My take on Toles

The outrage of the week on the red side of the blogosphere is a Tom Toles cartoon in the Washington Post and subscribing newspapers. If you've found your way to my little blog I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about.

I frankly can't get too worked up about it. I mean, Tom Toles is pond scum. When it gets on your hook you yank it off and whip it back into the lake. And I think few conservative bloggers would have even mentioned it if the Joint Chiefs of Staff hadn't sent a letter to the Post taking issue with it.

Which brings up a couple of other points. First, go to Slate magazine's cartoons. Do you find many that support the troops? That exhibit any political sentiment to the right of Ward Churchill? That aren't crass? Not many.

Wasn't always like this. Where is this generation's Jeff MacNelly? (He won three Pulitzers and all I can find is his lousy tax return.) There's not much wit in editorial cartoons these days, much less humor. Just shrill, pedantic leftiness. It's not like Tom Toles has the market cornered.

Here's the other point: Toles drew this pond-scum cartoon, and nobody noticed. It had to be called to our attention by the Joint Chiefs. Why is that?

Maybe it's because the cartoon hadn't been printed in most places yet. Maybe it's because a lot of editorial page editors had enough sense not to run it. Maybe it's because Toles is part of the mainstream media and just doesn't get a lot of traffic from bloggers. After all, how many people outside of D.C. go to washingtonpost.com just to read the paper? If a Post story isn't a must-read at Lucianne.com, there's not much of a chance I'll see it.

Then there's the simplest explanation: Editorial cartoonists today are in the outrage business. They just aren't news any more.

Trackbacks: Michelle Malkin rounds it up. Ace deconstructs. Instapunk has fun at Toles' expense.