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I must confess that the only newspaper cartoonist I read on a regular basis is published in the local free weekly that is delivered to my door and so I am usually quite clueless about the day-to-day world of editorial cartooning. However, we do try to link to major policart stories here at Sequential and that includes the occasional irate reaction to particular cartoons (after all, you never know when you’ll have another Danish cartoon event on your hands, with rioters in the streets). For the most part these sort of episodes are fairly predictable and almost solely the result of the deadline doom most daily policarts labour under. Your typical editorial cartoonist must cobble together some hopefully insightful (but usually lame) drawing pointing out the hypocrisy of the players involved in one of the day’s hot stories. Sometimes the caricatures are on target, mostly they are cliche and boring, if not downright unintelligible. Most days I vacillate between the Ivan Brunetti school of policart criticism and the more traditional view of policarts as the heroic defenders of truth and democracy.
I almost didn’t mention the current discussion of Serge Chapleau’s caricature of ADQ leader Mario Dumont because it seemed a willful misreading of the cartoonist’s intentions, even if the result, a drawing of the opportunistically xenophobic Dumont ironically dressed in orthodox Jewish garb, unfortunately played on several stereotypes associated with the same sort of antisemitism Dumont has flirted with. Sloppy cartooning or the artistry of a great Canadian iconoclast? I really have no idea. Fortunately, several bright lights from the Quebec comics scene, including cartoonist/critic David Turgeon have written into Tom Spurgeon’s site with their takes on the matter.
The cartoon in question has also drawn fire from B’nai Brith (Google trans), among others.
