>> welcome to the 11th annual forum on communications, technology and government. with presidential fervor percolating and presidential candidates adjusting for position, it's an appropriate time. how do political cartoons make a difference? we probably can agree a picture is worth a thousand words and that the pen is mightier than the sword. political cartoons, by articulating a memorable, visual image with scant or zero words, powerfully advance the argument and expand the conversation. as far back as 1754, ben franklin published his timeless political cartoon, join or die. it was a wood cut of a snake cut into segments representing

the divided british colonies. the franklin metaphor became a rallying point for unity initially in the french-indian war and then during the american revolution. today's brilliant political cartoonists can take advantage of a myriad of print and web-based communication portals. but freedom of expression must never be taken for granted. we recall the 12 people, including four prominent cartoonists were murdered in the paris offices of french is weekly l -- sat ircal charlie hebo for a religious figure. we wonder, are cartoon artists intimidated or energized by such violent responses. tonight's program will explore the challenges and opportunities inherent in this art form today and for the future. it is presented in partnership with the national archives which is supported by the

william g. mccowan political fund. i'm a member of the fund's board since 2008. the mcgowan fund was established in 1993 to preserve the legacy of global communication legend and my uncle william mcgowan. m.c.i. communications founder who died the previous year. through its grant programs, the fund helps protect society's most vulnerable members. we support programs ranging from food banks to dental clinics, college success programs and health promotion initiatives. since its inception, the fund has provided over $130 million to effective grantees in the areas of health care and medical research, human services, and education. the william g. mcgowan theater reflects a key priority of this charismatic and charitable industry. uncle bill loved history, movies and debating the great ideas of the day. in 2003, the fund honored him by partnering with the national archives by developing this

public theater. here, outstanding films and documentaries are screened and important ideas are explored. this annual forum on communications technology and government was very quickly added by the fund. to augment programming at the theater. in 2008, the fund added an annual spring forum spot lighting women and leadership and 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 and argue 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 m.c.i., his upstart, st. louis phone service starter, the victory over corporate giant at&t which had a virtual lock on u.s. phone service. in 1982, capping a 10-year

legal regulatory battle, a verdict in federal district court confirmed m.c.i.'s right to compete in the open marketplace, effectively ending at&t's telecommunications monopoly, history is repeating itself. this led to healthy competition and innovation, paving the way for today's global advances and communications technology. our distinguished panelist and moderator will take full advantage of our open forum here at the national archives to share perspectives on the vibrant and vital prospects of creating political cartoons. i'm looking forward to the conversation and your questions and comments to follow. thank you very much. [applause] david: good evening, i'm the archivist of the united states and it's a pleasure to welcome you officially to the national archives tonight and a special welcome to those of you joining us on c-span and on our

national archives youtube channel. since this year's topic for the mcgowan forum is political cartoons, i thought i'd mention some of the holdings of the national archives are in the form of cartoons. our holdings nationwide contain thousands of examples of editorial cartoons relating to political events and personalities throughout our history. some of the oldest political cartoons in the holdings of the national archives are in our presidential libraries. we have a series of dutch cartoons from 1719 in the f.d.r. library and a collection of thomas nast cartoons from the 1870's at the eisenhower and ford presidential libraries. but most of the political cartoons in our 13 presidential libraries deal with the actual presidents. these examples serve as proof that even and especially the leader of the free world is not immune from being secured each morning by a newspaper editorial cartoonist. it comes with the job. and as we see daily, it goes

for those who want the job, also. probably the most extensive single collection we have is the 2,400 original pen and ink drawings by cartoonist clifford k. barryman from the u.s. senate collection maintained by our center for legislative archives. barryman was one of washington's best known and most graphic political commentator respect in the first half of the 20th century and drew from "the washington post" from 1890 to 1907 and then the evening star from 1907 until his death in 1949. his cartoons touched on a variety of subjects including politics, presidential and congressional elections, both world wars, and even washington weather. and this is entitled the postseason parade from 1915 and highlights the departure of lame duck members of congress, those departing capitol hill after losing their bid for

re-election. the lame ducks in this cartoon are defeated democrats headed to the white house hoping to secure political appointments from president woodrow wilson. our panel of distinguished editorial cartoonists tonight will be moderated by david ciprus, a history major at williams college, david went on to harvard for a masters program in soviet history and after two years dropped out to pursue a career as a cartoonist. in david's words, this may seem like a strange transition but to me has made perfect sense. since i was a kid, i knew being an artist, specifically an artist who works with humor was what i really wanted to do with my life. after six months of dropping out, he published his first cartoon in "the boston phoenix." david's first "new yorker" cartoon appeared in 1998 and he was new yorker.com's first daily cartoonist during the 2012 presidential election. his work has also appeared in

"time," parade, "playboy," "the washington post" and harpers and election churred on the art of the cartoon and was the writer and host of conversations with cartoonists, a series of on-stage interviews with many of the artists who work on the new yorker magazine. he's also published both fiction and nonfiction on narrative.com and on the new yorker's website, including march: ella hazen changed my life, a tribute to the great italian chef in, november 22, 1963 in account of his family's experience of the kennedy assassination. now i'll turn the program over to our moderator, david, who will introduce our panel. [applause]

>> we salute the audience. david: good evening, i'm david cyprus, i'm moderating tonight and i want to introduce tom tolle, sydney wilkinson, keith ight and jan sorensen. i asked them to put up this thomas nast cartoon and wanted them to put it up to give us a history of cartooning in this country. tom, i want you to look at it. that's how you draw an elephant. ok. [applause] david: just a few words what i'm doing here. i am a new yorker cartoonist doing political cartoons for the new yorker is a tricky business because the sort of limitations that come down from up above are we can't advocate

directly for anything. we can't point fingers at any particular politician or policy. basically we just sort of go like this to the reader and say isn't that all ridiculous. also, part of those rules are we are not -- unlike the covers, no caricatures in new yorker cartoons and no text to explain anything. so i developed some strategies to deal with that. one is that i use the archetypes of new yorker cartoons to kind of funnel my point of view. one of them, for example, is the figure of the king that i use to represent government itself or a particular politician and i've chosen one to show you tonight. it's one i did right after the 2012 election when 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. i also chose it because i think

it's really appropriate for this venue tonight at the national archive. i'm concerned about my legacy. kill the historians. these guys work in a very different schedule than i do. i had a little taste of it as was mentioned, i was the daily cartoonist on the new yorker website during that 2012-2014 election cycles, topical cartoon every day for two months. and one thing that i really came to appreciate was what it's like to deal with the enormous amount of information 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 currently at odds with my desire to remain single. what these guys do is cut through all that noise and all that information and with the tools of words and pictures

together get us to some simple, concise truths that help us all figure out what's going on. and i'm going to start out, before i show any slides, you guys are probably going to kill me, but i'm going to ask you the only question that's going to probably -- you've asked a million times and will bore you to death. it's not where do you get your ideas, i'll get to that later. i wonder if anybody would like to say a little about how you view your role as a political cartoonist. is your role to explain, is it to make people laugh, is it to change people's minds or any combination of those? anybody have anything to say about that? ok. well, that one good idea is gone. anybody have anything -- >> that's the answer you'll get to every question, too, by the way.

>> only if we're going to talk about it when we get to particular topics. every cartoon is different. you do different things in different cartoons to make different points. sydney: the day after somebody blows up paris, a sympathy cartoon is a good idea. and yet you're not doing sympathy cartoons all week long. then you move on to other things. david: all right. why don't we dive right into the images. i'm going to show one cartoon by each of you. the first one is tom's. tom: you want me to talk about it? david: if you -- tom: because the answer is no. david: i have a question, do you have a television where you work in your office? tom: i do but don't watch it. david: you didn't sit there all day and watch the hillary clinton hearings? tom: i absorbed enough of them through various channels and had a pretty good idea what was

going on. and this cartoon, i sent this one along for the reason that -- traditionally what people look to a cartoon to do to a certain extent is to simplify a complicated situation. and i wanted in this one to simplify a complicated situation and a complicated way. hat's all i have to say. the obvious idea is that the benghazi hearings were not going according to the political agenda the republicans had set out for them to be, in other words, a big takedown of hillary. so the simple shortest version on hat is that it backfired them, but, you know, there are simpler ways to do it than i chose to do. and this was a cartoon that

some people said that they had to look at it for a while because of several things going on there. and you know, and sometimes complicated simple is better than simple simple. but within the complexity, got it all in there in a kind of engaging way and as you look at it, you can -- it's a static image, but it's potentially alive with all kinds of motion, all kinds of intent reaction and consequences. so i just -- it's an example of simplicity rendered complexly. david: i have a couple -- jan: it's a marvel of composition. david: i have a couple questions generally. i made a joke about elephants before but i'm always struck in your work by how sort of cuddly all your characters are. and i wonder, actually, if that's kind of a strategy you use to sort of soften their --

tom: yeah, yeah, yeah. it's the same strategy that fishermen use. they don't just make the hook look sharp and horrible, they make it look like food. and i mean, political cartooning is often, often very harsh and very pointed and i certainly enjoy and feel strongly about putting that element into my cartoons. but i don't know. i have to make choices to how i present what you have to say. i mean, that's really half the job. and for me, it's -- i designed 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 it invite you in rather than like stiff arms you away? it invites you in and then all of a sudden you find yourself immeshed in my world where eventually you find out there is a hook in there and -- david: let me ask you this, i've always been interested in your little ought biographical tom tolls in the bottom right hand corner. i wondered when you started doing that and what your thinking is about it. tom: its initial -- the thought initially obviously was derived from pat ofante who was the watershed cartoonist in political cartooning and he hates me to this day for adopting that. and when i would look at it, i would think that's brilliant, perfect, can't touch it because he invented it, and it was so personal, it seemed like that was offlimbs and it was for me

but other than a library which is sort of like an archives one day looking through early 20th century american political cartooning, i found out that this kind of marginal commentary was very much part of the field and that it wasn't an o'fane invention and gave it a try and people loved it right away and my variant is to put myself in it personally. it's a drawing board. and so -- david: does it have the effect of sort of distancing yourself from the main cartoon in a way and kind of giving an off to the side second opinion? tom: yeah, it's just another dimension. i mean, i draw -- when i draw the cartoons as sketches just to see how they're working, i always draw them without that in mind. and if you take that away, the cartoon is designed to work without it. and a lot of times i will get to the end of the day and i won't have that part yet and it often turns out to be the

hardest part of the cartoon but it's just another thing, another way to personalize it, to add another thought. sometimes it reinforces the main thought and sometimes it cuts a little bit the other way. and -- 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's a person, it's not just a cartoon. there's somebody behind it drawing it and that person has like their own thoughts, their own take. and it's me. and i'm not neither ashamed or especially proud of it, but that's the way it is. and that's why i am there. david: sydney, i'm showing one of yours now and when you sent it to me, and you said, i think it will be obvious, it's a cartoon that only a woman could do.

sydney: i have to preface it by saying it was done many years ago before recent discussion of mammography has come back into discussion. david: get ready, everybody. [laughter] sydney: wait a minute. i was going to read it for you. david: i don't think that one ecessarily needs to. sydney: you're speechless. david: there was an article about controversy about prostate exams today but i wasn't going to bring that up. i did want to ask you, we agree that there's -- in this particular field, there are only a few of you women cartoonists, and i wonder if you feel a particular

obligation or calling to make cartoons about these kinds of issues? sydney: no. if you look at the number of cartoons i've drawn over the course of 35 years cartooning, i've drawn a lot about women but so have men. you know, off of political issues of equal rights and the various, you know, 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. like maybe women could draw a few of those cartoons. it was like this men's club you could leave the ideas at the door and they draw the cartoon for you. so at any rate, it's been a privilege to be able to do it. then i got started and my first full-time job is defined by

having health benefits, there were about five other women cartoonists in full-time jobs, and today there's no one in actually a full-time paid position, no women, and very few, many fewer men. so, yeah, when women's issues come up, i want to draw about them, definitely. but it's not the thing i draw about most. jan: i consider myself a generalist, so i don't draw exclusively about gender, but, you know, at the same time, i feel it is something that i'm constantly aware of and possibly more aware of than some people who have been in the field. though there are many male feminist cartoonists out there. but, you know, i think through

life experience there are some perspectives you bring to the table. there's no, like, one monolithic female perspective, of course. but, you know, you do add to the conversation because there's just certain things at life experiences you're just going to bring to the cartoon. so, you know, i do a fair number of cartoons about gender and women's issues but at the same time -- and i don't mind being identified as a woman cartoonist because i feel like if we're going to get more women in the media, you have to be conscious of that. you can't just sweep it under the table and say oh, well, we're just going to ignore that. but again, i do view myself as a generalist and it's not -- my exclusive niche. sydney: a lot of my hate mail begins deer mr. wilkinson. jan: the number of people who i think i'm a scandinavian

dude. , they think i'm a david: i'm going to show one of keith. you want to read it or let people read it? keith: sure. how to discern an innocent gesture from a gang sign. it's really subtle to look closely. peace, bicity vague rans, tricity bloods, okey-dokey, old town crips. rock on, bro, west side ballers, misguided use and thug. david: you originally come out of sort of a comic strip sort of background. did you always do political content or is that something that just kind of developed over time? keith: i think it developed over time but it was always a part of my repertoire. i think it started in college. my first black professor i had

was in college. and he was an english -- american literature professor. professor was gerald -- gerald -- he was amazing. he gave us, for a read ago signment, he gave us james baldwin, maya angelou, martin luther king, like just all bella hooks, all these different writers. and when someone brought them up to him and said they're all black writers, he said they're all american writers and my head -- i was like whoa, that was cool. he was making statements without making statements. and just really made me rethink -- my comics went from comics about keg parties to comics that meant something.

and so when i got the opportunity to do it, you know, i had always been influenced by not just stuff like calvin and hobbs and peanuts but also was influenced by jules pfeiffer. i always found it fun to look and find all these extra cartoons off the comics page and on the editorial page and in the classified section and in parade, and i loved the way he sometimes had panels and sometimes didn't have panels and he would just do comics about a lot of different things. o when i started the k -chronicles, not only was it something i wanted to do or cover anything i wanted to talk about, but it also came at a time where i really wanted to do a strip that represented me, which was in the early 1990's, you know, as a hip-hop fan, the only time i saw people who were into hip-hop, you know, they

were gang members and hoodlums and all this stuff. and it was like, you know, no. actually most people i know into hip-hop are smart, politically aware and into nerdy stuff. so it was important to kind of bring that sensibility to the comics page. david: one thing i noticed in your work and sort of akin to tom in the corner of his work is you seem to almost have a direct conversation with the reader like you address the reader directly in your work. is that something you think about and -- keith: totally conscious. another big influence on me are my dad's side of the family. every holiday we'd end up and be down in the cellar at my great uncle's house at the bar and everybody would be spinning these funny stories. so the k chronicles was like this guy telling you these stories in a bar and you're not

really sure whether to believe him or not. i always have that mind with him that i'm telling the stories, even when i tell -- now i work my stories out on my 2-year-old and 7-year-old. yeah. i can't trick them as easily as i trick everybody else. david: ken, you want to advance the thing each time? it's the top one. this is a piece of jan's that's in a series of panels so she's going one panel at a time. jan: all right. so this is hillary clinton, pro versus con. on the pro side, we'll keep health care reform saving countless lives. on the con side, support an iraq war, dooming countless lives.

now find the rainbow flag. sponsored a bill to ban burning the u.s. flag. vow to fight economic inequality. partly caused by her husband deregulating lawsuits. riends with kissinger. would prevent total destruction of the supreme court. an't do much about scalia. would be the first woman president. hard sell in a country that can't even put a woman host on major late night tv show. she's the only realistic choice. she's the only realistic choice. the first thing that

strikes me is that in the new yorker when i write a caption, captions are always these filaments that everything has to be in the right place. there is always the kicker at the end. you always try to nail it with the last word. comedym to have a lot of chops in your work. is that something you think about? do you think about making it as funny as you can? >> that is the goal. primary goal is to create something that has a point in the first place. whether i can make that funny or not depends on how the process goes. in this case, something i found interesting is the most controversial aspect of this cartoon is that she is friends with bono. a lot of people didn't want to see that in the pro column. i got so much flak.

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 interesting about humor, you said that you think it is a much more persuasive and intellectually challenging way to make a point as opposed to anger. jen: absolutely. that is one reason that i went into cartooning instead of academia. if you can couch something in a really appealing and amusing message, you know, people who 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] these are coming right off the news since i use six a week. 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? the obvious thing is who should it be? that is too obvious. the thing i didn't comment on in the cartoon, 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 reserve 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. david f.: -- 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 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 through 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 the position of 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

of women we drew, so we have been rushing to raise that number. 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, 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 they get at something pretty fundamental that a lot of people are thinking about but don't have a way of discussing is that we put all of these letters in the newspaper and we gave all 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. the letter writers cap going back and forth amongst themselves -- writers 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 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 through all of that, it became more of an issue that our mayor,

mayor nutter, in his inauguration a grant -- inauguration address, was ongoing violence -- was on 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 doing interviews with gun owners and the 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. 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 dish -- 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 something is happening -- 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 lack lives matter -- black lives matter. 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 there it -- there is this black community making him feel guilty, i said, it is not the black community making you feel guilty, sir. it is youreyes, y -- it is your eyes, your hearts, and your -- it is your eyes, your heart, and your brain, and what you are hearing is bullshit. so the question is, what do you think about that feeling? do you write about 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] tom: i mean just clobbered. and it has gotten worse, but luckily by the time it had gotten worse, the skin had already gotten pretty thick. 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] tom: you can feel the sweat beading on his forehead. what can i say when i have heard it all? wow. 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. they know what you are at, what you are about, but they say there is enough information here that it is the u.s.. doing -- youu are

are saying the other thing. those are communications criticisms which make you question just exactly the method of presentation. generally speaking, you spend enough time thinking about what you're going to say and why you want to say it. somebody being upset about it isn't going to make you change your mind, but sometimes, misinterpretation give you a moment of pause. also, the new yorker closes on friday and comes out on monday. in an issue that closed i did a joke about a beheading. over the weekend, there was a beheading. on monday, the magazine was inundated with outraged people, none of whom could understand that there was nothing that could be done about it and there was nothing to do with it. i wish i have not published a cartoon. >> one of the things about the , in the last 10 years

, they appear as joke items in the cartoons, images. >> i'm prepared for this. you mentioned it to me -- >> i would like to say i have never found one of them funny. >> let me ask you this, not to be defensive, but when you watch tv and you see csi or whatever, there is guns and in movies come on television. what is it about cartoons that make that an issue for you. but it is just visceral. >> ok. i am just going to show one of mine. then i am going to ask jen to take us through another one of hers.

>> this one is called the vice conservatives never give themselves. you need to cut out the victim mentality. obama ruin my life, save the whites, stop the war on religion. >> you should be more respectful of authority. you people are too angry. lighten up. when are you going to stop living in the past? get over it. i got this right after the sandra bland incident. the woman who was stopped by police in texas and died in her jail cell a couple days later. much reaction coming from people -- she shouldn't have -- if you

compare that to clive bundy, the right wing response to the renter who was grazing his candle -- cattle on federal land, there was an armed standoff, a lot of people thought he was a hero. there seems to be a bit of a double standard there. this is also around the time when the confederate flag was being debated very that was the impetus behind this cartoon. >> we are going to move to instions from the audience one second. one more cartoon, not by any of us. it is by someone who is very published everywhere. you might notice there are no conservatives on this panel. do you think this cartoon is funny? 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 ready to and lighten 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 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 were always come at me and say they never get prices 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 come 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 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 and clever come because the humor -- 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 gear that you have people

scratching their heads. it is just a matter -- but not so obscure that you have people scratching their heads. 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." 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

to do the davies, i make references to stuff in obscure ways -- 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. 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. 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 to the hot 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 listen to him. back to my point about cartooning. [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 cartoonists on this very subject. i say the spectrum runs from first amendment -- to the most shallow. [laughter] >> it's the place a cartoonists ought to start. 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 opt to 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. 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 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 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 two separate moral questions, and they are saying you can't have one without the other.

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 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 change its 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 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 sign -- the same time. it is really diversified. 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 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. 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] >> on the next washington journal, gina smiley on the economic outlook. the federal reserve raising interest rates, as well as consumer spending and job creation. michael hanlon of the brookings institution joins us to discuss the u.s. strategy against isis and the role of arab and muslim countries in fighting isis. washington journal live today's headlines, your phone calls, and tweets every day on c-span at 7 a.m. eastern

>> tonight on q&a, either able steps on the late washington merry-go-round columnist. he talks about the second volume of mr. pearson's diaries. from 1960 to 1969. >> it was remarkable, all the things he did. sometimes he would criticize the diary. if you read it carefully you would come across places were he would say "i think i was too strong." is going to get mad at me for the way that i wrote that column." he was gladay that of what he wrote, and glad that he wrote it. >> the bob dole institute of politics awarded this year's dole leadership prize the former president bill clinton.

in his speech, president clinton talked about bipartisanship, equality and international affairs. this is one hour. >> the dole leadership prize is awarded annually to an individual or group that has served our country in an exemplary manner. previous recipients include president george h. w. bush, the women air force pilots of world war ii, among others. today's recipient is receiving the award for his presidency and his ability to work on a bipartisan basis to achieve many of his administration's successes. there is a $25,000 award that goes with a prize. i'm pleased to announce that our recipient has chosen to donate the award back to the dole institute. [applause]