Greta Lawler ‘23 News Reporter
Election time is stressful. It is exhausting to open up the news everyday only to be flooded with polling numbers, debate analysis, and the newest crazy comment someone made or refused to make: but for many, it is impossible to turn away. Political cartoons are an outlet for politically aware individuals on both sides of the political spectrum. Found most often in print newspapers, their relevance in today’s society is fading, but for those who view them, political cartoons provide humor and a welcome moment of levity. However, don’t be fooled into thinking political cartoons are all fun and games. While they are light on words, cartoons are often heavy in meaning and loaded with references to both politics and pop culture.
Political cartoons make a statement about the author’s political beliefs but are not typically intended to change the reader’s views or sway them to one side or the other. Most often, a newspaper has one to two editorial cartoonists, whose cartoons are published daily or weekly. Much like a columnist, cartoonists are free to express their opinions as they see fit. However, cartoonists’ political values are generally in line with the newspaper’s (and its readers) political leaning. Provided below are samples of three political cartoons published recently from different news sources. Notice the humor targets the political demographic most common among the paper’s readers. Which cartoons do you find funniest? Does the source it comes from align with your political views?
Washington Post (left-leaning):
The Economist (central):
Fox News (right leaning):
While each cartoon features a different style, all possess traits characteristic of the genre. Prominent figures are depicted as caricatures. President Trump’s face is large with prominent lips and obscured eyes. AOC’s mouth is huge, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes manic. These exaggerated physical features are used to make a statement about the intangible – a person’s integrity, character, and intelligence. Symbolism is another powerful element employed by artists. For example, the donkey portrays the Democratic Party. The Democratic donkey and the GOP elephant make frequent appearances in political cartoons from all sources.
Like paper newspapers, political cartoons have seen better days. They were once considered an accessible way to digest news for the general reader; now TV, podcasts, and short videos such as CNN10 have risen as the method of choice for brief, accessible, informative news. For political humor, most turn to SNL, other TV talk shows, youtube satire groups, or memes. In a way, these are the next evolution of political cartoons, optimized for the twentieth first century. Whether or not political cartoons in the traditional sense will ever see a comeback, their legacy as an original form of printed political humor will live on.
And finally, a little not-quite-political cartoon that anyone who tries to keep up with current events will most likely enjoy:)
Though I have issues with describing the Washington Post as a left-leaning publication, the far more egregious description is The Economist. The characterization of The Economist as a centrist periodical, despite what they themselves would like to believe, is a bit flimsy and shallow. While it may depend on how one describes the left and the right, and whether social issues should be considered and debated on the same metric as economic policy, on some of the most consequential issues of the time, they have shown to favor policy typically associated with the right.
On their blog post attempting to answer their political bent, they write, “We like free enterprise and tend to favour deregulation and privatisation. But we also like gay marriage, want to legalise drugs and disapprove of monarchy.” This is a very telling statement.
No publication that has any left leaning sentiments on economic policy would seriously write “tend to favour privatization” given that the common position on the left is that of nationalization and redistribution, not privatization and accumulation. Deregulation is also a very uncommon sentiment among left-leaners, even those who are more moderate. The economics of that statement tilt significantly to the right.
And where The Economist claims left-wing credentials, the positions it touts are not necessarily indicative of the left. Note that in Britain, where The Economist is based, gay marriage is a less contentious issue among the right than it is in the states, with staunchly right-wing figures such as Theresa May, David Cameron, and William Hague supporting it.
Though republicanism is admittedly a sentiment shared more commonly within the ranks of the left than of the right and prominent left-wing politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have had publicly supported a republic, republicanism is an unpopular position among the general British public. In 2012, 80% of Britons supported keeping monarchy. The Labour Party, the main left wing party in the UK, had no official stance on republicanism, despite having had a republican leader and a republican shadow chancellor between 2015-2020, and still doesn’t to this day.
And the legalization of drugs, if anything, is a social libertarian position, not a position unique to either the left or right. In fact, Milton Friedman, a widely influential figure on the right, was in favor of drug legalization. Ayn Rand, another influence on the American right, was in favor of drug legalization to the best of my knowledge. While legalization is a position not commonly seen among mainstream conservatism, it is also not a position entirely divorced from right wing politics.
Privatization and deregulation are hardly the only right-wing policies that the publication has supported. It supported austerity measures in Britain following the 2008 financial crisis. It supported President Obama’s surge in Afghanistan, a position that was contentious among the Democratic politicians but widely supported in the Republican mainstream. It supported the Iraq War, a war that was contentious in the Democratic Party and detested among left-wing circles both at the time and today. 98% of Republican Senators in 2002 voted for the war and 96% of Republican House members voted for it. In the British House of Commons, 84 Labour MPs defied its own PM and voted against approval (69 abstained) versus 0 Conservative Party MPs voting against the war.
And as a last point, its own endorsement record shows that it on balance supports right-wing politicians. In Britain, since 1955, it has endorsed the Conservative Party 12 times and the Labour Party exactly thrice in 18 general elections, the latter two times endorsing Tony Blair, a man considered so far to the right in the Labour Party (and in general politics) that there are very few in his own party who still support him (though to be fair, this is a sentiment shared by most of the British public). The Economist acknowledges and accepts this placement of Blair’s Labour Party on the political spectrum. It wrote in its 2001 endorsement of Blair, “Vote conservative—But choose the ambiguous right-winger rather than the feeble one.” It endorsed Margaret Thatcher three times, the woman who is credited for shifting Britain’s postwar political mainstream against its mild welfare state. It endorsed David Cameron’s Tories in 2015 after 5 years of unambiguously right wing austerity programs. It endorsed Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats in 2019, which might seem seem like evidence against my argument that The Economist is a right wing publication until one learns that Swinson not only served in David Cameron’s government but also voted with the Tory government more often than some Tory MPs did.
The idea that The Economist can be seen in the United States as a centrist publication is frankly disappointing and shows how conservative and stunted the American political spectrum is.