Category: Blog Post

We’ve never been huge fans of Steve Sack’s work, but that’s probably more to do with his medium than himself. Editorial cartooning is one of those dusty old traditions of publishing that we’re glad to see persist, without feeling terribly interested. Come to think of it, that’s true of newspapers as a whole—glad they’re around, but don’t feel we’re missing much when the subscription lapses. Still, editorial cartooning is one of the few bright spots in a trade that is otherwise in steep decline.

That explains why we were especially galled by the Pioneer-Press’s decision a couple years ago to drop Kirk Anderson. It seemed to many people to be yet another sign of end times at the dilapidated Knight-Ridder operation across town. Anderson resurfaced at the alt weekly— good for him, and good for them.

The thing about editorial cartoonists is that they seem to work harder than anyone else at the newspaper. While editors sit in business strategy meetings trying to conform the news to the interests of rich suburban readers, while the columnists sit on their thumbs two days out of every three, Sack publishes a new cartoon virtually each morning. There is no one else we can readily identify at the Strib who churns out this much work—of any quality. You might argue that there is nothing easier than expressing your opinion and getting paid to do it, but you would be wrong. The daily opinion part is itself a challenge, but attempting to be funny at the same time is about the hardest thing you can do in a seated position. Naturally, there are ups and there are downs, and the trick with succeeding in the media business is to get the average quality to the highest possible level and sustain it there for as long as you can.

For his sustained level of quality, and for his raw output alone, Sack certainly deserves the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award he just received as best editorial cartoonist in the nation—that’s a well-earned ten thousand dollar bonus, in our humble view.

The main virtue of the editorial cartoon is that it makes optimum use of its medium—in the best cases, it combines opinion, news, humor, and art in an instant visual snapshot that would not work as well in any other context, certainly not in broadcast journalism. At the same time, the editorial cartoon is the archetype for the one bright spot and growth area in the “news” business these days—the Daily Show, the Onion, the blogosphere, and all other iterations of hard news as soft entertainment turned up to eleven. This compares unfavorably with the general drift of newspapering these days, which is trying to make soft news (lifestyle magazine-type content) look and act like hard news, and also have it compete in the attention economy as entertainment—certainly a lost cause. In other words, most newspapers today (indeed, most magazines too) are trying to look and act like TV—while the true heroes such as Sack soldier on in the unglamorous backpages of a hollowed-out advertising vehicle.

Too busy to say anything of any substance today, so sounding a little like a broken record, but look here:

As I’ve mentioned before, there seems to be some panic abroad that the disinformation spread by hardcore partisan bloggers is somehow shaping reality for the nonpartisan centrists who seem to be in hiding. I have always had my doubts—and if I have to cast my lot with anyone, it will be with the optimists and the anthropologists, who tend to see the big picture and the broad view. In other words, it should be reassuring that we live in intensely polarized times where the tyranny of the majority rests on the thinnest margin, and the minority isn’t shy about saying so. (I do worry though about the violence that can be done to the country and its constitution in such a brief burst of pressing a slight advantage.) It should be possible for a slight majority of voters within the next two years to lose the scales from their eyes, and see raw power-grabbing for what it is, and begin the slow process of fixing what’s been done to us. (Didn’t this guy just win a seat and now he’s already looking for a promotion?)

As for certain silly attempts to continue to “frame” the conversation, I’m with editor Anders Gyllenhaal—bring ’em on. The neo-con blogosphere has already run up against the glass ceiling of credibility. When the choir is already full, and you just keep preaching the same gospel, the only room for movement is back out of the choir, where the rest of us have plenty of doctrinal elbow room.

Take, for example, this litany of supposed lefty bias exhibited by Dan Rather. It only appears to be evidence of lefty bias if you yourself are biased in the other direction. There are times when the facts militate against a particular political paradigm—but then the right has never shown much respect for or interest in the facts. If you need a measure of hubris, it is when they believe their gotcha moments are self-evident, when they are merely self-defeating, risible indications of the troglodyte’s myopia.

I have, for several weeks now, been saying that it is immoral to give certain highly intelligent, totally unaccountable liars any more exposure than they already get, but this morring I suddenly had two countervening epiphanies. First, I am no better nor more important than they are (considerably less so, actually), so for the moment I will suspend my own arrogance and obsequiousness, and I will climb into the jello-tub with them.

Second, I realized that I am making certain prejudicial assumptions about them. I have intuited that they are the worst sort of writers—pundits who never manage to escape a cycle of conforming the facts to an uncritical idolatry of current neo-con gospel. The reason they never surprise you is that they have no other job than to idolize that gospel, and doing something interesting—along the lines of a thoughtful critique of their own inherited party-line positions—is not within the realm of the possible for them. (Update: We expected a gradual deteriorization of consensus in the ranks, and here it comes—from the aging agnostics. Unchallenged arrogance and groupthink has its inherent downside. Power corrupts, you know.) So I decided, right here and now, that I would give these fellows the benefit of the doubt. When I go to their blog, which I will do momentarily, I will check on their position with regard to the shameless bankruptcy bill (so ably considered by the Big Boss over here). If their position is what I expect it to be, I pledge that I will never again sully these pages with the merest mention of them. On the other hand, if they surprise me, the lines will stay open.

Just to be clear, I am not a powerful, widely read pundit (the closest I ever got to Time magazine was once interviewing to be an editor there), and I have no reasonable hope of influencing anyone anywhere. This is merely a proposed personal and permanent embargo. In other words, this will hurt me more than it hurts you. Ah, but there I go making my assumptions again!

So, here I go… be right back… (start the clock)…

I’m back. It took me three minutes to scroll the homepage. Wading through a majority of posts that mostly celebrate (what else) the importance of Power Line, or idolize the President, I was astonished to see that the boys have not weighed in on the Bankruptcy Bill… I need to dive back in here. Is it possible that there is no reasonable defense that a couple of bankers can credibly pose? Hmmm.. be right back…

I cannot readily find the boys’ views—they have apparently never mumbled the word “bankruptcy” as a term pertaining to banking rather than morality—but I have had, in just a few minutes, a nose full of their self-promotion, self-righteousness, and… well, just their selves. I think it would be wrong not to go ahead with that embargo just the same.

By now you have heard about the flap over at The New York Press, where editor Jeff Koyen walked the plank for a tasteless feature called “The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope.” The general consensus seems to be that his main transgression was publishing a spectacularly unfunny piece by a writer who is a jackass. We have said it many times before, but no one seems to notice: If you do not care about your subject, it is impossible to be funny about it. This has confused some readers. They have written to ask whether this means one cannot poke fun or be mean in any way, and that is not what we mean. For example, here is a very good example of a pope joke that works, and it does not reflect very well on the pope himself. But if you desconstruct the joke, it is clear what the jokester cares about: social justice and progressivism, which in certain cases is emphatically not what the pope nor the Church are interested in.

The “official” story is that the publisher and owner of the Press were most exercised by Koyen’s “insubordination” in a technical matter. Koyen apparently wished to parody the New York Post at the same time that he made fun of the octogenarian pontiff, and lawyers at the Press apparently trembled at the prospect of landing in court with Rupert Murdoch’s henchmen. It is certainly true that putting yourself in the Australian Sauron’s cross-hairs is normally suicidal. On the other hand, parody is a time-honored protectorate of the fair use doctrine, and Murdoch would look pretty bad putting the Press out of business on an overreach like that. For their part, the publisher and owner don’t seem to care that certain public officials are calling on New Yorkers to break the law by gathering and throwing away any copies of the Press they might find. (This is against the law, and amounts to an abrogation of freedom of the press. It also reminds us of mobs in burlap with pitchforks and torches.) All in all, we have to say probably every last person at the Press, top to bottom, including the publishers and the lawyers, ought to either be fired or publically shamed, and that appears to be what’s happening. What an unadulterated debacle—rather like a runaway car full of egomaniacs who will not stop and ask for directions.

The main problem with the New York Press is not incidental, it is systemic. The Press has no friends in any quarter. We find that it has a hard time caring about any subject, and seems interested mostly in hearing its own voice. As a brilliant friend once said, after we ourselves made a brief appearance as the subject of a Press article, “You don’t necessarily want to read about yourself in the New York Press.” Despite frequent intonations of the holy name of H.L. Mencken, this has never been an asset to anyone, least of all the Press.

We are fans of Russ Smith’s, but this hand-biting legacy is probably down to him, and has been nothing but trouble in the hands of lesser writers and editors. He certainly was able to make a viable business of pure contrarianism, but we worry about his successors. If they are serious about plying new waters with the paper, they really ought to change editorial direction dramatically and make some powerful friends—or else hire Russ Smith’s equal. Koyen’s somewhat juvenile efforts to make the Press “more dangerous” were precisely what the paper did not need—by the sheepish admission of its owners.

In the end, we can all agree that we want the same thing. Simple-minded editors and writers (and publishers and lawyers) need to understand that editorial credibility is absolutely critical. Confusing contrarianism with credibility is an easy thing to do, but it is a deal-breaker. When you are trying to be funny, and trying to care about your subject, but failing at both, your credibility is damaged just as badly as if you wrote nothing but fawning sycophancy on behalf of your advertisers.