Best Use of a Blog Award

Tim O'Neil at The Hurting has begun a search of powerful comics executives on political donation web sites. This is one of those things that will likely prove fascinating even if there's no newsworthy hook. Or maybe this will just be interesting to me, because I am totally horrible at using databases and research mechanisms in the service of journalism.

Using the sites that Tim links to in his initial blog entry, I plugged in the names of cartoonists who made the news during the election period for reasons of content:

* Aaron McGruder of Boondocks and Birth of a Nation.
* Scott Stantis, who launched the conservative-leaning Prickly City this summer and was pranked by what he claimed were political foes
* Lalo Alcaraz of La Cucaracha, whose politically-focused strips cost him at least one major client.
* Gary Groth and Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics, who published political books during the election season
* Garry Trudeau, whose Doonesbury was reinvigorated this year through strips about the cost of war.

It may be that I'm still horrible at this, or the general lack of money among comics people is having an effect on who can give it away, but the only donations I found from that group are from Trudeau. One site reported:

* A $2000 donation to Howard Dean in February 2003 (they attended school together)
* A $2000 donation to John Kerry in May 2004
* A $1750 donation to Democrat Victory 2004 in June 2004
* A $2000 donation to John Kerry in June 2004
* A $2000 donation to John Kerry in September 2004 subsequently refunded

I have no idea what any of that really means, or why another search engine only confirms two of those. Well, I guess it means "take me with a grain of salt" and since I'm goofing off here you shouldn't take this too seriously, either. It's still fun, though. I started to randomly plug in other cartoonists like Mort Walker ($600 total to "Christopher Shays for Congress Committee") but that way lies madness. And a lot of empty results.

Finally, a request for Tim O'Neil: Please include newspaper syndicate people in your executive search.
 
posted 7:18 am PST | Permalink
 

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