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Evelyn Kent's avatar

As always, you are insightful, Diane. This also makes me think of how Jimmy Carter was lampooned during his presidency. He often was drawn as a big-toothed country bumpkin, reflecting his outside status in Washington. That was part of what got him elected in 1976 and a big part of why he was not elected in 1980 -- the American people had come to see him as a bumbling idiot. Honest, but ineffective. Those cartoons were powerful then and still are today.

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Diane Burley's avatar

It would be interesting to see how the cartoons evolved over the decades. I’d love to see a timeline!

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David B's avatar

Good point about our meme driven world Diane. And yes, newspapers can’t seem to compete with free “content.”

You might want to give Funny Times, a monthly anthology of cartoons and comic essays, a read. In tabloid format, it marries the old and the new: a paper meme.

The nod to Giuliani’s outburst was a sharp call. Nothing like mockery to get under a man-child’s skin.

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Diane Burley's avatar

Thank you for commenting, David!! Newspapers started dying before the Web — although that hastened it. When I was with NJ Press there was $250m in classified advertising. That went away because newspapers didn’t think Monster and Craig’s list would eat their lunch. I tried to unify all the NJ papers on one web platform. They thought they were invincible.

Funny Times sounds great! Def going to need to keep laughing. Thank you again!

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Naomi Yaeger's avatar

Thank you for writing about this. I had seen the cartoon and wondered why it had been censored. I enjoyed your links to other sources and research. I particularly liked the one that said that artists who knew anatomy were better able to draw facial expressions and so greed and other emotions on cartoon faces.

Also. I knew that Napoleon wasn’t actually so short, but I didn’t understand that. It was a cartoon that caused people to think he was short.

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