I just submitted my batch of cartoons to The New Yorker, a weekly ritual. It’s often very difficult to come up with anything. This week, I struggled a lot, nothing seemed funny. I don’t know why it was so hard to be creative this week, one often never really understands. But it’s important not to beat up on yourself , and just accept it. Try to work around it, not demand too much, just draw SOMETHING. I finally submitted about five ideas, fewer than usual. One was a resubmission of an idea that I really really like. Perseverance is more than half the battle— but sometimes, the fact of the matter is, you just don’t sell anything.
I have been doing this for over 40 years.
One that I sent in the week before, though, I want to share with you. They didn’t buy it, despite the cuteness of the bear! I sort of like it. It’s silly. Sometimes you just have to do silly cartoons, that mean nothing. Sometimes they buy them.
Below is one they did buy, several months ago (forget when). This cartoon of mine published in this week’s New Yorker is one of my favorites.
One of the drawings I did in my batch just now for this week I can verbally describe to you, or at least the idea behind it. The idea came from listening to Biden’s speech the other day when he was in Poland. His last sentence, paraphrased, was: “This man cannot remain in power!” It was so strong, I almost tweeted it out. Turns out that line became a real problem for him, it was thought that the U.S. was changing policy towards Russia or other foreign countries. I could just hear Biden responding to the outrage, “'c’mon, folks! It was just me being morally outraged!”
And I thought to myself, isn’t it wonderful that we have a president who can be morally outraged?
Below, paid subscribers can see the drawing I submitted about moral outrage.