How to Make the Trayvon Martin Shooting Even More Disturbing: Draw Cartoons About it.
You know the drill: Tragic, disturbing, awful event happens.
Political cartoonists make it worse by feeling a need to somehow weigh in with insta-cliche renderings that are matched in their conceptual inanity only by craftmanship several notches below what celebrated quadraplegic artist Warren Cox was able to manage while holding a pen in his teeth.
So here you go, sports fans, a selection of Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman cartoons from various Pulitzer Prize winners and other award-winning drawers of pictures. Read Reason's coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting, George Zimmerman, Florida's Stand Your Ground Law, and related issues here.
All images via the excellent and excrutiatingly comprehensive Cagle Post, your one-stop shop for every shitty cartoon known to mankind. The Travyon collection is here.
Note: to read alt-text captions in images below, hold your cursor over images.
The above is by Steve Benson, the Pulitzer Prize winner whose execrable work in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting will be studied as the low point in American political commentary long after Dr. Zaius and his pals have inherited the earth.
Finally, somebody is willing to take on the real problem in today's America: fucking Shephard Smith! How many more tragedies do we need before we learn the lesson that everything can be traced back to Fox News' most famous penis-remembering news anchor? I smell something cooking in Chuck Asay's kitchen - and it's name is…Pulitzer!
WTF? No, WWTTFF. Or even WWWTTTFFF. I remain disappointed that I've yet to see a cartoon featuring the Grim Reaper (preferably IDed with a little tag reading "Death") rocking a hoodie…
Mr. Fish is "a cartoonist and freelance writer whose work can most regularly be seen on Harpers.org and Truthdig.com." And based on the above image, the last living COINTELPRO provocateur on the FBI payroll.
"Rainer Hachfeld is a freelance writer and caricaturist living in Berlin. His cartoons appear in Neues Deutschland, a socialist daily newspaper in Germany." German socialists get it, that's for sure.
Another Mr. Fish insta-classic and one of many cartoons noting that Florida is shaped like a gun. And has a skull in the middle of it.
The creator of the above image is "a two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning." Which is the meanest thing I've heard said about RFK in a very long time.
More cartoons at The Cagle Post.
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Re: Good Hood. Bad Hood:
Both are bad. Both.
Political cartoonists make it worse by feeling a need to somehow weigh in with insta-cliche renderings that are matched in their conceptual inanity only by craftmanship several notches below what celebrated quadraplegic artist Warren Cox was able to manage while holding a pen in his teeth.
_
kudos nick. damn fine prose there.
Jesus Warren, you made a coherent comment.
only when my hump stops moving
Wow. What a steaming pile of bantha fodder.
These all need more crying Statues of Liberty.
Statue of Hoodertie?
Statute
^^^Hahahahaha! I have an Iranian friend who moved to the USA in 1983, learned English and speaks it well, without an accent. It's funny though because every once in awhile there will be a phrase or words that he just can't grasp.
He was told that he needed a notary public for some documents. He was asking me which gov't office he had to go to get a "Note of Republic".
He couldn't find the restaurant in Hermosa Beach called "The Pierre". Because we were meeting at the pier, instead.
His interpretation of some song lyrics ranges from hilarious to psychedelic to disturbing.
It's the little things...
I'm surprised none of them mixed in Iron Eyes fake Injun.
Holy fucking shit. It's like looking at a SomethingAwful Photoshop Friday whose theme was to mock shitty political cartoons. I can't believe these are even real.
If you are too stupid to be journalist, you become an opinion writer. If you are too stupid to become an opinion writer, you become a sports writer. If you are too stupid to be a sports writer, you become an editorial cartoonist.
Go on...
You missed a step. If you are too stupid to be a sports writer, you become a cartoonist and draw The Family Circus or Beetle Bailey. If you are too stupid for that, you become an editorial cartoonist.
Oh, I get it now, the gun represents institutionalized violence due to exploitative corporate greed!
Shouldn't Tallahassee be the hammer, Tampa be the trigger and Miami be the muzzle? Orlando can be the safety.
But that makes Daytona Beach the sights. That's stupid. You're stupid.
You're stupid! The whole trial is stupid! They're stupid!
If Chewbaca lives on Endore you must aquite.
Key West is the Muzzle and Miami the sight.
That's one droopy muzzle. Are you saying that's what you like? You disgust me.
It is one of them Nazi guns that would shoot around corners.
And I completely borked the geography up. Jacksonville is the hammer. AS IT SHOULD BE.
Tallahassee is the top screw on the grip.
If you are too stupid to be an editorial cartoonist, what's next? Blogwhore? Commenter on youtube?
Griefer.
Bingo. By that, I mean you become Bingo, resident H&R commenter.
griefin' ain't easy.
Say what you will, but Bingo's no Gojira.
4chan
rectal.
Yeah, that is true.
If you are too self-important to have a real job, you become a journalist. If you are too stupid to be journalist,...
My cartoon would be of Trayvon Martin on top of Zimmerman beating him up and then going "OH SHIT!"
But then I like the low comedy.
I don't get it. Is the prevailing narrative now that Geraldo Rivera is right about hoodies making people feel threatened?
The prevailing narrative is inane, as usual.
I would go with incoherent, myself.
The prevailing narrative is: TEAM RED TEAM BLUE RAH RAH RAH. As always.
Two words; Bill Belichik. I got your threatening hoodie right there.
I will pray for him.
I will pray for him.
You'll be too busy playing grabass with Mark Sanchez.
Sanchez ... dirty, dirty Sanchez ...
Note: to read alt-text captions in images below, hold your cursor over images.
Oh, that's interesting. What's a cursor?
i was gonna say, they took all the fun out of alt-text, but you put the fun right back in sage.
So the scythe is a protest, and the protest is beheading the guy who represents the stand your ground law, but what's the gun represent? The cartoon needs at least three more labels.
The gun represents the oppression of the protected class by single tooth white tank top wearing pasty white hillbilly beards.
My man can too get it up fer my squishy tampon holder.
Like a baby labelled "Blue Dog Democrats" holding a covered tray labelled "value added-tax" while riding a pig in a top hat labelled "Super-PACs."
Another one.
The creator of that one has already been labeled a racist
The Kennedy one would be genius without its caption.
Back...and to the left. Back...and to the left.
"I came to confess...I was the second gunman on the grassy knoll. ALLLRIGGHHTTY THEN"
Fucking Germans. They don't think it's so funny when we call them all Nazis.
They're not?
Probably about as much as the Klan hood is considered the right hood in the US.
But we can't let that get in the way of the grand European narrative.
Yep. WWII ended and then Europe was perfect and no one was ever mean again adn everyone had free healthcare. All the racists moved to the US or Argentina. The end.
Because the UN had un-nazied the world forever!
And Stalin somehow wasn't as bad as Hitler.
If only I had had one more bullet.
They have hoods in Germany, too, and they are red and they are used while riding.
You have to cut the Germans some slack. They can never forgive the Jews and Americans for Auschwitz.
They can never forgive the Jews and Americans for Auschwitz.
I thought it was the Russians who liberated Auschwitz.
You missed the joke. The Jews were the victims of Auschwitz. The Germans can never forgive the victims. See?
Could you explain what "Germans" are? I mean it sounds like some sort of bioweapoon.
You're thinking of Germmans
Remember when the left claimed the problem with GWB was his lack of nuance and failure to see anything in terms other than black and white?
Yeah, about that....
It's clear that Bill Day has heard something about the story of To Kill a Mockingbird. Maybe one of these days he'll get around to reading it.
Mock! Yeah! Ing! Yeah!
I got the gist of it, I think.
Racist. Mock! Si! Ing! Si.
At least he could read the Wikipedia article on it before trying to make analogies.
And let us not forget the quote from which the book gets its title.
our father's right. Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
So black people are here to sing their hearts out and entertain us?
Yes, yes they are.
Yeah, I'm about as big an advocate as you're likely to find for the "any interpretation you can support" school of literary criticism, but if your takeaway from TKAM is that killing any black person is wrong because they never hurt nobody then nnnnnnnnnno you read the book wrong.
I seem to recall that the movie ends with a wrongly accused black person being shot dead. Tell me again how the cartoon makes no sense.
Because that's not how the book ends?
The "wrongly accused" part is open to question. Life isn't as simple as literature, and certainly not as simple (minded) as political cartoons
No, Tom was definitely innocent but was convicted anyway even when Atticus Finch all but proved that not only did he not rape the girl, but her white trash father sexually abused her. The point of the book was the grave injustice of denying people basic human dignity because society does so.
At any rate, I don't think Zimmerman shot Martin after asking him to come onto his property and bust up this old chifferobe, so it's a stupid cartoon.
"Tell me again how the cartoon makes no sense."
because the dead bird isn't baked into a pie
Ironically, one of TCM's movies this morning was They Won't Forget, which is loosely based on the case of Leo Frank.
Claude Rains is excellent as always.
Both the movie and book end with Boo killing Bob Ewell after he attacks Jem and Scout and the sheriff accepting Atticus' story that Bob fell on his knife. Boo is the Mockingbird.
They are also here to help guide White people through difficult times.
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmw.....n_4712.jpg
What about the Magical Negro God of Golf.
Seriously though.
WTF,
Spike is complaining of overly heroic, benevolent, magical portrayals of blacks in popular culture.
I'm old enough to remember when blacks were universally portrayed as semi-retarded, overly sexed, violent degenerate demons that had to be kept in their place lest they shoot your parents, rape your women and make you a dope slave.
Within that big picture the magical negro trope seems like a benevolent, if lame, attempt at some kind of penance.
And I much prefer the white folk think of me as some kind of angel, rather than a demon.
Begins at 6:55 mark.
Well it's certainly not my place to accuse a Journalism Award-winning journalist of not having read a book every high school kid since fifty years ago has been obliged to read.
So he means Zimmerman is Boo Radley.
And I label his daring racist cartoon DARING RACIST CARTOON.
Travon Martin Case: Black guy is shot
To Kill a Mockingbird: Black guy is shot
What else do we need to know?
He probably can't read. Better get him the movie on DVD.
What? No Hunger Games angle? Amateurs.
Hunger Games: Has hunger in the name, AND in the book.
Travon Martin Case: Trayvon Martin was hungry for Skittles.
See? Exactly the same.
But the Skittles will pass on the targeted placement in the movie and Peeps takes the opportunity.
Florida shaped like a gun? I thought it was America's wang.
What's the difference?
Try showering off the damage when you get shot in the face by a gun.
=+1
The shame doesn't wash off.
This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun.
Actually Lincoln was shot by a white racist. How insensitive.
Well Kennedy was, like Martin, shot by a Democrat living in the South. So there is that.
Most misrepresented suicide ever.
more like a clitoris.
They get better:
http://editorialcartoonists.co.....26_low.jpg
The last panel about the white burglars reminded me of the tv ads for home alarm systems which always include a white guy with a knit cap carrying a crowbar.
Actually the Florida gun/death's head pic could make a pretty cool t-shirt.
Sell them at the next Florida Georgia game.
http://editorialcartoonists.co.....22_low.jpg
Zoinks! Not pulling punches there, eh Rogers?
They are aware the shooter is Hispanic right? Not exactly the archetypal Klan member.
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! You'll ruin the narrative!!
Don't they let Latinos into white prison gangs?
No, they don't. They are stupid Eurotrash who think that all Americans are racist idiots who eat fried chicken every day.
You know who else eats fried chicken?
Billy?
I mean it's not a very challenging question when the answer is right in your name.
No he's white. This editorial cartoon made him white anyway.
http://mattbors.com/strips/859.png
Ahem...that's "white hispanic".
Florida is shaped like a gun
I always though FL was America's wang.
I lot of people post here, but your thoughts are especially profound.
I hadn't looked at previous comments before posting, so I didn't realize you'd already made that particular Simpson's reference.
How DARE you accuse me of plagiarism you plagiarist! D'oh!
Does that make California it's ass?
This case is breaking the Shiavo record for most mendacity and stupidity concerning a single event.
Thats my line, punk
nobodies use mendacity
und swiss cheese references
They keep coming:
http://newsone.com/files/2012/.....on-640.jpg
SUBSPECIESIST!!!!11!!1
I think he's just a straigh up racist; showing that Hispanics are nothing more than damned dirty apes.
How does the cartoonist know how a racist thinks? Projection?
Since when does a racist intent on "open season" shooting of a black kid invite the cops to the scene?
http://www.carlsontoons.com/wp.....dCOLOR.jpg
Holy fuck, he's gone from being 17, to being 12. to being a friggin infant.
Is the point of all this agitprop to essentially fan the flames of a race riot? I can't explain it any other way...
Yeah, my understanding is that Martin was 6'2", not short by any measure.
And looked a little different the day of his death than he did in the 8th grade football picture the media uses.
Regardless of what you think about the case, how can you defend the media using an out of date picture that showed Martin as a child and the mug shot of Zimmerman?
They have a narrative to uphold, and dammit they're going to do whatever they need to do to uphold it?
Oh, please. It's emotional manipulation, sure, but that's what the fucking media does. WHY? Because we want it to.
Really doesn't change the facts of the case. It really doesn't matter that he was 6'2. The fact that millions of Americans are now whispering to their buddies "You know... that black kid really didn't look as innocent as that picture they put on the news..." Is kinda proof that the manipulation by the media wasn't enough to cancel out the bias against this kid.
Yes. They want a race riot. Race riots mean rating and sales.
well [THEYS] want me to wash my underwear...but i can buy new.
Wy yes. Yes it is. You think I can afford to jet her and her gal pals around the world om my own? It's important to, you know, spread the debts around.
Those are my thoughts as well.
to being a friggin infant.
And the Skittles morphed into a giant lollipop. Conservation of mass, I suppose.
race riot? I can't explain it any other way...
Before it was revealed that Zimmerman was a Democrat, I thought that it was an attempt to promote race issues during an election year.
There's not much else for Team Obama to try to shift the conversation to.
Holy fuck, he's gone from being 17, to being 12. to being a friggin infant.
I was joking with my wife the other day that instead of showing a 4-5 year old pix of Trayvon they should be showing pix of the infant Trayvon.
Once again the dino media makes parody impossible.
I will consider one Friday Funny a week merciful and benevolent from now on.
Yeah, this thread gave me a derivative of Stockholm Syndrome.
All this shit is a classic example of how difficult it is for libertarians to get a word in edgewise once Blue and Red draw the battle lines.
I'm insulted you're telling me how to read alt-text. I'm not the one skipping it on every single poll article.
Steve Smith have agent. Must get permit to visit Steve Smith.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012.....ck-permit/
It was for his own safety. They are sick of amateur "sleuths" wandering into park ranger stations dazed, bleeding, crazed, gaping and keening, weep weep weeping for the anal structures they have lost and the burning pang of the ones they have gained.
I could have made it through Friday afternoon quite happily without reading about anal structures and weep weeping.
Isn't all anal weeping around me? Is it not the case that my very handle is a warning of delights and horrors that each must decide in what measure they can consume? Am I not the crack of the stepped on twig in the forest that sends the quiet herbivores fleeing? like hikers before the bellowing rapesquatch?
Only at HNR can the subject of anal weeping be brought up in the midst of a discussion on poorly drawn cartoons.
This is why I come here.
I can't go on, it's like arguing with Shakespeare.
"like hikers before the bellowing rapesquatch?"
That's a good line! I can't imagine where I will use it, although I do plan to take my nephews camping near Eureka, CA soon...
STEVE SMITH RETIRE TO ARKANSAS ONE DAY!!! CHEAP LAND!!! FRESH OZARK AIR GOOD FOR ARTHRITIS!!! EARLY BIRD RAPE SPECIALS!!!
If I had a son that looked like that, I'd shave his ass and teach him to walk backwards.
So the alt-text doesn't work for me. Why?
Using Chrome with Reasonable and NotScripts, but I allowed all scripts. Any ideas?
I turned off the reasonable Show Alt-text below pictures option because it has been acting wonky for a while now. Try that.
Perfect! That did the trick. Thank you very much.
Those cartoons make Wrath of the Titans seem much more interesting and entertaining.
I feel like someone hit me on the head with the stupid stick. Repeatedly.
Like Wrath of the Titans in IMAX 3D, it doesn't matter how stupid the story is, just amp up the volume and people will watch.
I don't know if Zimmerman committed a crime or not. But I am very doubtful that he will get a fair trial. I have trouble believing that the court will have the stones to find him "not guilty" even if the prosecution fails to make its case.
Bingo.
And even if the courts do find him not guilty, the stage has been set for a full blown race riot. Either way the media wins.
Fair trials are overrated.
I see your point, but I cannot imagine 12 people who would look at the evidence I have seen so far and vote to convict.
I expect a hung jury, and no that is NOT a racial comment.
Convict of what? Maybe not, uh, first degree murder, but we kinda know the guy committed manslaughter. He started a fight with an unarmed kid and then shot him. You know. After a police dispatcher said to stay the fuck away from the kid.
The guy committed crimes. He was completely reckless. Ya don't get to creep around neighborhoods in the middle of the night, taking shots at people you and you alone deem suspicious.
I'm really curious as to what evidence is out there that would make ANYONE reasonably doubt that Zimmerman should spend some time behind bars. We know he was the only one armed. We know he had NO BUSINESS being armed (this wasn't his house, he was acting in a capacity that for the safety of his neighbors required him to be non-confrontational and unarmed). We know he was told to leave the kid alone. We know the kid wasn't approaching him or threatening anyone else or anyone else's property. We know he ignored the command to not engage Trayvon Martin. We know he started the fight. Is it JUST that there is SOME evidence at some point Trayvon MAY have started kicking his ass?? So the fuck what? Don't confront people for no good goddamn reason in the middle of the night if you don't want your ass kicked.
THIS ^^^^^
Hey! A decent one!
http://redalexandriava.files.w.....=522&h=345
Wow. Some actual connection to reality. Weird.
So ugly guys aren't being told the truth? That just seems merciful to me.
Agreed. That's the only one I've seen that is based in reality.
I'm new here. Somebody shot Flo Rida? Why is that news?
http://www.latimes.com/news/po.....1159.story
Did Trayvon Martin die because he was black?
....this tragedy was not a matter of white and black, but a matter of right and wrong. That's generous. But it's hard to believe Trayvon Martin would be dead today if he had been just a white kid on his way home in the rain.
Dear god.
As a few people have noted, this week a 17yr old Sarasota FL resident was sentenced for murdering *2* British tourists....(more than just *white* - Pasty white!)...
In the initial coverage of the murders, the key focus of the stories were = a) "What were they doing in that *bad* neighborhood?" (i.e. their own fault), and b) "its so sad that these areas are so blighted that people are *driven to murder*...
(more)
The question of whether "racism" had anything to do with the case never even came up in the papers... despite =
Witnesses testified that Tyson told them he saw two "crackers" -- his phrase for white people -- walking through the neighborhood and that he intended to rob them. The tourists said they didn't have any money and begged Tyson to let them go home. The men also told Tyson that they were lost.
"Since you ain't got no money, then I have something for your ass," Tyson recounted to a witness
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46.....3Yo7HiGquQ
No, instead they focus on the "sensational" tabloid coverage in England... where they used the word *Ghetto* in reference to the case!??! God, where is their *sensitivity*?
The only place you'll even see any comment at all on whether Sean Tyson was, "motivated by race" is on blogs.
(more)
Shawn Tyson, a high-school drop out who had the word "Savage" tattooed across the chest, had been released from prison in error the day before, after spraying a car carrying a group of teenage girls with gunfire.
Officials had decided that he was too dangerous to release, but the message was not passed to the prosecutor involved in his case, and he was freed after a three-minute hearing.
""Tyson's father said later that, "the trial was unfair", and planned to appeal""
http://amren.com/news/2012/03/.....-tourists/
You can't make this shit up
Cuz, you know. It's not racist to immediately point out that there are really, really bad black teens out there as response to the unlawful shooting of an innocent black teenager...
The whole point of the story that you are commenting on is to comment on the media and their handling of race.
The media have emphasized the melanin content and racial motivations of the actors in the Sanford case, but have almost completely ignored a similar case (innocent people killed by a member of a different race).
In what way is that not pertinent to a discussion of the media?
Joshua, of course its racist to acknowledge any differences in media bias... even *trying* is racist. And everyone knows the Zimmerman shooting was racist. Its already settled in the public mind. Self-defence? Not possible. Doesn't happen. No doubt at all. Whereas, when similar incidents happen all the time in reverse color-format? Well, then its just common sense that its society's fault.
As irresponsible and biased as the media have been, I am still more troubled by the way the police and district attorney have handled this case.
It doesn't make sense that a claim of self-defense is sufficient to prevent a police officer from arresting someone after an unarmed person is shot.
Better dead than Red
It was stupid the first time.... repetition has not improved the wit.
Apparently, I live on a gargantuan right maxilla. I had no idea.
I think all of the above cartoons were actually drawn by Chip Bok.
I think people need to get over it already!
http://www.Anon-Nets.tk
As a political cartoonist, I am greatly offended that Nick Gillespie referred to Mr. Fish as a "cartoonist."
ill take a Hammer and Pop-Sickle.