Steve Kelley, editor, Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 2013 edition, Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Co., 2013; 206 pages, ISBN 9781455517760, $14.95
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By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Formerly a cartoonist with the Union-Tribune in San Diego, where he and Shelia Lawrence, widow of Hotel del Coronado owner M. Larry Lawrence became a couple and later split up, Steve Kelley subsequently plied his trade for the New Orleans Times Picayune, and now is syndicated around the country. Also a co-creator of the syndicated cartoon strip Dustin, Kelley has added yet another honor to his portfolio: he is the new editor of the annual editorial cartoonists’ yearbook, which for 40 years had been edited by the late Charles Brooks, Sr.
The soft-cover book is divided into a variety of areas of editorial concern. Understandably, with 2012 having been an election year, a large portion of the annual retrospective deals with the presidential campaign that morphed from a free-for-all Republican primary into a contest casting Mitt Romney as the challenger to incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama. Looking at it from the various cartoonists’ somewhat distorted perspectives, it appeared to have been a race featuring a man with bushy eyebrows against another man with big ears.
By my count the book includes the works of 110 cartoonists, including those who won the year’s Pulitzer prize, Sigma Delta Chi Award, Herblock Award, John Fischetti Competition, National Headliner Award and Scripps Howard Award. Most cartoonists, but not all, are represented multiple times in the book, with Kelley’s own works showing up seven times, and those of Steve Breen, his successor on the San Diego Union-Tribune (now called the UT), also appearing seven times.
There are 22 pages of cartoons, a little more than one-tenth the book, dealing with foreign affairs, with most of them focusing on the Arab Spring, the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and the civil war in Syria. There were occasional looks at the situations in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, The European Union, and Israel, with the latter cartoons being relatively benign, as editorial cartoons go. One by Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, utilized an optical illusion to show a Middle East peace talk table in which the sides facing each other were upside down, however you looked at the cartoon.
Another by syndicated columnist Bob Gorrell showed President Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sitting side by side with an hourglass between them that represented the amount of time needed for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Obama saw the hourglass as half full, whereas Netanyahu considered it half empty.
Biblical themes remained popular references for cartoonists, for whom juxtaposition is often the key to humor. After President Obama suggested that wealthy business people should remember that their successes, in part, were based on prior actions of the government, Glenn Foden of King Features drew Obama on a mountain peak addressing the heavens. “On the Eighth day, the President said: Thou didst not make this on your own” read the caption.
In a cartoon by Jim Dyke of the Jefferson City News-Tribune, a sign by a church declared “After three days I will rise again–Jesus” and at a nearby gas sation a complementary sign read, “So will I.” Another reference from Christian Scriptures showed Jesus at the last supper, only in the cartoon by syndicated cartoonist Jim Siergey all the disciples are looking at their I-Pads and Smart phones. A cartoon by Theo Moudakis of The Star of Toronto pictured God (as depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) looking down on three physicists who are reading a paper. Explains one of them: “It’s a cease-and-desist order regarding any and all unauthorized use of the term ‘God particle.'”
Jews with national reputations occasionally were the subjects of the cartoonists’ pens. In a two-panel cartoon by Robert Ariah of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, President Obama muses that “this administration is all about creating a ‘green economy…” In the second panel, Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke is shown operating a machine printing dollar bills. “Let ‘er rip, Bernie,” instructs Obama.
Another by Gary Varvel of the Indianapolis Star shows Bernanke in the back seat of a car, labeled “economy,” that is being driven off the cliff by two members of Congress. He says: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, congressmen.” They say “No one likes a back-seat driver, Bernanke.”
During the Occupy Wall Street saga, Los Angeles Times cartoonist David Horsey depicted a pirate sitting behind a desk at Goldman Sachs, urging a visitor with a brief case to “trust me.” Jimmy Margulies of The Record (of New Jersey) invoked the memory of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, saying in a two-panel production “You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop….” In the second panel is a picture of Congressman Todd Akin’s head, the blank space within it labeled “The Twilight Zone.” Lest anyone forget, a cartoon balloon reproduced Akins astonishing suggestion that ‘women can’t get pregnant from rape.”
Two Jews who died during the year were the subject of memorable memorial cartoons. Margulies of The Record had longtime CBS correspondent Mike Wallace arriving in heaven with a boom microphone. An angel calls to God, “Mike Wallace is here to see you…” whereupon God (unseen) responds “Gulp!” Mourning another loss, Steven Parra of the Fresno Bee pictured one of the ‘wild things” crying over the news that its creator Maurice Sendak had died.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com