This is a shortish diary, but not as brief as some I've seen today.
I've been enjoying political cartoons for a long time. I can even remember when "Doonesbury" appeared in the regular comics section, instead of on the editorial page. I grew up with Jerry Fearing's cartoons in the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press, back when we got a morning and an afternoon paper.
One of my good friends in college had a weekly strip in the campus paper, and it was fun to see tidbits of our lunchroom banter show up in his work. He went on to become a syndicated cartoonist, and I was shocked one day while living in Denmark to see his familiar pen-and-ink style in the pages of Politiken.
Nowadays I visit Yahoo's comics page for a roundup of the latest political cartoons. The panels currently on display are all pretty sharp, and I recommend everyone head there for a few chuckles.
One can tell which way the wind is blowing because none of them are anti-Obama, while McCain and the Clintons take a few hits and W is made smaller and lamer. Henry Payne of the Detroit News is the only one of the twenty cartoonists sampled who is consistently anti-Democrat, and today he's anti-windmill.
The following quote relates to newbie governor Jesse Ventura's objections to the St. Paul Pioneer Press lampooning him in a cartoon called "Venturaland" back in 2001, but could easily sum up the McCain campaign's current flounderings:
Steve Benson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic and past president of the AAEC [Association of American Editorial Cartoonists], said Ventura's protests will only draw attention to the strip.
"It makes the governor look petty, insecure and humorless," he said."As cartoonists, we encourage him to keep it up."