To Be or Not to Be Politicaly Correct
At the recent Humorfest panel “Political Satire in Cartoons” many different topics arose like the topics of what happens when cartoonists portray a presidential administration wrong, how comedians portray different presidents, and who’s included in the cartoons.
Chris Lamb and Mark Long talked about “Drawing Fire: The Bush Administration vs. Editorial Cartoonists”. They talked about how the Bush Administration reacts towards the cartoons about them in the newspaper. For example one editorial cartoonist got arrested by the Secret Service for a cartoon he drew. A question that arose during the discussion at the end was how the Administration acts when the cartoonist draws good things about them
Another topic discussed was “‘Noises and Laftah’: Presidential Impersonations and the Negotiation of Political Identity in 20th Century Mass Media” by Peter Robinson. He talked about how comedian’s impersonations of presidents affect what people think of the president at that time. A question raised by this topic was “what might be the reason the impersonations affect the way the public thinks about the president.”
The final topic discussed was “A Museum Exhibit Explores the ‘Cartoon South’” by Tom Hanchett. He talked about how cartoons about the south always show stereotypical southern figures like “hillbillies” and confederate generals. A question raised by this topic was “does Uncle Sam have southern origin?”
All of the speakers got a good response from the audience and all of them seemed to know their material well. Overall it was a very interesting and funny panel.
Filed under: HumorFest Reports