A draft of the cartoon by Ann Telnaes that was rejected by WAPO. Image from Substack
It has been said that cartoonists are like the canaries in the coal mine, when they come for you then you know the politics are getting toxic.
So when Pulitzer Prize cartoonist Ann Telnaes recently resigned over a killed cartoon she did depicting Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaires groveling in front of a statue of Trump, we need to pay attention.
Rejecting an editorial voice is no joke.
Cartoons have the power to shock and offend and that largely is what they are there for.
The cartoon in question depicts a group of billionaire tech and media executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, bowing and offering sacks of cash to an imposing statue of Trump. Pictured among the genuflecting crowd is Post owner Jeff Bezos.
“I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” Telnaes wrote. “Until now.”
The timing is noteworthy.
A commemorative edition of Charlie Hebdo in January 2016 one year after 12 members of the staff were murdered in an attack on its offices.
This comes 10 years after the Islamist terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
The #JeSuisCharlie hashtag spread around the world in January 2015 after brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi stormed the paper’s offices killing 11 people in retaliation for it printing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
“Are we all still Charlie?”
The same outrage needs to be felt about the decision of Jeff Bezos to kill this cartoon.
The attack on cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo caused not only great grief but soul-searching raising the question about what satire is, what it should or shouldn’t do, and what role it plays in a society.
The same needs to be said about Ann Telnaes.
The satirist’s job is to push boundaries, expose our weaknesses, and point out the social fiction we tell ourselves.
Simply put, a satirist is necessary for the health of a society.
Now more than ever we need that voice STAT.
Now that Donald Trump has been confirmed to be our next President, our nation may soon be on life support.
Envisioning The American Dream 
I like the analogy Sally.
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Thank you for pointing this out and for emphasizing how serious it is. Once billionaires begin controlling our media, as Jeff Bezos is, we are truly in trouble.
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The wealthy have a long history of controlling newspapers, certainly going back to Hearst and his yellow journalism. But there was a period they used it for good.
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My wife and I decided yesterday to cancel our WP subscription in response to this. If Bezos doesn’t have the courage to stand up to trump (and this is becoming a trend), he can’t report the news. In general, I don’t think much of Telnaes’ cartoons because they never seemed hard-hitting enough, but if Bezos is going to weaken them further, she’s right to quit. Soon the post won’t have any journalists or readers.
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People have been canceling their WAPO subscriptions en masse ever since they refused to endorce Kamala. This was the last straw for many. The paper is a shell of itself and Bezos is utterly spineless.
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Every account of the Washington Post’s decline points to Bezos failures. The paper will continue to slide under his misguided ownership and this further exposes his tone-deaf leadership.
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