism whose satire seemed to reject solutions rather than proposing them.
In another deceptively light moment, Jack Ohman's keynote address brought that heritage of the Sixties into the current milieu, as he explained how John Kennedy's assassination had impressed him as a boy, and how Bobby and Martin's deaths had hit him again in adolescence as he formed his worldview, and he became a news junky.
Not only did this hunger inform his political opinions, he said, but propelled him into a cartooning job as a student at U Minn when he was the only applicant who could identify William F. Buckley and discuss his books and views in depth, much less do a spot-on, hilarious impression of the man.
It's not clear when he added the ability to caricature the ah-ah-ah-ah wisest ah-ah man in the world so well, but he did tell of a brutal critique of his undergraduate cartoons at the U by an established political cartoonist who charged him with wasting the platform he had been given by drawing cartoons that had no substantive point of view, of, as Jack concluded, "drawing X, Y or Z instead of saying something."
(He added that lengthy and generous criticism from his predecessor at the campus daily, Steve Sack, had helped sharpen and focus his efforts.)
Saying something, and protecting purposeful efforts, was the subject of a panel that explored the third-rail issues of religious and cultural sensitivities. One pair of presenters lumped the Falwell spoof in with more direct attacks on religion, though they didn't dwell on the interface wherein political efforts and religious belief become muddled to the point of being indistinguishable, and an attack on one appears to be an attack on the other, or both.
A more problematic factor was raised by Ritu Khanduri, a scholar of Indian culture who has written on the topic of cartooning.
Khanduri raised the issue of icons and the issues which arise when cartoons once confined to their own homelands begin crossing cultural borders, such that elephants and tigers seen by their creators as Western symbols of India become offensive colonialist stereotypes in South Asia.
She used the example of a Heng Kim Song cartoon the NY Times Syndicate ran as India entered the Space Age, in which a primitive Indian with a cow was seen trying to enter the Elite Space Club, a depiction that provoked a storm of objections from Indians and apologies from Heng and the Times, for focusing on the idea that it was unlikely, when, in fact, not only does India have advanced engineering, but many NASA engineers are South Asian as well.
The answering cartoon came some years later as India became a commercial launcher of satellites for Western nations.
Libertarian Chip Bok noted the dangers of repressing unpopular views, but also the difficulty of evaluating fair and unfair commentary, including mocking the idea that, in his testimony before Congress, Mark Zuckerberg could not identify hate speech himself but was sure that Facebook could use AI to spot it.
Joel Pett, who is active in the Cartoonists Rights Network International, then brought the symposium into an important focus on behalf of cartoonists who do not live in places where Hustler v Fallwell has any bearing.
He cited the case of Musa Cart, the Turkish cartoonist jailed for his work, as well as Eaten Fish, Zunar and other cartoonists whose views have earned them imprisonment, torture and/or death threats.
It was a powerful reminder of the privileged position American cartoonists are in, thanks to Huster v Falwell and the continued strength of the First Amendment, a rare factor in world media.
At the start of this three-part report, I said I wouldn't include everything and everyone, and I haven't. Watch in particular for a roundup of sketches the cartoonists did throughout the symposium, which AAEC has promised to put on-line.
My plane home is boarding. I'll revisit this to add links and fix typos later.
Thanks for reading!
Sigh. Yes, an immutable law of cartooning.
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