The latest self-inflicted blow to The Washington Post has been rocketing around the internet since Friday. Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize winner whose wickedly funny editorial cartoons have graced the Post’s opinion section since 2008, quit after opinion editor David Shipley killed a cartoon that made fun of billionaires for sucking up to Donald Trump — including Post owner Jeff Bezos. Telnaes writes in her newsletter, Open Windows:
As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
She’s wrong about one thing: Her resignation has created an enormous stir. Right now it’s trending at The New York Times and is No. 7 on The Boston Globe‘s most-read list. It’s all over social media as well.
The rough draft of Telnaes’ cartoon (above) shows Bezos and fellow billionaires Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sam Altman of Open AI and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong kneeling before a giant statue of Trump. Three are holding bags of money in supplication. I’m not sure what Soon-Shiong is doing, though he appears to be wielding a container of lipstick. Mickey Mouse somehow figures into it as well.
Shipley, who was hired in 2022, is trying to do damage control, saying in a statement reported by New York Times media reporter Benjamin Mullin that he was simply engaged in normal editing and believed that the Post was running too much commentary about Trump’s billionaire courtiers:
Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.
I’m going to take Shipley at his word. Opinion editors should assert themselves from time to time and insist on less repetition. But not in this particular instance. Given the fraught nature of Bezos’ recent Trump-friendly moves, including his decision to kill the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund (which is what Telnaes was mocking in her cartoon), Shipley should have left this one go. By killing Telnaes cartoon, he acted in a deeply irresponsible manner at the worst possible time. And he lost one of his brightest stars.
I’ve enjoyed Telnaes’ work for years. During the Trump presidency, she often drew animated cartoons that were published on the Post’s digital platforms. Under her skillful pen, Trump was a grotesque figure, covered with makeup with his long red tie often reaching the floor.
Sadly, we are at a moment when editorial cartooning in general is on the decline, and it’s not a given that Telnaes will be picked up by another paper. The Times, which has been scooping up disaffected Posties, famously does not run editorial cartoons. Shipley says he hopes Telnaes will reconsider, but that seems unlikely.
No doubt Telnaes won’t come cheap. But several papers distinguished themselves with tough anti-Trump opinionating during the 2024 campaign, including The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and I hope one of them sees fit to open up their checkbook and bring her on. The Atlantic, which like the Times has been hiring former Post staffers, is a possible landing spot as well.
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Lipstick on a pig.
Mickey=Disney=ABC
Lipstick on a pig was my thought as well, although I don’t think it quite works. As she said, it was a rough draft.
Sorry, but I am going to disagree here.
WaPo lost $77 million in 2023, and I imagine the numbers for 2024 won’t be any better.
Bezos’ ownership of the Post is practically an act of charity. He’s using his own money to keep “news journalism” relevant when it is clearly on life support. Bezos didn’t have to use his wealth to rescue the Post, but he did.
Is there no gratitude at all for the guy?
Telnaes could have made her point without attacking the very person who quite literally funds her living.
Telnaes harps about “hold[ing] powerful people and institutions accountable,” but one cannot help but notice her cartoons have consistently slanted in one direction – anti-Trump, anti-Republican – and are noticeably anti-Catholic, I might add.
Telnaes comes across as selfish, self-absorbed, and ungrateful. And her cartoons are not particularly good, imo.
Thank you.
I agree – looking at her work, she seems to only have one message, and it is one that may need therapy to resolve. Donald Trump seems to be the only thing on her mind these days.
Margaret Sullivan left the Post (after being pushed out as Public Editor at the Times) some time ago for the Guardian. I hope that Ann Telnaes follows. The Guardian is now, in my opinion, the only major English language daily not bending the knee. And they do editorial cartoons, sometimes appropriately savage. I encourage my fellow Americans in search of independent, non-toadying news and analysis of politics on this side of the Atlantic to seek it across the water, and contribute to the non-paywalled Guardian.
David, Sullivan was not pushed out as public editor of the Times. It’s a time-limited job, and Sullivan has said she was offered a third stint and turned it down. Nor did she leave the Post for The Guardian. She retired and later on started writing a weekly column for The Guardian on a freelance basis. I did the same from 2007 to 2011, and it took me about four or five hours a week, which is probably the same as what she’s putting into it.
I absolutely understand and support Telnaes’s decision, and I hope she finds another employer. But Shipley never should have killed the cartoon. Doing so was bad in and of itself, and was horribly bad given what else has transpired recently at the Post. (My Atlantic subscription is becoming more and more of a good investment without my having to do anything!)
Shipley’s comment does seem legit. As well, editorial cartoons should try to be funny and make us think with a visual. This one does that. At some point though, a lot of this gets tiring. If they want some balance or need to jump in to make editorial decisions on their opinion content, Telnaes should (or could) be encouraged to create cartoons that reflect that, not unlike a reporter is requested to do a story they don’t really want to do. There are plenty of opportunities when one looks at our political beyond Trump is Caesar. Or, they could hire or publish the works of conservative cartoonists. The Weirs Times, the weekly Lakes Region newspaper up here, publishes them frequently and some are quite funny. This situation reminds me of a controversial Boston Globe cartoon depicting three liberal women defending Bill Clinton in the wake of rape and assault allegations (Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Whilley) because he supported good policies for women. I know I clipped it at the time so it is somewhere in my archives, I’m sure, even though it’s nearly three decades ago. Readers were furious about its publication but it made an important point. Sometimes, this is the entire purpose of an editorial cartoon.
Tony, it was insane for Shipley to kill this particular cartoon for all the reasons we both know. I certainly wouldn’t mind if he talked with his staff, either collectively or one at a time, about branching out and taking on other topics, but he should have let this one go.
No, Shipley’s explanation of his decision does NOT seem legit. I did not believe William Lewis’ explanation that the spiking of the Kamala Harris endorsement was a principled decision by the editorial board, and within a few days it transpired that he was lying–the endorsement had been killed personally by Bezos over the heads of the editorial department. Shipley now claims he was merely avoiding repetition, because they had just run a piece making the same point, and have scheduled a satirical piece making the same point. I couldn’t find the one they had just run. Can you? I will watch with interest for the “satirical piece” he promises is coming to see if it actually appears.