OTHER EDITOONS OF THE YEAR

Time.com chose ten editorial cartoons, called them the “best,” and flung them up on the magazine’s website. But none of them stick with me. Clay Bennett’s target-painter is the only cartoon in the lot to achieve any power as political commentary; all the rest of Time’s selection are simply humorous, employing visual fragments from yesterday’s news to make a political point today. And the visual metaphors — a big guy getting into a tiny car to symbolize the shrunken auto industry — are trite and predictable and lame, lame, lame. Humor may have guided the selection, but the humor was not very sharply pointed. It’s as if the editors at Time had isolated the word “cartoon,” divorcing it from the genre’s controlling adjective — “political” or “editorial” — and because “cartoon” always denominates something funny, their misguided choices of the year’s best must perforce be funny cartoons without any particular potency as commentary. Too many editors make this mistake. Comedy has a role in an editorial cartoon, otherwise it wouldn’t be a cartoon. But the best editoons use comedy to make their points.

In animated political cartoons, for example, the best ones use motion to make the commentary. One of the most adroit at this is Ann Telnaes at the Washington Post online. Her cartoons do not simply move: their motions provide the punchlines that give the commentary its memorable impact. Her take on Darth Cheney’s perpetual kibitzing (January 1, 2010) is a beaut. Incidentally, the famed Herblock award competition this year will include, for the first time, animated editorial cartoons.

If you want to see more of my picks, the editorial cartoons representing the “best of 2009" without being exhaustive or encyclopedic, go here, where Rants & Raves, Opus 254, is open to the general public and casual drop-ins.