CLIMATE CHANGE CARTOONS! #13
Earth Day! And we have Climate Change cartoons, pollution, Trump, troubled birds and Greta Thunberg!
And we have four of the best editorial cartoonists as guests:
From Maine, RJ MATSON is the cartoonist for Roll Call in Washington DC for over 30 years. For many years, RJ was the cartoonist for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, he’s been a cartoonist for The New York Observer, The New Yorker, Mad Magazine and he’s won lots of awards. See RJ’s full archive of cartoons at Cagle.com/rj-matson
from FLORIDA we have Taylor Jones who has been drawing cartoons for decades for the Hoover Digest. For many years he was the cartoonist for El Nueva Die in Puerto Rico and for US News & World Report, and he has a butterfly garden in his backyard. See Taylor’s full archive of cartoons at cagle.com/taylor-jones
From Oaxaca Mexico we have Peter Kuper, who is also a New Yorker cartoonist and who drew the Spy vs. Spy feature for Mad Magazine for over twenty years. He’s drawn dozens of books, won lots of awards and has taught at School of Visual Arts and Harvard University. Peter draws a weekly, wordless cartoon abut the environment for Charlie Hebdo in France, that we’ll see today. See Peter’s full archive of cartoons at Cagle.com/peter-kuper
From Calgary, Alberta, we have Guy Parsons, a brilliant Canadian cartoonist who we syndicate as an American cartoonist so that he won’t be invisible to American editors. Guy has won a bunch of awards too and had drawn for the Calgary Herald and the Globe and Mail in Canada. See Guy’s full archive of cartoons at Cagle.com/guy-parsons
Here’s A Selection Of Some Of The Cartoons From The Podcast:
Climate Change Cartoons –Episode 13
[00:00:00] Daryl Cagle: Hi, I’m Daryl Cagle and this is The Caglecast. We’re all about political cartoons, and today is our Earth Day podcast. We’ve got cartoons about the environment, and we have four great cartoonists with us today. we have. RJ Matson, who is the cartoonist for Roll Call in Washington DC for over 30 years and for many years, RJ was the cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He’s been a cartoonist for the New Yorker, the New York Observer, MAD Magazine, and he’s won lots of awards from Florida.
We have Taylor Jones, who’s been drawing for decades for the Hoover Digest and for many years he was a cartoonist for El Nuevo Dia in Puerto Rico, and for US News and World Report. And he has a butterfly garden in his backyard
[00:00:40] Daryl Cagle: From Oaxaca, Mexico. We have Peter Cooper, who’s also a New Yorker cartoonist and who drew Spy versus Spy in Mad Magazine for over 20 years. He’s drawn dozens of books and won lots of awards and has taught at School of Virtual Arts and Harvard University and Peter draws a weekly wordless cartoon about the environment for Charlie Hebdo in France that we’ll see today
[00:01:04] Daryl Cagle: From Calgary Alberta we have, Guy Parsons, brilliant Canadian cartoonist who we syndicate as an American cartoonist so that he won’t be invisible to American editors. Guy has won a bunch of awards too, and he’s drawn for the Calgary Herald and The Globe and Mail in Canada. Welcome gentlemen. Hey, thank you. Thanks.
[00:01:21] Daryl Cagle: Thanks. Okay. Lots of people are listening to us in audio only, so I’m gonna read and describe the cartoons. Just bear with me when I do that. And RJ we’re gonna start with you. Here’s your first one. You’ve got, Congress Before Time, and they’re all dinosaurs. And one Republican dinosaur says, “Madam Speaker, this asteroid alarmism is the biggest hoax ever.”
[00:01:47] Daryl Cagle: I think this is a great cartoon.
[00:01:48] RJ Matson: I drew that — that must have been in 2008 when my daughter was five years old and in her dinosaur phase. So I, I probably had seen the land before time, maybe 50 times that year.
Daryl Cagle: Well, that’s a wonderful cartoon. It’s timeless.
[00:02:04] RJ Matson: But I wanna take credit. I, I’ve forgotten that I’d drawn this until you asked me to look up Earth Day cartoons and related, environmental cartoons.
[00:02:12] RJ Matson: And I want to take credit for the inspiration for the “Don’t Look Up” movie, that wonderful satire, which equates, an asteroid coming to destroy the earth with, our indifference and in inability to do anything about global warming.
[00:02:26] Daryl Cagle: Very good. Well, we’ll give you credit for that.
[00:02:28] Daryl Cagle: Thank you. Um, here’s Uncle Sam and he’s wearing his Earth Day Kiss the Chef shirt and pouring too much lighter fluid on his hugely flaming earth barbecue. Any words about this one?
[00:02:44] RJ Matson: No, it’s a nice looking cartoon I drew this at the Post Dispatch. a new phase of my life, family, kids house, backyard barbecues.
[00:02:50] RJ Matson: I hadn’t done much of that in the 20 years previous when I was in New York
[00:02:53] Daryl Cagle: City. This is a, a nice takeoff on Saul Steinberg’s New Yorker cover; the big book of global warming cartoons, 2007 to 2107. You’ve got, the classic view of, uh, but, uh, instead New York is, uh, flooded and just tops of the buildings poking out.
[00:03:12] Daryl Cagle: It’s a lovely cartoon. Thank you.
[00:03:14] RJ Matson: I’d, I’d actually seen a map, uh, that month, that week predicting, you know, what the United States would look like in a hundred or 200 years. And, you know, basically Pennsylvania would be the East Coast was the gist of the map. So that’s why I, I highlighted Pennsylvania as the one state.
[00:03:33] RJ Matson: the first state you see after the flooded New York City.
[00:03:36] Daryl Cagle: I see we lost California. Uh,
[00:03:39] RJ Matson: yep. You lost California. That’s
[00:03:41] Daryl Cagle: right. So here’s, uh, frozen capital, particularly the Senate, and it’s on, uh, an iceberg that’s breaking up and it says climate change legislation. That’s a great looking cartoon, beautiful piece.
[00:03:53] Daryl Cagle: Thank you.
[00:03:54] RJ Matson: that’s one of those challenging ideas. Just wanted to see if I could do it, you know, pull up, make the capital building look like it’s part of an iceberg or, or an ice shelf. I would say that’s cleaving.
[00:04:06] Daryl Cagle: All right.
[00:04:06] Taylor Jones: That’s a beautiful, that’s a beautiful piece.
[00:04:08] Daryl Cagle: okay. Here’s the Environmental Protection Agency, with their columns exuding, polluting smoke.
[00:04:15] RJ Matson: Right. And this was drawn right after Trump was elected president and the new administration was settling in and they were, Relaxing or reversing all the, environmental standards that were set, especially regarding coal.
[00:04:29] Daryl Cagle: in looking through the cartoons for this, I noticed that there was a lot more passion for environmental cartoons when Trump was in office. And a good deal when George W. Bush was in office and a whole lot of cartoons that depict, columns on buildings as, smokestacks or, pipes exuding waste.
[00:04:49] Daryl Cagle: that’s one of those tropes that cartoonists love, I guess, right?
[00:04:52] Peter Kuper: I had done a variation. Go ahead. When they, uh, the Supreme Court made, made a decision about the EPA and it was, you know, generally similar vibe to it. It’s that that happens so often with cartooning where you just have ideas, get in the air, and then we all end up
[00:05:09] Peter Kuper: gravitating towards something without, you know, I very often don’t look at the internet to see if somebody’s done something. If I feel like something is truly original. Like I, I, I know I haven’t seen that specific image and I don’t wanna put the kibosh on it, cuz I know I’ll do a variation sometimes.
[00:05:25] Peter Kuper: Yes. But do you, do you guys look at, at the web for whether something’s been done?
[00:05:31] Guy Parsons: I look cause I I don’t want to do the same thing cuz I, I, you know, I’m, I’m greedy and I think that maybe people won’t buy it if it’s similar to everybody else’s.
[00:05:37] Daryl Cagle: Here RJ you’ve got a big oil guy riding on an oil rig thats made to look like a elephant. It’s the new Republican elephant. this is another timeless cartoon,
[00:05:50] RJ Matson: But this was, during the, uh 2008 presidential campaign, McCain and Palin in the whole “drill baby drill” mantra that the Republicans settled on as a major campaign slogan.
[00:06:04] Daryl Cagle: All right, we’re switching to Guy. You’ve got, mother Nature and, she’s looking at all these bad polluting things of factories of cars, the water pollution. She says, “I was wondering if you could maybe dial things back a wee bit.” And the factory says, “What are you crazy That would hurt the economy.”
[00:06:22] Daryl Cagle: This is very nice.
[00:06:23] Guy Parsons: A lot of people commented on that one. I, I’ve got all the things that you need. I’ve got spewing pipes, I’ve got smoke stacks, Right. Yeah. Everything’s, everything’s dark and bleak looking, coming from a guy who’s, I, I got solar on my roof. I’m moving into a net zero house.
[00:06:36] Guy Parsons: These things are important to me. And I keep, like in Alberta too, they drill a lot of oil here. I’m really worried about, things going back to the way they were. That wasn’t me.
[00:06:43] Daryl Cagle: By the way, it sounds like you’ve got wildlife in Alberta.
[00:06:46] Guy Parsons: That was in my, that somebody else’s dog.
RJ Matson: That’s my dog in Maine.
[00:06:49] Daryl Cagle: All right. Yeah. See, he’s smiling
[00:06:51] Guy Parsons: That is his dog now.
[00:06:52] Daryl Cagle: And here you’ve got a couple having, dinner. And the French waiter says,
[00:06:57] Daryl Cagle: “… and Michel’s dish is wild caught. Sesame and crusted ma mahi raised on only the oceans’ finest plastics.”
[00:07:05] Guy Parsons: Yeah, it’s, it’s funny how some ideas just come to you. I was, I was sitting at the kitchen table after I think a couple martinis and, and think my wife and I were talking about, uh, the oceans and that the thing just popped right into my head.
[00:07:16] Guy Parsons: I love it when you get those little gifts that you don’t have to work for.
[00:07:18] Daryl Cagle: Here you’ve got dad with the kid in bed. Who’s scared of monsters? Dad says, “No, no. Don’t worry. If you don’t believe it, it, it’s not real. And the climate change, monsters looking in the window.
[00:07:29] Peter Kuper: Um, apropo, what you just said, Guy.
[00:07:31] Peter Kuper: Um, do you keep, uh, some kind of ability to write down ideas when, when you get them? Like you keep a notebook or anything with you? Oh, yeah. Got it.
[00:07:39] Guy Parsons: Right here. It’s a big, huge folder full of paper. So I just used my phone and then when I get home I.
[00:07:45] Guy Parsons: If I just record it. Simple. Yeah. But yeah, I, I saw a thing about, uh, the comedian, the black comedian, uh, what’s his name? That’s, uh, anyways, he said he had a, a fishbowl. Who’s the guy that’s big right now?
[00:07:57] Peter Kuper: Uh, Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle?
[00:07:59] Guy Parsons: Uh, not Chris Rock, but the other guy, Chappelle. And, and he said, yeah, he keeps a goldfish bowl in his kitchen, and every time he comes up with an idea, he, he just, anything, anything, he, he just jots it down and throws it in there.
[00:08:10] Guy Parsons: And, and I thought when he said anything, so anything that comes to me, even if it’s stupid, I throw it in the file and I get some great ideas, um, without, you know, once again, without even having to work for him. Um, and, and, you know, Tom Waits says he has a muse and his muse will give him my ideas if he’s open for it.
[00:08:24] Guy Parsons: So I’m always asking my muse to help me out today. And usually I get a, I get a reply.
[00:08:29] Daryl Cagle: I’m guessing that’s not too good for the goldfish.
[00:08:32] Daryl Cagle: All right, here’s, uh, monster Climate Change and Climate Solutions. The little knight is coming to slay the climate change. That’s an optimistic cartoon or a pessimistic cartoon?
[00:08:44] Guy Parsons: I was thinking of Greta Thunberg when I came up with this idea, cuz she’s saying basically nobody’s doing anything. What did she say?
[00:08:48] Guy Parsons: Yeah, blah, blah,
[00:08:50] Daryl Cagle: blah. All right. Here you’ve got ve and now then you’ve got the gal yelling, stop Climate change. And now you’ve got the gal with the sign that says, deal with climate change. It’s, it,
[00:09:01] Guy Parsons: it’s so true now, right? We, we, we can’t stop it anymore.
[00:09:05] Daryl Cagle: We’ve passed all of those, deadlines for the apocalypse and now it’s just a matter of how bad the apocalypse is.
[00:09:11] Guy Parsons: I guess I’m an optimist, you know? Uh, if you look at my cartoons,
[00:09:14] Daryl Cagle: I thought about inviting a conservative cartoonist to this, and I, I didn’t really want to have that conversation, that would’ve just dominated the whole thing. Yes. Okay. Here you’ve got, Exxon Total big oil, big coal, and big gas saying climate change is real.
[00:09:30] Daryl Cagle: We caused it. Who knew it was coming? And in the next panel, it’s who cared. they’re all blaming …
[00:09:35] Guy Parsons: Yeah. That came into that news story when, when you heard about Exxon, that they knew years and years ago. They, in fact, their own researchers warned them of, of what was gonna happen and they didn’t care.
[00:09:45] Guy Parsons: Profits were the most important thing. And, you know, as a shareholder in so many companies, and I used to be a shareholder in a lot of oil companies, not anymore, but, Shame on them. You know, it’s like the tobacco companies, you know, I, I used to smoke heavily and I didn’t think it was that bad for me until I started realizing, geez, I’m losing my vision in one of my eyes because I smoked.
[00:10:03] Guy Parsons: And so these guys, they’re, they’re letting us poison our kids’ future. And, and nobody’s holding their feet to the fire. nobody’s saying you gotta pay for this. So I thought that, that I wanted to do something stark anyways. Mm-hmm.
[00:10:14] Daryl Cagle: About that. Well, it’s a pretty cartoon. It’s got bright cheery colors.
[00:10:18] Guy Parsons: Yeah. I should have been more muted dead colors. I should have made them all green.
[00:10:19] Daryl Cagle: When cartoonists have muted colors, we sometimes get complaints from editors that say, “Stop the muted colors. I’m paying for COLOR on the editorial page.”
[00:10:31] Guy Parsons: Well, Daryl, the most popular cartoons are always the brightest, right?
[00:10:34] Daryl Cagle: Well, the ones the editors like/
[00:10:36] Taylor Jones: Yeah, I think mine would sell better to look better on the page …
[00:10:37] Daryl Cagle: They don’t think. Taylor does very pretty cartoons, I’m switching to Taylor now. Uh, Taylor here you’ve got the guy, uh, rowing his boat through all of the ocean of plastic, and he says, ban single, use plastic bags.
[00:10:51] Daryl Cagle: That’ll fix everything. But of course, the ocean of plastic is filled with every kind of nasty plastic junk. And the poor seagull says, “If only.” This is very nice.
[00:11:03] Taylor Jones: Unlike Guy, I take a pretty pessimistic view of our environmental future, this is one of the pieces I, I did for Hoover Digest.
[00:11:11] Taylor Jones: Now Hoover Digest is a, is, um, small publication for the Conservative Hoover Institution. And, uh, in terms of environment …
[00:11:19] Daryl Cagle: Do you find that frustrating, Taylor? I mean, does Hoover institution take a point of view, for example, on the environment, that’s opposite yours and you have to kind of hold your nose?
[00:11:28] Taylor Jones: Well, sometimes, but, uh, the thing is that, here, my feeling is that I think in general, liberals, are, really good at assessing the problem, and often, much more honest about it. But, sometimes, I think, uh, a lot of liberal solutions, uh, fall short and, uh, I don’t know how, as greedy as the energy industry is, I don’t know how we are going to, solve, environmental problems without some sort of cooperation.
[00:11:52] Taylor Jones: that’s gonna involve, business. Over the years, I, I worked things out with my editor editors and, and, uh, it, it, you know, works out. Okay.
[00:12:00] Daryl Cagle: So you’ve just kind of gotten used to ’em?
[00:12:02] Taylor Jones: yeah. We, they’re very good people to work with.
[00:12:06] Daryl Cagle: Okay, well, here’s a, here you’ve got a monkey with Monkeypox, and he says, “Monkeypox, let’s talk about Human Pox. It’s everywhere”. Just figuring everything. And the chicken, who has Monkeypox says, “But there’s a vaccine, right?”
[00:12:22] Daryl Cagle: And the frog that has monkeypox says, “Nope. No, do, don’t”.
Peter Kuper: Was that your French accent?
Daryl Cagle: That’s my monkey accent.
[00:12:29] Taylor Jones: again, with, with the pessimism, I’m not counting on humans to, to, uh, uh, dig us out of this hole.
[00:12:36] Daryl Cagle: This is a tough cartoon to get past editors. They don’t like any kind of, pox or, or human, maladies in cartoons. They don’t like poo poo or peepee or, blood. They don’t do anything with blood. And the cartoonists love to draw blood. They love to draw, all of these, human fluids and things.
[00:12:57] Daryl Cagle: And, uh, the cartoons just do not appear.
[00:13:00] Taylor Jones: Daryl, During the Trump administration, you know, there’s, many presidents. Now I’m old enough that there have been many, many presidents in my lifetime and there have been, you know, some that I’ve liked or sort of liked and some that I’ve various degrees of dislike, bordering on hatred.
[00:13:14] Taylor Jones: But Trump is the one president that I am utterly despised. And I’m not sure it made me a better cartoonist because so many of my Trump cartoons, have been scatological. Things that editors don’t wanna see. But that’s all I see when I, when I think of Trump. I don’t know if any other cartoonists have had that same problem.
[00:13:32] Daryl Cagle: it’s not so much a problem with Trump because editors won’t print cartoons about Trump no matter what they are. Which is a great frustration to cartoonists. I, I’ve talked to some cartoonists who thought that Trump was a great Renaissance for editorial cartoonists because we all had this, wonderful bunch of passionate things to draw about –but we were just drawing them for ourselves.
[00:13:54] Daryl Cagle: It was a great frustration, a frustration to me when we had such a large percentage of the cartoons about Trump. We just had a large percentage of the cartoons that were not getting printed, and it was, a very small amount of cartoons available to the editors. And they complained loudly about that.
[00:14:11] RJ Matson: Uh, I’ve had just the opposite experience. Drawing for Capitol Hill, uh, The Roll Call, which is the newspaper of Congress and Capitol Hill. And you know, the audience is members of Congress and everybody who works on Capitol Hill. it’s sort of a small town newspaper for Capitol Hill and it’s very insider and the editors generally shy away from picking on personalities.
[00:14:35] RJ Matson: and they, and they don’t want to come across as favoring one political party over the other. But they loved, they ate up every Trump cartoon because all the conservatives, all the Republicans, Capitol Hill hated Trump the beginning and they had to play along. And there’s a lot of comedy in that, right?
[00:14:49] RJ Matson: When people have a personal opinion that they can’t express publicly and they have to eat their words a lot or reverse their positions like Lindsey Graham did. So I, I was, was liberating for me because I could do far more political stuff. Far more hard-hitting stuff than I ever would’ve done for that particular paper, because all of their audience hated Trump and only half of their audience was willing to say it.
[00:15:12] RJ Matson: But the other half delighted in seeing the cartoons, I would imagine.
[00:15:13] Daryl Cagle: Well, I think you had a rare, fortunate editorial cartooning experience there.
RJ Matson: Yeah, I guess so.
[00:15:20] Taylor Jones: Thinking of Lindsey Graham, RJ, have you found that he contradicts himself pretty much every day? Oh yeah.
[00:15:25] RJ Matson: Yes, I have,
[00:15:26] Peter Kuper: They clearly have some photos on that guy that they can blackmail him in what, whatever direction they want. I have, I’ve never, we go more, you know, like clearly when called upon, he has to do whatever, so he doesn’t go to, you know what, whatever, there’s, they have something on him.
[00:15:44] Peter Kuper: That’s the expression on his face is that, I found actually at the New Yorker that I had lots and lots of opportunity to do Trump cartoons. Uh, for their daily and even for the magazine. there was sufficient opportunity, um, around, and they didn’t seem to shy away from that.
[00:16:00] Daryl Cagle: I’m kind of proud of our profession, that the cartoonists did not shy away from drawing Trump cartoons when Trump was in office just because they weren’t getting printed.
[00:16:09] Daryl Cagle: we have so many great Trump cartoons. In fact, here’s, one of them. Taylor, this is, your Trump cartoon in The Birds. Would explain this one?
[00:16:17] Taylor Jones: Yeah. one of the many things that Trump liked to do through executive order was, uh, he tore up the Migratory Bird Act, which, dates way back to 1918, as you can see there.
[00:16:28] Taylor Jones: And, uh, the birds didn’t like it.
[00:16:30] Daryl Cagle: Well, very good.
[00:16:32] RJ Matson: Nicely done. It’s like an Audubon society drawing. It’s beautiful.
[00:16:35] Taylor Jones: That was the point. And
[00:16:36] Peter Kuper: lots of, and it bother and there’s bird poop too.
[00:16:40] Taylor Jones: Birds pooping. There was so much, you know, uh, anytime I could work in, uh, uh, excrement into a Trump cartoon, I, I would.
[00:16:49] Daryl Cagle: Oh, very good. Here’s one where you have Trump farting. Yes. Uh, Trump says you won’t be laughing anymore. The fart heard around the world withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. well, you know what, first Taylor …
[00:17:01] Taylor Jones: first thing I wanna say is that, apparently I didn’t know this at the time. This, I, I guess it was probably 2017, this was done maybe 2018, but apparently, papyrus, typeface is now greatly frowned upon by anybody in graphics art.
[00:17:14] Taylor Jones: So I apologize for the, uh, the use of it here. Um
[00:17:18] Daryl Cagle: I don’t think anyone looks at this cartoon and thinks about the papyrus font.
[00:17:23] Taylor Jones: I’ve got a friend who won’t let me, won’t let that die. Again, Trump spent four years basically crapping on all things, uh, civil and, uh, this is what we have as a result.
[00:17:35] Taylor Jones: And, of course, you know, it occurs to me whether it’s, uh, Donald Trump or Ronald DeSantis, that there’s a certain segment of voters. I don’t really think they necessarily even care what the issue is. They just want their politicians to be, and I can’t say the word, you know, it’s, uh, um, uh, it begins with an A.
[00:17:55] Taylor Jones: That’s what they want their politicians to be, even their president. That’s what they want him to be. That’s certainly what they want Governor DeSantis to be. And, uh, as long as he being that in public, then they cheer him on. Uh, it doesn’t matter what it is. Uh, and that’s unfortunate, but that’s, uh, where we live in.
[00:18:12] Peter Kuper: Was the word entertaining? yes. Entertaining.
[00:18:14] Taylor Jones: That’s not
[00:18:14] Peter Kuper: entertaining with an “A” entertaining this. A.
[00:18:17] Daryl Cagle: this is a great looking. Greta Thunberg, Taylor.
[00:18:21] Taylor Jones: Thank you. Yeah. Well, it’s Joan of Arc here and, I know that she’s in some ways seems, is very tiresome, et cetera.
[00:18:26] Taylor Jones: I kinda like her just telling off all the great leaders of the world, even if it sounds kind of silly, you know, when she’s scolding them in, in, in, in to their faces as she has done. I, I’d rather like that, you know, uh, um, you like,
[00:18:39] Daryl Cagle: You like for your, uh, environmental activists to start with an “A” word.
Yes, that’s That’s right. On the left. That’s right.
[00:18:48] Guy Parsons: No, but it’s, it’s, I I know what you’re saying. It’s this disrespect for leaders, right? that they, they think they’re so important and she’s just knocking ’em down to, they’re just regular people that aren’t playing by the, the right rules.
[00:18:59] Peter Kuper: Well, encompassing anything. You know, I’ve been sort of surprised at how often seemingly more even liberal, like comedians use her as a punching bag. she’s putting down leaders, but then people hate her for being a leader.
[00:19:12] Peter Kuper: I keep on finding, I, I love listening to comedy specials, and I find the comedians love to attack her and, well, it’s, it’s very curious because it’s like there’s so few people out there who have managed to have as much of an impact as she’s had. And it’s, I guess it’s just like, if anybody rises up, you’re gonna knock ’em down.
[00:19:33] Peter Kuper: But it seems like, well, you know,
[00:19:35] Taylor Jones: to put in a, put in a partisan light. Uh, Democrats sat her eyes, Republicans demonized, and they demonized Greta Thunberg for sure.
[00:19:42] Daryl Cagle: You know what? I like Greta Thunberg and, and I think she’s, young and charming, and that makes it, uh, seem like the people who are demonizing her are, uh, nastier than with someone else.
[00:19:54] Taylor Jones: Well, she’s tiny. She’s physically tiny, and she’s stayed that way. So, uh, um, uh, I think that, um, that just makes the bullying all the more noticeable.
[00:20:03] Daryl Cagle: I like her. I love these bird cartoons. Taylor. I think that if you did, uh, birds just talking to each other about the news, like so many cartoonists do, the couple sitting in front of the TV, the birds are just the most charming thing.
[00:20:20] Taylor Jones: Well, I’ve done more of these birds. I have done more of them, and I’m going to continue to do more of them, especially because having to surrender four months a year. Uh, well every, you know, every, well about every six weeks, eight weeks for Hoover Digest. And, uh, often I’m not there when I, I’m under deadline for that one.
[00:20:35] Taylor Jones: There’s some big event that I can’t really cover, for, for you, uh, directly. And, um, but, uh, the nature cartoons and things I can do whenever I want and I should do more of them. But this one particularly was, uh, actually inspired by just outside my. because …
[00:20:53] Daryl Cagle: well, let me read and describe this one for our audio-only listeners.
[00:20:57] Daryl Cagle: So you got three birds and the bluebird says, “What? You’re gonna reopen the economy now?” And the next bird, I don’t know what kind of bird this is, says, “With a return to all that noise and traffic.” and the bird at the bottom says, “But we’re just getting used to hearing our own voices again.” This is, uh, after Covid cartoon night,
[00:21:16] Taylor Jones: Correct. It was right. It was during the lockdowns. And that’s an indigo bunting on, uh, there at the top left. And of course, uh, then you’ve got a, these are all American birds, all, uh, uh, Mockingbird or Northern Mockingbird, if you wanna get specific, uh, there, uh, in the middle. And then a Carolina Wren, uh, Carolina Wrens are very little birds.
[00:21:34] Taylor Jones: Very, very loud. And, uh, uh, but that’s the thing, they are actually having to sing louder as. Humans and our activity gets louder and louder as well.
[00:21:47] Daryl Cagle: Really, is that making the birds sing louder?
[00:21:48] Taylor Jones: Indeed, they are shouting. And of course Carolina Wrens are always shouting cuz they’re so little.
[00:21:54] Taylor Jones: They have to. But what a lot of people had noticed, and this was certainly true in my own neighborhood during the initial lockdowns, how quiet things got and how so much wildlife sort of was saying, you know, what is this, this is, this is amazing. We should, we should have some fun.
[00:22:10] Daryl Cagle: I think that’s great. All right, here you got two more birds talking. And uh, this bird on the left says “We’re at an inflection point. An inflection point. An inflection point and inflection point!” The hummingbird says,”Cool jets. It’s just another day.”
[00:22:26] Taylor Jones: Well again, we have a, uh, Carolina Wren here and then a Ruby Throated Hummingbird, only Hummingbird in the Eastern US.
[00:22:32] Taylor Jones: Um, and, uh, uh, well, again, you know, of course, I guess this is, this, this is necessarily about the environment, but it could be because although I’m pessimistic about what’s gonna happen in our environmental future, at the same time, I get so annoyed with the language that all of us here all the time from politicians, from pundits, et cetera, using all kinds of cliche words.
[00:22:54] Taylor Jones: And one of them is an inflection point. You know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are always at inflection points it’s just another day. It’s not an inflection point.
[00:23:01] Daryl Cagle: Peter, we’re moving on. You. Okay. So here you’ve got the golfer and, uh, the golfer swinging his ball on the grass. But you pull back and you see there’s just a little spot of grass and a vast, parched desert.
[00:23:14] Daryl Cagle: This is one of your Charlie Hebdo cartoons. You draw one of these four panel cartoons in Charlie Hebdo every week with their environmental column. Yes. And, uh, tell us about working for Charlie Hebdo and, drawing, this very specific kind of cartoon that’s so much different than the other cartoons in Charlie Hebdo.
[00:23:32] Peter Kuper: Um, well, the, I mean, it’s good to do ’em as wordless comics, because I don’t speak French. What they asked me to do more in the last year or so is to find a headline and then attach, kind of attach the cartoon to that headline. And so that makes it easier. But I still l really love the idea of a standalone wordless comic doesn’t have labels and can I, that that can potentially be understood by anybody around the world.
[00:24:01] Peter Kuper: and I’ve been doing wordless comics for, for quite a long time. I did a whole graphic novel called The System that was wordless. And, it’s just an area that I’ve been exploring for decades, I think it, it, you know, goes back to Spy versus Spy things that I saw like that, that I loved growing up.
[00:24:18] Peter Kuper: And the idea that you could communicate through a series of images like that was really appealing to me. And, and then having topic, like the environment is a really powerful, thing to work with. And I just seem to have an endless, sadly endless stream of ideas because there’s an endless stream of problems to.
[00:24:40] Daryl Cagle: Does that come from 20 years of Spy versus Spy, getting you into that mindset?
[00:24:45] Peter Kuper: I actually had that before. I did a, uh, a comic that I self syndicated, called I of the beholder that started out in the New York Times City section. And I did it there for six months. And it was similarly, a wordless, uh, it was a five panel cartoon.
[00:25:01] Peter Kuper: And, um, I did that for years and I ended up, uh, then sending it out to alternative papers back when there were alternative papers. And you could be, you know, I’d have 10, 10 papers running it every week. And so I was exploring that. Uh, before I got the, uh, Spy versus Spy, uh, they asked me to try out for that.
[00:25:22] Daryl Cagle: Here’s your, here’s your next one. You’ve got, uh, close up on the penguins on the ice, and then a penguin within, Uh, cone of ice falls into the water, becomes, uh, martini glass, which is drunk by the bad oil guy who’s dripping oil and oil logos.
[00:25:43] Peter Kuper: That, that was based on the president of, uh, the CEO of Total Oil, which is the French company, but he worked just fine as your generic, fairly evil, uh, um, oil company executive.
[00:25:55] Peter Kuper: Um, this is another thing I love doing with wordless comics, is to do a visual something where the image transforms. In this case, the, the iceberg starts to take a shape that then, and the next panel looks like a martini glass, and then is fully realized when you see the guy drinking the martini. Um, so there’s a lot of things like that that I can play with, and I really like exploring visual symbols.
[00:26:22] Peter Kuper: That I think is really in our DNA. I think it goes back to like, you know, our cave paintings and that we, we love these symbols.
[00:26:31] Daryl Cagle: This one, you’ve got the car driving in front of the capitol. You’ve got an airplane in the sky. You’ve got a big limo driving away from Glasgow Airport and they’re all going to the climate conference. so excellent hypocrisy cartoon. Tell us about this one.
[00:26:49] Peter Kuper: Yeah, well that, that’s just that thing and, and you know, of course we all are kind of living with a hypocrisy because I find myself, I’m looking up climate change things on my computer and my phone and which is plugged in, which is using electricity. We live with a lot of, um, contradictions that we have to, you know, try to.
[00:27:08] Peter Kuper: Make, make work in our brains, but the fact that, you know, when you had, uh, John Kerry was flying to Glasgow, and of course going through all the, using up a tremendous amount of, uh, energy in order to get to a climate change, uh, thing. And I, I’m happy to not just be, uh, you know, strictly attacking the Republicans, having the opportunity to actually, uh, point out the discrepancies across the board politically.
[00:27:34] Peter Kuper: not that I don’t lean towards, you know, as I think Stephen Colbert said, that, uh, uh, reality as a liberal bias,
[00:27:40] Daryl Cagle: The style of your cartoons in Charlie Hebdo is really dramatically different than all of the other cartoons in Charlie Hebdo. it’s surprising to see it there. Can you speak to that?
[00:27:54] Peter Kuper: Uh, I, I, I can’t really, because the. It was such a fluke that I got that job. Um, I had a four panel cartoon, wordless cartoon, and I had gotten hold of the art director’s email and I sent it to him and said, I don’t know if you take unsolicited, you know, solicitations like a random cartoon. And he went, uh, would you like to do this every week?
[00:28:17] Peter Kuper: And I was like, okay. And it just, you know, this really hit my sweet spot because this is really exactly what I want to be doing with my time in, you know, in this crisis. I want to be drawing about this and I’ll do cartoons of this sort anyway, um, and pitch them around. But having a regular spot that sits next to their environmental column was just, it was fantastically good luck.
[00:28:41] Peter Kuper: And I don’t fully understand, you know, there it is. Outside their usual much more, you know, Bigfoot cartoon and, and certainly they do a lot of, Cartoon styles and show things that I don’t tend to do in my cartoons. I know that I can do something more risque with them, but for the most part, I just do what I do, which is, you know, it’s, it, it, you know, there are fewer penises in my cartoons.
[00:29:04] Daryl Cagle: I don’t know if you ever do anything risque, because I haven’t noticed you uploading anything like that to our …
[00:29:10] Peter Kuper: I might do something if I do something risque for them, I, you know, I, I know pretty, there’s pretty good odds that it’s not gonna fly with any of your editors. Uhhuh, you know, Uhhuh, somebody’s sitting on a toilet, um, and, you know, things are being spewed or whatever.
[00:29:23] Peter Kuper: It might work. But as you know, Taylor demonstrated with farting. There was an article about how pollution is causing, Um, penis size to shrink. And one year it said that, and then the next year it said that pollution is causing penis size to grow, which did make it into like the Daily Show news and things like that.
[00:29:43] Peter Kuper: So I did some cartoon like that, that was visually using smokestacks and things like that. And I just figured y you’ll probably do not wanna run that one. So
[00:29:52] Taylor Jones: you wanna gimme your editor’s name?
[00:29:56] Daryl Cagle: I really do like that, that they’re open to a range, even if, uh, the range is only you.
[00:30:02] Peter Kuper: It’s, yes, it’s a range of one.
[00:30:04] Peter Kuper: A range of wine, but I am home on the range, I can tell you.
[00:30:07] Daryl Cagle: Okay, very good. So here you’ve got, uh, giant ice-scape and, uh, it’s breaking up into Rodin’s, the Thinker, and the, the Rodin the Thinker breaks up in, falls into the ocean as well.
[00:30:20] Peter Kuper: So it very much relates to, to RJs cartoon of the capital dome, which is in the process of melting.
[00:30:27] Peter Kuper: And, you know, that whole idea we’re sitting there, we’re, we’re pondering the, the, this giant problem, which is we are so close to the edge on, on things like having the oceans rise and living in Manhattan. I’m, I’m, uh, painfully aware having been around for Hurricane Sandy that when the waters rise, it can go up to say, 23rd street where cars are floating and, uh, I’m thankfully on the upper West side, so I’m a little higher up.
[00:30:54] Peter Kuper: But it, it made me very conscious of. The fact that this is around the corner and that, um, our ability to evolve. We’re doing a lot of thinking about it, but we’re not doing a lot of actioning about it. I mean, there’s some, but, well, actually
[00:31:08] Daryl Cagle: Your cartoon implies that we’re not thinking about it for very long.
[00:31:13] Peter Kuper: it was more like the thread of it is coming quickly and you know, it’s a, this is a time factor like that. We, we have a limited time to deal with this and we keep hearing about this. And I think probably most people when they hear about by 2100 something or others gonna happen, go, eh, you know, it’s like a lot of things we, we can only take in so much information.
[00:31:34] Peter Kuper: And so I think it’s really very outside of human ability to think that into the future. We, we just have, we’re very bad about that. Uh, we can’t, we, we, you know, and, and I think it’s our job as cartoonists to sort of visualize these things. And try to make it seem a little
[00:31:52] RJ Matson: more weird. I, I love that cartoon cuz it, it suggests geologic time that, you know, the iceberg mm-hmm.
[00:31:58] RJ Matson: Existed for millennia before humans existed. And, and, uh, the human’s time on Earth’s very short and uh, and uh, and then they just disappear.
[00:32:09] Daryl Cagle: Very. So, Peter, here you’ve got, uh, president Trump whose face is a thumbprint and he’s in the position of Edward Munch’s The Scream. And I’ve gotta say, I didn’t really understand this cartoon.
[00:32:20] Daryl Cagle: Could you explain it to us?
[00:32:23] Peter Kuper: Well, I, I, and I would’ve thought you, we were about to say, gee, about 20 people did this cartoon. Like I said, it turned out it was a cover of Time Magazine did this. I saw about 10 versions of this. A variation. Oh,
[00:32:35] Taylor Jones: I did it. I think
[00:32:36] RJ Matson: I was the first one. When did you. The day, the night he was in the, like two hours after he was indicted.
[00:32:44] RJ Matson: Well
[00:32:44] Peter Kuper: done. I think I, I think we’ll see. That was about when I did it, so yeah. I pitched it the next day to, you know, like I pitched it out there and, and, uh, it was one of those, I did not look on the internet because I thought very thoroughly like, okay, th this is, there’s a pretty good chance. You know, I’m not gonna be alone on the thumbprint trump face.
[00:33:05] Peter Kuper: Um, but, but, um, so it was, it was, Trump was, you know, being indicted, was getting thumb printed and that his, uh, you know, no matter what he said, you could just see the, from the expression on his face sitting in that courtroom. And especially when the guide, the police didn’t hold the door for him when he was walking in.
[00:33:24] Peter Kuper: You sense that some of, some of the facade crumbling and, you know, I think this is, this is a cartoon that we’ll probably be able to run several times, just change the New York background to, uh, Georgia or, uh mm-hmm. Florida or wherever else the, the indictments are coming down cuz um, he, I’d say he’s finally, some aspect of this is caught up and we’ll see how it shakes out.
[00:33:46] Peter Kuper: He’s a very, very slippery eel. And, um, but I, but I did, I said there was a, um, a moment there where the chickens were coming home to roost for him.
[00:33:56] Taylor Jones: Is that your own thumbprint?
[00:33:57] Peter Kuper: No.
[00:33:58] Daryl Cagle: This is one of mine, uh, moving along, uh, one of my, one of my Trump environment cartoons. This was another, Republican White. Uh, environment.
[00:34:10] Daryl Cagle: Smokestacks and waste pipes um, I do a lot of California flags and a lot of California pollution and climate change cartoons in the California flag format. Uh, here’s Trump talking to the burning state of California. He says it’s your fault that you’re burning.
[00:34:29] Daryl Cagle: “You’re so stupid. It’s not smart, sad.” When we were having giant fires, I had the couple talking to each other with their obscured by smoke and can’t see anything. And one says, “Climate change caused the fires that made this smoke.” And the other one says, “I just don’t see it.” And that’s enough about me, gentlemen.
[00:34:49] Daryl Cagle: I’m gonna go through a bunch of cartoons by, some of our other cartoonists, so this one is by John Darkow, who draws a car barreling down the street, the denier car, uh, the street to climate change, point of no return.
[00:35:02] Daryl Cagle: And one says, we don’t know where we’re going, the other one says, but we’re making good time. You can pretty much make a car. It make any point you want to, as an editorial cartoonist,
[00:35:13] Peter Kuper: This is a nice one because he’s got all these labels in it, but they’re all, they’re all integrated. Um, it is, this is one of the things I try to fight off is the, you know, if you have a caricature of, say Trump, you don’t have to put Trump on his shirt.
[00:35:28] Peter Kuper: I, you know, ideally, and though though it’s, it’s absolutely, you know, it’s a tradition of the form, but it’s, I, I love seeing it when there’s, there’s, uh, trickier solutions to that like this.
[00:35:38] Daryl Cagle: it’s kinda a sissy thing to use labels and it’s a good manly cartoonist who doesn’t use lots of labels.
[00:35:45] Taylor Jones: I’d like to add that, that, uh, technical thing. Uh, uh, I always love John Darkow’s, uh, use of a pencil. He just, uh, he, his quick sketches are always great.
[00:35:55] Daryl Cagle: He is unusual for not using the computer at all.
[00:35:58] Taylor Jones: Well, I don’t either, other than, I mean, you know, I mean, it’s, other than scanning things in,
[00:36:02] RJ Matson: I draw on paper and scan it and. Paint the color on the computer.
[00:36:06] Daryl Cagle: So gentlemen, here’s Patrick Chappatte from, uh, Switzerland, and he’s got the eight billionth baby being delivered by the stork into a world of, uh, war and refugees and horror. Uh, it’s, it’s a nice looking cartoon.
[00:36:22] Peter Kuper: Pretty upbeat, eh? Yeah. Very. Ah, laugh fest.
[00:36:23] Daryl Cagle: Here’s, Adam Ziegler, with, American West flooded out, people sitting on the roofs of their houses. And one says the good news is threat of wildfire is relatively low today.
[00:36:33] Peter Kuper: Uh, sad truth,
[00:36:34] Daryl Cagle: it’s sad. Here’s, Chris Weyant, um, he’s got the guy on a desert island being rescued, and he says, mass shootings, covid, attack on democracy, the recession, climate crisis.
[00:36:46] Daryl Cagle: Why would I wanna be rescued? Mm-hmm.
[00:36:48] Peter Kuper: Was that your French accent?
[00:36:50] Daryl Cagle: basically they’re all my French accent.
[00:36:53] Guy Parsons: Sounds like a Jersey accent to me.
[00:36:55] Daryl Cagle: Okay, well, who knows where this island is.
Peter Kuper: Daryl, you’re a kvetcher.
[00:37:05] Daryl Cagle: I am. Well, there’s, well, here. Here’s, uh, Dave Whammond, the poor turtle at the ocean’s edge. And the turtle says, “To tell the truth, I’m having some post pandemic stress too.”
[00:37:11] Guy Parsons: Good cartoon. That is a nice piece. I went to school with Dave. We were roommates actually.
[00:37:12] Daryl Cagle: Excellent. Hmm.
[00:37:14] Guy Parsons: Yeah. Small world. I’ve got stories to tell you guys about Dave Whammond. Make your hair stand up.
[00:37:19] Daryl Cagle: Dave Whammond is really very popular and, you and he, we present, as American cartoonists. You make an excellent American cartoonist Guy.
[00:37:28] Guy Parsons: Oh, thanks. I love American politics. Uh, you know, I’m so sad to see Trump leave office, but he, he really hasn’t, you know, he’s, he’s stuck around pretty well, don’t, I think this don’t indictment, but the indictment Sure.
[00:37:40] Guy Parsons: Quieten him down. Cuz you haven’t heard a thing in the last week about anything. Trump. I remember like the, in the middle of pandemic everything was Trump everything. Like, if it wasn’t the pandemic story, it was a Trump story, everything. Right?
[00:37:52] Peter Kuper: It’s, it’s, I mean, listening to, but I, I, I hear the name Trump pop up now and again on a daily basis throughout the day.
[00:38:01] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. Yeah. I, I do too. well there’s that Trump
[00:38:04] Taylor Jones: part of the plan.
[00:38:05] RJ Matson: Our, our great political system will provide someone new in, in due time. I remember in 2000, after about a decade drawing for the, uh, New York observer, I woke up one day and I realized I didn’t have Bill Clinton, I didn’t have Rudy Giuliani, I didn’t have Alphonse Demato.
[00:38:22] RJ Matson: All of my great targets of satire are gone. and then about a year later, nine 11, and it was just like, you know, who, who am I gonna make fun of? And, uh, you know, just stick around. Something new comes up.
[00:38:35] Peter Kuper: Yeah. Well, also there’s, and this is predates, uh, Jared Kushner owning the paper. There was a moment, there was a moment there.
[00:38:42] Peter Kuper: I was doing work for the Observer and just, and I did something that was, I, I guess I did something about Trump or whatever, and it was just, I and I, we had a, a falling out and I, uh, and I said, I’m not gonna work for you anymore. And at the end of the week, they, they endorsed Trump and they also wrote me a seriously nasty letter.
[00:39:02] Peter Kuper: They, they said, wrote, wrote some seriously nasty emails my way, the editor and the, uh, art director un unpleasing. But, uh, I didn’t know who Jared Kushner was, almost at all. I was like, this, this guy’s bought the paper. Who’s that? Right? And boy, then sure do know who he is. Now I wanna know more about who’s, in fact,
[00:39:23] Guy Parsons: Don’t you find it funny nowadays that political cartooning has become, more safe than it was say 20 years ago?
[00:39:30] Taylor Jones: I hate to put it this way, but if I felt this for a while now, that, uh, in some ways, uh, the, the quote editorial cartoons that people are seeing are things like, uh, Stephen Colbert’s monologue.
[00:39:43] Taylor Jones: Cuz if you put something in his monologue along with a graphic, which he, he does, that’s as much an editorial cartoon as anything we do. I, other than it’s not on paper or, or, you know, however the various cartoonists do it. And, uh, it’s, it’s, and of course, newspapers, uh, because of shrinking audience, aging readership, that people aren’t going to their editorial pages to look for satire as, uh, as they once did.
[00:40:14] Taylor Jones: And, uh, I find myself, uh, I have many times and I, I have tried to race to finish a cartoon to be done before 11:30 before, because there has been a couple of times, and I’m sure this happened with all of us where. I, you, you’re working on an idea, and then one of the late night talk show hosts does that, that in real time as a, as a, as a monologue joke.
[00:40:38] Taylor Jones: And I’ve had to crumple up the cartoon and throw it in the waste basket. So, so that’s, in some ways, I think that’s more of the competition for us.
[00:40:45] Peter Kuper: Um, the, the happier moment was when I did a cartoon, uh, that was the five stages of, uh, election denial or something like that with Trump. And it was, you know, like anger, denial, anger, denial, anger.
[00:41:00] Peter Kuper: You know, it was leading up to him not, not going along with it. And then every one of the talk shows did a variation of the five stages of denial. And it was like, and, and happily I got it in early enough where that didn’t happen. But, um, that what surprised me was that they all did the cartoon.
[00:41:19] Peter Kuper: Not that they were taking it from what I did by any means, but it’s just one of those, again, the ideas out there in the atmosphere and then mm-hmm. You have, they, they’re all doing it, but you’d think they’d be looking at each other and going, uh, you know, Jimmy Kimmel’s not gonna do it cuz Colbert did it and the Daily Show won’t do it because of, you know, Jimmy Fallon, although he’s not likely Jimmy Fallon.
[00:41:41] Peter Kuper: Um, and, you know, so, but they, they too do that same thing where they, there’s like a, a chewed over idea and similar. But you know, it, I mean, it must be the, I, you know, producing that material. Like, like we do. It’s a real, you know, you’re pushing a ball up a hill all every single day, and then the news gets torn up and they gotta come up with something new.
[00:42:01] Peter Kuper: It’s really quite remarkable sometimes. I, I do enjoy watching all those, the, the opening clips of, of that series of talk
[00:42:10] Daryl Cagle: shows. Well, I, I gotta say, I think cartoonists are doing the best work that they’ve ever done. Now, we stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, and I don’t think we’ve been deterred by, uh, editors not wanting what we want to draw.
[00:42:26] Daryl Cagle: We draw what we want. I send you guys a list of the 20 most reprinted cartoons every week. And I think it’s for many cartoonists that’s a, a depressing list. Um, and a, a real disappointment at, at all of the strong points of view that are not being seen. But, uh, that hasn’t deterred anybody from having strong points of view.
[00:42:49] Daryl Cagle: And, we do great stuff.
[00:42:51] Taylor Jones: Well, I certainly wasn’t suggesting that I, but I was just saying is that, is that, you know, where, where our audience is, and I think, uh, having, what we’re drawing and what our audience is, is, can be hard to match at times, I would think.
[00:43:05] Daryl Cagle: Well here is a wonderful cartoon by Steve Sack.
[00:43:08] Daryl Cagle: Our dear, retired Steve Sack who, draws uh, Tyranosaurus Rex with tiny little hands. He’s labeled fossil fuels and he’s trying to open the door to the future, but his hands are just too small to open the door. I think that’s wonderful. Hmm.
[00:43:24] Taylor Jones: Well, everything he does is pretty wonderful.
[00:43:27] Peter Kuper: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:27] Peter Kuper: Yeah. That beautifully rendered too.
[00:43:29] Daryl Cagle: And here is our, communist Chinese cartoonist, Luojie, who, draws, uh, very much in the point of view of the Chinese government, and they don’t get printed very much here, but he draws cartoons on the environment, that do get reprinted like this one, which is a cute cartoon.
[00:43:48] Peter Kuper: It’s a, a pile of garbage with, uh, the garbage holding a flag in the flag is a plastic bag’s great. It’s
[00:43:56] Daryl Cagle: The garbage holding up a flag in the form of the Iwo Jima memorial. So, uh, there the garbage is, I guess, uh, claiming victory. Yes, uh, over this, vast garbage landscape in the same way as on Iwo Jima.
[00:44:15] Daryl Cagle: And I think that’s cute. Mm-hmm.
[00:44:18] Taylor Jones: What is, I mean, great flip flop. No, it’s, it’s really, really well, it’s well done. And, uh …
[00:44:24] Daryl Cagle: we just did a, a podcast about China where we kind of, uh, dissed on Luojie for his cartoons opposing the Hong Kong protests and opposing Taiwan and defending lots of things that we never see in the press here.
[00:44:40] Daryl Cagle: But, I should say that the China cartoons on the environment, if not their actions, their cartoons are stuff I like to see.
[00:44:50] Taylor Jones: Well, I would think that in China, you may have to tow the government line, but it’s hard to avoid the environmental degradation in, in, it’s hard to avoid environmental degradation in China.
[00:45:00] Taylor Jones: It’s all around you. And I’m sure it, if you know every one of every political stripe in some ways you can converge on, on, uh, uh, opinions about, about the environment,
[00:45:10] Daryl Cagle: I would think. Anyway, I thought that cartoon was nice. Mm-hmm. Uh, here’s, uh, one from Gatis Sluka from Latvia, and he’s got the fish in, they’re all trapped in plastic containers. It says social distancing. Yeah, this is a great cartoon. Cartoon. Very good.
[00:45:26] Daryl Cagle: And this one is by Michael Kountouris from Greece. He’s got the scene from Planet of the Apes with the, uh, Statue of Liberty, uh, in a devastated landscape of plastic bottles. This was, uh, this is the real situation. I thought that was cute too. Mm-hmm.
[00:45:49] Peter Kuper: You’re gonna use the word cute a lot, aren’t you? Cause you know …
[00:45:51] Daryl Cagle: I guess when you talk about the apocalypse, it’s nice to find something cute. Well, gentlemen, I think, I think that’s, uh, the last cartoon.
[00:46:01] Peter Kuper: We’re standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, and it just happens that, that it’s in quicksand, but we’re, uh,
[00:46:09] Taylor Jones: well, there’s your cartoon for Charlie Hebdo.
[00:46:10] Daryl Cagle: Okay. Well, hey, uh, thank you for joining me everybody. It has been a pleasure having you all. Please, uh, remember to subscribe to the Caglecast. SUBSCRIBE to the Caglecast. Our Caglecast is available in both video and audio version. So if you don’t see the cartoons in your audio version, go to Cagle.com or Apple Podcasts, or YouTube or Spotify to watch the video. Thank you for joining us today, and we will, see you next week.
[00:46:41] Peter Kuper: Was that your French accent?
[00:46:43] Daryl Cagle: It’s always my French accent.
[00:46:45] Taylor Jones: Darryl, do you ever, uh, pull back to showing, you know, to show the cartoonists that we’ve already left? hat you go to the screens and we’re gone?
[00:46:53] Daryl Cagle: No, you’re all hanging out, gentlemen. That’s the end. That’s the end. AndI’ll see you later.
[00:46:59] Daryl Cagle: And of -course you should subscribe. SUBSCRIBE to this podcast. See you later.
All: Thanks, Darrell. Thank you. Bye. Good seeing y’all.