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By Brad Friedman on 1/5/2025, 6:35am PT  

[ED NOTE: See below this week's collection for a bit of troubling Tooning News that broke on Friday night... --BF]

I'm late to the game...But so was he...

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TOONING NEWS: On Friday night, Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, the great Anne Telnaes --- whose work has been featured here from time to time --- announced she was quitting the Post. In a brief column explaining her reasons, she cites a recent cartoon idea submitted for publication that was spiked by her editor, for the first time since joining the paper in 2008, "because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at." In this instance, her pen was aimed at, among others, Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos, as well as other billionaire media and tech bros and the Disney corporation for bending the knee (and giving millions) to the incoming President before he takes office...

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I'm just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, "Democracy dies in darkness".

See Telnaes' full explanation and a rough draft of her spiked toon is here. The Post's response to Telnaes is reported here.

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As The BRAD BLOG's former longtime toon sherpa PDiddie always reminded us: "With editorial cartooning increasingly an endangered species, please consider supporting them if you possibly can."

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The BRAD BLOG is looking for someone --- other than me --- who may be able and available to post our weekly toons here! Interested? Let me know!

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