Cowardly Cartoonist Camaraderie

C-SPAN recently broadcast a symposium on political cartoons, elections and global affairs featuring cartoonists Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post, Matt Wuerker of Politico and Michael Ramirez of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

This was right before oligarch Jeff Bezos decided that his newspaper, the Post, would not be endorsing either presidential candidate this year. Ann is a great cartoonist with a unique style and decent politics and I feel sorry for her.

Wuerker and Telnaes are what you would call liberal. Not exactly firebrand radical Marxists but definitely no friends of the far right. Ramirez has always been a right wing goon.

Michael Ramirez

Matt Wuerker

Ann Telnaes

This conversation was cordial and neither Wuerker or Telnaes called out Ramirez when he spouted crazy right wing Zionist talking points and debunked conspiracy theories. Why be polite with this asshole? I know that musicians and other groups are reluctant to criticize each other because there is some sort of professional decorum to be upheld but my god these are political cartoonists! It is their job to speak truth to power.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal is owned by the Adelson family - staunch Zionists who have given hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel. You know - the country committing a genocide with the full support of our current presidential administration? You’d think Telnaes and Wuerker could have brought that up.

We’ve lost a lot of journalists this year and I’m not just talking of the ones murdered by Israel in Palestine (over 100). It seems that if you want to keep your job in corporate media you have to not only downplay Israel’s genocide, you have to actively cheer it on. Or at least ignore it. No better way to destroy your credibility and the trust of your audience. Stenographers for the State Department should not call themselves journalists.

—Alex

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