Toon-Op

Cartoonists are lauded for our ability to simplify, and we are dismissed for our oversimplifications.

Cartoonists aimed double-barreled ink cartridges last week at Washington’s twin Topic A’s: Alito and Abramoff.

Last year, editorial cartoonists eulogized civil rights icon Rosa Parks, television veterans Johnny Carson and Peter Jennings, Vietnam War antagonists Gen.

In editorial cartooning, as my colleague Steve Kelley of the New Orleans Times-Picayune says, art often irritates life.

Sometimes cartoonists go with the pack of our pen-pals, and sometimes we stick our pencil-necks out.

As brackish floodwaters are pumped back into Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, what’s left behind is pretty nasty.

The humorist’s mantra is that tragedy plus time equals comedy.

On any given day, cartoonists have a choice: They can take potshots at a target of opportunity such as televangelist Pat Robertson, who put himself in the cross-hairs when he advocated the assassination of Venezuela’s leader, or they can pen a picture truly worth the proverbial 1,000 words.

Cartoonists had a 1,600-acre field day as President Bush vacationed last week at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Baltimore Oriole slugger Rafael Palmeiro served up a steroid-enhanced scandal-ball, and cartoonists blasted it out of the park.

Cartoonists have recently had plenty of science fare.

No summer news void yet.

Supreme Court nominee John G.

Editorial cartoonists can make a federal case out of anything.

If you earn your daily bread feasting on the news, you eat what you’re served.

Reporters don’t like to admit it, but most readers don’t notice bylines.

Cartoons about the high price of gas. Cartoons about U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Life may be fleeting, but the debate over it runs in eternal media circles.

When cartoonists are asked about censorship — or, as our supervisors call it, “editing” — one of our answers is invariably about taste.

Cartoonists are natural contrarians.

The natural habitat for editorial cartoonists is a gloomy forest of bleak news, which we share with an ever-evolving population of invasive and evasive species: kudzu-like deficits, reptilian public servants, creepy-crawly world leaders and all manner of bottom-line feeders.

When editorial cartoonists consider John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations, animal instinct takes over.

The editorial cartoons that immediately followed the death of Pope John Paul II were predictably, and appropriately, solemn.

Cartoonists live to demean sacred institutions, so it should surprise nobody that we privately snipe at the growing number of journalism awards, even as we covet them.

The all-Jacko-yakko channels make this year’s Trial of the Century seem like a must-draw for editorial cartoonists.

Sometimes the news begs to be lampooned in cartoon. Not this week. J.D.

The daily search for a cartoon topic is something like filling out your March Madness pool.

Sarge has dismembered Beetle ever since anyone can remember.

Report the story, don’t become the story. So says Journalism 101. But not Journalism 2005.

Cartoonists from across the political spectrum greeted the new Democratic Party chairman as if he were Dr.

Even without a tinker-proof, state-of-the-art computerized voting process, like, say, Florida’s, Iraq’s election had its own digital aspect.

Ah, awards time, the Golden Globe … the People’s Choice … the Oscar!