Cartoons, Capitalism & Censorship: Alison Bechdel & Ann Telnaes on Politics in Art

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Why not?

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

My guests today are Allison Bechtel and Anne Telnes, two artists who are chronicling our nation's political chaos in completely different but equally compelling ways.

Allison is a cartoonist, graphic novelist, and professor at Yale.

She started publishing her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out for, in 1983.

I've been reading it since then, and then became a graphic novelist and memoirist.

Her book, Fun Home, was adapted into a Broadway show and won five Tony's, and her latest book, Is Spent.

Anne is a former animator-turned-editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes.

She began working for The Washington Post in 2008, but after it censored her work, she quit the paper and went viral for a post explaining her reasoning.

These were about tech bros, so I paid a lot of attention.

She now publishes her work on Substack, where she has over 100,000 subscribers.

She's the author of three books, and her latest is Trump's ABC.

I'm excited to talk to him because I think I haven't actually had cartoonists, and I think today cartoonists, animators, etc., are becoming an incredibly important part of the political conversation, of the social conversation.

And they often distill things, much the way poets do, although people don't read poetry nearly enough,

in ways that are really important compared to reporters or any of the stuff I do on these podcasts.

So I really think they're just a distilled version of some incredible thoughts and talents and ideas.

And I really appreciate the impact they've had on my life.

Both Anne and Allison had a huge impact on my life and my thinking and just do beautiful drawings.

Our expert question comes from Hannah Rosen, a senior editor at The Atlantic and the host of Radio Atlantic.

These are two really thoughtful artists whose work is capturing our zeitgeist, so stick around.

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Allison and Ann, thanks for coming on on.

Thanks for having us.

I am very excited to be here, Kara.

You are two of my absolute favorites.

So editorial cartooning and comics have a lot of obvious similarities and they're, and you're both highly political, I would say, and yet your worlds are almost completely separate.

I'd love to talk about why that is and how do you envision the role of an editorial cartoonist and a graphic novelist today.

And you go first.

As you've written, as an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable.

Yeah, I, you know, I, whenever I speak about my work, I always start by explaining the difference between an editorial cartoon and other comics and cartoons.

And

basically, the thing is that our cartoons have to have a point of view.

Now, it doesn't mean that we can't be funny.

There are plenty of funny editorial cartoonists.

But if there's no point of view, it's not an editorial cartoon.

So we are part of journalism.

We are, even though editors maybe don't want to admit that.

And

that is our primary role is to have an opinion.

opinion but through visuals.

I mean, I taught a class about editorial cartooning, and I have to tell you, all those students were, of course, readers of graphic novels.

And all of them did their, because I gave them the, you know, the freedom to do their final project any way they wanted.

They could do a traditional one-panel cartoon, they could do it animated because this was an animation school, or they could do long form.

And everyone picked long form because that's what they read.

That's what they read.

Well, speaking of which, Allison, let's hear from you about this.

Yeah, my, what inspired me to start cartooning was wanting to see people who looked like me and my friends in the culture because I just wasn't seeing us reflected anywhere.

And I began doing single panel comics, not at all political, very much about everyday life and just silly things.

I just want to say to me the difference between what you do Anne and what I do is length.

You have to do it in one image and I can natter on for two, three hundred pages to say whatever I'm getting at.

And

in those early days when I was doing single panel cartoons, I found it increasingly difficult to come up with something that was, you know, could stand on its own like that.

And it was actually paradoxically much easier to write these long stories that then became almost a sort of episodic Victorian novel over time.

But yeah, I think length is key here.

Do you think what you were doing was political?

I think it was implicitly political because just being out in those days in the early 80s was in fact pretty radical.

But

my earliest work doesn't contain any explicit political content that crept in gradually with

time yes because of course i was living in reagan's america as a 20-something young lesbian and that just became inevitable i remember feeling very invigorated by what by i considered it that and you resigned from the washington post after david shipley the editorial page editor at the time rejected one of your editorial cartoons it shows a group of tech titans including the owner of the post jeff bezos bending a knee to a statue of President Donald Trump, offering bags of money.

Talk a little bit about this.

Was it meant, and by the way, Tim Cook just gave him a gold statue, which was even more perfect in real life, IRL.

Was it meant as a provocation to push the Post into confronting head-on the limits of editorial freedom under Bezos?

And we know what's happened since.

You were sort of the beginning of that move.

No, no, no.

I didn't plan this at all.

No, I, you know, I I was just doing my job.

I was frankly surprised when I was told I couldn't do that cartoon because, you know, the way that I work is I choose the topic.

I've always chosen the topic.

Different editors work differently with editorial cartoons, but I give them one rough.

And then usually, you know, they'll come back and say, oh, you know, can you kind of, it's kind of fuzzy.

Can you clear it up?

Can you, that image is making me uncomfortable, which seemed to happen a lot with this editor.

You know, and then, but I wouldn't go back and choose a whole different topic.

So, this was a surprise.

Now, having said that,

you know, a couple of months prior to that, we had the non-endorsement happened.

And, you know, I was part of the opinions section.

So, of course, I got to be in on the meetings about that where everybody was quite upset, you know, with what had happened.

So, but having said that, I also did a cartoon about it.

And they did print it.

Took them a couple hours to figure it out, but they did do it.

So it wasn't like I was expecting them to not to reject a cartoon idea.

So when it happened, I was taken back, taken aback, and I didn't have to think too long, but I realized.

You said you decided to quit five minutes after it was rejected.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, I thought, you know, about could I continue on?

And then I thought, how could I do that?

I mean, how do I know he's not going to do it again?

You know, and also I have to speak to my colleagues about why I'm still there if they're rejecting, you know, what I'm trying to put out.

Right.

So, yeah, I mean, essentially, yeah, I basically made the decision right away.

Can I just say something?

I think, I mean, the excuse that David Shipley had at the time was that, oh, we've already run articles about this.

That's right.

But

implicit in that is the fact that People aren't reading the articles.

Your image would have a much greater impact.

Right.

And that's a really good point, Allison, because that that was something that I didn't think of at the time, but, you know, I've had a few months to kind of reflect on it is, you know, why did that create such, you know, a viral reaction?

Because it went not just in the United States, it went in other countries.

And I think it's because cartoons are images, you know, and then people, of course, have been feeling, you know, they had been feeling pressure about what was going on with the democracy in the United States and of course the non-endorsement for the Washington Post readers.

But I honestly think the reason it went viral wasn't because of my particular cartoon.

It was because it was a cartoon and it illustrated the fact that the free press was being challenged and in danger.

And I think that's why.

By the way, full disclosure, my wife used to work for the Washington Post and left for many of these reasons.

But that was the most cockamamie excuse I've ever seen out of a person.

And it wasn't an excuse.

And it was an excuse, by the way.

Yes.

Yeah, it wasn't an excuse because I went back and read that column that he also explained to me why.

And I said, you know what?

That's not a column criticizing the tech titans.

It's a column warning them that Trump is going to stab them in the back.

Right, right.

That's exactly right.

So Alison is spent.

It's a fictional memoir about a cartoonist named Allison.

I wonder who it's about.

She struggles with her decision to take a lucrative deal from a publisher owned by an unnamed billionaire, which is very clearly Rupert Murdoch.

In real life, Murdoch owns, by the way, I call Uncle Satan anytime you want to use that.

It's all yours.

In real life, Murdoch owns News Corp, which owns HarperCollins, which owns Mariner Book, which is your publisher.

That's right.

And Carrie, you were the first person in all the interviews and reviews I've done to have mentioned that.

Thank you.

Yes, no problem.

No problem.

But only because I won't take a contract from HarperCollins.

They've offered several times.

But I did work for Rupert Murdoch, let's be clear, and

work several years.

And then I quit because he's such an awful, terrible person.

But talk a little bit about that.

You know,

to be honest, I did not struggle very long or hard.

It was a lot of money that I was being offered.

And

also, I knew it would guarantee a bigger reach for the work.

I mean, sure, I could do it at any number of small presses, but would anyone ever see it?

So that was my justification, for better or for worse.

That's how I made the decision.

And then I guess putting that little jab in is my way of trying to make myself feel better.

Yeah, really, it's a book about a struggle of someone's trying to live an ethical life in a capitalist society.

Yes.

Talk about why this is resonant for you.

Well, I just feel like I look around at the multiple crises facing this planet, and they all boil right down to greed and money.

And I wanted to just,

as a memoirist, I've always looked at how my own story intersects with larger

things going on in the world.

And so this was a way for me to do that.

Look at how my own financial life and privilege and choices,

what that's been like.

And just, it's a platform to talk about all this other stuff.

It actually, this book started as a straightforward memoir, but then it became this crazy auto-fictional project about,

which wasn't really true to my real life at all.

It was quite fun.

I could make up all sorts of things like that I live on a pygmy goat sanctuary.

Yeah.

I really don't.

You really don't.

Not today.

You don't.

Not yet.

I'm sure there's one around your neighborhood.

So, Ann, Trump is a recurring character in your cartoons.

He's not in everyone, but he's in a lot of them and for good reason.

And Trump is only mentioned explicitly twice, but his specter looms over the whole book.

So I would like each of you to talk about Trump as a character, Ann first, and then Allison.

Yes, I do a lot of

cartoons.

Well, at least he's good for a cartoonist, right?

He's physically interesting, presumably.

Well, yeah.

I mean, you know, we're all caricature is a big part of editorial cartooning um you can say a lot through a caricature right uh my caricatures have never really been about how the person looks i mean i always feel like my best caricatures are if i can portray how the person is deep down inside can i can i interject and you of all the people drawing trump you are the one who gets him your drawings are brilliant

Because I don't like him.

Right.

Okay.

Talk about how you pick the caricature, how you've decided decided promote it.

Well, that's the thing.

That's the thing.

And I think, you know, Allison has kind of hit on it is I just do what I feel, you know, and I think those are the characters that are the best.

So Trump, yes, he's, you know, obviously always in my cartoons.

He's ever present.

He also changed the news cycle for editorial cartoonists.

You know, prior to that, you know, you could kind of figure you're busy, especially when Congress is in session, but, you know, one big story a week, maybe, you know, during summer, we were doing stupid cartoons about reading lists on beaches because congress was out of session and nothing was going on when trump got in the first time it was 24 7 news

and it's again i mean i find it incredibly difficult to keep up with everything that's going on and i think that's a tactic or a plan of the jacket they've got it is absolutely flood the zone tactic but what talk about your caricature of trump what is the most important part of it his tie gets longer and longer it's that's a great the tie is a gift to cartoonist you know, you can do anything with that thing.

You can like, I saw somebody else use the tie as, you know, the Putin carpet that he just came in on.

I've used it to try to basically hang him.

You know, that kind of, you can do great stuff.

It's, you know, it's funny.

My readers are the ones that always point out to me because I never notice I'm changing every time.

They're like, okay, he's starting to look like a big mouth bass now.

And I'm like, okay, I can go with that.

Or, you know, they say he's a pig.

And I'm like, well, I like pigs.

Don't tell me that.

You know.

So, you know, like I said, it's just really, I try to find out.

I'm trying to show you what I think the insides of that person is more than the outsides.

Is there one particular body part that you think is besides the tie?

Little hands.

Tiny, tiny hands.

Right.

He's now obsessed with cankles, so get on that.

I just want to say one thing, Ann, about your drawings, which is that I feel like you captured his monstrosity, but also his essential brokenness.

Like, not necessarily in a compassionate way, doesn't deserve compassion for that, but we can see that there's something really wrong with this person.

Yeah, well, good, thank you.

I hope I keep doing that.

Um, so Allison, you don't uh draw Trump, but we feel his presence in Spent very clearly.

Talk a little bit about that, because Reagan was a real presence and dykes to watch out for.

Um, you know,

I struggle with

how much of my anxiety and doom to put into my stories, but eventually that sort of became inescapable.

Like, you know, we're all living under the cloud of the sky, and so I'm not going to putsy foot around.

I'm just going to talk about it.

I feel

like in the context of the book, Allison

becomes less

filled with doom and understands that she needs to have a better attitude because our attitudes are all that we have, right?

And there's

lots of good reasons to be optimistic.

And so she eventually arrives at that place.

But your alter ego, Allison, is living through an existential crisis in this book, one that's caused by environmental, health, political chaos we're living in.

But one of the things the Allison character also is very clear about is the worries about echo chambers.

Her partner tells her, quote, you get all your information from beautifully written and cogently argued essays in the Atlantic and the New Yorker.

We're all in our bubble.

And you've talked about trying to bridge the polarization gap.

How do you do that?

How do you create something that has a mob and snob appeal?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, this is the big difference between me and Anne.

I have always just preached to the choir.

That's what I do.

But Anne, you are talking to a mass audience, and

that's the thing.

That's what needs to happen.

Not really.

Not really.

Nobody on the mega set looks at my stuff unless they want to attack it.

Well,

perhaps, but they're still looking at it.

Fun Home certainly had crossover appeal, Allison.

Became a hit.

Broadway musical.

Yes.

Yeah, that was a weird thing

to

leave the margins and move a little closer to the mainstream.

And that's, too, is a theme of this book.

Like Allison in the book is just puzzled by how did she go from being this, you know, outsider lesbian character to

actually...

having her book taught in colleges and stuff and making money from it.

So that's

something I've been struggling with myself.

So, how do you deal with that, bridging this polarization gap?

Because presumably, you want to reach a lot of people, not necessarily preach to the choir.

I do.

I mean, when I first started out, I knew I was just writing to other lesbians, maybe some gay men who were reading these gay newspapers, not even alternative weeklies.

Those were, you know, those were still street audiences, and it took me until the mid-90s to break into those papers.

So, how do you then try to deal with that polarization grip as a a graphic novelist?

I try to draw cuddly, progressive characters that will appeal to people.

I feel like we get such a bad rap.

And I just, it was fun to write about these people who I just find quite lovable and endearing, and they're trying so hard to make a better world.

Like, can't people see that?

But again, the people who need to see that, I doubt, are picking up a copy of Spent.

I don't really know.

how to bridge that gap.

And now, Ann, after leaving the Washington Post, your Substack has over 100,000 subscribers, although they're not all paid.

Seems like quitting your job might have been a smart financial decision.

The Post does have millions of subscribers.

And when you work there, your cartoons were seen by people who disagreed with their message.

Do you grapple with that tension?

I was just asked, Allison.

Yeah, it's absolutely.

It was a surprise that I could actually make a living doing this.

But, you know, I also had the benefit of having a cartoon go viral.

I have a lot of colleagues on Substack and I think they're doing okay, but I don't really really know if it's a viable way to make a living.

It is a platform.

You know, I've been through various platforms.

Twitter used to be my home.

You know, obviously it's not anymore.

You know, so I'm not, I'm waiting to see how this works out.

I think right now it's fine.

I do not invite comments.

I don't open my comments.

It's the one thing I give my paid subscriber.

I figure they get to talk.

You know, I have enough.

trouble dealing with people that find me elsewhere.

So that's the only thing that I really do different in terms of limiting my audience.

I'm kind of with Allison.

I don't really know how you bridge this.

And I'm not trying through my cartoons.

I'm just speaking what I believe.

And, you know, that's all we can do.

You know, I'm not here to fix the country's problems.

I think that's a big, deep-seated problem.

I mean, I,

you know, I have all these plans to do long form pieces that are going to explain why we are where we are.

Because I've been doing this.

I've been doing editorial cartoons from the early 90s,

published ones.

And, you know, things started then.

If you remember all the way back, you know, we had the religious right and, you know, the Ralph Reeds and all that.

And we had the so-called moderate Republicans not speaking out.

And they're still not speaking out.

And, you know, we are where we are because of things like that.

So right now, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, seem like they're getting their cake.

And I haven't seen seen this episode yet.

The new one is great.

The tech moguls, speaking, you should watch that, Ann, because it's all the tech moguls sucking on.

Okay, I've only heard of it.

I haven't seen it.

Yes, it's quite good.

They were in a recorded $1.5 billion deal with Paramount, and they mocked Trump's alleged micropenis.

Again, they're back with a micropenis this episode.

Christy Noam's plastic surgery, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg's bribes.

Their sense of humor is very sharp-edged, often mean-spirited.

It's very funny much of the time.

In this case, they're really punching up.

It's not always that way.

What do you think about this,

right now, them being at the center of sort of the Trump pushback, which is interesting?

Because I never thought of them as having any side, just like they just punch everywhere.

Do you think it affects things, this satire?

Allison, you start and then Ann.

You know, I don't, who is the audience for South Park?

Is it mostly young men?

Yes.

If it is, then fantastic.

They need to see this.

I

only have watched Sporadic episodes.

I don't really have a sense of what it's like or the characters or anything.

But I say more power to them.

It's fantastic.

I mean,

it's like they, maybe this is their, like they have so much power and influence and money that they don't care at this point.

I mean, that's a wonderful use of use of it.

I'm like Allison.

I don't follow it all the time.

I've only seen sporadic stuff.

But yeah, good for them.

They were at Comic-Con in San Diego and they basically said when somebody asked them first about that first episode uh they said oh we're really sorry a very sarcastic voice i thought oh good for you

i mean the only criticism i have of them is their christy gnome is not mean enough not mean enough she does show puppies and i need to i need to show them how to draw her because her oh what would you do they had her face melt off you don't think it's quite mean

she needs bigger lips and bigger hair and bigger everything yeah yeah i don't know her face melted off and wandered away for a minute

But Allison is right.

You know, more power to them.

I mean, I'm glad they feel that they can do this.

Does that have more impact?

Because this is speaking of cartooning and cartoons and this kind of thing than writing long articles in the Atlantic or

I think that's still probably true.

I mean, that's my own excuse for continuing to do it.

Like I'm

it's just true that people are reading less and less.

And if you can find a way to draw them in and get them to read and, you know, read something substantive, even though it's got silly drawings connected to it, I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, I think it, I think, like she said, it's, it's, you know, something that maybe people will follow up and read something afterwards.

But, you know, image, I mean, it's pretty simple.

Cartoons are images.

Everyone likes to look at cartoons.

It's not just a...

can you read or can you not read it's you know the rich the poor everyone like to look at cartoons and they can be impacted by them like thomas nast or her block oh yeah i was thinking of thomas nast like here's the thing, though.

Our culture is so saturated with images that it's hard to have the impact of Thomas Nast who took down Tammany Hall with his caricatures.

Like, I don't know if that can happen anymore because there's so much competition for our eyeballs.

Yeah.

Because at the time, they didn't use photographs in newspapers.

They basically put that editorial cartoon on the front page.

Right.

And that's actually how he was

apprehended and jailed, by the way, is because somebody recognized him from the caricature.

i didn't know that that's great

so yeah it's i but i just think i agree there is a lot out there and you know there's always the competition for eyeballs but you know as i said we're the image people we're not the words people i think that's where and we can reach you know across countries now with you know the internet we can go all over the place which of course creates problems sometimes but But yeah, it's, I just think, and cartoons, everybody loves to look at cartoons.

They do.

I do think they, I would say South Park is going to have more impact than any hundred articles in any of these newspapers, but we'll see.

We'll be back in a minute.

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Let's pivot a little bit and talk about freedom of speech.

After Permanent announced it was canceling the Colbert Shoe, and you drew a cartoon of a court jester hanging limp from a noose.

You said in an interview, it's not a great leap to go from editorial cartoonists being silenced through threats to regular people being reported and questioned about their political beliefs and doing something innocuous as making fun of a politician.

Do you think we're headed in that direction?

And what would you do if you felt like your freedom of expression was under threat?

Obviously, you were able to quit the Washington Post, which is a dramatic thing to have to do.

But talk a little bit about this.

Yeah, I do believe that it's not a big leap to go from, you know, satirists, not just cartoonists, but satirists in general, stand-up comedians, you know, being silenced through either their,

you know, the the businesses that support them, you know, or just by people threatening them, you know, and self-censoring.

And I think that's where the danger is going.

I think eventually, I mean, we've seen it happen.

You don't have, I mean, we're all older, but, you know, it happened in East Germany.

People were talking, you know, were reporting on neighbors, you know, for saying things they didn't think they should be saying.

So I could see that happening.

Yeah.

Look how, look how much has happened in the eight months since he's become president.

So, yeah,

I think it's a valid threat.

Yeah.

So, Allison, your book, Fun Home, has been targeted by various book bans because of its LGBTQ themes.

I mean, completely in spent, the fictional Allison moderates a banned books panel and has a sister who's going, quote, full Hitler as a member of Liberty Moms, which is a very thinly veiled reference to parents' rights/slash book banning group Moms for Liberty.

Why do you think real-life conservative parents are so worried about books will turn their kids gay or what happens when gay kids can't read books

alternately that don't reflect on their experiences?

I know they still become gay because I didn't read a lot of books that reflected on my experience, but they still still.

It's crazy.

I don't, I don't know.

I have a feeling, although I don't have proof for this, that that whole movement was not at all grassroots, but was engineered from the top down by someone somewhere,

because it's just ridiculous.

But yeah, and I mean, it's ridiculous and it's very dangerous.

They don't like books with LGBTQ characters.

They don't like books with people of color who are protagonists.

And of course, it's not the stories, it's the people themselves that they're trying to ban.

That's the ultimate message.

They don't want gay people.

They want adorable gay people, I guess, if they want you to do that.

They don't.

So it just feels incredibly clumsy and brutal and crazy.

And

are they that stupid or are they that deliberate and mean?

I can't tell.

Talk about the experience.

I mean, it definitely feels like you were astroturfed, as they say.

But did it have a real impact on your book sales?

I don't think so.

I mean,

some people say, oh, well, at least you sold some books, but I don't think that has a huge impact on anyone, you know, getting censored here or there.

It certainly puts you in the conversation.

I feel like the book has gotten a lot more attention than it would have if no one was trying to ban it.

But Allison, just real quick, how did you feel personally?

Because

I find book banning chilling.

I just, I think think just because of the historical

banning.

How did you feel personally when one of your books was being banned?

Because

I almost don't like to talk about it because I don't want to give anyone the satisfaction.

But of course, it's terribly painful.

It's painful and it pisses me off.

Like

my book is a memoir about my real life and people describe it as pornographic.

Like, you can't call my life pornographic.

I mean, which is essentially what they're doing.

And that's just, it just makes me crazy.

Especially because at least

at least in one of these cases, the man who brought my book to the school board meeting with the giant blown-up pictures of the one sex scene in the book was like arrested for child molestation a few weeks later.

But when you, when that happens to you, is it?

I mean, have you ever met people who think that and talked to them?

I haven't.

And I, you know, if I had more time and more like

personal strength,

I would go there.

Dave Eggers organized a trip to somewhere, South Dakota, somewhere, where his book and my book were both being banned.

And he said, do you want to go?

Let's do it.

And I just, I didn't, I didn't want to do it.

I didn't want to put my resources into that.

Partly because I really didn't have time, but I didn't want to expose myself to that anger.

And it was very impressed to me that he did it you know that was a wonderful

you know

ally kind of thing to do that he could as a white man white straight man like i think in some ways it was easier for him to do i don't know maybe maybe not but i was very grateful that he did that and and he had some very meaningful interesting conversations with people he probably did he probably did have you tried that ian with people who didn't like your drunk cartoons or oh yeah i mean just through email you know because um yeah I actually have had good conversations with conservatives, but this is all prior MAGA stuff.

You know, this was a while back.

I mean, I, you know, and I have no problem.

I think, I think for me, it's just the time element.

It's really kind of hard to put aside so much time when you're working to have these back and forth.

Nowadays, I just get trolls.

I get a ton of trolls.

And they just say terrible things.

They just say shitty stuff and they pop up once in a while.

And, you know.

But, you know, the thing about Allison's experience, I think it's

important on two different levels.

Is one, obviously, you know, the banning of the book, which I think is horrific historically, as we all know, what who who else banned and burned books.

But on another level, it's also an attack against free speech because you're silencing voices, you know, and if you're banning these books and nobody has exposure to

a different opinion or, you know, just your fellow man that you know nothing about,

fellow human being, excuse me,

then that's dangerous.

That's dangerous on a lot of different levels.

And I think the book banning is, I mean, I don't have children, so

I'm not coming at it from that point of view.

But

I just don't understand how it kind of goes back to the way I think about free speech.

If you don't know what you're arguing about,

then how can you argue?

I think that's fair.

I think they think that the exposure is the issue, right?

The exposure to the idea.

And it doesn't, of course, it doesn't care about it.

It doesn't.

And it's the same thing with the Danish cartoonist.

You know, there were no American newspapers, I think, except maybe one or two that actually printed those cartoons that everybody was having a big old fit about.

How do you discuss it?

How do you sit there and argue what is appropriate and what isn't if you can't see them?

You're talking about the cartoons that depicted Muhammad.

Muhammad, yes,

I think they just do that.

I mean, I've had people, I do talk to these people all the time.

They end up as fans.

That's how I

get new fans because I talk to them.

And I think they just desperately need to be talked to, you know, in some weird way.

But

I have a lot of kids.

And one I had one right-wing person saying to me, You people make gay people.

I said, I make straight people.

Like, I think not unable to make gay people, but you make all the gay people, not me.

Like, I can't I can give them so many visits to, you know, Lucretia Mott's home and it just doesn't work.

And trust me, my ex-wife used to take them always to the suffragette museum and they're very straight.

No matter how much we try.

We don't try at all.

We don't care.

But one of the things you were both inspired to make your art by your experiences as women in a male-dominated society in the tech world, content moderation is supposed to make the internet and social media less toxic.

for women and minorities.

But conservatives and the tech people themselves successfully undone all these efforts at content moderation.

Talk about the importance to balance free speech and the right to be free and harassment online, because there is something to say, is like, as you just were noting, Anne, let it all out.

And Ann, you've written about how your Twitter feed was flooded with online harassment and death threats.

In 2016, after the Post published a cartoon of yours criticizing Ted Cruz for having his young child read a political attack ad.

So let's hear from you on this one.

So first of all, I mean, I have editorial cartoons are very used to getting criticism.

I mean, mean, it all started with, you know,

letters and calls to the editors, and then we went into emails.

But boy, once we had the internet access, I have never received so much misogynistic crap as I have actually over that cartoon, the Ted Cruz cartoon.

Having said that, I do think that it's better to let these idiots talk.

When the Ted Cruz thing happened, I was still working for the Post.

I didn't respond.

I see that differently now.

I respond.

I also let my readers respond.

So I have found that all I do is I just repost what people are sending to me and I say, have at it.

And, you know, it's sort of like.

That's great.

Yeah, I think it's a very good way of doing it because I think that rather than trying to shut people up, because the one thing that I have a problem with about

limiting content is who decides that?

You know what I mean?

It's like, I did a long form piece about, you know, especially after Charlie Ebdo, when the conversation went from, you know, just sweet Charlie to wait a minute, you know, they shouldn't be doing that.

Those kind of cartoons.

Who decides what is the red line?

You know, so I guess I'm a little bit more on the side that let the idiots talk, but that doesn't mean you can't challenge them.

As long as somebody isn't threatening to kill you, that's different.

You start talking about killing me, then yes, you should be.

Because it's happened, especially with cartoonists.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm kind of of that.

I mean, Allison, I don't know how do you feel differently.

Let me note, Allison has spent your alter ego worries about political violence and you yearn to learn how to shoot a gun in order to protect yourself from the proud boys.

Censorship can come in many forms, and fear is obviously one of them.

Governments aren't the only ones that target artists, so do vigilantes.

How do you think about censorship in that context?

And how much do you personally worry about political violence?

You may not be speaking through this person, but you kind of are in a way.

I don't feel consumed by that anxiety, but I certainly it's running

in my background all the time.

I mean, there's so many guns floating around this country, and who's got most of them?

You know, it's a little frightening.

But,

you know,

I miss the old internet.

I had such a wonderful community of readers back in the, like the aughts when I had a blog, like a blog and people would just log on and make comments.

And I didn't have to moderate it because there was no trolls there.

I mean, eventually they came and then I had to stop and then everything got so shitty after Gamergate and I was then I was really out.

But I miss, you know, that good aspect of the internet, which is now a thing of the past absolutely but when why does this character want to shoot a gun i i mean i have a lot of friends who had when i read it i was like so i just had a friend send me a picture who is a liberal shooting an ak-47 it looked like and i was like oh don't get a gun please don't get a gun and at the same time i thought about it i'm like oh well i you know to research that scene i i

tried shooting a gun.

It's it's actually my my partner's brother is a has a lot of guns and he agreed to take me shooting and brought his Glock.

And it was like, at first, it was just this abstract idea, but then we were really doing it.

We were going into this shooting range with all these guys.

And then I was holding this lethal weapon and it kicked like mad.

I never felt anything like the jolt that went through my body.

And it just scared the shit out of me.

Like, I am not messing with this.

But I, but it was, I feel glad that I tried it, you know, just to get a sense of it.

But

yeah, you, you

study war, you get war.

So I don't need to learn to shoot.

You don't need to learn to shoot.

So you didn't, it's not the real Allison's not going to yearn to shoot a gun to protect herself.

No, but we do have a 22

for

scaring the bears.

FYI.

It's here sitting there.

Yeah.

Just anyone, just so you know.

We'll be back in a minute.

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AI can be so open-ended, it's hard to know for the average person what it's good for.

And if you ask me, I don't think big tech is is doing such a great job at explaining that either.

So, this week, on a special episode of The Vergecast, Verge staffers talk about how they've used AI in their everyday lives.

That's everything from planning a move, helping their kids fall asleep, and we even found someone who's actually been vibe coding.

What's helpful?

What doesn't work?

We get into all of that and more, and that's this week on The Vergecast.

This episode is presented by Salesforce.

Let's end up talking about something that is a bit more uplifting than gun shooting, the art itself.

Every episode, we get an expert to send us a question.

So let's hear yours.

Hey, it's Hannah Rosen from Radio Atlantic of The Atlantic magazine.

Hi, Allison.

Hi, Anne.

So this is a switch places kind of question.

Allison, to you.

Is there any public official, politician, someone out there who you look at and you're like, oh, I would love to draw that person.

I have the exact image image in my head of how I would do it.

And then Anne, to you, I have the opposite question, which is, do you ever think, oh, I'm going to do a kind of graphic memoir now, now that my life has taken this turn, that's really internal and about my life and my experiences and draw something in that style?

That's my question.

Thank you, Anna.

Allison, you first.

Well, I'm going to have to go with Christy Noam after hearing Anne's story about her face.

You know, I think this whole like Republican

ultra-femininity is such an interesting trend, and it would be fun to try and find a way to represent that that sort of showed through it, you know?

What would be the image in your head, how you would do it?

Where would you start with part of the face?

I guess it would have to be the hair, which will be challenging for me because I have a hard time drawing long hair, but I will

learn to do it.

Why do you have a hard time drawing long hair?

Because it moves and stuff.

Like it takes a shape that's different from the head.

I don't know.

Yeah.

So the hair, you'd start with the hair.

The extensions.

Let me correct you.

Thank you.

All right.

What about you, Anne?

Yes, I have actually thought about it.

Editorial cartoonists don't tend to do personal stuff in their work, obviously, because we're dealing with policies and you know, political issues.

But, you know, I've lived long enough now that maybe I would.

I mean, it's, I have to say, I'm very, I admire the fact that Allison can do these long form.

I mean, that's a lot of work, you know,

I mean, years sometimes people take.

But yeah, I've thought about it.

I mean, I, I've created before during COVID, I created an idea for a COVID-related, but human story as an animated short, which of course nobody was interested in because nobody wanted to talk about COVID.

But yeah, I do try to,

I would like to do some more personal work.

Unfortunately, I was going to do that full time until Trump became president again.

And then I thought, I have to do this again.

So it might just take a little longer.

And you feel like you have to do this now, the Trump started.

I do.

I do.

I feel like as an editorial cartoonist, I can't just stop.

Right.

He definitely has a lot of content.

He gives you a lot of content every week.

All right.

Let's give something different to each of you.

You guys have been great asking each other questions, actually.

You're both experts in your field.

Allison, I'd love to hear what question you might have for Anne.

Um, I feel like we've already asked all my questions.

Um, I have something that we could discuss a little, okay.

Anne, let's hear your question for Allison.

Yeah, okay, because

um,

since you do create such personal art, how do you feel about AI

and art?

Because it's all about you, right?

It's not

the, it's not, it's, it's, it has to be your experience, it has to be how you you feel,

what you've done in your life.

It's not just about prompts, right?

So tell me what you think about AI.

Just as follows, generative AI is making it easier for someone with no artistic abilities to draw, etc.

And some of it's called AI slot, but it's going to get better, Alison.

Yeah.

It's funny because I actually am teaching comics right now, and I have to put my little statement on my class website about plagiarism and stuff.

And now I have to say, please don't use AI to make your drawings.

I mean, AI can't yet draw in their sketchbooks that I'm aware of, but

they can certainly use AI to generate sketches that they can then draw from.

And I just feel like that is,

you know, maybe fun to play with a little bit, but do not become reliant on it because you'll just lose that neural capacity to make drawings once you start relying on the computer, just as you can lose it for finding your way in the world if you only use a GPS.

Maps.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just gave my sons a map lesson.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah.

It's so important.

People are losing whole quadrants of their brains.

So would you read a graphic novel or editorial cartoon from someone who used AI to make drawings and couldn't actually draw themselves if they were expressive?

I would look at it, but I can't imagine it would be expressive, you know, because it's got to express

one person's self and it wouldn't be doing that.

And it's not just the whole personal part of your work.

It's also, you know, art is something that you have to learn.

I mean, you have to learn.

If you really do want to draw well and compose well, it's something you learn in school.

I mean, we had at CalArts, we had basic classes even before they let us animate a thing, you know, and that was before computers.

You know, I see now them putting people on computers, you know, in their first year, which I think is crazy, because you have to learn the fundamentals, frankly, in order to do anything like that.

And I'm with Ellison.

I think you're kind of losing.

I mean,

doing art is a constant thing.

You have to keep working at it.

I mean, I still take life drawing classes because I want to keep my skills up.

Wow.

That's impressive.

Well, it's just, it's so invigorating.

I love it.

I mean, I'm just,

I just, I think it's great.

And

it shows in your, in your work, in your figure, the figures are so amazing.

Yeah.

Well, it's the love of drawing you want to do a good you know you want to do a really good yeah you want to you if you don't want to do the drawing you shouldn't be a cartoonist exactly and have you ever have you ever asked AI to generate a telnais cartoon no but I've seen them and it's like really that's not my story really tell me what tell me what did you see what did they do oh it was like you know obviously what the AI used was the fact that in my earlier work I used a pen and brush I'm sorry a brush and ink so it's very clean lines, kind of Hirschfeld-like, you know, that was my earlier work.

So, what they did is they created this, this piece of art that had very clean lines and, you know, women that were like

profile and black and white.

And I'm like, well, I'm not even close.

So, yeah, it's just, it's, and it's lazy.

It's cheating.

I always say it's theft.

when you're using AI because it's coming from somewhere.

It's coming from another artist.

Right.

Somewhere.

Have you seen yours, Allison?

No, I have never asked that question and I don't think I ever will.

No, then I'll do it for you.

I did it.

I actually did it one year when I was writing my book and it was terrible.

And I then did it for the paperback and it was so much better and it was quite close, I would have to say.

I think text is easier, right?

In some ways.

And that leaves me to two more questions.

I'd love to

talk about some of the artistic choices you're making.

For example, why you switched to digital drawings halfway through the book, Allison, or why you use watercolors to draw Trump Ann.

Ann, you go first and then Allison.

Yeah, like I said, in my earlier work, when I first started editorial cartooning, I was using a brush and ink.

And the reason for that was because I...

I started out doing cartoons cross-hatching like every other single editorial cartoonist did in the old days.

And I realized I couldn't do them fast.

And you have to work fast.

You know, Allison mentioned that you're always, you got to do these things fast.

Every day, you got to do a new one.

And I discovered, well, you know, I knew how to to use a brush and ink because I had done licensing art for Warner Brothers, as a matter of fact.

And I was really good at it and fast.

So that's why I use that.

So that's where the look came, right?

But once Trump got into office, I just,

I don't know, I had to change.

I had been doing a little digital color because of the animated pieces.

You know, I still drew by hand the line art and scan it in.

But, you know, because there's so many drawings in animation, I use digital color, which I use it pretty sparingly, so it's not like oversaturated.

But,

but yeah, so I just thought, you know, just the way he's behaving and the way his administration is going, I needed to just kind of scribble it out.

So I switched.

I went to Prisma Pencil, which is very soft pencil.

You can grip.

And watercolors was so immediate.

And I don't know how to use watercolors, frankly.

And it'll just go off on its own.

So you can't control it very well.

So, it just seemed to be the right way to do Trump.

Watercolors, so funny, it's such an interesting choice.

But go ahead.

Are you saying you used the pencils, like watercolor pencils or actual watercolors?

No, no, I used for my line instead of the brush and ink, I used a prisma color, black, soft pencil, so scribbles, not a one-line all the time, right?

And then for the color, I just went to real,

real watercolors.

So, I don't even do, except for scanning it in to get it ready to go and correct spelling mistakes, which I always seem to be doing.

Then that's all I do on the computer now.

What about you, Allison?

Well, I, as you say, I did make a very big switch from drawing on paper with a steel nib to drawing digitally.

Tip of the nib, right?

What do you say?

Yeah, that's right.

Yes, I would often give tips of the nib to people who like gave me ideas.

Now, I guess I can't do that.

Tip of the stylus, I guess, doesn't have quite the same ring.

But yes, halfway through this, my newest book spent,

I was falling behind in my deadline.

And I realized how much faster digital drawing could be where I'm making my sketches on a tablet.

And it's very easy to layer stuff, bring in drawing references, do it all in one place instead of having to scan things and resize them all the time.

And it was so much faster,

but lacks the beautiful line quality that I used to have.

Now I just have this kind of, you can see it if you look closely in the book.

We go from a nice, very smooth line to a kind of rough, crappy-looking line.

Didn't notice.

Yeah, most people won't notice.

And Anne, actually, this is the thing I was going to say to you.

Like, I feel like our actual drawings often don't get a lot of attention.

It's the content that people always are responding to.

There's often not much of an aesthetic discussion of our drawings.

I mean, I find that in my stuff.

I don't know if you feel that too.

I occasionally have people who obviously geeky readers that kind of notice certain things.

The one thing that I've noticed always, it seems like my worst drawings are always the one that go viral.

You know, it's never that beautiful drawing you're talking about that goes viral.

It's always those horrendous sketches of tech titans on their knee.

But you did depict them rather well, I have to tell you.

You really did.

If they had given me a chance to do the final.

Oh, it wasn't the final.

Oh, I didn't realize.

No, no, no.

That's only a rough that goes to the editor for approval to go to final.

I will tell you, what a puts move on his part.

Allison, I'm sorry, you were finishing up with digital.

So you like doing it this way, correct?

I kind of do.

I mean, you can say you don't like the typewriter anymore and you like the computer.

Yeah,

you don't have to grapple with gravity or humidity, all the things that are constantly affecting the drawing process.

But

there's slightly less soul in it.

I'd like to find some kind of compromise between maybe digital sketching and then actual drawing with a pen again, but I haven't figured that out yet.

Well, neither of you churns your butter anymore, so it's okay.

So last question, spent ends.

And a spoiler for listeners, I'm about to say how it ends with Allison emerging from our existential crisis and realizing you have to live one day at a time and that community is still what really matters.

And your work is non-narrative.

It has no end.

And as a journalist covering Trump, you never know what fresh horror awaits you every day.

So where are your heads right now?

How do you feel about the ability of America's artists in general and yourselves in particular to chronicle and examine our current reality?

And you start and then Allison finish up.

Where's my head?

Just above water, I suppose.

You know, I'm just hanging on.

I did that in his first administration.

This one seems a little bit more urgent, obviously, because of the democracy issue.

I'm just kind of just plowing ahead and trying to keep up.

I think editorial cartoonists are just doing that, frankly.

I don't think anybody has a plan.

And you just take what happens every day.

We have to.

That's what we deal with every day.

Right.

Is there anything that animates you right now, in particular, of all the various horrors that he unleashes?

Oh, you know, I think because

we're artists, this whole cultural Smithsonian

Kennedy Center stuff,

this is so horrifying to me.

It's like it's the same level as book banning.

It's like, I mean, I've read, I've gone back and read a lot about, you know, the Nazis and how they control the German people.

And, you know, that's what they did.

They took over things.

And I see it.

And the depictions of Jewish people as animals and stuff was all artistic because Hitler himself was an artist.

Yeah, not just that, but also just the whole, you know, you know, the degenerative art stuff.

You know, there were all kinds of people, artists that were banned and forced to leave and arrested because of just different art, you know, just doing it differently than what they saw as German.

proper art.

And I just am horrified by this because it's continuing.

I mean, it's hilarious on one level because

his style and his tastes are basically low-level Las Vegas.

But

it's horrifying

on another level.

A friend of mine was just joking that next Baron Trump will be appointed to the Pulitzer Committee.

I mean, I think you're absolutely right.

I think this idea of

slavery being not as bad,

or maybe how bad,

don't focus too much on how bad slavery was.

It's a shocking thing for him to have written, but not because it's him, right?

On some level.

Well, I personally miss

the

quick turnaround time that I had when I used to write a bi-weekly comic, sort of still nothing like a daily thing,

when I could really comment on what was happening.

I don't have the

chops to do that anymore, but I would like to continue this.

world that I've set up and spent.

I'd love to do a sequel and show all these characters living through this current moment.

I was trying to think, could I put it out serially in little segments?

And maybe that's a possibility.

But

so far, I think I'm just going to try to

tell another long story.

I really appreciate this.

I love your interaction together too.

I knew this would work out.

Yeah, this was so fun, and I'm so happy I got to meet you.

Yeah, I'm really glad to meet you.

I hope we can, I hope we can like talk again soon.

That would be great.

Anyway, you're both both doing a great service.

Absolutely.

Even though you think you're, you know,

I think you do know, but you won't, you do.

Just so you know, I'm telling you that.

Thank you, Kara.

Thanks for having us.

All right.

Thank you.

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Rousselle, Kateri Yoakum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch.

Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester.

Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already fond of the show, Allison doesn't need to buy a gun.

If not, get ready for Ann's version of Christy Gnome.

Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Karis Wisher and hit follow.

Thanks for listening to On with Karis Wisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

We'll be back on Thursday with more.