Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
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What is the main topic of this episode?
Yeah, this is about editorial cartoons, a.k.a. political cartoons. They are one in the same. They usually appear traditionally in the editorial section or the opinion section of newspapers. So that's why you can call them either. And this is a profession. that appears to be dying out if you look at the number of editorial cartoonists that are, like, full-time staff at major newspapers. Right. Because there used to be more than 2,000 about 100 years ago. Now there's less than 20. And Dave, you know, helped us with this and found that stat. And I think we were both initially like, oh, my God, they're all going away. Right. Not necessarily true. Those are full time staffers on newspapers. Newspapers are in trouble. So that's a big reason why we'll get to that.
Are editorial cartoons still relevant today?
But there are still plenty of editorial cartoonists and political cartoonists mainly working online. Right. Yeah. And for syndication companies like you can work for a syndicate and they'll distribute it to newspapers that want to run your political cartoon, just like with comics. Yeah. So I won't say like we're at peak the golden age of it, but it's still alive and well and just sort of a different form. Yeah. I've seen the golden age referred to as in the 19th century. And I'm like, these people didn't live through the 80s. That was the golden age, baby. Oh, man, I saw, if I had a dime for every, like, cartoonish drawing of Tip O'Neill or Ronald Reagan I saw growing up as a kid.
Right, right. I didn't even, like, who are these people?
Yeah, no, that's a really great point that they, editorial cartoons are, like, of the moment. Sometimes, like, of the day. where they, like, they'll still make sense later that week, but they're not hidden because something already changed or moved on. And they don't, as such, it's very rare that an editorial cartoon can still, like, land the way it originally did. That means that whatever it was talking about was so historic that people decades on know what the ins and outs of it that the political cartoon is referring to. But for the most part, it's like... daily minutia of ongoing politics and government. And if you just go back like 10 or 15 years, it's like, I forgot John Boehner even existed until I went back and looked at some of the old political cartoons. And it's so important at the time. But, you know, all these years on, it does not matter what that political cartoon was saying. At the time, it wasn't. That's a huge point about those things.
That's why Michael Dukakis drove a tank.
I remember that.
Who's Michael Dukakis? Yeah. I remember. And Kitty. That's funny stuff.
Oh, yeah. His wife, Kitty. That's right. And Dan Quayle spells potato wrong.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic of this episode?
1:29–2:16
2
Are editorial cartoons still relevant today?
2:16–9:10
3
What are some historic milestones in editorial cartooning?
9:10–15:46
4
Who is the grandfather of political cartoons?
15:46–19:26
5
How did political cartoons evolve over time?
19:26–22:16
6
What is the impact of caricature in political cartoons?
22:16–1:00:54
Speakers
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