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Episode 290: 'Only in Oregon': How Drawing Political Cartoons is All About the Writing with Jesse Springer
185 Plays3 years ago
Jesse Springer (@springertoons) is a graphic designer and Oregon-based political cartoonist. His latest book, "Only in Oregon," is a greatest hits collection of his cartoons over the span of 26 years.
You can buy the book at springerdesign.biz/books.
Patreon: patreon.com/cnfpod
Social Media: @CNFPod
Show notes and newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Audio Magazine Deadline Extended
00:00:01
Speaker
Well, before we get started and dive into this week's interview, I want to remind you that the submission deadline for issue 3 of the audio magazine has been extended to December 31st. Got in a nice little pile of submissions now, which is nice to see.
00:00:17
Speaker
theme is heroes.
Submission Guidelines for Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:00:19
Speaker
You can go over to brendanomero.com for guidelines. Essay should be no more than 2,000 words. It's a written submission. If accepted, of course, then we record. So as you're rereading and rewriting your piece, bear in mind it's an audio essay. So pay attention to the way the words are rolling out of your mouth, out of your face mouth.
00:00:46
Speaker
Some crazy IRA in the douche. Those who know, they know. Email your submissions with heroes in the subject line to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com. Oh yeah, I pay writers some of that burrito money also. Got it? Okay, good. A bad idea drawn really beautifully is still a bad idea.
00:01:17
Speaker
Well, hello there.
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Podcast & Jesse Springer
00:01:19
Speaker
It's a creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? And sometimes that form of telling true stories takes a graphic approach, a visual approach. So enter Jesse Springer.
00:01:38
Speaker
He is on the show and he has a new book, Only in Oregon, which is a greatest hits collection of 26 years of his Oregon-themed political cartoons. He's a regular cartoonist to the register guard in Eugene. I edit as part of my day job. I edit the opinion page. Some of you may have heard that.
00:01:58
Speaker
and as a result I get his political cartoon every week and I get to run it and it's one of those things that lands in my inbox every Thursday as I'm getting the weekend page together and it's always a nice little treasure to see that before just about anyone else does.
00:02:15
Speaker
He's a graphic designer and cartoonist based out of Eugene. He actually came to the studio in person with his own microphone and boom arm and we did an in-person thing. It's pretty wild. Very few of those and count them on like my hand. I think it's like Elena Pasarello, Jesse Springer, Emily Poole.
00:02:39
Speaker
I think that's it. You can check out his new book by visiting springerdesign.biz slash books.
Exploring Oregon's History through Cartoons
00:02:49
Speaker
What I loved about the book is that it tells the Oregon story over the past quarter century.
00:02:58
Speaker
You know, frame by frame. There are some very Oregon-specific things like this kicker refund tax thingamahoosit that I don't totally understand or this thing called PERS, P-E-R-S, which is some sort of pension plan that I think a lot of public employees pay into, which is a source of contention. Also don't understand.
00:03:25
Speaker
that but there's wildfires and stuff I understand and there's the timber wars which I sort of understand but it's very complicated well you can see that Oregon is very diverse in its subject matter and very complex it is a shade of gray
00:03:43
Speaker
And that's very fitting in the rainy season, that it's always overcast and raining for a good chunk of the year. Rain is my sunshine. That's why I love it. Anyway, the book itself, it probably won't have that much appeal outside of Oregon, obviously, but Jesse and I do talk about how he goes about the work. So some of that stuff that you've come to expect from the show, I think you can draw inspiration from, whether you doodle or not. I got my COVID booster, so I feel like hell
00:04:14
Speaker
And so I'm gonna keep the intro very short and there will be no parting shot. I know, I know. I'm sure you're bummed. I'm sure you're crying into your can of beer right now. And I don't have one right now. I don't have a can of beer. That's my fault. That's on me.
00:04:32
Speaker
Head over to Brendan America com. Hey, you'll find show notes and you can sign up for the up to 11 monthly newsletter recommendations raffles exclusive happy hour first of the month no spam Cannot beat it so far as I can tell you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF pod Instagram at creative nonfiction podcast Jesse is at Springer tunes and
00:04:56
Speaker
on Twitter. So before we get to that, let's do this. Let's do this.
Sponsors and Community Engagement
00:05:02
Speaker
Support for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan Colleges, Low Residency, MFA, and Creative Writing. Don't hit skip, or maybe you will. Don't do it. Don't.
00:05:13
Speaker
Now, in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Don't hit skip. Recent CNF faculty include Random Billings, Dombold, Jeremy Jones, and CNF pod alum Sarah Einstein. I said, don't skip. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty there being Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend, as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple.
00:05:37
Speaker
Skip. No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. If you skip, you're going to miss the URL. It's mfa.wvwc.edu. It's a bunch of letters. It's pretty wild.
00:05:53
Speaker
Blew my mind when that came to the front of my brain. More information, dates and enrollment, go there. Do it. Okay, Jesse Springer is here and I think you'll love how he goes about vetting his ideas for cartoons and how the writing is like 80 to 90%, probably more like 90%, the most important part of the entire process. So here's my conversation with Jesse Springer.
Focus on Oregon Themes in Journalism
00:06:34
Speaker
Early on, you figured out that you were like, you know, if I'm going to make a go at this, I have to be really specific in Oregon in particular. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, in the very beginning, it was just Eugene, Oregon. That was sort of, that was my very specific niche. Actually, the goal was to sort of widen that scope all the way to sort of become like a nationally syndicated cartoonist. That was my big dream, right?
00:06:56
Speaker
Of course, the internet happened, and newspapers started shedding editorial cartoonists rather than hiring them. So then, yeah, so I figured out my economic model is to stick with that niche exactly, of Oregon.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, when I was reading the introduction to Only in Oregon, and you specifically talk about that as a business decision to stay very, very local, as it were, I think when you and I were coming up roughly around the same time in journalism and this kind of thing, there was a well-worn path.
00:07:36
Speaker
that got completely disrupted by the internet and then all of a sudden everyone is trying to find new footing so what was the challenge for you early on to you know to i don't to blaze a new trail because those well-worn paths that you know we were kind of following up and told to follow were quickly just shattering below our feet
00:07:54
Speaker
Well, I mean, so I had, as I mentioned, I had sort of started in Eugene and then I had self-syndicated to Oregon papers. That is, I just got in touch with the editors of the papers myself and distributed them myself. And so I was already in that position when I was
00:08:09
Speaker
wanting to then jump to the national level and try to get the attention of national syndicates. When I realized that that was no longer a practical reality that was within my reach, I was already in the position that I needed to be in to just stick with that Oregon niche.
00:08:29
Speaker
You know, maybe the hard part was the decision to say to just really figure out this is going to be the focus of the work that I'm going to do, not just in terms of who I'm distributing to, but this is because this is what they want and what they need. You know, like the Oregon papers, they want, quote unquote, local content because that's really where their bread and butter is. I can go on Yahoo News and get the national stories.
00:08:52
Speaker
But the news aggregators won't give you what's necessarily going on and more locally. So that's and you know, it's just amazing. You know, it used to be that in the date local daily paper in the register guard, it would be you know, like national international news on the front page that was sort of seemed normal. And now it's just it's everything that's local is really the front page news because that's where their market is. That's who they're selling to. That's what their readership is looking for.
The Art of Political Cartoons
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, and so as you're looking to cut your teeth as a cartoonist, what were some of those early steps of wanting to marry your influences with the news of the day? Who's inspiring you?
00:09:33
Speaker
Artwork-wise, I really was inspired by Jim Borgman from the Cincinnati Inquirer, and he still draws zits, which is a cartoon that a lot of people see. And then I would say, just though in terms of really just amazing ideas, is a guy named Tom Toles, who started out with the Buffalo paper and then was hired by the Washington Post after winning probably the Pulitzer maybe a couple of times or something.
00:09:59
Speaker
And what was great about him is that, I don't know if you remember the comedian Stephen Wright, but he was a guy that had this really deadpan delivery of his jokes. And that was kind of his style. And that's how I see Tom Toles as a cartoonist, because his art is, because I've seen artwork that he's done, which is like really exquisite, but his political cartoons, his artwork was very rudimentary, I guess, in a way. And so to me,
00:10:23
Speaker
It was kind of on purpose. It was this deadpan delivery of his genius ideas and the way he did it I just thought that was really genius. I thought that was really amazing. Yeah, so he's one of my heroes and at what point do you Do you figure out that it's it's? Or how do you navigate the balance between the writing of the cartoon and the drawing of the cartoon and you know? What might you identify as the most important? yeah, that's a great question because a lot of people tend to focus on the artwork and
00:10:51
Speaker
And, you know, as I was just alluding to, it's really the writing of the cartoon that I want to give 85 or 90% importance to, because if you think about it, a bad idea drawn really beautifully is still a bad idea.
00:11:07
Speaker
And so you've got to have a great idea. And the drawing obviously has to support it. And people will often say to me, oh, all I can do is draw a stick figure. And I get that. Not everyone has artistic talents or ability or experience or whatever. But it's really the writing that is key. And the drawing really is just in support of that idea.
00:11:30
Speaker
And how do you go about generating ideas and curating them? And a lot of times working through a lot of bad ideas to find ones that really kind of stick out of the soil. Well, just to take a step back in terms of the process, topic selection is a really huge piece of it because I think what's worked for me to come up with good ideas is to have some passion about an issue.
00:11:56
Speaker
It's really hard for me to come up with a good idea on an issue that I just don't have the bile for. And so there's that. And also you want to find something that's the mixture of something that I'm passionate about and also something that's on other people's radar. So those things. So the topic selection is really important. And then once you get to that stage,
00:12:19
Speaker
You're just starting to turn the concept around in your head, and first of all, what is it that I want to say? It is a political cartoon, so there's a point. An important part of the process is distilling down to as succinct a sentence as I possibly can. What am I trying to say with this cartoon?
00:12:37
Speaker
If I skip that step, my cartoon is going to be fuzzy and amorphous and people are going to be like, what's going on here? Making a point, then once you have that point, then you want to find some sort of humorous twist. There are all these comic devices.
00:12:53
Speaker
Hyperbole is a classic cartoonist device. Irony is a great one. Metaphor is a good one. In Congress, juxtaposition, putting together things that don't necessarily fit together. So it's a political cartoon, I believe, is visually making a political point and giving it that humorous twist in some way.
00:13:14
Speaker
And so it's a matter of just wrestling with the idea that I'm trying to put across and what's an angle? What's an angle that I can put on this that people might be able to relate to? And a lot of times it's say a culturally, a well understood cultural phenomena, like let's say the Wizard of Oz, you know, people can relate to like the man behind the curtain or the cowardly lion, you know, something that's a well-known cultural icon and then put a twist on it or something like that, you know.
00:13:43
Speaker
You know, I've appropriated lots of things like that, you know, like a Bugs Bunny or Charlie Brown or, you know, all those
Recurring Themes in Oregon Cartoons
00:13:50
Speaker
types of things. Yeah. Yeah. Specifically, one sticking out to me is, you know, the Tin Man with, you know, not having a heart. I think it might have to do with like death with dignity or something. You might know it off the top. Yes, I do. Yeah.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, do I have that wrong? I know there was. It was about a tax measure that was supposed to pay for some schools and services type of thing. That's right. And it was voted down. Yeah. So the cartoon is the tin man saying if I only had a heart, you know, I would have voted for that measure. What are what were some of the ideas that over the course of the 26 years that you've been drawing these cartoons that it was just an idea in a topic that it was a gift that kept on giving.
00:14:30
Speaker
Um, it didn't last for too long and unfortunately it ended tragically, but the Bundy takeover of the Mallard Wildlife Refuge was one where, you know, this is really a big deal. Not only is it an issue like this land use issue that kind of strikes to the core of what it's like to live in the West, but
00:14:48
Speaker
It's also one that's captured the attention of people around the country. And those are always ones that I really feel have a special weight to them when people around like articles are in the New York Times about it and stuff like that. So I really feel like, you know, those are the issues that I really, you know, I'm deep into and I feel very committed to doing a great cartoon on. Yeah.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, and what are some of the particular idea where maybe your antenna are especially in tune to, that frequency just lands on you a bit more frequently and provides that passion that you were talking about that you need to go then and generate the work. What are the issues that seem to resonate?
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. Like I say, ones in which they attract national attention, those are ones, you know, just in the last two years, we had COVID, which was, I mean, it's just something that affected everybody. And it was such a, it was just, you know, my daughter observed, we're living through history right now, you know, and so it's like, it's something that we didn't
00:15:56
Speaker
No one has a script for or whatever, so it's just kind of, it's new, everything's new. And then, of course, that same summer we had George Floyd and the whole racial reckoning that the country was going through. I mean, those were just huge, huge issues that I felt, you know, that I really wanted to address in a thoughtful and a thoughtful way and really important issues.
00:16:17
Speaker
You know, unfortunately, sometimes what happens to me with covering Oregon stuff is that like, oh, the Oregon legislature, and I've made jokes about this, like one cartoon I did was about the Oregon legislature officially made a jory dirt, the official soil of Oregon, you know? And so sometimes you get kind of lost in some of the weeds of these little kind of inconsequential things and you can make fun of it. But when you have something that really affects
00:16:44
Speaker
Me, personally, and universally, is affecting people around me. Those are the issues that I really can sink my teeth into, yeah. Yeah, and over the course of your tenure of writing or in drawing these cartoons, what have you noticed that has changed in the last quarter century and what in your reckoning is also things that have also just really stayed the same?
00:17:09
Speaker
Well, the second half of your question really resonates with me because I have done so many cartoons about The Kicker, for example. So many cartoons about PERS. Some of these things just keep coming up and keep coming up in the same ways for 25 years. And I sometimes, when that's the news of the day, I wonder to myself, can I do another cartoon about PERS?
00:17:34
Speaker
I'm almost picturing just like you drawing yourself into a cartoon like having drawing the thing that you drew 25 years ago and like that's the cartoon of just like this the mirror reflecting on itself and it's just this portal of constant repetition. Reductio adds absurdum. Yeah it's a little bit like that and sometimes it is hard not to think self-referentially when coming up with a cartoon like do I have to do this again?
00:18:02
Speaker
Maybe that's my cartoon. Guy at the drawing board. So when you're coming up with an idea and hoping that one gloms on to you so you have that energy and passion behind it, how many, you know, how do you go about, you know, do you have a notebook where you're just taking down ideas and you're just, you come up with maybe five a day and the hope is that out of the 30 you might come up with in a week that one really stands out?
00:18:29
Speaker
Boy, I wish I wish I wish it were that wonderfully thought out No, I I do read the paper every morning and make some mental notes but basically my deadline is Thursday at 3 o'clock and I wake up Thursday morning and say this is the day I
00:18:48
Speaker
And so I, because, partly because of the timeliness of things, that's part of it too. So something might happen earlier in the week that I could be like, Oh, well maybe that's a good cartoon. And then something happens, you know, later in the week that supersedes it. And then I've sort of wasted my mental energy, I suppose, on the first thing.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, and so and all those all those all those news stories from from previous previous stories from the week They're all still there. So um, so I can go online and you know check up on them You're like, oh, yeah, there's that thing from Tuesday. That's right. And so yeah, so the timeliness does does play a factor, but it's basically wake up in the morning and tabula rasa get a cartoon done by three o'clock and
00:19:34
Speaker
Now, in your career as a cartoonist, what can you identify early on that was a victory that put some fuel in your tank that allowed you to say like, oh, you know, I'm kind of, I'm on the right path here.
00:19:48
Speaker
Well, I think the ability to do what I just said regularly without pretty much almost ever emailing you or some other editor and saying, I'm going to be late, pretty much like doing that, being able to do that week after week.
00:20:04
Speaker
Um, even when I'm at 12 o'clock and I don't have a good idea, I'm like, I know I can do this. You know, I've done it before I can figure it out. So, so yeah, it is that, it is that water under the bridge, the history with it. And you know, even here recently, I've had a couple of weeks where the topical issues of the day haven't really struck me that much. And so I have taken things that are a little less topical, maybe a little more typical and made cartoons out of them and that work. And so that's another.
00:20:34
Speaker
another sort of safety valve, which is that I can always kind of come up with something that's more in the background rather than something that's right on that fresh off the headlines of that particular day. Yeah. Yeah. And did you have a particular mentor, you know, as you were cutting your teeth too, that really helped you along as you were finding your voice and
Finding Voice and Style in Cartooning
00:20:55
Speaker
your style? I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. A guy named Don Cayley, as a matter of fact, who writes column for the register guard. Yeah.
00:21:02
Speaker
I don't know exactly the timing of when he appeared and when I started but it was right around the time that I was starting. I guess, yeah, so he was running the comic news paper that he was doing and I wanted to run my cartoons there and then he kind of think he kind of took it on himself to sort of be a bit of a mentor to me and so I started
00:21:23
Speaker
showing him my rough ideas and he would give me comments and so forth and And I continue to meet with him not as regularly and I don't submit my cartoon ideas to him now But but I really owe a debt of gratitude to Don for that and as you were putting together this book you know what what struck you as you were going back through the archives and curating curating the cartoons and you know what it what did that tell you as you were putting putting this together and
00:22:01
Speaker
So there is all that. It's interesting. Another way to phrase that question is, what have we learned about Oregon over the course of 26 years? And I would say that it's a very interesting state. As I say, sort of on the back cover, we're liberal and conservative, we're urban and rural, we're weird and we're traditional.
00:22:17
Speaker
Well, I have already talked about the fact that history, what do they say? It doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
00:22:24
Speaker
So, it's a very interesting state with a lot of push and pull, and people aren't afraid to voice their opinion, and I think that's great too. So, yeah, it's sort of this Wild West meets liberal-ness. I don't know.
00:22:43
Speaker
Have we grown up in the last 26 years? I'm not really sure. Yeah, it's crazy. I've only been here five years. Last week was kind of the five-year anniversary of moving here from the East Coast. And it was great going back through and reading and seeing all these cartoons and hearing it echo. Even to this day, I'm like, oh, I'm familiar with that already. Like, it's funny that that happened or sad.
00:23:10
Speaker
that it happened 25 years ago or 20 years ago, and these things seem to keep coming back. And it was pretty wild to see, like, oh, I know exactly what you're talking about, whether it be the timber wars, or kick, or purrs, all these things that I hear about as part of my day job. And it's just wild to hear that thing just always coming back to the forefront. And you're like, has forward progress been made? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah.
00:23:37
Speaker
It's hard to really say. The Timber Wars thing is an interesting one, and there's recently that kind of an agreement that's been reached between environmental groups and some timber industry. I don't know exactly where that's going, but that's an interesting piece. It would be nice if there was some way that there could be some agreement on some sustainable way. We need wood products.
00:23:59
Speaker
But we also need to not cut down all the trees. Maybe they're finding a common ground. That's probably a bit naive to think that it's actually going to bring peace to the timber wars, but I'm hopeful.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I was talking with some fire experts a few months ago. I was just trying to think about doing a big piece on wildfire. And it's on the one side, you know, timber wants to log to prevent fires to death. And then on the other side, the fire experts and the environmentalists are like, no,
00:24:37
Speaker
they're just such on the opposite sides and there's like, I don't know how they can bridge it and have a conversation that's productive because they have such disparate ideas of what it means to prevent wildfire and to preserve the landscape. And each end seems very self-serving with like no real common ground. Like I have no answers or what that conversation
00:25:00
Speaker
how it should evolve, but it's so complicated, and it just seems to have dug in. Right. Very dug in, and they've kind of learned the lesson that if you give an inch, it'll take a mile, so it's sort of like, you know, and it's reflective of polarization we see in so many areas in this country today of, you know, it's my way or the highway, and yeah.
00:25:22
Speaker
It's so, that is difficult and I guess I'll definitely cop to leaning liberal on my political views, but I do try to hold in my mind all political viewpoints when I'm drawing a cartoon so that I'm not
00:25:40
Speaker
Sort of mindlessly obliging somebody with my political idea. It's it's that humorous twist I believe that is kind of the key at least I believe it's the key to just Helping people Put down their armor just a little bit and maybe have an idea sort of creep through and and
00:26:00
Speaker
And I think being able to laugh at yourself actually is really, really important. And if you can do that, then you can at least sort of appreciate, if not agree with a political viewpoint that might not be your own.
00:26:13
Speaker
And just from you as an artist and a writer, over the course of the span of this book, when you were putting it together, what did you notice about your own development as a writer and an artist over the course of putting this book together and then seeing this body of work for a quarter century? Yeah, yeah.
00:26:30
Speaker
Well, the artwork, I definitely noticed a difference. If you kind of go to page one, it's pretty rough. There's obviously some talent or whatever there, but I definitely gained a lot of skills over the years just having drawn a cartoon every week.
00:26:45
Speaker
there's only 240 plus cartoons in this book. In total, I think I've drawn something like 800 or 900 cartoons in that span. And so that's just a lot of time at the drawing table and practice and stuff like that. So I feel good about that. And then in terms of the writing, yeah, I think I have matured
00:27:02
Speaker
and understood what I just said is that it's not helpful to just kind of beat people over the head with your viewpoint without any kind of humor or any kind of dexterity going towards it because you're really just preaching to the choir at that point. You're not making any attempt to reach across and not necessarily find common ground, but try to help people look at things a little differently.
Evolution of Style and Content over 26 Years
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's to your point of how you see the drawings and the line work evolve over time. It's so cool to see. I've got a Calvin and Hobbes collection there, the entire Calvin and Hobbes, the entire Far Side. If you go back to their early cartoons, as skilled as Watterson and Larson are, it's crude and rough early on.
00:27:53
Speaker
over the course of a decade plus of drawing cartoons. Those are only the published ones we see. Who knows how many they're drawing and are scrapped as practice. And you just see the evolution of the artist of how clean things are getting and that's just
00:28:08
Speaker
It just goes to show you that whatever discipline we might be, whether it be a writer or cartoonist, so much of this just takes repetition and comfort and sitting with it and doing the work over time. And you can see the evidence of it. You can see the proof of how you've gotten better as an artist over the course of this time. It's just staying with it.
00:28:31
Speaker
Right, right. No, absolutely. And I'm glad you also mentioned Watterson. He's definitely artistically a huge, huge influence on me. Yeah.
00:28:39
Speaker
Maybe you can speak to this, that just over the course of your career, so often it's us being able to sit with bad writing, bad cartoons to get to those good ones. Over the course of your career, how have you developed a tolerance and a muscle for doing bad work that's not a waste, it might go in the waste paper basket, but ultimately it's building a skill and good stuff has no choice but to come out of the bad eventually.
00:29:06
Speaker
Right, right. I think that, you know, one of the things that I have developed is a discernment of what is kind of meet some minimum criteria of like, this is going to be okay. Like I sort of say, I at least want to hit a clean single every time. Sometimes I hit a home run. I know I'm not going to hit a home run every time, but I really feel strongly that it's got to be something good. It can't be
00:29:35
Speaker
crummy and so yeah I mean I will sit there and wrestle with it for for a while you know I'll have an idea that it's like oh this this seems like it should work but here I have this reservation about it or whatever it's not fully formed and so yeah having building up that ability to
00:29:53
Speaker
And really to judge your own work, I think, is another piece that is, you know, that's a skill too, because I think in the early days, one is maybe a little more self-conscious and not quite as self-confident. And so it's harder to be introspective and be self-critical in the early days, whereas later on it's easier to do without worrying that, you know, oh no, I'm bad.
00:30:22
Speaker
Where is the fear for you when you're constructing or coming up with an idea? And how do you learn to sort of confront that fear, that you might get some backlash, but this is still something really important to your point of view?
00:30:39
Speaker
I say I would actually say one of my biggest fears is that I draw a cartoon and somebody interprets it the wrong way. And so I feel very strongly that that's on me if that happens. And so one thing that I try to do is
00:30:55
Speaker
look at my cartoon kind of with a fresh eye sort of once I have the rough drawing there ready to go I'm about to ink it in and really sort of go forward with the artistic production of it just look at it and be like how could somebody interpret this in a way that I don't mean and that's actually that's maybe still a skill that is emerging I mean all my skills are emerging but that one may be more so than others because it's hard to just look at something with fresh eyes when you've been sort of
00:31:23
Speaker
hammering it around in your brain for the last hour or two. And that's one of my bigger fears, is to have someone misinterpret. And again, not because of some problem with how they're thinking, but of how I've drawn it. And I don't want to give anyone any weird escape routes. I want my idea to be very sharply in focus, and that's the only conclusion you can come to.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, I remember a few weeks or probably a couple months ago at this point where Bill Bramhall, the great cartoonist for the Daily News, he had drawn, I saw the original and I saw the new one and I couldn't really discern, but apparently he had drawn Andrew Yang in a somewhat insensitive way. It's one of those things where if you slip up a little bit, the sensitivity of the drawing can really
00:32:16
Speaker
can be counterintuitive. It'll lose that focus of the idea because the drawing might be pulling on insensitive tropes. It's like, oh, okay, if I'm drawing a particular group of people, I have to be real careful not to
00:32:31
Speaker
Falsely caricature them. Yeah. No, that's that's that's really good point and and you know Last summer when I was doing some cartoons about this racial reckoning that I talked about I tried to focus more on white people because that's an experience that I know about and I know that You know that racism in this country is it's a white person's problem that they white people need to deal with it Let me put it that way
00:32:56
Speaker
And so that was, I felt on pretty good ground of portraying white people grappling with their racism. And so, because I don't know anything about the black experience or the Latinx experience, you know, so I don't really want to try to go there and, you know, try to portray that experience. That's not my place. That's not my space.
Are Political Cartoons Journalism?
00:33:19
Speaker
And so anyway, so yeah, try to stay in my lane. Let's put it that way.
00:33:24
Speaker
And something that you and I spoke about a couple months ago is this idea of political cartoons as journalism and whether they are journalism or not. And I remember just in my day job as editing the opinion page for the register guard.
00:33:40
Speaker
I would get some people, just based on the cartoon I would select, they would say, oh, this is misleading, and this is factually, this is untrue. And I would write back, I'm like, listen, they're using hyperbole, they're poking fun at something. If you're getting your information from a political cartoon, I was like, you need to find a better place to get your information. This is meant to poke fun, jab, and be sometimes elliptical.
00:34:06
Speaker
with the truth. And that got me thinking to reach out to you and to get your impressions about the responsibility, how much elasticity in that truth can you play with. And just on the mics here, I want to extend it back to you and just be like, what's your relationship to political cartoons as actual journalism?
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, I do believe that I want my cartoons to be based in fact. So if I'm making political point X, I want to be sure that it's based on facts that I understand to be true. And so that's one piece. I also believe that I agree with you that people shouldn't be getting their news from political cartoons, but
00:34:50
Speaker
especially as it comes to say, Oregon issues, not everyone's up on what's going on specifically with the state of Oregon for whatever reason. And I believe that some of my cartoons are almost more expositional in nature than anything else. It's like, this is something that's happening and I want people to know about it. And so I'm going to draw a cartoon about it, but I'm going to try to put as much information and I can, there's a limited amount I can do, but I also want to open the door a little bit for a person to do a little bit more reading if they don't really know about it.
00:35:19
Speaker
So, those are two sides of it, I guess. But I do, I agree with you that hyperbole is definitely in play and people should understand in terms of their media literacy that political cartoons are going to stretch reality a little bit, maybe not necessarily the truth or facts or, you know, they shouldn't expect them to lie to them, but they should expect a somewhat distorted, it's just everything's in really high contrast.
00:35:48
Speaker
Like, a higher contrast than it normally is. Of course, everything has nuanced shades of gray. That's how life is. And what a cartoon does is it renders it just in black and white. And of course, that's not going to be correct.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it goes to the point of how the Daily Show or Weekend Update on SNL, it's the fun that they're poking at the news and at the expense of certain characters. There is a kernel of truth and the joke really drives home the real meaning. It's shrouded in sheathed and veiled in comedy, but the kernel at the heart of it is like stone cold true. Yes.
00:36:27
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. I think that's right. And that is where I want the kernel to come from. I do want the kernel to be factual, so that's important to me. Yeah, there is something about a visual medium like cartoons that I think are more visceral, perhaps, than reading words.
00:36:45
Speaker
So, that's another piece of it too that a cartoon has that maybe words don't have. I think it just hits people in a different part of their body a little bit. I mean, there's obviously words in the cartoon, but the visual aspect of it does that, I think.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, and I think what your book does a really good job of, too, is that you make the effort to provide context to each
Providing Context in Cartoons
00:37:05
Speaker
cartoon. So that little news graph, which might be effectively like the lead to a newspaper story, you know, just here's the context and this is what it means. Like, how important was it for you to provide that context? That way the cartoon makes sense, whether it be yesterday or 25 years ago. Yeah, I think it's pretty essential. Otherwise, this book would be really out of reach for most people.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, so it is important, I think, for people to know that I do have a little sort of fake newspaper article, a very short headline and a little subhead with each cartoon to help put people on the mind of the context of where that cartoon came from. I mean, there's cartoons from 1995 in here, for God's sakes. I mean, you say you came here just five years ago. It's like, of course, you weren't around.
00:37:49
Speaker
By being able to get that context, I think it makes it accessible to everybody. It's not just for political junkies or historians or whatever like that, yeah.
00:37:58
Speaker
What's the greatest amount of grief that you get from readers and consumers of your work over the years? That's a really good question. The most grief that I've gotten are from liberals when I poke fun because I believe that liberals are not immune to the same foibles and turning their brains off to new information.
00:38:22
Speaker
Everyone does this, okay? It doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on. And when I kind of poke my barb in that direction, I do get some angry emails sent to me because they're kind of like with this tone of subtext of, I thought you were on our side. So there's been some betrayal or something like that.
00:38:46
Speaker
And, you know, I'm just trying to calm as I see them. And so that's an interesting one. But I have gotten also certainly other complaints from all sides of the political spectrum.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, I've gotten angry emails from people. If I publish conservative or right-leaning letters, the very few that we even get. And some people are like, don't you know your audience? Why are you publishing this? I'm like, do you really want an echo chamber here? I'm so thankful, whether I agree or not, of the letters I get from the right, like I said, it's probably nine to one liberal to conservative that come in.
00:39:29
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm so thankful for the coherent ones that come in that I can actually polish and get into the paper because we need those – we need those extra point of view. Otherwise, I mean, I'm just so – sometimes so tired of hearing about –
00:39:44
Speaker
the same things that the left wants to the drum that they beating all over and over again so to get something from the right is just it's very refreshing whether you agree with it or not and to then play those off each other it just creates a much more you know balanced product for people to at least you know get stop being so complacent in their own thoughts
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree with you and this is the argument that I try to make when I reach out to editors in the eastern part of the state and try to convince them to run my sort of left of center cartoons and try to convince them that a vibrant discussion on the editorial page is good for the community and for the paper. Sometimes I win that argument, sometimes I don't.
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah, in what ways have you been able to challenge people's misconceptions or just challenge their worldviews with your work? What's that dialogue like when you're trying to lobby them to be like, hey, listen, this is another side of the issue to create that vibrancy that we so desperately need.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yeah, well, definitely the cartoon itself is definitely not a dialogue. It's kind of a shot across the bow, really. But in some of the emails that I get with people that disagree with me, I would say at least half of the time we end up saying, hey, I'm really glad we had this little email back and forth. You sound like a reasonable person. We disagree on some things, but I can kind of see where you're coming from or whatever.
00:41:14
Speaker
So that's really where the dialogue takes place, is when you can actually have a nuanced conversation. Like I say, political cartoons are just really black and white and they, yeah, so the dialogue kind of happens after that.
00:41:28
Speaker
In this day, a digital age when we're so often not face to face or we're just avatars on social media or something, people get really, really heated and fired up and then once the blood stops boiling and you're able to maybe pop off a more measured response, people, they often, their hackles go down and they realize that there is actually another human being on the other side of that.
00:41:54
Speaker
Ultimately, I think whether it's a message you're trying to convey in a cartoon or a column, it's just someone writing in a very heated thing. They just want to be seen and they just want to be heard, right? Yes, I think that's right. No, and I absolutely agree with you. It's sort of this face-to-face conversation that's really where we're going to
00:42:14
Speaker
You know kind of bridge these these gaps and that's a that's a really actually a very important thing to me And it's something that I'm interested in trying to pursue in this community. I don't think political cartoons is the way to do it I'm trying to figure out some way that I can follow up on that idea Because you know not being able to sort of living on different planets is not working for us, right? Yeah
00:42:41
Speaker
Well, when Thursday comes around and you're like, our deadline's cracking, I've got to get this work done, what is the step-by-step process in pulling in even the tools you use, whether you start with pencil and then ink and then scan it and then color in Photoshop, I imagine. What's that process like for you just from A to Z?
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah. Well, so it starts with sitting down at the computer. Well, after I've had my breakfast over the morning paper, of course, sitting down at the computer, put Oregon into the Google search, hit the news tab and see what comes up. Of course, 50 to 60% is about sports. And so I just have to kind of scroll past all those to get to the actual news items.
00:43:23
Speaker
But yeah, I basically make a note of all the news items that have happened in that week that feel like they have larger radar cross-sections that people are paying attention to.
00:43:39
Speaker
So I have maybe a list of anywhere from three to eight usually topics that I have written down and then I sit down and sort of scan that and make an evaluation about which is the one that I'm going to zero in on.
00:43:58
Speaker
some ideas off because well that really isn't you know people don't really know about that or this isn't really getting me upset about something or excited about something or this has legs this will come up later so I can save it for another week that's another reason why I might pass up a topic
00:44:17
Speaker
But then once I pick a topic like I was mentioning before, I'll just start to knock it around like what's the angle that I want to take on it? Like here's the thing that I here's my succinct political statement that I want to make about it. What is the angle that I want to take? What's what's funny about what could be funny about this?
00:44:34
Speaker
Oftentimes, how would a child view this? I often use that approach. The grown-ups in the room are arguing and they're bickering, like, what would a child say to this? That's just one potential approach. But I've developed, and when I say I've developed, I've observed and studied other people. But I have collected this sort of comic device toolkit and
00:45:00
Speaker
And it's almost like I don't sort of go down the list of, well, will hyperbole work? Will a metaphor work? It just sort of, at this point, it just sort of starts to seep in. And sometimes no idea comes. I go for a walk around the block and sit back down again and maybe something will come back in. So there is definitely writer's block.
00:45:18
Speaker
that comes into play, but eventually I'll look at my watch enough times and be like, okay, time's a waste in here. Then once I have the germ of an idea, I will do some pretty small thumbnail sketches.
00:45:33
Speaker
and then just to kind of work out some of the composition pieces. And then I'll do a rough drawing either within the box of my cartoon constraint or I will just draw the component pieces and then scan them in and assemble them, sort of size and place them in a box once in Photoshop. And that gives me a little more compositional flexibility than the first sort of drawing it just completely in the box. I know that was a little wonky there.
00:46:05
Speaker
I can see it. So I have a compositional sketch assembled and then I print that out, put it on my light box and put a piece of smooth tracing-ish kind of paper over it and then I use a few different brush pens. There's some great brush pens now. I have sort of one that goes for thick lines and one that's for medium lines, one that's for thinner lines and then I have like a pen, just a regular black and white pen and
00:46:33
Speaker
essentially trace what I've done. I try to keep it loose and not have it just be like a real tight tracing, but at the same time my composition sketch has some details and stuff that I want to make sure that I get in there. So then I scan that inked piece into my computer and then from there I apply color in Photoshop.
00:46:54
Speaker
For that, I usually use, not for every little bit of it, but I use a pressure-sensitive tablet to get, you know, little sort of strokes in there. And that's pretty much it. And then we have a color cartoon, which can go on websites in color, and then I create a grayscale version, probably tweak it a little bit just to get the values of the grays right, and then that is ready for black and white.
00:47:20
Speaker
Nice. And where do you feel the most alive and engaged in the process of composing a cartoon? Well, you feel alive when you're nervous that you can't meet a deadline and it's getting late. So that's a time when you feel alive. But yeah, definitely once an idea has popped into my head, there's definitely a juice of energy that's like, okay,
00:47:41
Speaker
This is something I can use. This is something that's going to turn into something. Sometimes I don't necessarily have it fully fleshed out, but I'm like, yeah, this is it. This is what is going to get across my idea with that humorous twist that I'm looking for. And I know that I'm on the road. I just need to execute it at this point. So yeah, there's kind of a little spring in my step at that moment.
00:48:04
Speaker
What an email or a phone call or anything from a reader or consumer of your cartoon, what is the most outlandish thing that someone has said, like, oh, Jesse, you should do this. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I do get that. I do get like, you should draw this cartoon. And it's like, yeah, they're usually not very outlandish at all. It's like, you should have Trump on an iceberg saying to a polar bear. I don't know. It's just sort of like. Yeah.
00:48:32
Speaker
They're usually, okay, let's just be generous. They're very straightforward. They don't really have much of a twist to it, and they're just basically illustrating their idea, which I get. What I always say to people, whoever they are, no matter what side of the political spectrum, I always encourage them to draw their own cartoons. People are not as bad at drawing as they think, and I also talk about the fact that the writing is the key part and the drawing is just in support of it.
00:49:00
Speaker
I really do encourage people to draw their own cartoons. Yeah, well, as someone who likes to draw, it's definitely, it's one of those things where, yeah, the first ones you do are always kind of garbage, but you really have to just stick with it for a long time. Then you do, you get better over time, but so many people just get real discouraged early on.
00:49:20
Speaker
I've seen a lot of this artistic discouragement when especially when they're talking to me and they know that I draw and stuff so People people have bad art self-esteem. I think I think that's something that we need to work on in this country Oh my god, that's so great. Yeah, bad art self-esteem. I love I love hearing that I haven't heard that like articulated so perfectly but it's so true Yeah, we need to really work on that
00:49:45
Speaker
And where do you, you know, so you've got this volume of 26 years of cartoons and, you know, you're still going and, you know, where does, where would you say your optimism lies?
00:49:57
Speaker
Hmm about the cartooning or about the political state of the world or I guess I guess in the ongoing story of Oregon And yeah, I guess even the the state of the world, but yes someone you're chronicling this stuff and it's a pictorial history in hyperbole and
00:50:15
Speaker
And here you are, it's still chronicling this week after week after week. And you see trends, you see things change, you see things not change. So maybe as you're documenting this, and quite literally a historian in a sense, what still lights you up and where does your optimism lie? As someone who I can tell, there's optimism in you.
00:50:38
Speaker
Yeah, no, there's optimism. And I talked about trying to bridge this gap somehow. And I don't think political cartoons is the way to do it, honestly. But I think political cartoons do serve a purpose. Yeah, I don't know. We are in kind of a dark time right now in terms of the divisiveness. And in this state in particular,
00:51:00
Speaker
The people that tend to agree with me politically are in political power, so that is, I guess, comforting to me. But I don't feel good about the people that feel completely disenfranchised. I felt that way for four years when Trump was president, and I know what that feels like, and it's not good.
00:51:18
Speaker
And so what can we do to sort of, you know, bring people in and have them invested in what's going on and feeling like we're going in a good direction. So I feel like it's possible. Again, I'm not really sure what the path is. And yeah, that'll be something that I'll be working on. But I do feel like we are kind of maybe the darkest before the dawn right now. I don't know, hopefully.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, as someone who has been chronicling the Oregon story pictorially for a quarter century, and right now in the Oregon legislature, you're dealing with super majorities, Democrats, and that's not always been the case. Sometimes it's been quite the other way. Yes.
00:52:09
Speaker
What's the most you know the most fun dynamic for you to draw to draw from you know for your cartoons like pray just given the whatever situation is you know. Concurrently going on and the legislature is a balance is it is it more fun to draw from when it's right or or left you know.
00:52:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there was a shift when I first started drawing in 1995. I can't remember, I think Barbara Roberts was still governor, but the legislature was definitely more in Republican control at that point. And then that started to shift through the sort of turn of the millennium, I guess you'd say.
00:52:49
Speaker
There was a moment then and there continues to be moments when the Democrats have a little bit of difficulty dealing with the fact that they're in power and you know some of the ethics concerns are now pointed squarely at them and sort of
00:53:04
Speaker
You know, when you're in power, what do they say? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? And so there's problems with Democrats, even though, you know, I may agree with a lot of their policies. They kind of go about things in some crummy ways sometimes.
00:53:21
Speaker
So, I definitely don't have a problem pointing my pointed sharpened pencil at them, for sure, because people in power that are not using their power wisely and compassionately deserve to be criticized.
00:53:39
Speaker
Fantastic. Well Jesse, this book is so fun to go through and it's just such a testament to your critical eye in the wind school way in which you tell these stories.
00:53:55
Speaker
You know, where can people, you know, get familiar with you and your work if they're not already familiar with it and find the book in this holiday season? Yeah. Yeah. So actually, it's I don't know. I'm not I'm a graphic designer and a cartoonist. I'm not a book marketer. But what I've decided at this point that it's only going to be available on my website at this point.
00:54:17
Speaker
And so the URL for that is SpringerDesign.biz, B-I-Z slash books, plural. And so that's where you need to go to buy the book. And on that page, you can see sample pages of the book. And you can also, I made a video slideshow. I don't know if you had a chance to see that. I don't know if I sent you the link to that, but I do a sort of a 20 minute
00:54:46
Speaker
uh... highlight slideshow as i might give if live in-person events were happening like at the library for example and sort of go through a a uh... a sampling of the of the cartoons explain a little bit about them and uh... and show them and so anyway so that's actually a really fun entree if you want to sort of see what the book is about uh... i would definitely i highly recommend going to springer design dot biz slash books check out that uh...
00:55:15
Speaker
that video and also another short video that explains the little articles that go with it, the instant context that help people understand it. Awesome. Well, this is great. Well, thanks so much for coming by the studio here and talking shop and giving us some insight into the great chronicling of the Oregon story in the last 26 years. Thanks, Jesse. Thanks for the work and thanks for coming on the show. Thanks very much, Brendan. I really appreciate you having me.
00:55:48
Speaker
Thanks to Jesse and thank you for the time. Thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing for the support as well. SpringerDesign.biz slash books. That's where you're going to want to go to go buy the book. He's actually got some really cool videos there as well about
00:56:09
Speaker
about the book, the Oregon story, head out, draw a political cartoon, good stuff. You can follow Jesse on Twitter, at SpringerTunes. You can keep the conversation going at CNF Pod and at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Consider heading over to Patreon for the sport to help subsidize this enterprise. Patreon.com slash CNF Pod. A lot of goodies over there. You can ask questions of future guests. I give you credit for that.
00:56:35
Speaker
head over to brendanomare.com for the show notes, for the newsletter, and lots of cool goodies that I hope will put fuel in your tank. But, like I said, COVID thing is kicking the crap out of me, so I'm gonna get up on out of here. I wish I had more to give, but I don't. So, stay wild, CNFers, and if you can do, interview. See ya.
00:57:10
Speaker
you