I learned about the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo yesterday via FM radio, while making coffee, moments after waking up. Fourteen years ago, I watched the 9/11 attacks live, on TV, though it had also been the FM radio that alerted me to the events unfolding in New York, and it had also been while I was making coffee. In the hours that have elapsed, the cartoonists of the world have responded, and while their drawings were certainly full of passion, I’ve always felt that editorial cartooning is much more effective in the form of a scathing cartoon on a slow news day than as an emotional cartoon on a day of mourning. Mauldin’s weeping Lincoln, or the toothless, unfunny cartoons that followed 9/11…these are the exceptions, but yesterdays cartoons were an exception within the exceptions. Cartoonists themselves are now under very real attack, and its bizarre to think that outsiders who draw little pictures are now pubic enemy number one to a group of extremists who are public enemy number one to the Western Establishment. Even before the literal dust of 9/11 had settled, cartoonists had started to question the Bush Administration’s reaction to the attacks. Now, although Toles and Telnaes still lampoon the right, a sort of realignment seems to have occurred. The 21st Century has brought us the show “24”, Leno’s appeal to liberate Afgan schoolgirls, Zero Dark Thirty, Democrats rubbing the “taking out” of Bin Laden in Republicans’ faces, an attack on London’s tube and now, France’s free press. There are many ways to explain the radicalization of thousands of young Islamic men, and many reasons to suspect that the Western Media is afraid both of them as well as the interests that seem to have radicalized them. My hero has long been Bill Mauldin, who was a legit war cartoonist. Compared to his exploits in Europe, his daring drawings in support of civil rights and his trip to Vietnam, being a 21st century cartoonist seemed a bit insignificant. I stopped drawing editorial cartoons about ten years ago. I focused on music, sculpture, drawing comix, work, etc. But yesterday I was making my coffee, listening to the radio and I got the same feeling I felt fourteen years ago. I dug around, and found my brushes and ink. I believe it just might be possible that i have been re-radicalized. Its time to draw.
“Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”
-Salman Rushdie, Jan 7th, 2015
kandero 