wtf!!!!

i totally agree w/ u on everything. conservatives are quite somthing else, arn’t they?

-=Frank

I was a fan of Mad for a long time, but in the past few years, since it took on ads and Gaines died, they haven’t been as good, alas. They often don’t do their signature movie parodies anymore!

Recently, MAD Magazine recruited editorial cartoonists on a two-page spread called “Mad Expose on why George Bush is in favor of Global Warming.”

Well, Mike Ramirez is one of the cartoonists they recruited.

You can see his contribution on the slideshow of this article.

Thanks! Nice background.

What’s funny is that Ramirez views gay rights groups as “extreme.” He’s also ignoring the difference between having contrasting views and legal discrimination. Were the issue being black or Latino, I doubt he’d take the same stance.

Mysterio, I’ve seen Ramirez decry pop culture before, but I don’t think over a celebrity death, as you note. And yes, he does love variations on the “water up the nose” bit.

When Ramirez won the Pulitzer in 1994, there were actually protests from gay-rights organizations because of cartoons they perceived as homophobic.

Here’s a passage from a bio on Ramirez in Graphic Opinions: Editorial Cartoonists and Their Art page 189.

When Ramirez won the Pulitzer Prize, gay militants in ACT-UP demonstrated both in Memphis, and at Columbia University during the award ceremony, claiming that his cartoons were homophobic. They cited two in particular: a six-panel cartoon about a gay soldier “coming out” during formation roll-call (soldiers on either side of him move away); another showed a gay man, sitting on a tombstone, complaining that AIDS testing was cramping his lifestyle. Ramirez’s response: “I believe in the right of extreme groups to express their opinion and I had hoped that they understood that I have a constitutional right to ignore them” (Editor & Publisher June 25, 1994, 55)

Regarding a couple of Ramirez cartoons-I think this is the first time Ramirez has taken the media to task for focusing on a celebrity’s death too much-it wouldn’t have anything to do with Ledger’s role in Brokeback Mountain, would it? And you’re correct in that normally, the right seems to dislike the MSM focusing on the deaths of soldiers in Iraq.
The quote in the McCain cartoon about “pouring water down a terrorist’s nose” seems to be one that Ramirez likes-I recall him using it in a cartoon about Congress in the last collection of cartoons you did.

I grow nostalgic for those days when would make the arrangements for summer camp, fighting over who was gonna share a tent with whom, what with all the jealousies. Yes, many of us were having sex with each other.

Our weekend fishing trips were wild - we ensured that the older kids all shared one big tent. There was usually an orgy.

No kidding.

I didn’t include one of those from Gary McCoy on Edmund Hilary, actually.

You’re right that Ramirez’ cartoon doesn’t use that cliché, but it’d be harder to make that cliché work with the attack he makes. Here, I’d say his “originality” is only a function of making a bizarre charge. The focus of the cartoon isn’t honoring Ledger, it’s bashing the media, and to a lesser degree anyone mourning him.

Well, at least it’s better than the standard “pearly gates” cartoon many editorial cartoonists use when a celebrity dies.

Cartoonists would have more relevance if they tried harder at being honest. Case in point: McCoy’s “Bad news on the economy”.

Whether it be one person or an entire party, if you feel you must resort to lying then you haven’t got much of a patform to stand on.