Record-busting temperatures and violent weather wracked the Northern Hemisphere last week, leading the Washington Post to report on the “inescapable link” between these snowballing, extreme weather events and “a planet warming from man-made emissions.” Jack Ohman leads this week’s editorial cartoon gallery with a depiction of mankind regretting not turning down the Earth’s thermostat 40 years ago.
Ohman, of the Sacramento Bee, and Joel Pett, of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, are in the news for another reason this week. Ohman, Pett and Kevin Seirs of the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer were let go by McClatchy newspapers. All three are winners of the Pulitzer Prize.
Ohman, the president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, told the Post’s Michael Cavna, “This is just another brick in the wall” of continuing layoffs in the field. “But we haven’t had three Pulitzer [cartoon] winners go out the door on the same day before.”
In 2021, the newspaper reported there were about 30 editorial cartoonists remaining on newspaper staffs, down from over 100 decades ago.
“It is not the readers but the industry gatekeepers who have given up on political cartoons, for a variety of reasons,” Pett told Cavna. “They don’t see how [political cartoons] make any money and they alienate people, and they can be a pain in the neck. So why bother, just because they are historically powerful and popular, and a longtime mainstay of the Fourth Estate? The democracy is doing great, right?”
Other topics in this week’s cartoons include the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the alliance put off admitting Ukraine into the alliance; FBI Director Christopher Wray’s appearance before a hostile House Judiciary Committee; the presidential campaign; falling inflation; and more revelations about the ethics practices of Supreme Court justices.
Cartoons were drawn by Jack Ohman, Nick Anderson, Bill Bramhall, Dana Summers, Drew Sheneman, Scott Stantis, Walt Handelsman, David Horsey, Phil Hands, Joel Pett and Joey Weatherford of Tribune Content Agency; and Mike Luckovich, Steve Breen and Michael Ramirez of Creators Syndicate.