Steve Benson for August 05, 2016

Any pity I have is negated by his attempting to destroy our country.

Yosemite Sam was sane compared to Tiny Hands Trump.

He’s the Manna Man!

The GOP is trying to reassure a distressed country with Trump as a nominee that it loves crying candidates running for president, don’t worry. “I love babies. I hear that Trump cry, I like it” – Ryan “What a baby. What a beautiful Trump baby. Don’t worry, don’t worry. The GOP is running around, like, don’t worry about it, you know. He has no experience and he’s beautiful and healthy and that’s what we want.” – Pence“Actually we were kidding, you can get the baby out of here, I think he really believed us that we love having Trump crying while we are trying to win the white house. That’s OK. the American people don’t understand. That’s OK” – The GOP

Trump is the biggest whiner I have ever seen.

Since you can’t handle Cartoons, Radical Muslim Terrorism is the least of your worries.

A baby that should be taken to Phoenix and left in a locked car on a parking lot. Can’t be any worse than the hot air he’s been blowing on everyone for over a year.

Trump’s action was against the mother. She’s supposed to be home, knitting by the kitchen fire while she turns the spit with one of her bare feet, according to the gut crowd..(“Action” here means talking. It’s Trump.)

Obviously the baby had more smarts than mom. It wanted to get her out of there.

You got bit by the Bundyitis tick and sought out any venue where you think you can spread the infection..Why you chose to burrow your way into a cartooning website is beyond me, but thanks for all your cartoonable fanatical fodder.

And may I add that you can’t prove I’m a troll because . . . . . I’m not..There, that was simple enough..I’ve been a professional editorial cartoonist with the Arizona Republic over the better part of my 36-year career. .The operators of this website can vouch for my creds in that regard. Gocomics has a contact process accessible through its home page. Show some personal initiative and use it. Ask for Steve Melvin to help you verify that, yes, me and that Steve Benson dude are, in fact, the same guy..You can also contact me at my openly-available downtown Phoenix office number: 602-444-4407; as well as via my publicly-provided work email addy: steve.benson@arizonarepublic.com, where I’ll be happy to walk you through the basic ID details since you’re the one who brought up this guess-who thing in the first place..With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, talk about being screwed up: You know as much about editorial cartooning as you do about the U.S. Constitution and the Declsrstion of Independence—-which ain’t much..But cartoonists muchly appreciate your unintended humor (especially those of us who were poli sci majors and/or have done stand-up comedy)..You’re like a downsized Trump huckstering his stuff on the local carnival circuit. .How does it feel to have been piñata-ed by a dastardly doodler who knows low-hanging fruit when he sees it?.Please, please, please run for public office. You would provide a bottomless pit of material for us gleefully wicked satirists. :)

Steve, I wish more cartoonists participated in these exchanges.

To call me a troll without cited evidence is a sophomoric, unprofessional, fact-barren insult on your part..

The fact that you will not phone me—despite me having provided both my office phone number and email addy (where I can directly verify authorship) is part and parcel of your conspiracy-clouded mindset that has evidenced itself in your nutty notions of Bundyitis “sovereignty.” .

Apparently you think that your views are comical enough to be believed by cartoonists..

GONG! .

Wake up and smell the coffee. .

By the way, I personally know the cartoonist you invoke in your defense, Ted Rall—have for years—and regularly see him at our annual national conventions of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (of which I have been president)..I find it curious that you would attempt to coach his name into your corner, given that Ted—contrary to your claim—does quite a bit more than “tap a few words to his readers but . . . never resorts to insults [and] name-calling . . .”

Your assertion in that regard is not backed by the facts..Case in point:.Ted derisively referred to grieving spouses of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers as “Terror Widows,” and caught holy hell for it (including from many of his colleagues)..May I suggest you do some requisite reading on this episode—one that. years later, is still generating controversy..Here’s a copy of the cartoon, along with attached comments:.http://cellar.org/iotd.php?threadid=1161

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Below is more on that some cartoon, from the UK Guardian:.

“New York Times Cartoon Mocked September 11 Widows”.by Lisa O’Carroll7 March 2002.“The New York Times was forced to withdraw an online cartoon that ridiculed the widows of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks as greedy and shallow..“Ted Rall’s drawing, “Terror Widows,” was removed from the newspaper’s website after relatives of those killed in the World Trade Center disaster expressed their outrage..““All I can say to these people is, ‘Shame on you’,” said Jenny Farrell, whose brother, James, died in the Twin Towers..“They really crossed the line of decency” he told the Daily News in New York..“In one frame, a widow with a pile of money in her lap tells a newsman she still mourns her lost husband.".“Fortunately, the $3.2 million I collected from the Red Cross keeps me warm at night,” she says..“Another frame shows a widow flippantly mentioning that her husband was on fire when he called her from the World Trade Center – then complimenting a news host on his tie..“Widow Nicole Petrocelli said she was “overwhelmingly upset and saddened” by the cartoon..““No one wants the money,” she said. “All we want is five minutes to say goodbye to our husbands.”.“The cartoon was fed directly to the Times’ website yesterday morning by the Universal Press Syndicate, the newspaper said.

.“Editors pulled the cartoon after receiving calls from reporters..“We thought the subject matter was inappropriate,” said Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman for the newspaper..“Rall, 38, is one of most syndicated cartoonists in America – his work appears in nearly 100 papers nationwide, including the New York Times and the Star-Ledger of Newark, and he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1996.”.https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/mar/07/pressandpublishing.terrorismandthemedia.And whether you agree with Rall or not, he has never apologized for that cartoon; in fact, he has done quite the opposite. Ted strongly defended the cartoon, as quoted in a website review harshly critical of him:.“. . . [I] n his famous ‘Terror Widows’ cartoon, Rall tried to call attention to the apparent hypocrisy of particular women, like Lisa Beamer, who parleyed the death of her spouse on 9/11 into lucrative media exposure. This is certainly explosive material, and Rall might have gotten flack for it anyway. The clincher, though, was that he never mentioned Beamer, or anyone else, by name. Instead, the cartoon reads as a vicious and arbitrary attack on anyone who lost a loved one on 9/11. In his introduction to this book, Rall acknowledges that he “should have referenced the original media whoring that had inspired the cartoon more carefully.” But he refuses to apologize, on the probably true but nonetheless irrelevant grounds that while “Terror Widows wasn’t my best work, . . . it was far from my worst.””.http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2007/10/ted-rall-not-mean-just-dumb/_____.Rall as a character witness for you? Well, he’s quite a character and I do like the guy..

I just think you should have done more and better research before you resorted to using him in an effort to bolster your position. It bombed.

Great Cartoon – thanks!