Editor:
I believe the North Coast Journal of the past few years has had the best journalism in Humboldt. That’s why I was stunned to see Clay Jones’ cartoon in the last issue (Cartoons, June 27), trying to find humor in the Trump administration’s detention of children without providing such basics as soap and toothpaste (let alone access to their parents).
I went to Clay Jones’ website, where it’s clear he’s horrified by the treatment of these children. Humor is a difficult thing; what some people find funny others find awful and still others won’t get at all. For me, at least, this cartoon completely failed. It seemed to trivialize the atrocities that our government is committing in our collective name, the opposite of what I believe was the cartoonist’s intent.
We watch the occupant of the Oval Office shake hands with murderous dictators and ignore human rights at home and abroad. In this environment, I believe, even cartoons matter.
Mitch Trachtenberg, Trinidad
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This article appears in The Administrator.
Political cartooning is not about humor. It’s about making a political visual point because too many people will pay attention to a visual and not read. It’s always been like that, for hundreds of years-for as long as there has been political news.
Reading political cartoons for soley humor or enjoyment, is like going to a funeral for the buffet afterwards at the home of the bereaved.
Nations have changed power over political cartooning.