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The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

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Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#41

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

cm2187 wrote: post #25
dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

Except that the said newsrooms are more often than not the ones that amplify and give a legitimacy to these mobs by printing their reactions as if it was somehow the reaction of the people. The NY Times itself actively participated in many of these lynchings, like the Covington kids. To me it looks more like a newsroom that likes playing with fire, got burned itself, and decides to cut its exposure so it can keep pla…

If anything, that's the thing I hate most about Twitter. A journalist who wants to write a story with a particular angle can easily find tons of supporting viewpoints on Twitter, and usually at least a few of these are somewhat clever or snarky.

So the journalist writes the article and then uses these examples from Twitter to show that "the masses" agree, or are equally outraged as the author.

Since when do we start giving every rando who can shout something from Twitter equal weight?

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#42

Post by colpabar »

donohoe wrote: post #22

To be clear, the NYT never did a lot of cartoons nor was it known for them. I really don’t think this is a big deal. If The New Yorker or sone other publication did, then maybe.

My issue isn't that they no longer have political cartoons, it's why they made the decision to remove them. And to be fair, we don't know yet. I haven't found an official statement from the NYT on this; I've only seen tweets and this guy's piece on it.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#43

Post by trehalose »

781 wrote: post #32
praneshp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East Was this an universal viewpoint in the West? As a non-Muslim teen in India I saw it as mocking Islam (I get that others' mileage varies).

Mocking is still legal in the West. But not for long. Mocking anything but white men/Christianity creates huge uproar today. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2018/09/1...

Mocking white men/Christianity doesn't create huge uproar? Hasn't there been a huge uproar about a "War on Christmas" for years where people get mad when baristas say "happy holidays"? Hard to believe that something so innocuous could generate Christian outrage but mocking Christianity couldn't.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#45

Post by nerpderp82 »

mAEStro-paNDa wrote: post #8

Here's an article over the cartoon mentioned here that sparked outrage in April which led to this: https://nypost.com/2019/04/28/new-york-times-condemned-for-a...

Can someone explain how the cartoon is antisemetic? Calling it such doesn't make it so. If I blend Putin into a Cassowary crossed with a Peacock would it not be apropos? Cartoons are supposed to be edgy and uncomfortable.

It looks like like the NYT succumbed to the mob whipped up by the Trump administration, it meerly doesn't want the criticism.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#46

Post by vlozc »

cm2187 wrote: post #29
praneshp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East Was this an universal viewpoint in the West? As a non-Muslim teen in India I saw it as mocking Islam (I get that others' mileage varies).

In the case of Charlie Hebdo the intention was clearly to mock Islam indeed. But I am mystified that we are questioning in 2019 the right to blasphemy in a modern, western, free, secular society.

We don't have that. October 2018:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...

>On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld her 2011 conviction for “disparagement of religious precepts,” a crime in Austria. The facts of what E.S. did are not in dispute. She held “seminars” in which she presented her view that Muhammad was indeed a child molester. Dominant Islamic traditions hold that Muhammad’s third wife, Aisha, was 6 at the time of their marriage and 9 at its consummation. Muhammad was in his early 50s. The Austrian woman repeated these claims, and the Austrian court ruled that she had to pay 480 euros or spend 60 days in the slammer. The ECHR ruled that Austria had not violated her rights.

Muhammad fucked a 9 year old according to the Quran, which makes him a child molester under any kind of reasonable understanding--pointing that out means you get fined. Now, granted, Europe does not have freedom of speech, but this shows the way the things are moving.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#47

Post by enraged_camel »

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #27

I think this piece is a great example of smug, establishment romanticism which grossly overvalues form over function. A political cartoon hasn't made me laugh, think deeply, or--most importantly--change my worldview in years. It's the most self-satisfied, pretentious, and outdated medium I know of. The author's notion that the loss of political cartoons is a serious loss of visual political culture is a self-absorbed…

>>A political cartoon hasn't made me laugh or think deeply in years.

This probably says more about you than about political cartoons as a medium.

Is it possible that you have become so used to over-the-top memes and shallow animated shows with instant-gratification "satire" that you have lost the ability (and/or patience) to pause and ponder the subtler, many-layered messages underneath traditional cartoons?

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#48

Post by your-wrong »

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #27

I think this piece is a great example of smug, establishment romanticism which grossly overvalues form over function. A political cartoon hasn't made me laugh, think deeply, or--most importantly--change my worldview in years. It's the most self-satisfied, pretentious, and outdated medium I know of. The author's notion that the loss of political cartoons is a serious loss of visual political culture is a self-absorbed…

For a number of reasons, I don't think you're a real person. I think you have an agenda. I think you're here to provide artificial tone and voice to a conversation on The Internet, in an insubstantive matter.

If drawings and charicatures accompanied by text captions and word baloons in print media haven't appealed to your tastes in some time, it is less the fault of the medium, and more likely founded in massive social and cultural shifts fomented by the potent emerging technologies currently changing the world.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#49

Post by rdtsc »

dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

> The issue now is that the puritanical outrage stretches past the pulpit and Letters to the Editor and directly into your notifications,

I think many people have realized that they can control the discourse by pretending to be offended. And it is not easy to figure out if someone is genuinely distraught at seeing a cartoon like that (or anything really) or they are just claiming they are.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#50

Post by Chazprime »

cm2187 wrote: post #25
dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

Except that the said newsrooms are more often than not the ones that amplify and give a legitimacy to these mobs by printing their reactions as if it was somehow the reaction of the people. The NY Times itself actively participated in many of these lynchings, like the Covington kids. To me it looks more like a newsroom that likes playing with fire, got burned itself, and decides to cut its exposure so it can keep pla…

Yup, media outlets like the NYT did this to themselves really.

At some point they decided that a story could be manufactured from a few outraged individuals, even if those sources were random or completely unknown users. Bam...there's your instant moral outrage. It didn't matter that their story might be a grossly inaccurate sampling of readers or have little factual basis, the only thing that mattered was that suddenly a mob formed around them, instantly amplifying their message.

I suppose this has done wonders for those sites looking to increase ad revenue, but I wonder what the actual damage is to political discourse in this country.

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