The author is a law professor, political artist, President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, member of the Board of Cartoonists’ Rights Network International, and LeO contributor.The opinions expressed here are his own.
No one can confidently identify the origin of the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Leonardo DaVinci said something like it, it may be from a Chinese proverb or an advertising executive or even Napoleon. Its provenance is likely unknowable because of its obviousness and the simple truth it tells. Pictures are not only worth a thousand words, they can express things that can’t be described at all in words. That’s why they can be so powerful. And that’s why the powerful are so afraid of them. Democracy dies in darkness” is how political artist Ann Telnaes concluded her statement upon her courageous resignation from the Washington Post. It’s also, comically now, the Post’s own slogan. What happened this week at the Post is only the latest evidence that every day we are being pushed deeper into the darkness by the billionaire oligarchs and corporatists who control everything including, more than usual, the Presidency. The Post killed a political cartoon drawn by Ann, a Pulitzer Prize winner, because it featured the Post’s despicable owner Jeffrey Bezos on his knees to Donald Trump. Ann is a first ballot Hall of Famer and has drawn for the Post for 16 years. Her art is smart, beautifully rendered, and always fair. The cartoon wasn’t even a reach. It was so on the money it was nearly a photograph rather than a drawing. No one could responsibly argue that it was unfair or inaccurate. The publishers killed the cartoon precisely because it was so accurate. In demanding the artist’s resignation they proved her point.
Journalism is the only profession in the United States protected by the Constitution itself. Not doctors, not even lawyers. A Free Press is the life’s blood of a functioning democracy. More important, even, than the Rule of Law, and I say this as a lawyer of 40 years and now a full time law professor. Without a Free Press the destruction of the Rule of Law would happen in the shadows. We wouldn’t even know. We have to know. Knowing, ultimately, is what keeps us free.
Political artists work in metaphor. It should terrify you that Ann’s resignation from what was formerly one of our nation’s strongest defenders of the Free Press isn’t a metaphor but is, rather, only the latest proof that those who would rule you rather than govern you are winning. Political artists – to which you may not have paid much attention in the past – are, as Ann has also said, the canaries in the coal mine. Around the world they’ve been jailed or murdered. In the US they’ve been fired, relegated, and targeted. In 2023 the enormous McClatchey newspaper chain fired 3 of its Pulitzer Prize winners and eliminated political cartoons. McClatchey’s only real competition, Gannett/USA Today did the same. This, while shuttering news rooms and turning their newspapers and online content into mere newsletters for the local Chambers of Commerce. School boards, city councils, mayor’s offices and state legislatures (who make 95% of the rules and laws that actually affect you) are today free to act nearly with impunity because not only is there no City Desk at your newspaper often there’s not even really a desk.
The corrupt and powerful dislike reporting and written columns. But they are driven mad by political cartoons. Images have a power words struggle to achieve. No one lines up in an abandoned alley in Manchester to see the latest paragraph Banksy wrote on a wall. No one would remember reading a news article describing a police chief in Saigon shooting an accused traitor point blank in the head. Far fewer people would know about the Hindenburg lighting up the New Jersey sky if there had been only written reporting. Washington’s boat ride across the Delaware would have long ago evaporated into history if a man in Düsseldorf, Germany hadn’t painted it. 150 years after Tammany’s Hall’s corrupt Boss Tweed complained about Thomas Nast’s drawing by whining “My constituents can’t read, but they can damn sure look at pictures” political artists are now more than ever the target of threats in the US and violence overseas. In his insulting response to questions about Telnaes’ resignation the Post’s opinion editor David Shipley said – it isn’t reported whether with a straight face or not – he killed the cartoon because of “repetition”: That they had and were publishing written columns about the same subject. What he meant to say was that while it was unlikely Bezos would notice or read the columns, he’d blow his bald and cosmetically-enhanced top if he saw Ann’s drawing.
The images they don’t want you to see are the only ones that really matter. This is why this should matter to you.
Political art isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But, presumably, living in a corrupt authoritarian oligarchy isn’t, either. The darkness in which democracy dies arrives not with the flick of a light switch but like the night, following the gradual setting of the sun. And people, it’s getting chilly. The shells of their former selves that the Washington Posts of our country have become have all but eliminated political art from their pages. Political commentary delivered visually is far too much trouble for editors who just want to keep the publishers happy. Fire the artists, shrink the size of the newsroom, demand loyalty to the business or a particular President and the next thing you know … well, that’s the goal. You won’t know. You’re not supposed to know.
When you don’t know, when you can’t know, you’re no longer free. They’re trying to kill all the canaries. That, you should know.
This article appears in Dec 18, 2024 – Jan 16, 2025.