Toon-town under siege

Most threatening dialogue aimed at cartoonists usually comes from editors or ex-wives or the occasional pissed-off politician, who might offer a few “expletives deleted,� but now we’ve got an entire segment of society in the form of Islamic world terrorism to worry about. Don’t they realize that Mort Walker’s “Beetle Bailey� military uniforms might as well be sequined tutus for all the military prowess they exhibit?

Socially, we (cartoonists) are among the least threatening folks on earth, aside from what we might do to ourselves. On the East Coast there’s an occasional alcohol fatality, and the West Coast drug scene has claimed some casualties. Drugs and neurosis do so much damage in southern California that they’re on their way to being described as death by “natural causes.�

But the Islamic terrorist world has already taken cartoonist lives and actually imprisoned a cartoonist in Iran for producing an innocuous drawing of a football (soccer) player that they say looked too much like the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Nope, not much of a resemblance, but the cartoonist was jailed anyway.

In Turkey an entire convention of cartoonists was attacked; the attackers set fire to the building where the convention was held. Cartoonists died in a blaze set by people who prize the teachings of a wonderful holy book that says, “Let there be no violence in religion.�

Now we’ve still heard of plots to kill that Scandinavian cartoonist, and I’ve only followed it in the dribs and drabs of occasional TV news broadcasts or newspaper articles. I’m so far behind in that story that I don’t even recall which Scandinavian country is involved and what exactly the artist is accused of drawing. Religious likeness … something like that.

I’m in this field, I keep track of stuff like that, but I still don’t know what it’s all about. Terrorists gathering to plot violence toward an obscure cartoonist whose name I’ve never heard, about an unknown drawing seen by a handful of people who spend most of the year freezing their cojones off, eating herring, drinking aquavit and producing (wow) gorgeous blond ladies. Fact is, if it weren’t for those blondes I’d probably never even think about Scandinavia.

Cartoonists aren’t governments or political creatures. They’re a loose confederation of artists who just ain’t grown up yet playing with pen and ink and (now) computers, hoping to plug into a James Cameron-type or Disney or a media syndicate as a possibility of getting to own a Mercedes. It’s an art form and like all art forms it’s born in financial grief. That’s “financial,� not “physical.�

That threatened cartoonist probably lives in a small flat with a pet cat or dog named Lars, drives a used Volvo and keeps his milk on the window sill ’cause he can’t afford a refrigerator. Does he sound threatening? Who’s playing God out there with dangerous interpretations of cartoon art?

People who worship in a religion of peace, kindness and charity claim to take action against guys who draw funny pictures? I couldn’t make that stuff up.

Bill Lee lives in New York City and Sharon, and has drawn cartoons for this newspaper, and many other publications of note, for decades.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less