With high gas prices, stagnant wages and high unemployment, summer fun might be forced to take a backseat for many this season.
Check out our new Summer Vacation cartoon slideshow to see how cartoonists are coping this summer.
J.D. Crowe / The Mobile Register, Politicalcartoons.com
Former Alaska Governor and one-time Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has started her East Coast tour, an event most see as a bridge to seek the Republican presidential nomination.
Palin has become a lighting rod for controversy, and a favorite for cartoonists to draw. Check out their latest work in our new Palin's Tour cartoon slideshow.
Jimmy Margulies / The Record, PoliticalCartoons.com
Oprah Winfrey ended her popular talk show last week after 25 years, outlasting Phil Donahue, Sally Jesse Rafael, Jerry Springer and nearly every other daytime TV challenger to come along.
The nation's cartoonists have drawn lots of great cartoons about Oprah over the years. Come check out our best in our new Oprah Legacy cartoon slideshow.
Cam Cardow / Ottawa Citizen, PoliticalCartoons.com
Satirist and Raging Moderate Will Durst weighs in on Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer:
Martin Sutovec / Slovakia, PoliticalCartoons.com
Forget the almanac. And the calendar. Forget whatever the weatherman or the newspaper or the next-door neighbor with the hair growing out of a mole shaped like the state of Delaware on his nose told you. The true worm-hole opening to summer is not the upcoming solstice on June 21; it’s the last Monday of May, Memorial Day.
Memorial Day: when the world alters unalterably for every kid and teacher across the land. By now, the cages have either sprung open or the locks are being picked and the imprinted DNA of every true-blooded American tingles in anticipation of the 10 to 12 weeks of school-free adventures looming ahead like a sun-kissed valley below a fog-enshrouded summit. Even if we don’t get to stop in the valley, we can recall when we did and grin wistfully.
Officially, the last Monday of May was carved out as a peaceful moment to lay wreaths at the tombs of all the young men and women who sacrificed their lives for the security of this nation, not to mention the multitude of valiant drivers tragically lost in Midwestern automobile races.
Unofficially, it’s a time for the whole of America to stop in the headlong momentum of the year to lean on a freshly painted picnic table and catch our breath. Summer? Already? How the heck did that happen? Wasn’t it just the other day we were taking down our Xmas cards? Of course some of us still have our Xmas cards up. And just exactly what is wrong with that?
Most importantly, Memorial Day marks the beginning of the flesh-charring season. Our own at the beach eating al fresco for the first time all year, and those many brave, slow mammals on a freshly scrubbed Weber who gave their lives in order for us to raise our cholesterol levels to heights where Sherpas fear to tread.
Dave Granlund / PoliticalCartoons.com
This is a time for fireworks and pie and tires swinging on ropes over rivers and roasted marshmallows and ice cream on sticks that melt down your hand all the way to the elbow. And golf and corn and hiking and lemonade and thunderstorms and baseball broadcasts on AM radio and spending a week in the middle of August jammed in the back of a station wagon with no air conditioning, an incontinent 18-year-old basset hound and a leaking Coleman cooler.
Some people even find camping relaxing. Good for them. For me, the outdoors is where the car is. Roughing it means cable TV without Turner Classic Movies. You say "wilderness," I think spotty cell-phone reception.
My vacation plans comprise of room service, Perry Mason marathons on hulu.com and the crazed midnight looting of many hotel mini bars. Forgive me folks, but my idea of a good time does not involve sleeping on rocks, going potty behind trees and dodging mosquitoes the size of La-Z-Boy recliners. Think more along the lines of waitresses shepherding sweaty bottles of cold beer poolside.
Our season of frenzied leisure will too shortly end on Labor Day, so hurry out there and have one terrific summer full of languid days and untroubled nights. May you frolic and cavort and gambol and caper in a madcap series of wacky, zany antics that are fondly remembered always. All while keeping the sand off of your hot dog.
Will Durst is a political comedian and columnist for Cagle Cartoons Inc. Read more of Durst's columns here.
New doping allegations by former teammate Tyler Hamilton and a potential federal investigation have made this a particularly unpleasant week for seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
What do the nation's cartoonists think about these latest allegations? Check out our new Lance Armstrong Doping cartoon slideshow to find out!
John Cole / Scranton Times-Tribune, PoliticalCartoons.com
Memorial Day is upon us, and while most people are thinking more about grilling hamburgers that our military, don't forget make time to commemorate the U.S. servicemembers who died protecting your right to slop sauerkraut on that hot dog.
Click here to view our Memorial Day cartoon slideshow.
Nate Beeler / Washington Examiner, PoliticalCartoons.com
John Edwards went from Presidential candidate and advocate of the poor to a guy who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife and spawned a love child with a campaign worker. Now that he faces possible indictment for allegedly using campaign funds to cover up the affair. We thought we'd dig into our archives and pull out our best John Edwards cartoons. Check out our new Sleazy John Edwards cartoon slideshow.
Jimmy Margulies / The Record, PoliticalCartoons.com
There was a lot of hype over doomsday this week, due to a California preacher claiming The Rapture was going to occur on May 21. When it didn't happen, he swiftly told his followers that even though he's screwed up twice on predicting the end of the world, the third time's the charm. Now The Rapture has been reschedule for Oct. 21st.
To find out what the nation's cartoonists think, check out our funny Righteously Raptured cartoon slideshow.
Joe Heller / Green Bay Press-Gazette, PoliticalCartoons.com
Last week I drew a cartoon on the value of the dollar being chipped away.
I’ve drawn a lot of dollar cartoons over the years, and George Washington often suffers for it …
Here’s George struggling with the sinking dollar – something that other cartoonists have surely drawn dozens of times, but it was new to me the first time I drew it.
This frightened George Washington oldie was a magazine cover that I also used for the cover of one of our Best Political Cartoons of the Year books.
Here’s poor George Washington getting slugged by China’s Mao.
I drew this many years ago. China has been buying up America’s debt for a long time.
More recently China has been vocal in complaining about the value of the dollar and America’s huge debt, that they continue to gobble up, so I revised my old panda to express China’s new sentiments.
One problem with cartoon dollars is that it is hard to draw billions and trillions of them. Here is Obama wasting money on the bank bailout – I only wish I could have drawn the dollars in the proper scale.
Ash from an erupting Icelandic volcano is once again forcing the cancellation of flights across Europe. Last year, a volcano that erupted under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier caused major disruptions to air traffic for days throughout Europe.
Well, if you're sitting in the airport with no place to go, at least you can amuse yourself with our new Volcano Eruption cartoon slideshow.
Dave Granlund, PoliticalCartoons.com
The savage tornado outbreak that killed 117 people and injured over 500 in Joplin, Missouri could just be the start of a greater threat to the Midwest. According to msnbc.com, forecasters warn that a vast swath of the United States could be hit by severe thunderstorms, with a high risk of tornadoes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri.
Click here to view our Tornado Terror cartoon slideshow.
Pat Bagley / Salt Lake Tribune, PoliticalCartoons.com
Popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa, known as the "Arab Spring," have already knocked out dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, triggered a civil war in Libya and prompted widespread and deadly demonstrations in Syria and Yemen. How this sudden change will play out, and what effect it will have on Israel, remains to be seen.
Come see how cartoonists have responded to these events with our new Arab Spring cartoon slideshow.
John Cole / Scranton Times-Tribune, PoliticalCartoons.com
This weekend, Memorial Day will usher in the unofficial start of Summer. High gas prices and uncertainty at work may have caused you to cut back your Summer plans, but it's not all bad. At least you can chuckle at the funny cartoons in our new Summer cartoon slideshow.
Jeff Parker / Florida Today, PoliticalCartoons.com
I'll give it to Newt Gingrich - he comes up with creative ways of shooting himself in the foot. After backtracking from critical comments on Paul Ryan's budget, the former Speaker of the House is now claiming that he's "not a Washington figure."
I wonder how Gingrich classifies the 20 years he spent as a member of the House of Representatives. Politicians like Newt are the reason cartoonists sharpen their pencils in the morning Check out some funny cartoons in our new Newt's Nonsense cartoon slideshow.
Nate Beeler / Washington Examiner, PoliticalCartoons.com
My only exposure to French culture as a child was Looney Tunes cartoons featuring the lecherous skunk, Pepé Le Pew. When I grew up, my views of France changed, and I thought of the French as romantic, a view that seems to contrast with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose alleged sexual assault on a hotel maid is remarkably similar to Pepé Le Pew’s antics. Maybe Warner Brothers got it right.
I recently visited France where I learned that the French were also raised with Looney Tunes characters from an early age, and they are all familiar with Pepé Le Pew. In France, the cartoons are dubbed into French and Le Pew loses his French accent; it isn’t widely known that he is supposed to be French. One French lady I spoke with told me, “We never knew Pepé Le Pew was French – I didn’t learn that until I grew up – and I was shocked. We thought he was just a jerk.”
As a flood of news of past liasons pours in, everyone now agrees that Strauss-Kahn is a jerk. This is the season for political-Le Pews, with Euro-Le Pews Schwarzenegger and Burlusconi joining our own chorus of American-Le Pew oldies: Clinton, Gingrich, Spitzer, Sanford, Vitter, Ensign, Edwards and more. It is a parade of shadenfreude delights for editorial cartoonists.
The French are remarkably tolerant of their leaders’ sexual indiscretions, and I was interested to see the America-bashing that accompanied the Strauss-Kahn news, as the French press was eager to bash the American legal system for publishing images of Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs. The American press wouldn’t publish the name of Strauss-Kahn’s victim – not so in France where the victim’s name was broadcast widely.
I wondered what the French thought of sexy maids, and I just did a Google search - ou la la! It seems that every aspect of the Strauss-Kahn story reinforces our stereotyped images of the French. I suspect the same is true on the other side of the Atlantic as the French roll their eyes at puritanical Americans with their backward legal system.
I once got a job from a French magazine whose editors asked me to draw the archetypal American; they gave me a list of American attributes to incorporate into the image; they wanted an overweight man with a: cowboy hat, hamburger, soda, jeans, sneakers and iPod. Hamburgers are an international cartoon symbol for America, understood worldwide, except in America.
Superman is another international cartoon symbol of America, a fact that may have recently led Warner Brothers to have Superman renounce his American citizenship. I hate to think that Warner Brothers might do the same with Pepé Le Pew. Without his French citizenship, Le Pew would be as pointless for us as he is in France.
Well, May 21st has come and gone, and it looks like we're all still here. According to Alan Boyle at the Cosmic Log, at least one good thing may come out of today's non-Rapture: More folks are likely to realize that there's nothing to numerological mumbo-jumbo.
The other good thing was the great cartoons drawn about today's non-event. Check them out in our new Doomsday cartoon slideshow.
Pat Bagley / Salt Lake Tribune, PoliticalCartoons.com
Editorial cartoonists have a tradition of drawing politicians in their underwear. President Clinton is often drawn with his pants around his ankles and boxer shorts with a pattern of little hearts. The same treatment is due for serial adulterer politicians like Newt Gingrich, Arnold Schwarzenegger and too many members of congress to list. Even Batman and Superman wear their underwear on top of their tights. As an editorial cartoonist, I cherish my right to draw anyone I want in their underwear.
Mitt Romney is a little different. He doesn’t seem to be an adulterer, and is certainly no superhero. As a devout Mormon, Romney is supposed to wear religious “garments” as his underwear, and I assume he does although he refuses to answer questions about his underwear. If Romney would talk about his underwear, I would be less motivated to draw him in his underwear; Romney’s “garment” silence interests me. Here are a couple of my cartoons with Romney wearing his Mormon “garments.” I have gotten a bit of flack from readers about drawing the mysterious underwear on Romney, but not as much as I expected, and I’ll keep drawing him this way at least until he talks about his underwear. Poor Bill Clinton will continue to be drawn in his underwear whether he talks about it or not.
The story of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his "love child" dominated a busy news week. Check out our big Week in Political Cartoons slideshow to get caught up the country's best political cartoonists think about everything from Newt Gingrich's implosion to Donald Trump's decision not to run for President.
Daryl Cagle / msnbc.com, PoliticalCartoons.com
Our federal government likes to spend money. Lots of money. Every day, it spends more than it receives. It makes up the difference by borrowing, which is why earler this week we reached out debt ceiling, set at $14.3 trillion.
Congress has until August 2 to either raise the debt ceiling or make substantial cuts. For advice, we look to the nation's best editorial cartoonists with our new Debt in America cartoon slideshow.
Randy Bish / Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, PoliticalCartoons.com
Classic Grover Cleveland political cartoon by New York illustrator Frank Beard from The Judge magazine.
Arnold Schwarzenegger may be bearing the brunt of our 24-7 news cycle with the revelation that he fathered a “love child” with a former household staffer 10 years ago, but he’s hardly the first politician to admit to such a scandal. From Jesse Jackson to John Edwards, numerous politicians have fallen victim to their own selfish urges.
And some have even survived politically.
During the 1884 presidential election, then New York governor Grover Cleveland admitted that he had fathered a child with a store clerk while unmarried. Frank Beard, a widely known cartoonist at the time, drew this infamous cartoon of a baby crying, “I want my Pa!” on the cover of The Judge magazine. Quickly, Cleveland’s opponents took up the cry and started bringing children to Cleveland’s rallies to chant: “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?”
However, Cleveland went on to win the Presidency, and following the electoral victory, the “Ma, Ma …” attack phrase was countered with the slogan, “Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
RELATED:
Cam's cartoon today in the Los Angeles Times.
Cam's cartoon in today's Los Angeles Daily News.
It is typical that newspaper editors will prefer the same cartoon on the same day. Even though editors receive stacks of syndicated editorial cartoons on their desk each day, there is often one dominent cartoon that is every editors’ favorite. Today that cartoon is the Arnold Schwarzenegger Hummer bumper sticker cartoon, which ran in dozens of California newspapers, and in newspapers across the USA, by Canadian cartoonist, Cam Cardow.
What makes this cartoon unusual is that it is eight years old. When the news of Arnold’s love child broke, I looked through our archives and found this appropriate oldie; I changed the date on it and sent it our to our subscribing newspapers. I don’t do that very often, but this one was a good fit at the right time.
Cam’s oldie kicked butt, displacing the new Schwarzenegger cartoons today, on Arnold’s Love Child cartoon day.
Cartoon Slideshow about Schwarzenegger's Love Child
Cam Cardow / Ottawa Citizen, PoliticalCartoons.com
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, is currently on suicide watch in a cell at Rikers island in New York, awaiting trial on charges that he sexually assaulted and tried to rape a housekeeping employee after chasing her naked through his posh Manhattan hotel suite.
As one of the most powerful men in finance on the planet, this story has captured the eyes of readers worldwide. Cartoonists from across the globe have weighed in on this potential scandal. Check out what they think in our new Strauss-Kahn Sex Scandal cartoon slideshow.
Kap / Spain, Politicalcartoons.com
I was interested to read that my former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child more than 10 years ago outside of his marriage to Maria Shriver. It is fascinating that someone who attracts as much media attention as Schwarzenegger was able to hide something like this. Here is my new Arnold Love Child cartoon ...
Looking back at our cartoon archives, we have a lot of terrific cartoons about Arnold. In fact, Cam Cardow of the Ottawa Citizen drew a cartoon back in 2003 showcasing Arnold’s “love child.”
The Los Angeles Times supported Gray Davis and came out with the story of Arnold groping women just before election day. Here was my take then:
And this was a cartoon I drew about the groping story at the time …
Arizona cartoonist Brian Fairrington touched on the groping issue in this cartoon about Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial victory:
He also drew a funny cartoon about Arnold’s famous gap:
Regardless of the rumors, our former first lady, Maria Shriver defended Arnold during the campaign against allegations of groping and sexual abuse. Here’s Austrian cartoonist Petar Pismestrovic’s take on Austria’s favorite child …
Pismestrovic draws a terrific Arnold for Arnold-crazy Austrians. Here are a couple more of his caricatures:
I think Ottawa Citzen cartoonist Cam Cardow sums it all up with Arnold’s bumper sticker:
The space shuttle Endeavor lifted off from Cape Canaveral for the last time today, carrying a physics experiment and spare parts to the International Space Station. It's under the command of Mark Kelly, husband to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was on site to cheer the launch on.
How do cartoonists feel about the looming end of the highly-successful space shuttle program? Check out our End of the Space Shuttle cartoon slideshow to find out.
Bob Englehart / Hartford Courant, PoliticalCartoons.com
Will gas at the pump costing most Americans $4 a gallon, it's hard to be sympathetic for big oil. Yet that's what it seems like Republicans and the C.E.O.'s of these companies want, as they attempt to make the case against a Democratic proposal to remove $2 billion in tax breaks to these extremely profitable companies.
What do the nation's cartoonists link about big oil and their subsidies? Check out our new Big Oil is Big Business cartoon slideshow.
Jimmy Margulies / The Record, PoliticalCartoons.com
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