He Has Risen

So maybe don't fuck with him

At 1 a.m. today, the Supreme Court paused the deportation of immigrants who are subject Donald Trump’s abuse of the Alien Enemies Act (a measure that’s only supposed to be used during an invasion or times of war), just as the Trump regime was on the verge of flying a group of Venezuelans from Texas to El Salvador to rot in that nation’s hellhole of a prison.

Breaking news at 1 a.m. is usually about an explosion, an invasion, a tsunami, a tweet from Trump containing an incomprehensible new word, but rarely a Supreme Court ruling.

SCOTUS had previously told the regime that it’d be OK if they used the illegal Alien Enemies Act, just so long as each immigrant (and maybe US citizen) received due process first. The regime apparently ignored that last part about due process and was about to go all-skippy with deporting more Venezuelans.

The court ordered the Trump administration to respond to the emergency appeal once a federal appeals court in Louisiana takes action in the case. The court said, “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court.” That means the regime will probably go ahead and do it.

SCOTUS did not explain the ruling, maybe because it was 1 a.m. and a rumor started that Denny’s was about to close, and Sotomayor is a real grouch if she doesn’t get her Moons Over My Hammy.

But we probably don’t need an explanation for why the only two dissenters were (be ready to be surprised) Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (OK, that wasn’t surprising).

Why would those two oppose delaying the deportation of immigrants without due process and support the regime violating the last order from SCOTUS? There are several possible reasons, and I’m sure none of them are good.

The first reason could, they’re fascist goons.

The second one could be that they just don’t give a shit about the Constitution and know this is the side they’re supposed to be on.

The third reason could be that they don’t care what the issue is and all they need is to be pointed in the direction Trump’s going, and they will follow.

The fourth reason could be that it’s booty night, Clarence doesn’t want to upset Ginny Thomas, and Samuel is hoping Mrs. Alito will help raise his flag.

The fifth reason could be that they’re both corrupt and were bought off to vote this way.

Even Trump’s justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, voted for this delay.

These guys would deport Jesus, especially since he’s not a blue-eyed blonde like White Christians make him out to be.

This part of the blog is short because I want to clean my apartment before I fly to Chicago on Monday. I like coming home to a clean apartment.

I have a beef, and it’s not the Italian beef sandwich I’m planning to try in Chicago: I may be starting a fight I don’t want to fight, but dammit. Somebody has to.

A caption contest is where a cartoonist draws a cartoon, but doesn’t finish writing it. He creates an image and leaves a blank speech bubble/balloon. He then invites the readers to fill in the bubble and makes a contest out of it. It’s fun for the readers, gets them to engage with the cartoonist and the publication, and brings more hits and views to the publication’s website. I always felt it was a cheap way to make readers come back to look at other same page, and I openly admitted that when I did a caption contest for The Free Lance-Star. I hated the caption contest, but knew my readers loved it and my editors liked the views. I don’t see anything wrong ethically with the caption contest because I don’t see it as political cartooning. I saw it as a newspaper feature similar to the crossword puzzle, the jumble, or today’s Wordle. I’ll occasionally bump into a reader who’ll bring up the caption contest…that I hated.

My friend Walt Handelsman is doing a caption contest, and he does it well.

I saw something similar last night that’s kinda similar to the caption contest, but it’s entirely unethical, diminishes political cartooning, lazy, and is screwing readers over.

This is what I saw, and it’s by Daryl Cagle, who operates the largest syndication company for political cartoons.

If this were just a game for his website, I’d think nothing of it, but it’s not a game.

Daryl is shopping for his reader to write his ideas, and then he plans to sell them. If he does manage to sell them, they won’t be next to a crossword puzzle, but on the opinion page. It’s not like editors will care if they suck, and they will. And if he sells them, he’s not sharing the money with the person who wrote the idea. They’ll just get an “attribution.”

Remember my blog about why I don’t use cartoon ideas I didn’t write? The reason boils down to ethics, which Daryl doesn’t have. Even though I might be the goofiest guy in this industry, I take this industry seriously. I care about my work. Obviously, Daryl doesn’t care about his. He once drew two versions of a cartoon, one version from the Right and the other from the Left. It was a total hack job. He doesn’t care.

I commented on Daryl’s Facebook page, telling him to write his own cartoons. He replied, “According to the Pulitzer people, we're all just illustrators now, Clay.” That’s pretty much true as the Pulitzers have taken away the contest category for political cartoons and combined it with “illustrated reporting” or some shit like that, but I wasn’t going to let Daryl use it as an excuse.

I replied to Dayl’s reply, saying, “Then why are you helping the Pulitzers diminish us? You already used the anonymous cartoonist to tell editors and publishers that we're not journalists.
Most political cartoonists have too much integrity to take ideas submitted by readers, and here you are shopping for them. Do you not care about your work? If you don't want to be a political cartoonist, then get out of the political cartoon business.
And then on top of all that, you're not going to pay the person who writes the cartoon you're going to sell.”

Daryl previously syndicated an anonymous cartoonist who signed his work as Rivers. Rivers is a lying racist idiot MAGAt in Canada (that was a secret too). By syndicating Rivers, Daryl was telling editors and publishers that political cartoons didn’t have to abide by their ethics policies, thus cartoonists aren’t journalists anymore. That’s a weird position for a cartoonist to take. Even letters to the editor must be signed. When asked to justify this a couple of years ago, Daryl replied to me, “I don’t see a problem with this,” which wasn’t answering the question.

I first met Daryl in 1997 when I was in Hawaii. He flew out and bought me a burrito. I liked him. He’s a nice guy personally, and I thought at the time with his website, that he was a huge advocate for our entire industry, but over the years, he started doing shit like this, shit I can’t remain silent about. Other cartoonists have told me to shut up and not make noise, but you know I’m not good at that. I’m a noisy motherfucker. I rock a Gibson. And then others send me private messages encouraging me on, but won’t add their voices to my one-man protest. Those cartoonists are smarter than I am.

I would rather support other cartoonists than criticize them. I try to make any criticism about the message in it, like if it’s lying or racist, never just because I think it sucks. I don’t want to go after Daryl, but here I am.

Daryl could come after all my clients and try to chase me out of the business, but there’s no sign he’s ever tried that, though I have lost newspapers to his syndicate, which sells dozens of cartoons in one package for a flat fee. It’s hard to compete against that. Once, every cartoonist could submit to USA Today, but then Daryl made a deal with Gannett that shut out every cartoonist from their entire chain except for his cartoonists. Now, Gannett doesn’t publish political cartoons at all.

But he can’t come after my Substack. To all you paid subscribers, this is one of the things you’re helping me fight, and you’re giving me more freedom to speak out. So I thank you again.

I’m going to open the comments today to be fair, to give Daryl a chance to respond to this. I don’t think he will, but I’m trying to be fair.

I’m not going to fight a war or carry a torch for this. I’m going to move on and focus on my work, but somebody had to say something. I’ll end this with one more message to Daryl: Write your own fucking cartoons.

Creative note: I already did one Easter cartoon, which has a higher chance of being published than this one. I wanted to do something like this cartoon just to rouse up the conservatives on Easter Sunday. It’s so much better than the he-has-risen bullshit from the fake Christians like Gary Varvel.

Music note: I listened to Live.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

Timelapse (turn up your volume):

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