Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year [Paperback]

Charles Brooks (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Best Editorial Cartoons | Publication Date: February 28, 2002

War against the Taliban.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

More than 180 leading editorial cartoonists from the United States and Canada once again present their incisive pictorial commentary on the events, ideas, and personalities that captured headlines during 2002. Saddam Hussein's contrived attempts to avoid weapons inspections, President Bush's determination to hold the dictator accountable, confrontations between Democrats and Republicans, the scandal-ridden saga of Enron and WorldCom, and the relentless scourge of world terrorism provided fertile subjects for the cartoonists' art. In some 420 cartoons, this thirty-first annual edition focuses the spotlight on the winners, the losers, the movers and shakers, the builders, the bombers, the fraudulent, the scandalous--just about all who found themselves under scrutiny in the public arena. This series has been edited since 1973 by Charles Brooks, former president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and an award-winning cartoonist in his own right. Included in this edition are the winners of the year's major cartooning awards.

About the Author

Editor Charles Brooks is past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and for 38 years was a cartoonist for the Birmingham News . He has been the recipient of 13 Freedom Foundation Awards, a national VFW Award, two Vigilante Patriot Awards, and a Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial cartooning.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing; 2002 edition (February 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589800176
• ISBN-13: 978-1589800175
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A melancholic look back at one of the darkest days in American history, October 3, 2008

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year (Paperback)

Even though it is seven years later, memories of the attacks on 9/11 still leave me teary-eyed. This book is a collection of the best editorial cartoons of the year 2001, so the topic of many of them is the attacks, the collective emotional reaction and the determination to fight back. However, the events of the past seven years also raise other reasons for sadness.
In these cartoons, you see national unity of a kind almost unprecedented in the United States, yet the actions over the last seven years have destroyed it. Since that time, we have had among other things the revelation of torture, a war launched against Iraq on false pretenses with no end in sight, destruction of fundamental civil liberties and the exploitation of the tragedy for political gain.
Political cartoonists are some of the best commentators on the social and body politic; they manage to capture an enormous amount of reality in a simple image and phrase. They are among my favorite reading material and despite the feelings of melancholic recapitulation, I still enjoyed reading these cartoons.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Focuses on concerns over terrorism and political actions, June 5, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year (Paperback)

Leading editorial cartoonists are presented in a volume which focuses on concerns over terrorism and political actions. Best Editorial Cartoons Of The Year, 2002 Edition packs in popular black and white editorials that reflect the major concerns of the Year 2001: any that wants a record of events and opinions will find Best Editorial Cartoons Of The Year, 2002 Edition intriguing and fun.

12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Androgenized artists can't carry a "toon", August 25, 2002

By 

Jack Maybrick (Shuttling between the streets of Whitechapel and the shadow of Coogan's Bluff) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year (Paperback)

The "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year" series has been around for at least 30 years now.

I know this because I actually remember the 1972 and 1973 editions. The differences between those editions and this one show how far the art of political satire has declined and how far the Matriarchy has progressed.

We're never told what standard is used to rate a particular cartoon as among the "best" of the year, and it's fairly safe to say that it's purely based on the subjective preference of the editor, Charles Brooks. And this much has to be said for him - he includes cartoons from a number of perspectives but leaves out left-wing heavy hitters such as Conrad, Trudeau, and the recently deceased Herblock (did they hit him in the head with a shovel to make sure?). This is important for balance, simply because there are no right-wing heavy hitters among political cartoonists to even the score.

For the most part, the cartoons included in all collections have been from relatively obscure contributors - both left and right. This is all to the good.

But this year's edition was just a lot of pap. For one thing, Gary Condit had been the big story before September 11. Where are the Condit cartoons?

Of course, the biggest story in 2001 turned out to be the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. So the "best" cartoons mostly repeat conventional sentiment - what a tragedy, but we're strong and united now so we'll get the bastards, blah blah blah.

How many cartoons were drawn which showed the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam, and the American Eagle alternatively weeping, praying, retaliating etc. etc.? What a self-replicating show of pompous victimologistic self-assuming virtue!

Incisive masculine wit is disappearing from the modern political cartoon, and cartoons that are supposed to make you EMOTE without THINKING have become the rule.

Get a load of the contribution from Richard Wallmeyer of the Long Beach Press Telegram about "anti-bully" legislation. In the penultimate panel, one kid suggests that people just live by the Golden Rule instead of passing a law and in the last panel, his friend responds by reminding him that religion isn't allowed in public schools.

That's it. No wit; no nuance; no attempt to make the reader THINK about what the cartoonist is trying to say. No symbolism even. Wallmeyer tells you straight out what you should believe.

And Jeff Parker's post-September 11 contribution from Florida Today showing two Floridians wearing "I Love NY" paraphernalia and agreeing between themselves that "We are all New Yorkers now".

No biting masculine wit, no nuance, no intellect, no symbolism. And suck a lozenge, Jeff Parker. All of the terrorists attacks in the world won't turn the average New Yorker into a human being, any more than the 1989 earthquake could do so for the average San Franciscan. Parker is just engaging in cheap sentiment masquerading as patriotism.

The decline in quality of political cartoons stems from the fact that as women continue to make war on men and as the Matriarchy's grip becomes more crushing, male cartoonists have become softer and more effeminate (this is happening in other settings too, obviously).

And more women have become political cartoonists. There's an Ann Telnaes cartoon in which Joseph Lieberman's statement at Notre Dame that public morality should be based on faith is juxtaposed against a picture of Moslem women wearing veils.

Even assuming that it's BAD for women to hide their features, is it really accurate to suppose that a faith-based public morality would require an imposition of the burqua? No more than it would require baptism or a kosher diet but in a feminized world, the reader is not supposed to think but to emote, emote, emote.

Of course, as anyone who has seen her recurring appearances on C-SPAN knows, as a political cartoonist, Ann Telnaes is one hot babe whose face definitely should NOT be covered. But her cartoons would only be improved by the camouflage that a veil would provide. They are hardly worthy of inclusion among the country's "best".

And the feminization of the American political cartoon isn't just limited to matters of style.

Resistance to the Matriarchy has become unthinkable. In the 1973 edition, there is an entire section devoted to "Women's Lib", most of the contributions deliciously skewering the feminazis.

In one uproarious example, a man is standing at the altar looking apprehensive while hooked in his arm is his "bride", a man in drag. The preacher performing the "marriage" ceremony asks the "groom", "Do you, John, promise to love, honor and obey the Equal Rights Amendment?"

Go try to find a cartoon like that today! We've come a long way from when Thomas Nast cartoons afflicted and ultimately defeated party bosses such as Bill Tweed. Today's feminist bosses have no reason to moan, "Stop them damned pictures!" The people drawing them come from the same New Class that their masters do.

So where gender issues are concerned, the drawing board cult members bow their collective heads in deference to the "women are strong and good; men are weak and bad and deserving of punishment" party line. The 2002 edition shows an androgenized Statue of Liberty punching a Taliban member in the face in a display of women's "rights" (get it? She`ll throw her "left" at him next).

The Evil Rights Amendment might not have been enacted, but feminism has still become the official state religion of both left and right. As such, it stifles masculine energy, independence, and creativity. These can only return when and if a younger generation of males rebels against the imposition of public morality in the name of this particular faith.

Until then, the quality of written protest, in the form of political animation, can be expected to continuously decline. But I wonder what the 2032 edition of "Best Editorial Cartoons" will look like.