Longtime Washington Submit cartoonist Ann Telnaes introduced her resignation from the paper on Friday, January 3, after a cartoon she had drafted criticizing the Submit‘s proprietor, Jeff Bezos, and different distinguished figures for making an attempt to realize favor with President-elect Donald Trump, was rejected. On her Substack, Telnaes, 64, acknowledged, “in all [the] time [I’ve worked for the Post] I’ve by no means had a cartoon killed due to who or what I selected to purpose my pen at. Till now.”
The unfinished cartoon mocks Bezos, Fb CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Los Angeles Occasions proprietor Patrick Quickly-Shiong, and ABC Information proprietor Disney (represented by Mickey Mouse), for numerous supportive choices they’ve made for Trump, from donating to his second inauguration, to settling the lawsuit over ABC journalist George Stephanopoulos‘s characterization of the decision in E. Jean Carroll‘s personal go well with in opposition to the creep. (One thing that may assist him cowl the price of the damages awarded to Carroll.)
Previous to this, Bezos had reportedly blocked the Submit‘s meant endorsement of Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, earlier than the election on November 5, a choice broadly condemned by many critics as being cowardly, and that spurred editor-at-large Robert Kagan to resign from the workers. Telnaes had labored for the Submit since 2008 (5 years earlier than Bezos acquired it in 2013), and garnered a lot acclaim and respect for her satire, incomes a Reuben Award from the Nationwide Cartoonists Society in 2016, and the Herblock Prize in 2023. Her departure comes amid experiences the paper is anticipated to put off dozens of staff this week, persevering with a troubling collection of developments for the paper, which has already seen two rounds of lay offs since October 2023.
In her resignation publish, Telnaes says “there have been cases the place sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, however by no means due to the viewpoint inherent within the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a recreation changer… and harmful for a free press.” She concludes by referencing the slogan the paper adopted at first of the primary Trump administration, saying, “As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to carry highly effective individuals and establishments accountable. For the primary time, my editor prevented me from doing that essential job. So I’ve determined to go away the Submit. I doubt my resolution will trigger a lot of a stir and that will probably be dismissed as a result of I’m only a cartoonist. However I can’t cease holding fact to energy by means of my cartooning, as a result of as they are saying, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
David Shipley, the Submit’s opinions editor, responded in a press release to The New York Occasions that he disagreed with Telnaes’s interpretation of occasions, saying “My resolution was guided by the truth that we had simply printed a column on the identical subject because the cartoon and had already scheduled one other column — this one a satire — for publication. The one bias was in opposition to repetition.” He provides he requested her to rethink resigning, and expressed hope that they’d communicate once more this week to achieve a compromise in-line together with her ideas.
On the time of writing, that doesn’t seem like the case. Telnaes has expressed gratitude in direction of these praising her resolution, with cartoonist Steve Brodner encouraging others to create their very own work with the identical theme. She has shared a few of these on her Substack, together with a considerably less-flattering cartoon of Bezos by New Yorker veteran Barry Blitt, which depicts her former employer puckering as much as kiss a statue of Trump’s ass.
