Alan Gardner produces a cartooning-news blog called The Daily Cartoonist. It’s painfully boosterish and unprofessionally written, which is why most professionals have stopped posting, or reading, it. Today, in an incredibly tacky move – even for a guy widely known throughout cartooning as a miserable hack – he runs interference for Daryl Cagle.
I’ll let you be the judge of whatever sins Daryl is guilty of.
Well, not really. Gardner has barely scratched the surface of the allegations.
He certainly has critics and detractors in the business, but in this case I find no evidence that this was a premeditated effort to capture more market space or syndicate dollars. For those cartoonists who profess to be journalists, whatever happened to asking questions, and getting context before rushing judgement to the presses?
Well, Alan, those of us who profess to be real journalists might start by seeking comment from people like me and Matt Bors, who have been at the forefront of the movement to restore professional ethics to editorial cartooning – you know, instead of childishly denying me the “privilege” of a link (it hurts, it hurts!).
Cagle has zero credibility. And now, neither does Gardner.
3 Comments.
Ok, well — there it is. He changed his mind. Why is that so bad, especially since the second cartoon was more in line with the law of the land?
Looks like it’s not a deliberate idea, so there will be no innovation here. Pity. Hell — you could run with that idea though Ted, and make millions — AND keep your artistic cred. Being an artist is about pissing people off, and I don’t see much of that in editorial cartooning anymore.
Also — to call Cagle “the Osama Bin Laden of cartooning” is really kind of lame. I don’t even get the analogy. What, Cagle funded the killing of a few thousand people by ….. making bad cartoons? By being a hack? For that, he gets compared to Bin Laden? Again, I don’t even get it. Why not just compare him to Pol Pot? Or just get it over and call him the Hitler of cartooning?
Really, this is just scorched earth stuff. It smacks of taking the gloves off blowing up bridges.
I read Alan Gardner’s defense of Daryl Cagle, that Cagle started out with a perfectly reasonable cartoon that NONE of the enemies of the US government deserves Miranda rights, but then objections in the comments changed his mind, so he changed it to say that EVERYONE accused in the US deserves Miranda rights.
Mr Rall thinks he changed the punchline to sell more cartoons.
I have no idea which version comes closer to the truth.
The fact that Alan Gardner thought both versions were perfectly reasonable says something about Alan Gardner.
But why compare Cagle to Osama bin Laden? That requires some explanation. And to WHICH Osama bin Laden were you comparing Mr Cagle? The real one, or the demonic monster created by the US propaganda offices?