I recently spoke with resident Daily Lobo cartoonist Juan Tabone for his take on the controversy surrounding his strip.
Jason Darensburg: How long have you been a cartoonist and who or what are your major influences?
Juan Tabone: I’ve been consciously cartooning since middle school. I started gag-strip work, à la “Doonesbury” and “Calvin and Hobbes,” in high school and political/editorial cartooning in the 1990s. Influences? Pat Oliphant, he pulls no punches. Tom Toles and Jack Ohman. G.B. Trudeau of “Doonesbury” and Bill Waterson of “Calvin and Hobbes” are major influences.
JD: America is adrift politically, culturally and spiritually.
These should be golden years for you. Are political cartoons a dying art form?
JT: Corruption of our political process by money and corporations means that journalism in its classic “watchdog”, muck-raking role on a mass level is dying as well.
Six corporations own almost all of the major media outlets in all major markets. As for cartooning being a dying art form, it could be — if the bullies of this world have their way, certainly an outlawed art form.
However, people will always use satire to skewer the powerful and their lickspittles. I agree there’s currently a lot of material to work with. It’s like shooting three-eyed, radioactive fish in a lead-lined barrel.
JD: Do you feel as if you are performing a service to society? Is it a sense of duty? How do you view your impact on the UNM community?
JT: Wow, way to ennoble me. Cartooning out of a sense of duty … well, it does serve as a form of therapy. As Trudeau said, political cartoonists are just frustrated assassins.
Who knows? Maybe one of my cartoons online caused that blogging, lying, thug (Andrew) Breitbart to vapor-lock and drop dead. If so, I happily accept full credit. My impact on UNM is probably minimal at best. I’m sure I ruffle feathers, raise eyebrows and occasionally get some Fox-watching, Bible-thumper to think — if only for a moment.
Again, the fact that newspaper readership is way down guarantees my work is probably seen by far fewer Lobo readers than 10 years ago.
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JD: What is it about your strip that angers certain people?
JT: The past 30 years has seen the rise of right-wing bullies, goons and thugs. These bullies think they have the right to dictate terms to the rest of us. They feel they’re entitled to define “morality” in the public arena for private matters, in order to justify their existence.
So when I draw a cartoon that points up their hypocrisy and stupidity and bloodies their nose, they do what bullies do: they cry “victim” and claim that they are being “persecuted” for their religious beliefs.
If they are literally being rounded up and marched into camps, they might have a case.
But until then, they’re just a bunch of crybabies throwing temper tantrums because the Constitution rightfully kicks their self-serving asses out of government — while protecting their religious freedoms in the bargain.
JD: Is there an overall theme that defines your work?
JT: “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” And if possible, be funny doing it.
JD: Above all, your strip is funny. Why do you think it’s so difficult for some people to laugh at themselves?
JT: Well, sacred cows make the tastiest steaks. Today’s Bible-thumping, flag-waving bullies take themselves way too seriously. Not surprising, as they’ve been given free reign for the past 30 years.
They’re so full of themselves that anybody who dares puncture their balloons of lies and character assassination with those irritating things known as facts really pisses them off.
For example, it’s fine for them to cheer on candidates who call our first African-American president the “Food-Stamp President,” or media pigs who refer to women who stand up for their right to medical privacy as “sluts.” However, god forbid anybody ever call them out on it. Then, of course, it’s time to claim their “victim status,” that they’re being “persecuted.”
Finally, they’re humorless because if they ever stopped judging everyone else, they’d be forced to actually look at themselves.
Then they might have to own the fact that they’ve been collaborating with corrupt politicians, the rich and corporations to turn our democracy into a police-state/plutocracy like Chile under Pinochet.
JD: Is America losing its sense of humor? Do you think people “get it?” Why is it important to mock authority?
JT: Overall, I think people in this country have a good sense of humor. The only danger would be that people might confuse the mocking of authority and corporate power as a substitute for confronting authority.
As Woody Allen once said, “A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really get the point across.” Mocking authority helps people know that they are not alone in feeling the way that they do about their government and the corporations that own it.
It also reminds the powerful that they are being watched. But before I break my arm patting myself on the back, I have to add that it is not all about me. My ability to reach people wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t have strong editors backing me and my work up.
Sure, I know my work can be offensive to some, frivolous and obnoxious to others, and scary to the editor who has to deal with the hate mail. But that’s the nature of the beast.
Opinions, especially those that challenge the “conventional wisdom” are always going to offend somebody. For example, one cartoon I drew for the Daily Lobo chastised the Albuquerque Police Department for shooting mentally unstable people. In the end, my editors and I wound up not only being covered locally, but even in USA Today for defending the First Amendment and my right to satirically question police policy.
All this was while APD was threatening to “buy up” our advertising and shut us down. We eventually won that battle because my editors had the guts to run the cartoon and stand by me and the role of the press to question authority.
Sure, they were scared, but they didn’t let that stop them from doing the right thing. The moment any element of the media stops questioning the status quo, they become stenographers for the powerful.
JD: Throughout history, humor, satire and political cartoons have been effective tools in exposing injustice and hypocrisy in society. Do you feel you are carrying on a tradition?
JT: Yes, I suppose I am. These days cartooning and even working for a print newspaper seems to be becoming obsolete. Sadly, the future for actual journalists is grim until Internet news sites start paying what newspapers have paid.
That is to say, instead of recycling stories from other websites or having writers only work as freelance contributors. So, actual newspaper journalism and the staff cartoonist as a career may pass into history. I hope not. The service an open and independent press provides to society is crucial to the survival of a democracy.
Finally, cartooning for a University paper, like the Daily Lobo, has and does offer me the chance to express myself with unrestrained glee. After all, as an editor of mine once said to me, “If you can’t run it in a college paper, where can you?”