AFTER JANUARY’s Charlie Hebdo attack, many satirists responded by rendering pens that were mightier than swords, and ink that flowed like blood sacrificed in the name of free speech. But after this month’s shootings outside the AFDI’s “Draw Muhammad” contest in suburban Dallas, many humorists homed in on a different target: How to comment on the very act of illustrating the Islamic prophet — without actually showing the Islamic prophet.
“Saturday Night Live,” for one, responded over the weekend with a sketch centering on the very apprehension about creating a blasphemous-to-some sketch. In the bit, Taran Killam hosts the charades game show “Picture Perfect,” and contestant Bobby Moynihan’s prompt is to draw “the prophet Muhammad” (soon sharing his concern is Kenan Thompson as Reginald VelJohnson). What could have been comedically mundane somehow touches a humorous hot-button by depicting the palpable fear of even putting pen to paper.
That sketch called to mind the words of “Pearls Before Swine” creator Stephan Pastis, with whom I co-guested on “The Kojo Nnamdi Show” last Wednesday, in a conversation that pivoted from Garland to Garfield. Pastis said on the program that he finds it “absurd” that in America, anyone might tell him what he can and cannot draw. He also said he cared less about the ideology of anyone who shoots a cartoonist, because once you pull the trigger, you only symbolize one thing in his mind: a murderer.
Two days later, Politico cartoonist Matt Wuerker decided to visually employ Pastis — or at least his “Pearls” avatar — for his own comment on this front.
“I was imagining different treatments for the cartoonist character,” Wuerker tells The Post’s Comic Riffs. “The obvious thing would have been to draw myself in there, but then I remembered all the mischief Pastis has made by inserting other cartoonists into ‘Pearls Before Swine.’
“Besides, it also seems only fair to drag those lazy strip cartoonists into the ‘draw Muhammad’ fracas,” continues the cheeky Wuerker. “When I finished the cartoon, I was about to post it and got slightly cold feet, since anything involving cartoons and Muhammed in any way is a little more fraught than taking pot shots at ‘Family Circus’ or ‘Cathy,’ so I emailed Stephan to make sure to make sure he didn’t mind getting enlisted in the War On Terror. He was very cool about it.
“We’re hoping if the deluded ranks of ISIS do include fans of ‘Pearls’ and they recognize his avatar, that they will stop and realize that it was me, not Stephan, who was nearly drawing Muhammad,” says Wuerker, who next week will host a Washington talk with author Mike Kahn about Puck, the great and influential political-cartooning magazine.
“Besides, it’s just a cartoon, right?”
Another political cartoonist to weigh in last week was the Sacramento Bee’s Jack Ohman. As president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Ohman released a statement to condemn the Garland attack.
“The shootings in Texas once again demonstrate that art is provocative, but we must not cower in the face of threats to this profession or to free expression,” the AAEC’s statement said. “Political art, be it cartoons, paintings, sculpture, or anything else, is protected speech under the First Amendment.” (About which Ohman also commented through a cartoon.)
Ohman’s statement noted that AFDI has been called a hate group, and said that its leader, Pam Geller, apparently has “her own tasteless and ignorant agenda.”
“However, a group’s political agenda, whether we agree with its goals or not, is subject to the same constitutional protections we all enjoy,” the AAEC statement said. “Cartoons are powerful, as has been repeatedly shown in the past few months.”
Here is how some other American editorial cartoonists have responded in recent days:
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