I’ve been lobbying for a gig as a political cartoonist. I always think the best approach is simply to show someone what you can do.
I did 10 cartoons (Monday-Friday) during the 2-week period ending June 22, 2012. I checked news headlines each day, picked a topic, roughed out an idea, scanned in the finish, and added text and shading in Photoshop. Political cartoons require a very fast turnaround, so I worked as quickly as I could. Each cartoon took between 2-3 hours, start to finish.
Here are the three cartoons I liked the best.
The first one was inspired by two separate news items: 1) an Adele song was credited with bringing a little British girl out of a coma, and 2) back on June 8th, President Obama told a news conference that the private sector was “doing fine,” a remark he was later at pains to qualify.
Operation Fast and Furious was a “gunwalking” operation in which a U.S. federal law enforcement agency allowed suspected arms traffickers to purchase guns on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. The ultimate objective: to trace the guns, make arrests, and disrupt the cartels. Instead, guns were lost and used in violent crimes, including the murder of a U.S. border patrol agent. The operation was mounted without informing Mexican officials.
A Congressional committee is investigating the failed operation. The committee has voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for not turning over all subpoenaed documents in the case. Holder asked President Obama to invoke executive privilege to prevent certain documents from being released. Obama has done so– the first time he has asserted executive privilege during his presidency.
Reading about the case conjured up the image of someone furiously sweeping documents under a rug. 
The U.S. presidential election is more than four months away, but here in New Hampshire, a swing state, we are already being bombarded with television campaign commercials. The Obama campaign bashes Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, and vice versa.
FactCheck.org tries to monitor the accuracy of political TV ads and related assertions. It took issue with a number of claims in a recent Obama ad, including the assertion that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney “outsourced call center jobs to India.”
What Romney actually did was veto a bill that would have prevented the state from doing business with contractors who outsourced jobs, a practice which saved taxpayers money. Democrats controlled the state legislature at the time and could have overridden Romney’s veto. They did not.
When I watch any political ad, I find myself wishing for a certain kind of remote.
What do you think? Has politics been completely co-opted by the entertainment industry? Are political cartoons just part of the noise, no different than YouTube clips
and late night comedians? Hope you’ll leave a comment.
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