Daryl Finally Reponds to CagleGate

Like a politician trying to sneak out those sleazy statements that come out late Friday so that they will appear in a Saturday newspaper that nobody reads, cartoon kingpin Daryl finally addressed CagleGate — the outcry that followed the discovery that the ethics-challenged former editorial cartoonist is selling two versions of the same exact cartoon, with just a few words changed so that they can appeal either to the liberal or the conservative side of the political spectrum. (Bear in mind, this follows a multitude of sins: sleazy business deals, bottom-feeding and scabbing, censorship, coddling and encouraging plagiarists, and even publicly calling for other cartoonists to behave unethically.) Actual quote: “It amuses me to reuse old cartoons; I don’t find much opportunity to do it, but when I do, I chuckle to myself and take an extra hour for lunch.”

Perhaps the most remarkable argument here was that editors don’t take editorial cartooning seriously, so editorial cartoonists shouldn’t take themselves seriously either.  To which I would answer: (a)  if editors didn’t take the profession seriously, why are they doling out millions of dollars for editorial cartoons every year? and (b)  maybe we need to take ourselves a little more seriously.

As promised when this remarkable piece of spin and dissembling hit the Internet on Saturday, here is my response to a few choice lines:

This week I drew an unusual cartoon that garnered a crazy response from my outraged, cartoonist colleagues.

“Crazy”? Who’s the real nut here? The scores of editorial cartoonists who find Daryl’s behavior cynical beyond belief? Or the one cartoonist in American history – the first ever – to try to strip the politics out of political cartooning, to try to sell the same cartoon to both Democratic and Republican newspapers?

I drew this last Sunday:

I got no response from editors or other cartoonists to this cartoon, but I got such a strong reaction from readers against the cartoon, with many well reasoned arguments, that I changed my mind – something that doesn’t happen much in this profession. (The comments on my Facebook page are representative of the overall comments I received).  So I posted a revised version of the cartoon on Monday. I learned that Tsarnaev was given his Miranda rights shortly before I posted the revised cartoon, so I doubt that this second cartoon got reprinted much.

As with so many things, Daryl’s response was a dishonest attempt to recast history in order to put him in a better light. Here’s what he said at the time: “I remember when the Miranda decision came down in the 1960′s, on a 5-4 vote. It was controversial for a long time; the only area of the law where ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’ didn’t hold true. I got a large enough sampling of e-mails in response to the cartoon (and you can see from the Facebook comments as well) that I realized the Miranda decision no longer seems to be controversial.” In other words, “well reasoned arguments” had nothing to do with it. Like Dick Morris, the pollster who advised Bill Clinton when was the best time for him and his family to take a vacation, Cagle poll-tested the cartoon and found it wanting. Remember, that his defense.

The second version is the same as the first, but instead of “none of them” deserving to be read their Miranda Warning, the revised cartoon says “all of them” should get the warning.  I’ve changed my mind before, not often, and usually over a longer period of time, but I won’t go back into the archive to delete the old cartoons. I posted them, I should live with my history. So both cartoons are still posted. (My old cartoons supporting the run up to war in Iraq are still posted too – I’m more embarrassed by those.)

It is standard operating procedure for rogues to describe their nefarious actions as motivated by integrity. In this case, he says he’s taking responsibility for his mistake by refusing to memoryhole the old, bad, wrong version.  The problem is, Daryl will happily sell both versions of the cartoon. If he had really changed his mind, he would refuse to distribute the old one. Or he would mark the old one in some way as to indicate that he no longer stood by that opinion and that it was in the archives for no other reason than historic interest. But anyway, given the fact that only one word changed in this cartoon, the appropriate action would have been to delete the older version. After all, the history of the change is online in his blog and in other places. The only reason to put the old one in the archives, is if you plan to sell it again. Which he clearly does.

I remember when the Miranda decision came down in the 1960′s, on a 5-4 vote. It was controversial for a long time; the only area of the law where “ignorance of the law is no excuse” didn’t hold true. Liberals like it, conservatives still don’t like it.  I decided to disagree with the talking heads at Fox News and I changed my mind to agree with my readers and conclude that the Miranda decision should no longer be controversial – it has become a part of our national fabric. Most of the responses conflate reading the Miranda warning to the suspect with the suspect’s overall civil rights; I have come to the conclusion that is a good thing. (I really do pay attention to the arguments that readers send to me.)

See above. So interesting that he keeps using the word “controversial.” And so revelatory. Like any other political thinker, an editorial cartoonist takes stands on various issues. As far as I know, Daryl Cagle is the only one who overtly crowdsources his own political opinions. As far as everyone else is concerned, if they don’t like the Miranda decision, they say so and they let the cards fall where they may. Frankly, any editorial cartoonist who worries about being unpopular should get out of the business.

Some cartoonists wrote that I must surely be lying about my reason for changing the cartoon, because the idea that I would change my mind was simply not credible. Others called for me to be punished for my breach of the unwritten laws of cartoon ethics. Some demanded that I remove the old version of the cartoon from my archive, as I would do with a cartoon that was revised to correct a spelling error; the idea that an editor could purchase and print both versions of the cartoon, with two different opinions, was repugnant.  Bloggers and journalism sites reported on the cartoon controversy.

Yes, the cartoon police really do exist.

No they don’t, but Daryl Cagle personally is a one-man justification for recruiting such a force. Like most other cartoonists, I spend most of my time focused on my own work. It’s only when you have some butthead crapping all over everything that is good and decent that you have to put down your pen and speak out. The idea that Cagle might change his mind was quite credible.  What made his story incredible was the fact that he continue to sell both versions of the cartoon. And here’s my favorite part:

I know this all sounds unbelievable, but I’m not exaggerating.  It is fascinating that editorial cartoonists have such a different perspective on their own work than editors and readers do. The cartoonists take themselves far more seriously than anyone else takes them.

I don’t even know where to start with this.

Why do anything if you don’t take it seriously? Yes, I admit it, I think editorial cartooning very seriously. It’s all I have ever wanted to do since I was a little kid. I still get an incredible thrill when I see my work in print. Some of the most amazing artwork I have ever seen has been in this medium. Its potential has yet to be achieved. No one has ever drawn the perfect editorial cartoon, and I plan to spend the rest of my life in a vain attempt to try.

I suspect that Daryl’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t take his own work seriously, it’s that he doesn’t view editorial cartooning as his life’s work. He is a businessman first and foremost. His business is to aggregate cartoons. This business model, beginning in the 1990s, was to collect the cartoonists who were unable to get syndicated by the five major syndicates, aggregate them into a package to be sold to individual newspapers, pay the cartoonists a pittance, undercut the syndicates by offering 100 cartoons for the price of one good one, and flood the market. He takes that job very very seriously.

Fortunately for editorial cartoonists and for readers, so do a lot of editorial page editors. Many of them are still willing to pay $20 a week for one high-quality syndicated editorial cartoonist feature as opposed to $50 a week for a package containing 100 low-quality cartoons. They know the difference and they figure that their readers know the difference too.

Even if you take Daryl at his word, even if he’s right that editors don’t take editorial cartoons very seriously, what is he asking us to do, stop caring? Abandon ethics? Forget about working hard to do the best possible work that we can? Pretty much. Because that benefits him. Well, I reject that. I think it’s important for us to take ourselves seriously. After all, if we don’t, who will?