Pat Bagley On Mitt Romney, Taxes, Olympics And F-Bombs

Here's a Pat Bagley piece on the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. I'm not much up on politics -- there's a reference to two Jon Huntsmans in there that being familiar with only one I had to google to sort out -- but you may get something out of the content of Bagley's piece. What interests me about it is that Bagley is set up as kind of a humorous expert on Romney by virtue of being the cartoonist that covered him back in the day. I see that kind of thing more and more as news coverage kind of seeks out ways to distinguish certain personalities within its wider umbrella, this particular branding of cartoonists as wise/wisecracking men sitting on the sidelines ready to tell you the truth. That's not too far away from how the best ones were treated decades ago, and of course that's the way a bunch of them used to operate through their work. I also think that this is something Australia does: you frequently see their cartoonists on national television as a kind of acerbic voice talking someone through the events of the week. I couldn't tell you what any of our cartoonists even looks like, except the few that I've met. (I think I may know what Tom Toles looks like, but I may have him confused with Jim Henson.)

The irony here, I guess, is that while cartoonists seem perfectly suited to this role, and this is a role that seems like it will be in demand for news sources in the years ahead, you sort of have to have a baseline respect for the work involved to make it possible over time. I'm not sure that's there anymore.
 
posted 1:45 am PST | Permalink
 

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