supported by the william g mcgowan charitable fund. i have had the privilege of being a member of the fund since 2008. mcallen -- mcallen fund was created since 2003. through its grant programs, this helps protects society's most vulnerable members. we support programs supporting food banks and clinics and help -- health promotion initiatives. since its inception, it has provided over $130 million in health care and research and human services and education. the william g. mcgowan theater reflects the key priority of this charismatic and charitable industry. uncle bill loved histories, movies, and debating the great ideas of the day. in 2003, it honored his memory

by providing the public archives to develop this public theater. here, films are screened and important ideas are discussed. explored. this annual forum was quickly added by the fund to supplement programming at the theater. in 2008, the forum focused on spotlighting women in leadership. it focuses on women in business, journalism, academia, the arts and sciences, and public service. bill mcgowan believed in a frank and open exchange of ideas, and he loved to debate with his nieces and nephews, which we were tested on on a regular basis. he believed in america's democratic society, backed by a democratic, independent judiciary. only in such a democracy, could

bill have led his upstarts corporate provider overthrow at&t, which had a virtual lock on phone services in 1982. a verdict in the federal district court affirmed his company's right to compete, and thus breaking the at&t monopoly. history is repeating itself. this led to healthy competition and innovation, paving the way for global advancements in information technology. our distinguished moderator will take full event is here to share perspectives here on the vibrant and vital process of political cartoons. i am looking forward to the conversation, and your questions and comments to follow. thank you very much. [applause] >> good evening, it is a pleasure to welcome you officially to the national archives tonight.

special welcome to those of you joining us on c-span and on the national archives youtube channel. since this year's topic is political cartoons, i thought i would mention that some of the holdings of the national archives are in the form of cartoons. we have thousands of archives of editorial cartoons related to political events. and personalities throughout our history. some of the oldest political cartoons are in our presidential library. we have a series of dutch from 1719, and thomas nast cartoons from the early 1870's, in the eisenhower and ford prisons are full -- presidential libraries. but most of the political cartoons are in the subject matter of dealing with the actual presidents. these service proof that even, and especially the leader of the , free world is not immune from being skewered each morning from

a newspaper editorial list. it comes with the job. and as we see daily, it is probably something that is wanted with the job also. the most extensive single collection we have is the 2400 original pen and ink drawings from clifford barryman. he was one of washington's best-known and most admired graphic political commentators in the first half of the 20th century. he drew for "the washinton post" and the "evening star" until his death. his cartoons touched on a variety of subjects, both world wars, and even washington weather. this is in titled the post season parade from 1915. it highlights the departure of lame-duck people from congress.

those departing capitol hill after losing their bid for reelection. the lame-ducks in this cartoon are defeated democrats, heading to the white house, hoping to secure local appointments from president woodrow wilson. [laughter] david: our panel will be moderated by david tsipras. history major at williams college david went on to earn a masters in soviet history, and after two years, dropped out to pursue a career as a cartoonist. in his words, "it may be a strange transition, but to me this made perfect sense. since i was a kid, i knew being an artist who worked with humor was what i really wanted to do with my life. ,ix months after dropping out he published his first cartoon in the "boston phoenix." his

cartoons appeared in "the new yorker" in 1998, and he was "the new yorker's" daily cartoonist for a number of years. he has lectured on the art of the cartoon and he was the writer and host of conversations with cartoonists, a series on artists who work for the new yorker magazine. he has also published both fiction and nonfiction on "the new yorker" website, and an account -- and that includes an account of his family's experience of the kennedy assassination. and now i will turn the microphone over to david, our moderator, who will announce our panel. [applause]

>> we salute the audience! [laughter] [applause] david t.: good evening, i am david cyprus, and i am moderating tonight. on june to use our panel. -- i want to introduce our panel. [applause] david t.: i asked them to put up this thomas nast drawing, unfortunately, it is cut off at the bottom. this will give us a little context of the long history of cartooning in our country. i want you to look at this. tom, that is how you draw an elephant. [laughter] david t.: just a few words about what i am doing here. i am a "new yorker" cartoonist. being a "new yorker" cartoonist is tricky business, because we

can't advocate directly for anything, we can't point fingers at any particular politician or policy, all we can really do is point to the reader and say, isn't that ridiculous? part of those rules are, unlike the covers, no characters -- caricatures in the "new yorker" cartoons. so i developed some strategies to deal with that. one of those things is develop archetypes and tropes, and one of those is the figure of the king to represent government itself or a particular politician. i have chosen one to show you tonight. it is one that i did back in the 2012 election. there was a lot of chatter about what the president had to accomplish in order to affect

the way future generations would view his presidency. it because i think it is really appropriate for this venue tonight at the national archives. i am concerned about my legacy. [laughter] kill the historian. [laughter] david t.: i had a little taste of this, as i mentioned, i was a daily cartoonist on "the new yorker" website, and i wrote a topical cartoon every day for two months. and one thing that i really came to appreciate is what it is like to deal with the enormous amount of information that you have to take in in order to come up with your ideas, and this cartoon was kind of a result of that. my desire to be well-informed is at odds with my desire to be sane. what these guys do is cut through the noise and all

information with the tools of words and pictures together, and get us to some simple, concise truths to help us all figure out what is going on. and going to start out, and before i show you some slides you guys are probably going to , kill me, but the question that you have asked so many times and will bore you to death. it is not, where do you get your ideas? i will get to that later, but i wonder if anybody would share their view on their role as a political cartoonist. is your role to explain? to make people laugh? to change people's minds? or any combination of those? anyone have anything to say about that? ok. [laughter] >> somebody else might.

>> that's going to be the answer you get to every question by the , way. [laughter] >> i think we are going to talk about it when we get to particular topics, because every cartoonist is different. you do different things in different cartoons and you make different points. i mean come of the day after somebody blows up paris, a sympathy cartoon is a good idea, and yet, you are not doing sympathy cartoons all week long and then you are moving on to other things. david s.: all right, then let's dive right in to the images. going to show one cartoon by each of you. this first one is tom's. tom: do you want me to talk about it? [laughter] tom: because the answer is "no." [laughter] david s.: i have one question, do you have a television all day always watch it. tom: yes, but i don't always watch it. i have a pretty good idea as to

what is going on, and this cartoon, i sent this one along for the reason that, i mean, traditionally, what people look to a cartoon to do is, to a certain extent, analyzes a situation, and this one, i wanted to simplify a complicated situation in a complicated way. [laughter] tom: that's all i have to say. [laughter] tom: no, the obvious idea is that the benghazi hearings were not going according to the political agenda that republicans had set out for them to be, in other words, a big takedown of hillary, so the simple, shortest version of that is that it backfired on them, but there are simple are ways to do that then i chose to do.

[laughter] tom: and this was a cartoon that some people said they had to look at it for a while. [laughter] tom: because there are several things going on there. and you know, some things complicated simple is better than simple simple. i think within the complexity is that it got it all in there in a kind of engaging way. and if you look at it, it is a static image, but it is potentially alive with all emotions and all kinds of consequences, so this is an example of complexity rendered complexly. david s.: i have an example of -- i am sorry, jen. jen: it's a marvel of composition. tom: oh. david s.: i was just surprised as to how cuddly your elephants

are. i wonder if that's some strategy you use, to soften them. tom: it is the same sort of strategy that fishermen use. they don't make the hook look sharp and horrible. they make it look like food. [laughter] tom: i certainly enjoyed and feel strongly about putting this element into my cartoons, but, i don't know, you have to make choices as to how you present what you have to say. i mean, that is really half of the job. for me, i want my cartoons to reflect just my personal way of being with information and opinions, and i just feel if you make it look sweet and

nonthreatening, is that it invites you in, rather than stiff arms you away. then all of a sudden you find yourself and mashed in my world, and then you discover, there is a hook in there. [laughter] david s.: i have always been interested in your little biographical tom toles in the right-hand corner. what are you thinking about it when you write it? tom: the thought, initially, was derived from pat oliphant, who is the watershed of political cartooning, and he hates me to this day for adopting that. i would look at it and think that his brilliance, perfect,

can't touch it, because he invented it. personal, and it seemed like that was off-limits. and it was for me. but other than a library, i was looking through early 20th century american cartooning, and i found out this marginal commentary was part of the field, it wasn't his invention. i thought, i would give it a try. readers loved it right away. i put myself in it personally at the drawing board. david s.: do you have any way of putting yourself in the cartoon and giving a second opinion? tom: yes, it is just another dimension. when i draw cartoons and sketches, i always draw them without that in mind. if you take that away, the cartoon is designed to work

without it. a lot of the times, i will get to the end of the day, and i won't have that part, and that often turns out to be the hardest part of the cartoon. this is just another way to personalize it, add another thought, and sometimes it reinforces the main thought, and sometimes it cuts the other way. but again, i want -- i mean, political cartoons are very much the opinion of the cartoonist himself or herself, and i just wanted to make it clear that there is a person, not just a cartoon, there is somebody behind it, trying it, and this -- drawing it. and this person has their own thoughts, their own take, and it is me. nori'm neither ashamed especially proud of it, that is just the way it is, so that is why i am there. david s.: all right, signe, i am going to show one of yours now. youwhen you sent it to me,

said this would be obvious, it's a cartoon that only a woman could do. signe: this was done many years ago before recent discussion of mammography has come back into discussion. david s.: get ready, everybody. [laughter] signe: wait a minute! i was going to read it for you. [laughter] signe: you're speechless. david s.: i am speechless. there was an article about controversy and prostate exams today. i don't think i'm going to bring that up. i did want to ask you -- we agree in this particular field, there are only a few women

cartoonists. do you feel that there is a particular obligation or calling about trying to make these kind of issues? signe: no. if you look at the number of cartoons i have drawn in the 35 years of cartooning, i have drawn a lot about women, but so have men. all the political issues of equal rights, the various equal pay. and actually, one of the reasons i wanted to get into cartooning was i was sick of having all the men draw cartoons. this was back when the women's movement was just getting started. i was thinking, maybe women could dry few of those cartoons. if you could leave these ideas at the door and just run these -- they draw these cartoons for you.

it has been a privilege to do it. when i got started in my first full-time job, which is defined as having health benefits, there were about five other women cartoonists in full-time jobs. today, there is no one, actually, in a full-time, paid position -- no women. there are many fewer men. so yeah, when women's issues come up, i want to draw about them, definitely. but it is not the thing i draw about most. i consider myself a generalist, so i don't draw exclusively about gender. and at the same time, i feel it is something that i am constantly aware of, and possibly more aware of than some people who have been in the field. there are many male feminist cartoonists out there.

but i think just through life experience, there are some perspectives that you bring to the table. that there is no one monolithic female perspective, of course. but you do add to the conversation because there are certain things in life experiences that you are just going to bring to the cartoon. i do a fair number of cartoons, about gender and women's issues. but at the same time, i don't mind being identified as a woman cartoonist. if you want to have more women in the media, you have to be conscious of that. you can't just sweep it under the table and say, we are going to ignore that. but again, i do view myself as a generalist. it is not my exclusive niche. signe: a lot of my hate mail dear mr.ith "

wilkinson." [laughter] signe: it is amazing how many men think i am a scandinavian ex-pat named jen sorensen. they think i am a duty. -- a dude. david s.: keith, do you want to read this? keith: sure, it is how to discern an innocent gesture from a gang sign. [laughter] david s.: you originally, you come at a sort of comic strip background. did you always do political contents, or is that something that developed over time? keith: it was always a part of my repertoire, it was part of me in college.

my first black professor i had was in college, and he was in english -- american literature professor. his name was professor gerald. professor gerald, he was amazing. he gave us for a reading assignment, he gave us james baldwin, maya angelou, martin luther king, all of these different writers. when someone brought it up to him that they were all black writers, he said to them, they are all american writers. and i thought, in my head, whoa, that was so cool. here he was, making statements without making statements. rethink really made me

-- my comics went from comics about keg parties to comics that meant something. so when i got the opportunity to do it, you know, i had always been influenced by not just stuff like calvin and hobbes and peanuts, but other comics. but i've also been influenced by jules pfeiffer. it was always great to find extra cartoons off of the comics page or the editorial page or the classified section or "parade." i love how sometimes he had handles, sometimes he didn't have panels. and he would do comics just about a lot of different things. so not only was it something i liked to do, when i would cover anything i wanted to talk about, but it also came at a time when i really wanted to do a script they represented me. which was -- in the early 90's,

as the hip-hop fan the only , people i saw who were into hip-hop were gang members and hoodlums and stuff like that. and no, most people that i knew who are into hip-hop were smart and politically aware. they were you know, into nerdy stuff, so it was important to bring this is ability to the -- that sensibility to the comics stage. david s.: one thing i noticed about your work, and it is like tom's little corner of his work, is like how you have a little conversation with the reader and you address the reader directly in your work. is that something you think about? keith: totally conscious. another big influence on me are my dad's side of the family. every holiday, it would end up that we would be down in the cellar at my great uncle's house, at the bar, and everybody would be spinning these funny

stories. so the context is, this guy is telling you these stories in a bar, and you are not sure whether to believe him or not. so i'll is have that in mind when i am telling a story, even when i tell -- now i work my stories out on my two-year-old and my seven-year-old. i can't trick them as easily as i can trick everybody else. [laughter] david s.: all right, jen, do you want to advance the thing every time? jen: sure. david s.: this is a piece from jen's where it is a series of panels and she is going to go one panel at a time. jen: this is hillary clinton, pro versus con. on the pro side, we will keep health care reform, saving countless lives, on the con side, supported the iraq war

using countless lives. now flying the flag go -- the rainbow flag, she is also burning a u.s. flag. she was partly cut by her husband deregulating lawsuits. friends with bono, friends with kissinger. would want total support of the supreme court, can't do much about scalia. would be the first woman president, lives in the country where we can't even put a woman on a late-night tv show. she is the only realistic choice. she is the only realistic choice. [laughter] [applause]

david s.: so the first thing that strikes me is that, you know, in "the new yorker" when i write a caption, captions are always these filaments that have to be in exactly the right place, and there is always the kicker at the end. you always try to nail it with the last word. you seem to have a lot of comedy chops in your work. is that something you think about. is that something that is important to you -- think about? is that something that is important to you? jen: whether i can make it funny or not, sort of depends on how the process goes. him in this case, actually, one thing i found very interesting is the controversy all aspect -- most controversy all aspects of this cartoon by far was that she was friends with bono. for me, i would say it is about making a point first, but

catching it in a hopeful and hopefully amusing way. david s.: you said something amusing about humor, you said that you think it is a much more persuasive and intellectually challenging thing in comparison to anger. jen: absolutely. that is one reason that i went into cartooning instead of academia. if you can count something in a really appealing and amusing message, you know, people who will might not be predisposed to side with you, they might have a little opening there were you can reach them once in a while. david s.: i wanted to show you that a man can make a very

interesting a powerful cartoon about women's issues. this is tom's. tom: all right, this is -- this is. this is -- david s.: you'll have to read everything to understand what is going on there. [laughter] tom: i give up. [laughter] tom: the news this week was that someone is talking about putting a woman on the $10 bill, and the first question is, who should it be? but that was too obvious. the thing i didn't comment on in the cartoon, ellie satan think i

did, yeah, i didn't, was, first of all, why not the 20? you got to get rid of andrew jackson, and i think we can mostly agree with that. [applause] tom: there is no justification for him being on any currency, but i think it is like, oh well, the 20 is the best currency that everybody has. that is what comes out of the wall, so you can't have that, so immediately, they are talking about the $10 bill. so i -- i -- well, you can see where i went with it. some cartoons want you to get on where you are going with this, but some of the things that i added in, well, you are way ahead of me now, but the federal deserve note was i -- was, what i thought, a nice touch, if i could complement myself. [laughter] david s.: ok, that's enough,

tom. [laughter] tom: it is enough. david s.: another one of the cartoons of yours is next, so -- i asked these guys to give me to cartoon or, on one particular subject, and this is a particularly difficult subject, the subject of guns, and i wanted to sort of get a sense of each of how these cartoon ideas happen, what sort of moment happens where you get the information and then you have that little flash of insight and the cartoon happens? it is kind of an origin story of the cartoons, and i thought it would be interesting to do them all on the same topic. so i'm going to start with, i am sorry, tom again. this one is yours and i want you to tell us how this one happened. tom: i don't remember. only remember is you said this is the one i want you to put up about gun control. i actually had one that i was going to substitute for, but i could not find it.

david s.: unbelievable. tom: it was somebody putting up a second amendment corkboard, and it had 1000 hashmarks, no, i am getting it backwards, the first thought was the number of tyrants overthrown, because this is the big argument on the second amendment side, they need big arms to overthrown the tyrants, and then the number of tyrants overthrown was covered with #'s and then the number of people killed by firearms was covered with thousands, so it is an inversion of the expected imagery. an analogy tends to reinforce ideas, but this has the argument backwards and this have -- this has arguments coming out of the gun, and it is just a matter of the number of bullets, as you can imagine, being fired at a rate where these weapons are being misused for horrific violence.

david s.: jen, i've got your campus carry cartoon if you want to take us through that. jen: yes all right, campus carry, it is a hot new trend sweeping campus colleges. because no college student is ever depressed, guns will only be used for protection. [laughter] jen: enjoy and enhance theme parties. hold still, brah! [laughter] jen: great for late-night sliced defense. step away from the pie. relish the surprise of finding your gun in your messy dorm room. oh, there it is. oh, who are we kidding?

this will be the real reality of campus carry. kind of a downer. david s.: did this idea just pop into your head or did it take some work and thinking. jen: i live in austin, texas, so that is a start, and the university of texas, well, the state of texas just passed a law earlier this year allowing guns on campus, and basically, insisting upon them to some capacity, i think they could still banned them in certain places, but basically, allowing concealed weapons for permit holders and that is the law of the land now. i guess it will begin on august 1 next year. that are of been protests to the

university of texas, and the chancellor of the school, william mcgowan, actually, the guy in charge of the hunt for bin laden, that is what he did before he was the chancellor of ut, and he was opposed to it, all kinds of people were not wanting more guns on campus, so there is a big protest gathering for when this actually happens next year. so i mean, that is the thing. david s.: keith, i am actually going to put two of yours up, one specifically about guns that

you made -- that you gave me and secondly, the other one is also about guns, and you can talk about either or both of them in terms of how they work for you. i am going to show you both of them. keith: remember, folks, hugged them extra tight before going to sleep tonight. you never know when they are going to be taken away from you. and this one is a more serious cartoon. david s.: what you tell me all about this one? keith: it is interesting about this one, because if you are not a nerd, then you probably don't get it, but basically, this is, i did this just after the dylann roof shooting in south carolina, and a week before, what gave me the idea, a week before in south carolina, the kid who played anakin skywalker in "the phantom menace" was pulled over a high-speed, 100 mile per hour chased by the south carolina police. the kid is so traumatized from it being in that movie that he is like, a mess now. so when dylann roof happened, and a posted some of his pictures on facebook or wherever, he had the same sort of hole cut -- bowl cut from the

kid from phantom menace, and i thought, that can look like in a can skywalker, and so there was that connection. i just drew him with the bowl cut and i had these three little flags, and the gun, and it just sort of made sense with the shadow and everything. david s.: what kind of response did you get from the cartoon? keith: just, it was one of those were a lot of people say, wow. some people say, that was one of your best. one nerdy blogger guy put it really, really well. and i forgot to take his quote and put it on my website, i can't remember it now, but it was like "yeah, yeah, that is what i want to hear." but now people see it and say, what does that mean?

sometimes you do stuff in the moment, and it doesn't really last, but the strip before, you know, you always hear the hug them while you can, and i just hear that over and over after every shooting, hug your kids, hug your this, your that, and i just automatically thought of guns instead of kids. david s.: this is interesting, because humor is really just about juxtaposition, about putting together two things and kind of exploding this into a joke, and i think you all have shown aspects of that in your work. jen, you also gave me two cartoons, and for a specific reason. did you want me to show them both right away or just the first one? jen: do you mean signe? signe: the other woman? [laughter] david s.: you know, at "the new yorker," we looked at the number

of women cartoonists, and it was in a tiny number, and so the same is refunded in the number -- the number of women in cartoons and the number of people of color in cartoons and it was an incredibly tiny number so we have all been rushing to put women and people of color in cartoons. let's just keep this amongst ourselves. [laughter] tom: at the last convention on -- keith: at the last convention i was at, someone said, keith, you should submit to "the new yorker," and i said, why? and they said, i think they are actively seeking women and people of color. i got the secret e-mail. [laughter] keith: if anybody wants it. [laughter] signe: a lot of spec work. david s.: it is a lot of spec work.

but we are not here to talk about me. [laughter] keith: that is the great thing about being a cartoonist, you come up with all of these cartoons, and just because they don't run in the "new yorker," it doesn't mean you can't use them. tom: yeah, it does. [laughter] keith: one of my fairness -- my favorite exhibits that i have ever seen was rejected "new yorker" cartoons. i could see them being inappropriate for the new yorker -- the "new yorker," but they were hilarious.

now with self-publishing and you're on websites, things have changed, there is all this stuff. even if you do 10 a week that get rejected, that is 10 that you can put into your next book. david s.: it is a lot of pain, keith, it is a lot of pain. keith: but we're used to rejection. david s.: signe, i am going to move onto yours. signe: i have two, and one focus is on the gun issue, and i live in philadelphia, and we have always been in competition with baltimore to see how many more people we can kill than baltimore, and we were a head until this last year, i'm so proud to say. so i was looking over my cartoons about guns and about what i would choose, and i was certain of -- sort of roughly counting them up. there was approximately 160 cartoons on guns. i hate it when there is another shooting because i think i have

already done all i can possibly say on this, and yet, it still shocks everybody again when it happens. so i'm going to show one, and i'm going to show you it to show you how pointless cartooning really is in the grand scheme of things. one of them is a cartoon after a particular round of shootings in philadelphia, and it is the kind of cartoon i have done, 100 60, -- 160 or maybe 70 are like this one. david s.: want me to put it up? signe: yes. my opinion is that the city's flood -- city's lead abatement program still needs work. these are obviously kids living in a poor part of the city that are getting killed, and that reflects the numbers of poor, african-american kids in the city getting killed.

as a cartoonist, this is a super touchy issue, but if i didn't draw these characters black, it wouldn't be the reality of what we are experiencing in the city. but i got tired of trying these cartoons, and people said, oh yeah, this is really nice. can we put this in our newsletter or our church bulletin or whatnot, and two days later, there would be another bunch of killings, and it just seemed sort of pointless. i felt like people were really talking around the issue. now, this is very many years before black lives matter, so this is when it was worse, but this was one of the most controversial cartoons i did. if you want great views of young black men killing each other, then use ku klux klan traveled to come to philadelphia.

you are not laughing. [laughter] signe: most people did not laugh, and particularly african american activists really went after me in a fairly major and direct way. we were inundated with calls and pickets and whatnot. and i showed this because then what happens when you draw really controversial cartoons that gets at something pretty fundamental that a lot of people are thinking about but don't will have a way of discussing is that we put all of these letters in the newspaper and we gave all beds to people -- gave op-eds to people who objected to it, and then there was this second wave of people who said, wait a minute. that is what is happening in our city, she is right, even though

she is a white woman. this is what was happening in the city. and then the discussion takes on a life of its own. it has nothing to do with the cartoon. letterwriters kept going back and forth amongst themselves. this is pre-internet chat rooms. there was a discussion in the city about what we ought to be doing about violence. and i ended up some months later on a panel, and the guy who sat i down next to me was one of my big accusers, but we were on a panel on something different, and we both agreed on that, and we got talking about it, and he says, well, my opinion has really actually changed after the whole discussion that we went through. and again, even having gone

him him through all of that, it became more of an issue that our will mayor, mayor nutter, in his inauguration a grant -- inauguration address, was talked about gun violence in the african-american community, but still, we had 250 murders so far this year. so you know, cartoons, while they can draw people's attention to things, they in and of themselves, can't unfortunately solve anything. david s.: just, i also have one of mine on this issue. this one, for me, happened after the newtown shootings, and i was in my studio trying to squeeze my brain all day about what can i do about something so painful, how can i make a joke when i

felt the need to make a statement about something, and i finally gave up and turned on the radio and john hockenberry was interviewing some gun owners midwest, and one of them said the exact words in this caption, and the image popped into my head, fully formed. people not from here don't understand, it is not a weapon, it is a way of life. will so next i am going to show a few cartoons, and what i was wondering about, in my memory, i don't ever remember the country being quite as divided as it is now on every level and how tough the discourse is, so i am going to show a few cartoons in a row and then maybe we will talk a little bit about how that

affects your work. the first one is by thom, and it is just a really interesting cartoon. [laughter] tom: do you want me to say anything about it or do you want me to just -- [laughter] tom: well, again, this is simple and complicated at the same time. sometimes you read a situation, the purchase of "national geographic," and sometimes the imagery falls and aligns right in the place, and i don't need to add much to it. david s.: i'm going to show one of keith's. [laughter] keith: so i actually do talk about gun issues, and i also talk about police brutality issues for 20 plus years.

last year as i was doing one of our ferguson, i was thinking, i can't believe how every time i do it, i wonder if this is the last one i have to do, and i would be psyched if that were the case, and it never is the case. so i put all of my heart is together in a slideshow and i started touring the slideshow. so now i have presented 20 years of my police brutality cartoons and it is kind of sort of the modern era of police brutality, starting with rodney king in 1992. this is one of the interesting pieces they came towards the end of that slideshow. the great thing about social media is that someone always does or says the right thing about this stuff. so when i talk about all lives

matter in the black lives matter movement, someone put it on twitter, and i will always remember this, when i have a bumper sticker that says save the rain forest, it doesn't mean f--- all the other forests. it means all the other rain forests are getting cut down at an exorbitant rate and we should do something about it. [laughter] so that's what we mean by black lives matter. it doesn't mean that nobody else's lives matter, it is means -- it means that something is happening in a very bad way. when somebody gets out of shape because something says black lives matter, you got to think about what it means when it says -- you have to think about what is making you bent out of shape.

i have just moved to chapel hill, north carolina, and i have started to write about the south because i have never lived there. now that i live in the south i can write about it. this guy had written into the newspaper, and he was a very angry white man, and he wrote in, saying that the black community making him feel guilty, i said, it is not the black community making you feel guilty, sir. it is your eyes, your hearts, and it's your brain. and it's telling you as you seal , your brainappening and your heart and your eyes are telling you that what is happening is bullshit. it is a human reaction to feel bad when you see it.

and the question is, what do you do with those bad feelings? do you fight for justice or do you write a silly op-ed to your newspaper? [laughter] [applause] david s.: you mentioned social media, i am wondering, do you guys obsessively follow comments? you all moved from print to digital in a lot of ways, do you guys search for reactions to your work when it appears? does it bother you? tom: you learn early on that you're going to get clobbered. [laughter] all tom: i mean just clobbered. will tom: i mean just clobbered. and it has gotten worse, but will luckily by the time it had gotten worse, the skin had will gotten worse, the skin had already gotten pretty thick. will will will i used to look at them just to educate myself as to the range of opinions, the

intensity of opinions. you cannot take it personally and you have to understand that you have to picture of this person, trying to think of the words that he can find that will hurt you the most. [laughter] will tom: you can feel the sweat beading on his forehead. what can i say when i have heard it all? david s.: have any of you guys regretted something that you published afterwards, thinking maybe you had gone too far? tom: the regret is when, and there are some examples, it is when the cartoon is read opposite of what is its intent. that makes you question your delivery, sometimes, somebody will on purpose misread it. will

you spend enough time thinking about what you want to say and why you want to say that. those are communications criticisms that make you question the hesitation. somebody being upset about that will not make you change your mind. misinterpretation does give you a moment of pause. >> the new yorker closes on friday and comes on monday. in an issue, i did a joke about a beheading. over the weekend, there was a he heading, and on monday the magazine was inundated with outraged people, none of whom

could understand there was something that could be done about it. i sure wish i had not published that cartoon. >> i would like to say that i have never found one of the cartoons funny with guns. >> let me ask you this, not to be defensive, but when you watch tv and you see csi or whatever, there are guns in the movies and television. what is it about cartoons that make that an issue for you? >> i don't know. it is just visceral. >> ok. [laughter] >> i will just show one of mine. [laughter] >> and then i will ask to have us taken to another one.

>> this one is called "advice conservatives never give themselves." [laughter] >> i did this after the sandra bland incident, the woman who died in her jail cell. there was so much reaction coming from people saying that

she should not have stabbed that cop. if you compare that to the right-wing response to the rancher who had an armed standoff, a lot of people thought he was a hero for standing up to authority. there seems to be a bit of a double standard there. it was also around the time that the confederate flag was being debated. that was the impetus behind the cartoon. >> we have to move to questions from the audience. i want to show one more cartoon by someone who is published everywhere. i notice there are no conservatives on this panel. i just wonder what your reaction is. do think this cartoon is funny? franklin mccoy.

i don't think anybody here is finding it particularly funny, so what does that say about the issue of preaching to the choir, that your work is always directed to people of the liberal persuasion, and that is something you think about at all? >> first of all, fox news and rush limbaugh, they don't worry about preaching to the choir much, so i don't worry about it. >> ok. [laughter] [applause] >> secondly, one philosophy of cartooning that i try to follow is do no harm, just like a doctor. i feel like it is my response -- my responsibility to and -- my responsibility to enlighten and not add to the suffering and misrepresentation in the world, so i would say that this cartoon fails. >> i couldn't agree more.

[laughter] >> one more quick question, you guys have been watching the debates? >> it's funny. i sort of missed the last two, even though i wanted to see them, but i forgot they were on. it just shows you how boring they have become. i liked it when they were crazy, saying crazy stuff. >> i don't want to leave this as the last image up there. i will put one of mine up. this is the cartoon i thought up when i stopped watching the debates. [laughter] >> i may take questions from the audience. what it you go to the microphone -- anybody have any questions, go to the microphone. why don't you go to the

microphone to ask your question. ok. we used to some bad language. >> thanks. i was hoping you could take your last question and take it on more seriously. the absence of a conservative on the panel is not a problem, but the absence of conservative viewpoints in political cartooning in america is very noticeable. i would love to hear a serious consideration of why is that. i take your point that fox and rush limbaugh don't apologize, but i would like to know why in political cartooning, where are they? >> there are a lot of very good conservative cartoonists, including glenn mccoy, whose image david showed. i think he chose it because it was one of glenn's not so great cartoons.

[laughter] >> if you look at people, they will always come at me and say they never give prizes to the conservative cartoonists, but the pulitzer prize has gone in the last 10-15 years to several very conservative cartoonists, so it is just -- they don't appear in the washington post. i don't know. you have a deficit situation. they are out there, and they do their work just like we do ours. >> i remember someone writing to me saying that if you did conservative cartoons, you would make so much money. [laughter] >> i didn't know that. [laughter]

>> yes? >> i am a librarian, so i have a dorky library in question, which is how do you -- especially the three of you, tom, i know you are at the post, so i think there is some archival stuff there happening with your work. how do you keep track of your stuff and organize your stuff? do you tag them? how do you find the ones about guns? anyone who wants to be answered, that will be great. >> nobody is interested in that question. i can guarantee it. >> nobody else is standing up to ask questions. [laughter] >> fair enough. mine just go into boxes. the archival sophistication you

imagine, if it exists, they have not told me about it. [laughter] >> i feel bad about the situation. they are one match strike away from oblivion. they are not water damaged yet. >> i think that is a really interesting question. i would say that i tag my blog posts on my own website with different tags for each cartoon, and i do a search on my own website. that is the only way i can , and that is the only way i can remember. >> if they sit on your hard drive and there are certain titles and everything, it's easy to remember. my originals are splayed across boxes, but it's a mess. it is all over the place. i do have a few pieces in the library of congress, so those will forever be protected.

[laughter] >> at least three or four of them. >> yes, you have a question over there? >> could you talk about striking a balance between an ambiguity that provokes and having a crystal-clear message? how much do you want, how oblique do want to be? what do you want readers to figure out for themselves and what you want to tell them directly? >> that is a great question for which there is not a good answer. it is exactly what everybody on this stage deals with every single day, how to find that balance point between obvious clever, because the humor in the cartoon is right there. that's where it is, where it is

not so obvious, not hitting them over the head, but not soaps -- but not so obscure that you have people scratching their heads. it is just a matter of field. that is what it is. it is like doing this and trying to divine where it is. you are always missing -- not everybody is in the same place. some readers will find it too obvious, too puzzling. i bet nobody will argue with me about that. maybe only yes, no? >> since i do different ones. i do a daily comic strip called the "nightlife." as a daily cartoonist, the one thing i started it was it is similar to the fact that there are fictional characters mixing in with real stuff, like

doonesbury. the one thing i took from doonesbury was that it is hard to look at stuff from the 1980's or 1990's, so when i went ahead -- the 1980's of the 1990's because it is very much about that stuff. so when i went ahead to do the dailies, i make references to stuff in obscure ways. i very rarely name the president. that will always stay fresh. hopefully, they will always be in the present. -- so hopefully there will always be a president. i try not to get to specific, or when i make reference to certain things, it is always -- there is never anything specific, because somebody will open it and go this is from 20 years ago. i try to be as sort of obscure with the dailies.

you can't do that with a lot of editorial cartoons. there are certain things that sometimes you have to drop. i self published most of my books, and the ones that have the shortest shelf life are the editorial cartoons, so i print the fewest of those. >> i think what tom says is -- i think that striking that balance is how you get into people's heads with your work. if you had them too hard over the head, it does not have the same impact as the subtlety that can get people to think like you came up with the idea themselves, which i think is a crucial way to communicate. >> the temptation to be didactic like an op-ed columnist, but that's the game. you have to make it more complicated. you have to bring concepts into

the fold. that is a challenge of cartooning. it is an extra step. >> a cartoon depends on a lot of people knowing exactly what you are talking about and having this same information that you do. if you saw a lot of my cartoons, you would have no idea what they were about if you did not live in philadelphia. also, the difficulty is that people get their news in so many different places. it is hard to say what everybody knows. a lot of people just don't read the same way that they used to in the good old days when i was growing up. [laughter] >> yes? >> i was wondering how much work goes into a cartoon.

i saw the debate last night and i want to draw a cartoon about it and doing the sketching, playing around with the captions -- how long does it take to get moment -- to the moment where you know what the cartoon is going to be? >> david was saying that he heard that line and the image popped right into his head. for me it is often reading, and reading -- writing is really helpful. you come across this phrase and the images right there. those of the great days when it comes up like that. >> there must be some days when you decide you want to make a cartoon about something and you have to figure it out. >> i'm not sure it's that complicated. [laughter] >> it comes all different ways.

sometimes it is a sketch, you hear something. it is just all different ways. the toughest part is to kind of train yourself to be open all the time, constantly open all the time taking in information, just sort of having a sketch book there or typing in information so you remember it. if you put it down on paper, it allows for more stuff to come into your head. >> if you feel clearly about the subject, it is often easier to do a cartoon. i admire cartoonists who have that -- it's like a direct pipeline to their viewpoint, and they make it clear. ok, now i will have to -- when they were proposing the iraq war, tom is in the vortex

of the discussion, and he was one of the really consistent voices saying the iraq war is going to be a nightmare, don't do it. nobody listened to him. back to my point about cartooning. he could have saved the world. [laughter] >> ok. yeah? >> something stood out to me about the attacks in response to a religious figure without naming the religious figure. i just wondered if there is anything off-limits when you are drawing cartoons, or how do kind of edit your work given certain sensitivities of your readers? >> that is another great question.

not to say that all the questions haven't been perfect in every way. [laughter] >> might as well. >> there is lively debate, and sometimes he did debate among -- and sometimes very heated debate among cartoonists on this very subject. i say the spectrum runs from first amendment periods, which is the most shallow. [laughter] >> it's the place a cartoonists ought to start. any journalist ought to start with, ok, my natural ground zero is first amendment absolutely, and in a way i'm there, but as a functioning cartoonists i am not there. i feel like i have and do have and would explain to have the right to say any damn thing i want to. for me, it is what i want to say. there are things i do not want

to say, and if i see another cartoonists saying them, i am often extremely conflicted in my support for their right to say it. and my vigorous disagreement with the judgment that was shown in there saying it, and then i am left in a bad position, which we got into all of us with the charlie hebdo cartoons. is it desirable for you to in some way support the reprinting of an image that you personally thought was very ill advised for a variety of reasons? i found myself in a real quagmire of trying to explain the subtleties of my position on that.

those cartoons in particular -- you say if you support free speech, then you have to support those cartoons and the reprinting of those cartoons. my answer to that is this, the history of political cartooning contains many many very shameful, shameful chapters, and no, i don't support a broad brush it with every single thing that has transpired under the rubric of political cartooning. the two obvious examples, there have been vicious anti-semitic cartoons drawn that have real consequences from extravagantly racist cartoons that have real consequences, bad consequences for real people in the real

world, and i can't just say that anything goes and i support anything that any cartoonist does. i support the right to do it, but honest to god, there are things i would not do and i am upset when some cartoonists have done things showing very bad judgment. >> i think you state the dilemma we all struggle with really well. >> there are two separate more -- moral questions here. there is the question of free speech, which is very simple and straightforward. obviously we should all be free to express opinion no matter how vile without repercussion, without being killed, repressed, persecuted by the government. there is also the question of representation, which is an important moral question and does have real world consequences as well. i think a lot of people are getting confused on this issue because they are missing these

-- they are mixing these two separate moral questions, and they are saying you can't have one without the other. we only have to look at things exclusively through the lens of free-speech advocacy. i don't think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. we can completely support the freedom of cartoonists to draw what they want, but at the same time we can have a conversation about representation, weapons -- what those cartoons mean, because that is a part of free speech, too. >> we have time for two more questions. which side? i will go to that site, and then you, sir. yes? >> in a society where we communicate more with texts and tweets and people have a lower attention span now, how do you think political cartoonists -- how have political cartoonists -- how have political cartoons

changed in ways of informing the public where people don't have the attention span to read a 5000 word expose in the new york times for example? >> social media is the best thing that ever happened to cartoonists and the worst thing that ever happened to cartoonists. our stuff is being seen by more people than ever, and we are getting paid less for it than ever. [laughter] >> it is sort of a combination of the two, where it is like, yeah, great, i'm getting e-mails from people all over the world saying, i saw this and all this stuff, but what is nice is that we are starting to catch up in the sense that there are so many more ways now for cartoonists to make up the lost revenue from all the print media that has gone away. i lost 75% of my newspapers and

stuff like that, but i made it up through art patron websites. i make it up there selling prints and i do a lot of shows where i go to schools and present my police brutality slideshow. those are the types of things that are totally enhanced by social media. again, it is the greatest thing that ever happen and the worst thing at the same time. >> the community and people knowing about something, newspapers -- editorial cartoons were traditionally newspaper based, and people just are not

reading newspapers the way they used to. look at this audience. most of the people here who know and like cartoons are of a certain age where you don't even think about subscribing to a newspaper. my children would not. that's how they got through college and they wouldn't even by my newspaper. [laughter] >> any rate, the downside of it -- yes, you get your stuff out to lots of places, but he goes to places where people agree with you or they like that subject. where as a broad-based and newspaper, you have people who did and didn't like your point of view, and again, how do we get a conversation started, how do we go back and forth on issues, if people are in their silos and not even seeing the same material? i think, yes, we get out a lot, but we get out in a much more

narrow bandwidth a lot of times. i think that is not a great thing. >> ok, we have time for one more question. >> you covered most of the stuff. [laughter] >> where'd you get your ideas? [laughter] >> i get mine on d-day. -- i get mine on ebay. >> i don't think there has been a line and answer to that -- >> i just want to touch on one last little point. do you think that is driving the content now more or less, and how you think that is affecting cartoonists coming into the field? if i draw a cartoon and i am not syndicated, i have try to sell it to somebody. it has a short shelf life if i

have to try to sell it to someone. will i build an audience by drying things that people want to see so i can get my voice heard? i'm thinking of the young cartoonists today trying to find a voice. is there audience going to find them through the internet and they will find funding? or is this something where the marketplace is moving in this direction, so people was start drawing cartoons they think they can sell? >> i don't think cartoonists think that way. i think cartoonists think about being artists and creating what the voice inside them tells them to make. i don't know about everyone else, but i don't think too much about my audience. i think that is a dangerous way to go in terms of developing your own voice.

>> i think it would be hard to get started today. i started in the late 1990's when alternative newspapers were a growing industry, and it seemed like there was some real potential there. i started doing an alternative weekly strip and started to get it in a enough papers to support myself along with freelance work on the side. the great recession was very scary. fortunately, there are some websites that have begun paying for cartoons like daily post and others. and so they have stepped into the void, but that path -- it never seemed all that clear, but it seemed like there was a path in the late 1990's. now i don't know what i would say except to be highly diversified. in addition to doing my weekly strip, i edit a comic section on a website.

i do freelance work. i've done graphic journalism work. it really is -- it sounds like a cliche, but it's about being entrepreneurial and having lots of bowls in the air basically. -- balls in the air basically. >> we started around the same time. it is really diversified. -- it really is about diversifying. i have more hope for people starting out now. as long as you are doing a strip that you want to see and read, there are 7 billion -- how many are there? there are a lot of people in this world. [laughter] all you have to do is find the 1000. you have 1000 fans. everyone here has 1000 hard-core fans, and you just have to create your work and you will find those 1000 fans.

you have to convince those 1000 fans to give you $75 a year. [laughter] >> and you do that by providing them an opportunity to give you money, like reading books or having a site for them to -- like creating books or having a site for them to support, just different ways in different things. in addition to those 1000, there will be peripheral folks who buy a book every once in a while. will be peripheral folks who buy a book every once in a while. you have to continually sort of -- yeah, it really is a hostile, a constant hustle. i've never had a steady salary gig. i have been in the industry for 20 years. i'm raising two kids on this wacky cartooning thing that my

dad is like, where are you making money? [laughter] >> but it is there, and when people see that you are doing something that you are passionate about and they see some sort of truth or sincerity in it, they are willing to support you. and so i think you go for it. one great example is there is a young lady who all she does is review sex toys with her husband, and she has gained this crazy following of people -- and she makes time of money -- tons of money. she gets free sex toys. [laughter] she use of them and makes comics out of them. it is amazing.

seriously? [laughter] >> i will show you. >> no. [laughter] >> on that note -- [laughter] >> -- i think we have reached the end of the program. thank you all. [laughter] [applause] sunday night on q&a, the late washington merry-go-round columnist drew pearson talks about the second volume of mr. pearson's diaries which gives an insight take on washington, d.c. from 1960 to 1969. >> it was just remarkable all the things he did, and sometimes he would criticize himself in and he must've come across different places where he said, i think that column was too strong, i should not have

said it that way. portland it is going to get mad at me for the way i wrote the column. but it needed to be told. sunday night on q&a. this holiday weekend, american history tv on c-span3 has three thisof future programming evening at 6:30 p.m. eastern to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of dwight david eisenhower, his granddaughters susan and mary gather for a mayor -- where family discussion at gettysburg college to talk about his military and political career as well as his legacy and relevance for 21st century americans. then on saturday afternoon at 1:00, 60 years ago, rosa parks divided city ordnance for blacks to leave their seats on a city bus to make room for white

passengers. her stand helped instigate the montgomery bus boycott. we will reflect on the boycott and see what roles lawyers played in that as we hear from freddie gray, attorney for rosa parks, and montgomery boycott demonstrators. then at 6:00, civil war author on historian william davis the little-known aspects of the lives and leadership of union general ulysses s. grant and confederate general robert e lee. sunday afternoon at 4:00 on real america a 1965 progress report on nasa's projects, including the manprogram and the mariner flyby of mars. just before 9:00, writer and filmmaker ric burns on how the public learns about history through film and television. american history tv, all weekend and on holidays, too, only on c-span3. in this year's christmas

message, queen elizabeth focused on the sacrifice of soldiers serving overseas. the annual christmas message is a tradition that dates to 1932 when king george the fifth delivered his message over the radio. this is 10 minutes. ♪ "god save the queen" ♪

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, few this time of year sites devote more feelings of cheer and goodwill than a twinkling lights of a christmas tree. the popularity of a tree at christmas is due in part to my great, great grandparents, queen victoria and prince albert. after this touching picture was published, many families wanted a christmas tree of their own, and a custom soon spread. christmas as at newly married naval life. we have returned to that island over the years, including last month, for a meeting of commonwealth leaders.

this year, i met another group of leaders, the queens young leaders, and inspirational group , each of them a symbol of hope in their own commonwealth communities. gathering around the tree gives us a chance to think about the .ear ahead i am looking forward to a busy 2016, though i have been warned, i may have happy birthdays unto me more than once or twice. it also allows us to reflect on the year that has passed. as we think of those who are far .way or no longer with us many people say the first christmas after losing a loved one is particularly hard. but it is also a time to remember all that we have to be think of for. it is true that the world has had to confront moments of , but thethis year gospel of john contains a verse of great hope, often read at

christmas carols services. the light shines in the darkness , and the darkness has not overcome it. one cause for thankfulness this summer was marking 70 years since the end of the second world war. on vj day, we honor the remaining veterans of that terrible, and in the far east, as well as remembering the thousands who never returned. the procession from horse guards parade two was minster abbey must've been one of the slowest ever because so many people wanted to say thank you to them. at the end of that war, the people of oslo began sending an annual gift of a christmas tree to trafalgar square. and is500 light bulbs enjoyed not just by christians, but by people of all faiths and of none.

at the very top sits a bright star to represent the star of bethlehem. the custom of topping a tree also goes back to prince albert's time. for his family street, he chose an angel, helping to remind us that the focus of the christmas story is on one particular family. for joseph and mary, the circumstances of jesus's birth in a stable were far from ideal. but worse was to come as the family was forced to flee the country. it is no prize that such a human story still captures our imagination and continues to inspire all of us who are christians the world over. despite being displaced and persecuted throughout his short life, christ's