How To Draw The Threat

January 6th was the tip of it

January 6th, 2022. I was not able to watch all the news coverage on the day, but have been reading about it since, about all the worries that our democracy is in danger. I believe it. As a cartoonist who sometimes draws about the news, I want to draw about this but don’t know how. During the Trump presidency, my drawings often addressed this, often in terms of his attacks on the press.

Lady Liberty to me represents the best of America. But there is a horrible side to America bubbling underneath what she stands for, trying to uproot her, trying to topple her. How does one draw that?

Yesterday in a powerful speech, Biden said that Trump had a “dagger at the throat of democracy.” David Remnick of The New Yorker wrote about a possible civil war brewing. President Jimmy Carter warned us in a NYTimes Op-Ed.

After the election last year, I was relieved yet exhausted. I stopped drawing editorial cartoons, in part because I was tired of the news, but also in part because I am not sure what good editorial cartoons do anymore . I have written extensively on the beauty and positive impact of editorial cartoons historically, and in ways I still hang on to that (here on Substack, I made a case for the art form, and here on Medium I wrote of the history). But in the current media landscape, it is unclear to me how realistic that attitude is. Is the purpose of an editorial cartoon to educate, share the artists’ viewpoint, hold a leader/corporation/government accountable to the voting public, or rally a certain demographic into action? I don’t draw editorial cartoons for any paying customer anymore, I was doing it mostly on Medium which pays pennies for my column and cartoons. The New Yorker doesn’t buy my political cartoons anymore, instead they choose non-political or slightly cultural commentary.

So often, editorial cartoons are directed at someone or something. What is happening now, the threats to our democracy, are coming from an amorphous, unamed, large group of angry people. The temptation is to say the threat is really from white supremacists; I think that may be the case. How does one draw white supremicists? To draw a klansman is too simplicistic and old (although effective) imagery. I have used the figure of Trump in the past, but now that he is no longer president it’s not that clear cut, even though he is mobilizer in chief still. He still has such control over the GOP and the right.

After writing the above, I decided to draw something and came up with this drawing below. A shark indeed can be symbolic of threat…the question is what to label the shark. Let me know what you think.

Liza’s new book is Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists, 1925-2022. Preorder signed copies here.