A Tribute to Telnaes

    [Before I move back to the past, where I belong and where we all now wish to be, excuse me again for writing about the present and the THING many of us wish to avoid. But, as newspapers cease publishing and good journalists disappear to subterranean places like Substack, it is worth taking some time to tell you about Telnaes who now resides there.]

Democracy Dies in Darkness and Irony

   The Washington Post just won a couple of Pulitzers. Credit for one of them should go to Ann Telnaes who is no longer with The Post. She also won a Pulitzer in 2001 for editorial cartooning and this one is for "Illustrated Reporting and Commentary." The Pulitzer people say it was "For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."
   While The Post still gets the credit for the Pulitzer which is based on her work, it should be noted that she felt it necessary to leave that paper after another of her editorial cartoons was 'spiked.' It "showed a group of media executives bowing before then President-elect Donald Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos." She has indicated that it was not published because of what it portrayed. Her editor, David Shipley, said that it was not published because it was somewhat redundant, in that there had already been too many illustrating similar themes. Redundancy in Washington is hard to avoid these days.
   Mr. Shipley himself later resigned after Mr. Bezos indicated that subjects in the "Opinion Section" needed to be restricted in favour of those emphasizing free markets and personal liberties.
   Ruth Marcus left after "she said the newspaper’s management decided not to run her commentary critical of Bezos’ policy." Others left after Mr. Bezos would not allow the Post  to endorse Kamala Harris. Perhaps the Post's slogan, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" needs to be re-evaluated by the marketing folks at that publication. 
   I have kept my subscription because the Washington Post still produces good pieces and writers like Ron Charles need to be supported.
 
   So do the people who have left. The work of Ann Telnaes, along with an archive of her cartoons is found at "Open Windows"(https://anntelnaes.com/") which offers  "A view into an uncertain time of isolation and frustrations, but also one of the resiliency of the human spirit."
   Among the writings on her Substack one finds an article which illustrates that cartoons are important and that one can be even more severely punished for publishing them. Remember Charlie Hebdo? She published a story about that atrocity in the Washington Post and she deserves the credit for it, not the Post. Here is a portion from, "Charlie Hebdo, One Year Later," Jan. 7, 2016:

  "One year ago today two masked gunman entered the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and gunned down twelve people, including five cartoonists. The murderers claimed they were avenging the prophet Muhammed and by the end of two days of terror, five more people were dead.
   In the days immediately after the attack I did hold on to one hope. Surely now that people had been brutally murdered the world would finally and unequivocally support the universal right to freedom of expression, including cartoonists. But it didn’t happen. Support and solidarity quickly turned to questioning the motives of the attacked cartoonists....
   So attacks continued on cartoonists and bloggers who dare to criticize governments, challenge institutions and traditional thinking. It seems like the quantified support for Charlie Hebdo has only allowed for repressive governments and humorless dictators to establish their own list of offensive images, mainly any criticism which ridicules them and threatens their power....
   The only protection these brave cartoonists have is for the world to speak loudly for their right to freely express themselves....
   Banning offensive images either officially or through intimidation will only end up allowing intolerant individuals and institutions to change drawing a red line for cartoonists into drawing an enclosure for them."

   That the cartoonists were criticized more than the killers was surprising as I noted in this post: The Delicate Subject of Cartoons.

Sources: 
  The Post can be given a little credit for reporting this story about a journalist who chose to leave the paper after being censored. See: 
" Ann Telnaes, Who Quit Washington Post in Protest, Wins Pulitzer for 'fearlessness' in Commentary: A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest after editors killed her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President Donald Trump, has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary," Lisa Baumann, May 5, 2025. 
  "A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest early this year after editors killed her sketch criticizing the Post owner and other media chief executives working to curry favor with Trump has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary."

The Delicate Subject of Cartoons

  

   A distinction should be made between the act of drawing a cartoon and the beheading of a person. Many seem to think that the decapitators are better citizens than the cartoonists. I tend to side with the cartoonists and the silent minority on this issue. I can’t imagine a cartoon as bad as a beheading. Although I strive to avoid current events, at least this post does not again mention still-President Trump. It does involve our Prime Minister.

   The issue concerns the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Five years ago, twelve staff members at the publication were killed because they published cartoons of Muhammad. The killers are now going on trial, so the magazine decided to re-publish the images. A teacher chose to show the cartoons and discuss the issue of ‘freedom of the press” with his class. He was beheaded for doing so. I suppose the majority wonder how stupid the cartoonists and the teacher could be, while I think the beheaders deserve more criticism.

   President Macron apparently felt the same way and when he sought support, none was forthcoming from our Prime Minister. Trudeau had second thoughts, and just a few days ago the Leader of the Opposition had a few of his own, here are some of them:

“Regrettably, in the wake of the recent Islamist attacks in France, killings committed as acts of revenge for our freedoms, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted he did not believe in free speech if it could be used to offend someone. To be frank, these words are unworthy of a Canadian prime minister. They once again show Trudeau bowing to ideological Twitter mobs rather than standing up for a founding principle of our country.

Let’s be clear: no dogma, whether political or religious, is immune from criticism. As my colleague Gerard Deltell put it so well in the House of Commons, “Freedom of expression does not exist only when it suits us … It must exist especially when it does not suit our business.” And I will go further: tolerance, which truly defines our country, should not be a one-way street.”

   It does definitely seem like we are on a one-way street. If you are heading the wrong way, you are labelled  an 'Islamophobe' and criticism of Islamists can be classified as a hate crime or deemed 'blasphemous'. If you are among the politically correct and heading in the right direction you perhaps secretly admire those who are really good at cancelling culture, or at least the Western version of it.

   A few brave people spoke up about the issue of freedom of speech, but fewer still were willing to go much beyond that. I fear a fatwa myself for this rather mild critique, but will take the slight risk and go a step further and present a few jokes - but, certainly no images. The jokes are not mine, but I will give no source since the author of them may wish to avoid the fate of Salman Rushdie.

   These jokes were offered after the writer of them noticed that a major American newspaper was providing advice for the increasingly Muslim audience of readers, Here they are, but there are no pictures:

“Which way is Mecca? Ten Timely Tips for Budget Hajj Travel”

“Modern Romance: How Many Wives is Too Many?”

“Healthy New York: Maintaining Vitamin D Sufficiency Under the Burka”

“Food: Top 100 Kebob Houses in Lower Manhattan”

“Sunday Styles: Goat Tending for City Dwellers”

“Five Times A Day: Suing Employers Who Don’t Provide Prayer Rugs”

“Best of New York: Local’s Guide to Men-Only Tea Houses”

“Know Your Tenant’s Rights: Halal Animal Slaughter on the Balcony”

“Summer in the City: Cool Lightweight Burkas that Beat the Heat”

“Taxing Matters: Time for a Municipally Collected Jizya?”

“Healthy New York: Female Genital Mutilation Without Tears”

“CityScape: The 100 Most Beautiful Mosques on the Upper East Side”

“Modern Romance: How Young Is Too Young for Child Marriage? 14? 12?”

“Mosque and State: Time to Rethink the Founding Fathers?”

“The Feminist Muslim’s Guide to Politically Correct Wife Discipline”

   Some of the advice offered involves women and I was reminded of a curious incident that took place in Massachusetts. It concerned signs that were posted around the town of Winchester. The signs were plain and rather innocuous, but still perplexing as this headline indicates: "'Islam Is Right About Women': Odd Signs Spark Confusion in Local Town," Boston 25 News, Sept. 18, 2019. Was the sign poster being sarcastic? Is Islam right about women? Or Wrong? Here is the clever sign that is likely just a bit of troll bait.

Sources:

"Freedom of Expression a Founding Principle of Canada,"Erin O'Toole, Toronto Sun, Nov. 13, 2020.

See also: "Trudeau Shamed Into Supporting France, Freedom of Expression," Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun, Nov. 6, 2020.  These quotations are from this article:

"It’s a sad statement when leaders from around the world stand with France but Canada doesn’t.

The central question is whether it is ever acceptable to insult religious figures, specifically by showing images of Mohammed.

Islam forbids showing images of Mohammed, but I’m not a Muslim and shouldn’t have to live by that rule any more than their rule against eating bacon.

What he should have said is that while he may find the cartoons of Mohammed offensive and understands why Muslims do, it is a fundamental freedom to show them, publish them or discuss them."

Post Script:

I am too cowardly to use the image of you-know-who and hope the cartoon of Erdogan is not overly offensive. I am not the only coward. In 2009, Yale University Press published THE CARTOONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, by Jytte Klausen. Oddly enough, there is not one cartoon in it.

If you are interested in the debate over this issue, go back to the spring of 2005. At that time PEN awarded Charlie Hebdo a freedom of speech award. You will think that PEN members would be automatically in favour of presenting such an honour, but the event was boycotted by some. Of course Salman Rushdie, a former PEN president agreed since he had to go into hiding for several years, after the publication of Satanic Verses. Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, among others, protested.