Recent Book on Cartoon Censorship

Today is what I call the International Day of the Cartoonist, meant to honor and remember the cartoonists Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb, all killed by Islamic terrorists in Paris on this date in 2015. Although Hoosier cartoonists have not faced anything like that, we have had in the past few months an attempt at censorship against one of them, Ken Avidor of Indianapolis. Mr. Avidor's offense against political orthodoxy involves his animated cartoon Unjabbed. Those in power cannot tolerate dissent or difference of opinion, and so Mr. Avidor's cartoon has been censored. The last we heard, Ken Avidor is working on the second episode of Unjabbed.

MIT Press recently published a book on the topic of cartoonists and censorship, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship. The authors are Cherian George of Hong Kong Baptist University and Sonny Liew, an independent artist based in Singapore. Not surprisingly, there have been attempts to censor or suppress the book, or to categorize it, more or less, as politically unacceptable. See for example "Red Lines' clumsy attempt to decry cartoon censorship ends up defending bigotry" by Caitlin Rosberg on the website The A.V. Club, dated September 7, 2021, here. The point of Caitlin Rosberg's article or review seems to be: "You should not read this book." Or, perhaps: "The authors of this book should be silenced," a curious and ironic conclusion drawn on a book about censorship.

Backdated to January 7, 2022.

Copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2021

Since 2015, I have here observed the International Day of the Cartoonist in honor and memory of five French cartoonists murdered for their art. They were Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb, respectively, George David Wolinski (1934-2015), Jean Cabut (1938-2015), Philippe Honoré (1941-2015), Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015), and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015). They were killed on this day in 2015 by Islamist terrorists in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

The same kind of terrorist infamously killed another Frenchman in 2020 because he showed some cartoons to his students. He was Samuel Paty (1973-2020), and he was a middle school teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris. Every year since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, M. Paty showed his students cartoons drawn by its cartoonists depicting a person revered by Muslims. When he did the same thing in October 2020, a young Muslim man took offense, and on October 16, 2020, he killed and beheaded Samuel Paty in the street near his school. A few minutes later, police tried to arrest the killer. When he resisted, they shot him dead. The French government was strong in its response to the murder. Some Western media, including in the United States, were characteristically weak. The French showed strength and resolve. Some Americans, Canadians, and Europeans showed their bellies.

The French president awarded M. Paty the Légion d'honneur posthumously. I think we can honor him, too, for his courage and for his devotion to the principles of freedom of thought and expression and of resistance to tyranny and oppression. There are cartoonists all over the world currently engaged in the same kinds of things. We should honor and remember them, too.

Postdated to January 7, 2021.

Copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2019

Today is what I call the International Day of the Cartoonist. It was on this day in 2015 that five cartoonists working for the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were murdered for their art. They called themselves Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb--respectively, George David Wolinski (1934-2015), Jean Cabut (1938-2015), Philippe Honoré (1941-2015), Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015), and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015). Their murderers were adherents to a totalitarian ideology, one of many that I suspect will forever be a plague on humanity.

There is an organization devoted to defending cartoonists from those who would wish to silence them. It's called Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI), and every year since 1999 it has given out its Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning. The most recent winner is Pedro X. Molina of Nicaragua, who has drawn cartoons in opposition to President Daniel Ortega and his regime. Mr. Molina received his award in 2018.

You can read more about Pedro X. Molina and CRNI at its website:

https://cartoonistsrights.org/

By the way, Hoosier cartoonist Joel Pett serves as president of CRNI.

Copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2018

On December 5, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. There is talk of discrimination, public accommodations, and so on in the case. Make no mistake, though. What is at stake here is whether the State can require an artist to create something he wishes not to create. Larger still are the questions of whether the individual serves himself or the State, whether he can be made to perform labor against his will by the State, and whether there are such things as private enterprise and private property, or whether those things are merely extensions of the State and exist to serve the purposes of the State. I'll have more to say on these questions below.

Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, Colorado, is owned and run by Jack Phillips. Mr. Phillips may or may not be a cartoonist, but he is an artist. Anyone who doubts that should see his work and the way in which he creates it. Although he may not be a cartoonist, I write about Jack Phillips today, the International Day of the Cartoonist, because of the issues involved in the case against him and in his case against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. I started observing this day in 2015 when five cartoonists were murdered in Paris in the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They were murdered because they dared to draw what they pleased. I have since written about cartoonists who have been oppressed, threatened, harassed, tortured, imprisoned, or killed, again, for their art. Usually, when artists are treated this way, it is at the hands of the State, or, in the case of radical Islam, a political mass movement with aspirations towards control of the State. Jack Phillips won't be tortured or killed for his art, but he has already been harassed and may face other punishments for choosing not to create something he wishes not to create. My question is this: If he and artists like him do not comply with the requirements of the State, what shall be done with them? Shall they be fined, even to the point of bankruptcy or impoverishment? Shall they be endlessly harassed? Driven out of business? Imprisoned? Shall they have their substance eaten out? Or should we simply allow them their freedom?

* * *

In thinking about cartoonists and the Masterpiece Cakeshop case last month, I developed a hypothesis. My hypothesis is this: that the nation's political cartoonists, specifically those who lean to the left, will perceive the implications of this case for the artist, namely, that if one artist can be made by the State to create something against his will, then no artist is safe from official coercion; and, if those political cartoonists understand the implications, they are likely to remain silent on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. My hypothesis does not include conservative political cartoonists, as artists of that political or philosophical persuasion are almost certain to support the rights of the individual over the power and authority of the State.

So how do you test a hypothesis like this one? Well, I did what everyone does these days: I searched the Internet. Before doing that, though, I drew up a short list of political or editorial cartoonists who I believe lean to the left. In alphabetical order, they are:

• David Horsey (b. 1951) of the Los Angeles Times, formerly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• Mike Luckovich (b. 1960) of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

• Joel Pett (b. 1953) of the Lexington Herald-Leader

• Ted Rall (b. 1963), a syndicated cartoonist

• Tom Toles (b. 1951) of the Washington Post

David Horsey and Joel Pett, by the way, were born in Indiana. Whether they like it or not, I'll call them Hoosiers.

As it turns out, I found very few drawings from political cartoonists on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. The cartoons I did find are pretty mild, I think, and don't address what I believe to be the real heart of the case, nor do they come out with any strong support for the two men who made the original complaint against Masterpiece Cakeshop or for the general idea behind their complaint. None was drawn by the cartoonists on my list.

Mike Keefe (b. 1946), a syndicated cartoonist with the Colorado Independent, formerly of the Denver Post, drew a cartoon dated December 7, 2017, showing Moses holding the Ten Commandments and stating: "And if you violate any one of these, no wedding cake for you!" (You can see the cartoon at the website of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists [AAEC], here.) That apparent allusion to Seinfeld may be a deflection from the far more serious topic at hand, in other words a way of noticing the topic without saying anything serious about it.

Chip Bok (b. 1952) of the Akron Beacon Journal, another cartoonist who was not on my list, also drew a cartoon commenting on the controversy. It shows a black man sitting at a lunch counter in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 and saying to the waitress: "Now that I'm sitting at your lunch counter, I'll have a slice of gay wedding cake." (The cartoon is dated December 9, 2017. You can see it on Mr. Bok's website by clicking here.) I don't think Mr. Bok's cartoon is especially well thought out. In fact, it seems to me practically a non-sequitur. But if Chip Bok's purpose is to equate homosexuality with being black in America, he ought to have studied our country's 400-year history of enslavement, rape, murder, torture, lynching, oppression, segregation, discrimination, and other offenses against African-Americans before making such a foolish calculation.

The most pointed cartoon that I found on the topic is actually from 2015 and was drawn by David Horsey. In it, an angry cake baker is handing out slices of wedding cake to a crowd of well-dressed people. The triple-tier cake (a devil's food cake, I'm sure) is decorated with the words: "Have a Happy Abomination." The cake topper is two little devils holding hands. The cake baker is saying in anger: "Which one of you sodomites wants the first piece?!" On the left is a caption that reads, "Caveat: You may not want a wedding cake made by someone who thinks that your marriage is evil . . ." Mr. Horsey's cartoon (to be found on the website of the Los Angeles Times, here) accompanies his own opinion piece on the religious liberty law advanced in Indiana in 2015. Mr. Horsey's piece may be slightly snooty, but he closes it with this reasonable consideration:

Gay activists are winning battle after battle, and may want to show some magnanimity in victory. If, in the end, it really comes down to a matter of a few wedding photographers, florists and bakers who disapprove of same-sex marriage, what is gained by forcing them to provide their services? If somebody doesn’t want to share the joyful occasion, does anyone really want to have them around? No wedding needs to be spoiled by a party pooper who thinks committed, lifelong love is a sin. 

I would like to think that David Horsey's opinion has not changed in the last two years. On the other hand, he might very well be flayed by the leftist media for writing something like that today. We should be clear, here, that Jack Phillips is almost certainly not like Mr. Horsey's cartoon caricature, nor is any true Christian likely to be. But then men of David Horsey's political stripe are permitted to trade in broad and inaccurate stereotypes where others are not.

In any case, you can't prove a negative. The fact that I found only two cartoons on the topic of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and none drawn by the five cartoonists on my list does not really confirm my hypothesis. (Maybe I should have designed my experiment better.) In other words, an absence of evidence doesn't make a firm foundation for a case. But if left-leaning political cartoonists remained silent on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, might that indicate something about where they stand? Maybe. Maybe not. There has certainly been enough else to keep them busy for these many months. Maybe I can test my hypothesis again when the Supreme Court announces its decision later this year.

* * *

A year ago today, I wrote about the cartoonist Joe Szabo, who was born and educated in Communist-controlled Hungary before fleeing to the United States. (Click here to read that entry.) Here he is discussing journalism in his native country with his friend Len Lear:

Journalists in a Communist country are considered a part of the political apparatus. You're not a watchdog, just the opposite. You are a lapdog. You are not there to print the news or to be objective. You are there to make the authorities in government look good and not to deviate from the party line. You are basically a public relations person for the rulers and oppressors.

Substitute the word artists for journalists, and you begin to close in on the questions central to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, namely: Is an artist his own person, an individual free to express himself or not as he chooses, or is he simply a part of the apparatus of the State, merely one of a collective compelled to serve its purposes? Is an artist a free and autonomous person or, in Joe Szabo's words, is he "basically a public relations person for . . . rulers and oppressors"? Does an artist own his own property? Does an artist have any right or claim to his own time, labor, energy, and creativity? Or do all of these things simply exist within the domain of the State, to be held, distributed, and controlled by the State as it sees fit? Is the artist his or her own master, or are artists simply servants of political power? And if an artist is such a servant, then what about everyone else? Are we not servants also?

I'll close with two quotes on totalitarianism. One is from an artist, T.H. White in his novel The Once and Future King (1958):

"Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory."

The other is from one of the architects of totalitarianism, Benito Mussolini:

"Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Shall it be forbidden the artist to create or not to create as he or she pleases? Shall artistic expression for the State's purposes be made compulsory? Shall anything be permitted to reside outside the State? Or shall we as artists--and as people--be free?

Original text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2017

I would like to observe the International Day of the Cartoonist 2017 by remembering the international cartoonist Joe Szabo, who died last year at the age of sixty-five. I'm happy to say that Joe was also a Hoosier, if only for a while.

Joseph George Szabo was born on February 4, 1950, in Budapest, Hungary, just six months after his country fell under communist rule. According to items on the Internet, Joe graduated from the Academy of Journalism in 1974. I believe that to mean what was then or is now called Bálint György Academy of Journalism in Budapest. On July 19, 1975, Joe Szabo married Flora Toth, also of Budapest.

In a remembrance of his friend, Len Lear wrote that Joe "wanted to be a real journalist because he had a passion for justice, but that was impossible in Communist Hungary, where any deviation from the party line could mean unemployment, exile, prison, torture or even death." (1) Although he worked in the late 1970s as assisting managing editor for Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), the largest daily newspaper in Hungary, Joe was dissatisfied with his comfortable position and his relatively prosperous life in his native country. "Journalists in a Communist country are considered a part of the political apparatus," Joe told Mr. Lear. "You're not a watchdog, just the opposite. You are a lapdog. You are not there to print the news or to be objective. You are there to make the authorities in government look good and not to deviate from the party line. You are basically a public relations person for the rulers and oppressors." In 1980, Joe and his wife fled from Hungary to the United States by way of Austria and West Germany (where he sought political asylum at the U.S. embassy). In December 1981, Joe arrived in a small town in Indiana, possibly Warsaw, Indiana.

Not knowing English, Joe struggled and was unemployed for a couple of years. He found work as a freelance cartoonist for a time. With a drawing printed on May 13, 1985, his political cartoons began appearing in the Philadelphia Daily News. They were also syndicated by Rothco and were chosen by Charles Brooks for his annual collection Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year in 1986, 1987, 1988, and possibly other years. (My collection is incomplete.) In 1987, under the byline Joseph George Szabo, Joe began publishing WittyWorld International Cartoon Magazine. The first issue was dated Summer 1987.

I have just three issues of WittyWorld (Nos. 2-4). As a cartoonist, I can say that is everything a cartoonist might want in a magazine. It is well designed and well made, and though there are only forty-eight pages in each issue, those pages are packed full of information. The regular departments are especially fine. They include a letters page; "Witty Wire," a compilation of cartoon news from all over the world; reviews of comic books and animation books by Frederick Patten, of cartoon books by Hongying Liu-Lengyel, and of journals by John A. Lent; "Cartoon Laboratory" on innovations in cartooning; a column on syndicates; a calendar of events; and classified advertisements. There are of course many articles and pictorial features as well. WittyWorld ran for several years. The last number I have found is Number 18, from Autumn/Winter 1994.

Joe Szabo published WittyWorld from North Wales, Pennsylvania, a borough north of Philadelphia. He seems to have moved to Pennsylvania from Indiana and to have lived there for the rest of his life. Even though he had escaped to the United States, he still had reason to fear political oppression and political violence. "Remember," he said, "Joseph Stalin had Leon Trotsky murdered in 1940, although Trotsky was many thousands of miles away in Mexico. In the U.S. and western Europe, where there is freedom of movement, dictators like Vladimir Putin have had journalistic critics murdered. They could do it here, too. You are never really safe." (Boldface added.) The targets of the cartoons he drew and those he published by other cartoonists were not just communist rulers or rulers in formerly communist countries. They were and are oppressors and tyrants of every color and stripe.

In 1990, Joe convened a meeting of cartoonists in Budapest as the Iron Curtain was coming down. He traveled to other parts of the world, too, to meet with cartoonists, to speak at and attend exhibits and conferences, and to lecture on cartoons and cartooning. He spent the last decade of his life conducting research and interviews for a planned book, The Image of America, showing how people the world over see his adopted home country. With visits to nearly seventy countries, he had enough material for a lecture series, one that he conducted in the United States and abroad. (He found that people in other countries have ambivalent views, though tending to the negative, of the United States. Some of those views are delusional at best. For example, some Spaniards--like one of our recent presidential candidates--are 9/11 truthers.) Joe Szabo was also author and compiler of The Finest International Political Cartoons of Our Time, published in 1992 by his own WittyWorld imprint.

"I'd rather be poor in America than rich in Hungary," Joe Szabo once said. (2) Although he was not materially wealthy--he and his wife reared their five children in a small apartment stocked with used furniture and books--Joe Szabo enjoyed the benefits of freedom with his family in a new country. Sadly, he died at his desk on February 2, 2016, in North Wales, Pennsylvania, just two days short of his sixty-sixth birthday. His obituary observed, "He was a passionate risk taker, boundless world traveler, and world-class debater. He never once lost an argument. Joe's friends described him as having an infectious personality with a continuous thirst for knowledge." (3) I think it fair to say that he also had a thirst for freedom and a very keen interest--as cartoonists tend to have--in fellow cartoonists and in the craft and profession of cartooning, which is, if I might add, a fine and noble one.

In memory of Joseph George Szabo (1950-2016) and of:

George David Wolinski (1934-2015)
Jean Cabut (1938-2015)
Philippe Honoré (1941-2015)
Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015)
and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015)

Notes
(1) From "Joe Szabo, Local Voice for Courage and Justice, Has Been Silenced" by Len Lear on the website Chestnut Hill Local, January 6, 2017, here.
(2) Ditto.
(3) "Joseph George Szabo," from the Landsdale Reporter, Lansdale, Pennsylvania, posted on the website Legacy.com, February 9, 2016, here.

A cartoon by Joe Szabo from 1987 showing the magnetic pull the United States has for people who wish to express themselves freely and, by extension, to live freely. From Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1987 Edition, edited by Charles Brooks.

Completed at a later date and backdated to January 7, 2016, in observance of the International Day of the Cartoonist.
Text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2016

One year ago today, on January 7, 2015, five cartoonists were murdered in Paris in the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They were Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb--respectively, George David Wolinski (1934-2015), Jean Cabut (1938-2015), Philippe Honoré (1941-2015), Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015), and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015). Their murderers were Islamists, and we must never forget that, but they were also part of a larger force that has always been with us. That force is the drive that makes people want to control the lives of other people--a force that will never die but which must always be resisted.

Last year on this date, I proposed that January 7 be named and forever observed as the International Day of the Cartoonist. Right now, I'm the only one to observe it I think. I hope that others will join in, but even if they don't, I'll continue observing it and continue remembering those who have died or who have been imprisoned, tortured, arrested, oppressed, or denied their rights simply for their art.

Recently, the death of another cartoonist was confirmed. Syrian cartoonist Akram Raslan was arrested by the Syrian regime on October 2, 2012, at the offices of the newspaper Al-Fida in Hama, Syria. Raslan was held, apparently incommunicado, in a Syrian jail. He may have been tortured. His death was confirmed late last year as having taken place in the spring of 2013.

Born in Souran, Syria, in 1978, Akram Raslan drew more than 300 cartoons in support of the revolt against the rule of Bashir al-Assad. In 2013, in absentia, he was given the Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning by the Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI). Indiana cartoonist Joel Pett said at the time: "CRNI gives Akram Raslan our annual Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning in recognition of his extraordinary courage in confronting the forces of violence with cartoons that told only the truth." By the time of the award ceremony, which took place on June 29, 2013, Akram Raslan had very likely died as a result of his being jailed.

You can read more about Akram Raslan and other cartoonists at the website of the Cartoonists Rights Network International at the following URL:

https://cartoonistsrights.org/

* * *

Indiana has long given its men and women into service to their country. They of course have included artists, illustrators, and cartoonists. Most returned to civilian life. I know of only one to have died on active duty. His name was Asa Henderson King, and he was born on May 12, 1880, in Boone County, Indiana. His parents were William H. King (1833-1928) and Susannah Jane (Mendenhall) King (1844-1882). Asa was the youngest of their four children and was only two years old when his mother died.

In 1897, Asa Henderson King moved to Clinton County. I know only that he was an artist and cartoonist. On May 4, 1915, three days before the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in New York City. From there he was sent to Fort Jay, New York, for training, then assigned to Company F of the 29th Infantry Regiment. That same year, the 29th Infantry was dispatched to Panama to guard the Panama Canal. The unit returned to the United States in September 1918. Evidently King remained in Panama, for that was where he died, at Camp Gailliard, on June 6, 1919. The cause was heart trouble. Private Asa Henderson King was buried at Corozal American Cemetery in Corozal, Panama. His name is inscribed on the Clinton County War Memorial in Frankfort, Indiana.

Hoosier cartoonist Asa Henderson King (1880-1919). The photograph is from the website Find A Grave.

Text copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Artists Murdered for Their Art

Today, in Paris, five cartoonists were murdered for their art. Their names were Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb--respectively, George David Wolinski (1934-2015), Jean Cabut (1938-2015), Philippe Honoré (1941-2015), Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015), and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015). One cartoonist, Corinne Rey, escaped with her life. In all likelihood, there have never been so many cartoonists to die in one day, certainly never in a single incident. Those five murdered cartoonists probably outnumber all other murdered cartoonists in history. The men who murdered them subscribe to a belief system that readily and perversely claims martyrdom in murder. The true martyrs today were the cartoonists themselves. Ironically, they worked for a leftist and anti-religious newspaper called Charlie Hebdo, and in consequence might very well decline conventional martyrdom. Perhaps significantly, one of the cartoonists was Jewish.

Like artists everywhere, those five French cartoonists sought to bring new things into creation, to express themselves through their art, and to throw the light of truth upon a benighted earth. And like cartoonists everywhere, they wished to expose the evil, corruption, folly, and oppression that exist among men and their institutions. For that they were murdered by the kind of men who have existed in every time and place, men who seek to deny free expression and to deprive others of their rights, their freedoms, their property, and their lives, men who prefer darkness to light and lies to the truth. These men go by a different name today than they did during much of the twentieth century, yet we have seen their kind before and we have defeated them before. We can defeat them again by recognizing the threat, by taking action against those who threaten us and our way of life, but perhaps most importantly by not sympathizing or collaborating with them, and by not supporting them or excusing their actions in any way, as so many in Europe, Great Britain, and America seem so willing to do. An added irony is that today's murderers did by violence what some Western governments, certain journalists, and various individuals have wished to do by disapprobation, censorship, or force of law--they silenced the voices of dissent.

If we are to survive, we must have the clarity of vision, the uncompromising desire to tell the truth, and the quotidian courage of the artist--the cartoonist--who stands at the barricades against murder, lies, tyranny, and oppression. I have a modest proposal: Let January 7 forever after today be the International Day of the Cartoonist.

Copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley