Tag: politics

The News Is Hair Raising: The Evolution of a New York Times cartoon gif

Cartoons often evolve from real situations or emotions. I want to show you how a recent drawing happened.
The other day,  I came home to find my husband, Michael Maslin, glued to the television set, sitting on the edge of the sofa close to the screen.  We are both riveted (and not in a good way) by the news that is emerging at a fast clip out of Washington as of late.
The next day, another news story broke about the Trump administration, and  I decided to draw a cartoon about this because I could feel it was something our country was grappling with in various ways on many levels. There was drama happening on an hourly basis.  I thought of Michael and I drew this:
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When I drew it, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was going to do with it. Looking at my sketch above,  I thought I should simplify it. And make the person a woman, because, well, why not. I try to make my protagonists female when I can. In this instance, gender had no meaning.IMG_3401
I looked at the hair that I drew and thought:  it should go straight up!   I drew this:

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I thought:  I can make it a two paneled cartoon with these two images. But then wait!  I remembered that I now know how to animate!  So I will just animate it!  I opened my animation app and drew this video. Then….

 

 

 

… I sent it to The New York Times to see if they wanted to run it, mentioning that I could also do it as a gif. They said yes,  they wanted to publish it with Nicholas Kristof’s column, which was about to be published.  After an hour of fine tuning about where my signature or credit line should go, I made a gif and it ran with Mr. Kristof’s column, “What Did Trump Know, And When Did He Know It?” 
It was an honor to have my gif on the front page of the New York Times with Mr. Kristof’s Op-Ed piece,  in commentary about an historic time in our country’s history.  Bottom line was: this gif represents exactly how I feel right now. It seems to represent others’ feelings.  And for an editorial cartoonist,  that’s often the best place to find ideas: in your heart.

A Sea Of Pink Hats: Drawing The Women’s March, January 22, 2017

It was an amazing day. While we did not make history on January 20th by electing the first woman president, history was made on January 21 by the sheer size of the Women’s March in DC. Along with the fact that many other marches were held simultaneously in support around the globe.
The crowds were friendly and happy, and they seemed enthused to be there to express their views in a demonstration. It was multi-generational, and there were families of all sizes. The crowd was diverse, the posters diverse as well, and while the majority of participants were women, there were many men there as well. There were pink pussy hats on a wide variety of bodies.
The speakers were many and also diverse, from Gloria Steinem to Ashley Judd, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Moore, Van Johnson, Angela Davis and more. Many speakers were not familiar names, but people who work hard on the ground as activists trying to make the world a better place. Speakers urged the crowd to take action, don’t lose hope. My favorite part was when many women from Congress took the stage together, it was a powerful image. They urged the crowd to run for office. Or at least support a sister running for office.
I wish I could have drawn more. There was so much to see, so much hope and enthusiasm, so many great pink vistas. But it got cold, and very crowded, so it became hard to draw after a while.
Below are some of the drawings I did of the crowds, and some of the speakers, and a video of my drawing at the event.
I was so happy to be there.

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We’re All In This Together: Dialogue without hatred, in the fight against hatred

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I have hope. Some may consider me naive. My socioeconomic class and skin color have helped me live a relatively easy life, free of negativity; perhaps that’s why I can be optimistic. But I am also a woman, and have felt sexism and misogyny because of my gender. I have chosen to push past it?—?I don’t ignore the hatred, but I try find a way in my cartoons to expose it, talk about what it is and why it might exist. All with the hope of creating awareness, change, and making things better.

If nothing else, this period will be a time for Democrats and left leaning folks to bond. But all Americans, no matter the political stripe, have to be vigilant to be sure hate does not win over. If someone expresses hatred in the form of bigotry, sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, we speak out.

Those things are not America, and the majority of us believe that.

Each of us must try to find a way to make change?—?no matter how small?—?either in our work or in our community. It’s about positive individual steps, right?

And I’ll try to keep drawing cartoons that speak to this, try to expose what I see, create dialogue without hatred, as we move FORWARD as a country.

The Tyranny Of Email: Hillary knows best

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With the latest scuffle over Secretary Hillary Clinton’s server and her long-ago admitted-to poor choices in that regard, we are hearing about emails again. Not Hillary’s, but someone who wrote to someone who is close to her. We think. We don’t know, the FBI isn’t sure. Rumor has it that Anthony Weiner is somehow involved, a man with shockingly (possibly criminally) poor choices when it comes to sending things out into cyberspace.

We don’t know what the latest emails contain, they may be duplicates. What we heard from the FBI is simply that they exist. But it has stirred up Donald Trump and his supporters, that we know. We’ll see whether or not there is any there there; Mr. Trump, a man with plenty of his own there there, is certain there is.

Remember the photo of Secretary Clinton on her blackberry and her dark glasses, and many of us were proud of a woman in her fifties being so hip (and still is)? Now I bet she wishes all along she was a ludite.

Emails are burdensome to all of us. But our burdens are nothing compared to Secretary Clinton’s email headaches.