My new book, due out in November, will be sold in the great store Anthropologie!!!

Sarah Palin.  I imagine many women aspire to look like her. But the same women may hate her politics. What to do?

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/image_gallery/72570

http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/U1727254-4.html

I used to do the cartoonist lunch every Wednesday. Now I join the group on Tuesays every so often. The regulars when I was going early in my career (in the early 80’s)  were Roz Chast, Jack Zielger, Mick Stevens, Sam Gross, Bob Mankoff.

It is a town that is home to a variety of people–families who have lived here for generations, farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, artists, writers, cartoonists, weekenders from NYC and cows. Not to mention chickens, horses and goats. Thinking about all the secret service that are blanketing the area, I came up with the cartoon below. Then did another version with a different caption. The local paper, The Daily Freeman, has published the first version online.

And I wanted to try to do one that did not use the word “Rhinebeck”, and came up with this:

The issue I drew about was the McChrystal firing. The drawing (link in the magazine here) I share with you below. The idea of a general’s medals being for things other than bravery, etc, is not a new one for me. I have tried it before in cartoons that did not sell. Medals for not saying the word peace, medals for driving a hybrid….but this time, I used the format again and it was the magic formula. Cartoonists often do this– rework settings, formats, words with new ideas.

Not that this came easily. In my head and on the many pages of paper on my desk, I tried numerous different approaches to the McChrystal affair before I drew this one. There are countless ways to get at a subject, the key is to find a way to poke fun in a manner that will allow the cartoon to last beyond the immediate circumstances.

(copyright The New Yorker Magazine and Liza Donnelly)

My feeling is that as we get older, we women learn to lose our inhibitions in many ways. Helen Thomas represents that clearly. We realize that being careful is not all that it is cracked up to, that being nice at the exclusion of ourselves should not always be the most important quality to have. Her comments on Israel and the Jews, however, went too far in my estimation. She is, of course, allowed her own opinion, but even she realized after the fact that what she said was not right. Her emotions got the better of her–I am not sure if it was because of her age. Maybe after years of being asked questions, she let her inner editor fall away when she shouldn’t have.

I am sorry she will end her career on this note…if in fact her career is ended. Maybe she should do stand-up. Sarah Silverman has shown that raw comments get a laugh from many. In my cartoons, I try to be uninhibited but thoughtful, not hurtful, and not provocative as in pushing people’s buttons. I want to be like Helen Thomas, but not as she was last week.

The cartoon below was done last week (June 10, 2010) and has run in numerous online sites, starting with womensenews.org, then dscriber.com and now salon.com It’s getting a lot of comments, mostly in the form of dialogue between the commenters on their own opinions. As long as the comments don’t get nasty, dialogue is what we need.

Michael Maslin, Liza Donnelly, Drew Dernavich

Host, creator and curator of Happy Endings, Amanda Stern

Carolita Johnson

Drew Dernavich

Liza Donnelly

Liza Donnelly

Cartoonists: Drew Dernavich, Carolita Johnson, myself

Musical guest: Jeffrey Lewis

link:  http://www.joespub.com/component/option,com_shows/task,view/Itemid,40/id,5165