Me on MPR

I was a guest on “The Daily Circuit” morning show on Minnesota Public Radio with Kerri Miller this morning. They brought me in to discuss cartooning in the U.S. vs other parts of the world, and to address the issue of “how far is too far” when it comes to satire and editorial cartooning. I’m hardly the guy to ask about that… after all a typical example of my “hard hitting” satirical work would be making fun of Jennifer Lawrence and the latest Hunger Games movie. However, you don’t have to be a practitioner of that type of cartooning to understand it and its social/cultural effects.

While we were discussing how editorial concerns about consumer reaction to more extreme cartoons like Charlie Hebdo routinely publishs curtails the publishing of similar cartoons in mainstream media here in this country, a caller ambushed Kerri on the air saying she thought Obama was a Muslim. In a way that caller demonstrated exactly why editors and publishers might be afraid to push buttons too hard–these are the kind of idiots you have to answer to. That’s the downside of free speech… you have to defend the rights of morons to spout their idiocy with the same force as you do those with something constructive to say. The good news is you don;t have to listen to it, and you can call them idiots.

If they ever post an audio clip of the interview, I’ll edit it in here. Here’s that NPR appearance.