Darkness at News

Mike Peterson in The Daily Cartoonist.

There have been a number of cartoons responding to Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos having spiked an endorsement for Kamala Harris, many of them playing on the Post’s motto “Democracy Dies in the Dark.”

Ann Telnaes gets the top spot in part because she works there and her cartoon joins with 16 Washington Post columnists who signed an outraged statement protesting the move, which is reason enough, but also because while she is perennially one of the most inventive political cartoonists, she knows when it’s time to be plainspoken.

And her fans recognize her outrage, as the comments on her page indicate.

The fact that the Post has published protests over the topic — from both staff and readers — is encouraging, because it indicates a chasm between the people who make the paper and the man who owns it, and that there is a difference between doing what you’ve been ordered to do and behaving like a lickspittle.