Daryl Cagle: Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle, and this is the CagleCast, where we're all about
political cartoons, and I'm pleased to introduce, Taylor Jones and Ed Wexler,
they're going to show you a bunch of great art along with, some, excellent
Trump bashing cartoons because, We all have the passion for bashing the Trump.
Ed Wexler was an Emmy nominated creative director at Disney
television animation for 30 years.
He was also a regular cartoonist and illustrator for US News and World Report.
And he has drawn the covers for the Hollywood Reporter's Emmy and
Academy Awards issues for many years.
Ed, here's your felon.
Ed Wexler: Felon.
yeah, it was fun, uh, creating this little alphabet.
This little Trump alphabet.
Daryl Cagle: Have you done the whole alphabet?
Ed Wexler: No, but I, I'm only missing a handful of consonants.
Daryl Cagle: Maybe you should just do the whole alphabet
so you have the whole thing.
Ed Wexler: I more or less do.
I more or less do.
So I don't think, I don't think I have a G.
And I don't think I have a W for example,
Daryl Cagle: well, you've got hush money.
Ed Wexler: Yeah,
Daryl Cagle: this is looking good
Ed Wexler: know, I found there was a question of readability, when
the words get too long It's hard to read it's hard to understand
What what they're spelling out?
Daryl Cagle: So have you thought about doing?
dirty words or symbols for like comicana bad words
Ed Wexler: No, it didn't it did not occur to me to do that
Taylor Jones: Ed, you've done a bunch of these and you've done, you've done them
for some other figures too, correct?
Or is it just
Ed Wexler: letters that spell things?
I don't think so.
Taylor Jones: Well, does this date back, uh, I mean, how many would you say
you've done of Trump as the alphabet man?
Ed Wexler: I remember there were four or five of them, Daryl.
Taylor Jones: Does this date back to
Daryl Cagle: Well, here you've got fraud.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
I think that may have been the first one I did.
One of the first
Daryl Cagle: Fraud was the first one?
Ed Wexler: It could have been.
I like the vile toxic liar.
That's good.
That's excellent.
Thanks.
You know, in my mind is very Push Pin.
My influence, my early influences were Push Pin Studios.
Daryl Cagle: How is this, Pushpin Studios?
Ed Wexler: how is it my influence?
Daryl Cagle: Well, how is that influence showing in this work?
I, I'm I'm just,
Ed Wexler: the playfulness of the technology
Daryl Cagle: Pushpin Studios is, is what, Milton Glaser and,
Ed Wexler: Seymour Chwast
Daryl Cagle: Seymour Chwast Yeah Who, who are also very far, far apart stylistically
And there were some others, weren't there?
Ed Sorel
Yes
Ed Wexler: Was one of them
Daryl Cagle: Those guys are absolutely different
Ed Wexler: Yeah, they all went to Cooper, Cooper Union, where I went to school.
But the thing, the thing I was, the reason I brought that up was because,
uh, Chwast in particular was all about, uh, interesting typography.
And I, was thinking of him when I started doing these.
Daryl Cagle: So the commonality is that they're, illustratory graphic designers.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Yeah.
Taylor Jones: You know, Ed, when I see these, uh, your, your Trump alphabet,
man, I always think back to Tommy Tune, uh, song and dance man from the 60s,
and this was one of his staples because he was a very tall limber fellow,
and he could, he was very good at creating, himself as various letters.
Ed Wexler: I didn't, I know who he is, but I didn't know that he did letters.
I don't remember that.
Daryl Cagle: Well, you do have Trump moving around and looking energetic.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Yeah, it's almost like looking at a little Trumpy dance.
Daryl Cagle: Yeah.
Yeah.
Ed Wexler: yeah.
But, you know, it was a little strange because he's all different scales,
uh, to make these letters work.
You know, like for example, look how big he would be, you know,
for the, in the letter A, for, for example, you know, he's a giant.
Daryl Cagle: Yeah.
It's almost like you could do a, uh, Jules Feiffer thing and he could be
saying, I dance to the sun, I dance to the flowers like Jules Feiffer,
and he spells out vile, toxic liar.
That would be a funny cartoon.
Ed Wexler: That would be a funny one.
I did a, uh, a takeoff on him.
This is several years ago already, but You're right.
Maybe that's worth thinking about.
Taylor Jones: You
ever accidentally misspelled a Trump cartoon?
Ed Wexler: I'm, i'm no stranger to misspelling
Daryl Cagle: words in cartoons.
Boy misspellings are a curse on us that cartoonists are terrible spellers
And I brag about not killing cartoons But if you count the misspellings
I kill tons of cartoons every week.
I kill cartoons
Ed Wexler: My first misspelling was um who was the guy that the, uh,
Supreme Court, judge that likes beer, the one that likes beer Kavanaugh, I
spelled his name C A K A V E N A U G H.
And it was in the USA Today.
Remember that one, Daryl?
Daryl Cagle: I remember getting letters from editors about that
because we didn't catch it.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
I was the spelling champion of my public school, when I was in the sixth grade.
So there,
Taylor Jones: me too.
Well, not the whole
school.
I'm not in, in, in my sixth grade class, we were both on Long Island and
I was able to do it because I was the only one who could spell Khrushchev.
Ed Wexler: Oh.
Oh
Daryl Cagle: my goodness.
Ed Wexler: I won with the word colonel because I watched Hogan's Heroes,
. And the, and the LeBeau used to say
"colonel" Hello, Colonel, and it told me how to spell the word.
Daryl Cagle: Very good.
Hey, this one is wonderful.
This one, I expect, was after the E.
Jean Carroll second verdict for, what, 80 some million dollars.
Ed Wexler: I think you're
right.
I think you're right.
Daryl Cagle: And that's lovely.
And I love The cartoon trope.
we don't see that very often and you would think that we would.
Ed Wexler: You mean the device of a barrel?
Daryl Cagle: The barrel defining that he's broke and he's unhappy about going broke.
It's a very, depression era cartoon, and it's
wonderful.
Taylor Jones: You could have a bunch of them in barrels.
Giuliani in a barrel as well?
Daryl Cagle: Yeah, but With Trump, you know that he's so money focused
and it's his big issue and, Giuliani is just kind of mentally ill.
Ed Wexler: I
haven't seen a lot of Giuliani recently.
Daryl Cagle: I read about how much trouble they had serving him with
a subpoena on the last court case.
He's kind of hard to find, I think, purposefully so.
I thought this one was wonderful.
He's yelling, I did nothing wrong as he's falling off Trump Tower, of course.
Ed Wexler: I did nothing WROOOOOOONG
Daryl Cagle: Yeah, this is that WROOOOOOONG.
That's wonderful.
you know, he, said his apartment was so much bigger worth so
much more than it actually was.
And, I presume that's what this one is about as his, Trump
Tower House of Cards collapses.
Ed Wexler: this was a fun one to do.
It was a little tricky to have so many little shapes, lots
of lines and stuff like that.
And still.
be able to read what the heck's going on.
Taylor Jones: Well, you know, Ed, with your work, your animation
past always, shines through.
Ed Wexler: Thanks.
I spent, I spent a long time doing that stuff, it helps, it helps,
in staging and, action cartoons.
Daryl Cagle: Taylor, we have come to you.
I thought this was a lovely one.
Taylor Jones is a brilliant caricaturist.
He draws for the Hoover Digest at Stanford University.
He was the staff cartoonist for many years for the El Nuevo Dia newspaper in Puerto
Rico, and he drew for many years for U.
S.
News and World Report magazine also, and he's won a ton of awards.
Taylor, this is Trump looking at his 60 dollar Bible with,
Taylor Jones: he's sleeping.
Daryl Cagle: Stormy Daniels and Cohen and, um, Hope Hicks.
Right.
Ed Wexler: That's a wonderful
Hope Hicks.
Taylor Jones: Thank you, Ed.
Love it.
Daryl Cagle: It is.
Yeah,
Ed Wexler: the eyes are so good.
Eisers
was so good.
Taylor Jones: you know, she turned out a little more difficult than I thought.
Um, only because she's got that very small nose.
I, you know, I tell you, I would, I would like to see her without all the makeup.
She could do tutorials, I suppose.
TikTok tutorials on makeup applications, but I'd kind of like
to see her without all the makeup.
Daryl Cagle: I'm very impressed with her eyebrows.
I think those are kind of clownish.
I mean, they are so heavy and so darkly drawn.
It's like she does her eyebrows with a Sharpie.
Ed Wexler: Trump Sharpie.
Taylor Jones: He's actually, Trump is asleep there on
his Bible.
You know, somebody pointed it out to me.
Daryl Cagle: Oh, I see.
I see.
Taylor Jones: Somebody pointed out to me on Facebook, and I hadn't intended for
this, but, you know, in the, in the, the Bible, they've got the little divider.
And, of course, at least I remember Bibles growing up, they'd have them.
They'd either be red or green, and, or black, and, and something
so you could, keep your page.
And, when I posted that on Facebook, somebody, uh, commented that, oh,
you, you know, that was a nice twist giving it a, making it a forked tongue.
which hadn't been my intention, but, I said, well, thank, I, I appreciated that.
Ed Wexler: Oh, oh, I
see that now.
I, the, the, the bookmark was a fault.
Whoa, that's a happy little accident.
Daryl Cagle: So I thought this one was a good one.
This is, oh, Kanye West taking on his support of Trump.
Ed Wexler: You know, that's interesting that you, you make him, you started
doing, orangey reddish hair for Trump, because he's only started.
You know, he's mostly white or light yellow, but he's been
getting more into the oranges.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, well recently
that seems to happen with people who dye.
The dye just gets stronger and stronger
Ed Wexler: It's hard to mix the color every time.
Yeah
Daryl Cagle: You know, I I don't think he dyes his hair You know how old ladies
make their hair blue and they do that because their hair is looking kind of
orange Instead of being a nice clean gray Um, and uh, they want to they want to
gray it down by adding the compliment.
I think Trump just has yellowy gray hair.
Taylor Jones: Well, Daryl, I think you're right there.
Ed Wexler: I think it's white.
Taylor Jones: Well, I thought that Gary Trudeau had a great way to describe
Trump's hair, that it's a confection.
Ed Wexler: It's like cotton
candy.
Cotton candy.
Because you can't, you can't, if you see, when you see him on television,
you can't see where the hair starts and stops, and where his skin starts.
And he used to, he used to dye his eyebrows dark.
You know, the, Pictures of him and, um, Jeffrey, Epstein.
There's this one picture where they're ogling young girls
and he's got black eyebrows.
Who dyes their eyebrows?
Daryl Cagle: Here you've got Charlottesville.
he says, This has been going on for a long, long time.
That is just great.
I love the hair.
Taylor Jones: I've forgotten that one, Daryl.
Thanks for, uh, Resurrecting me.
Daryl Cagle: That's a great cartoon.
And, The hair is just lovely.
Taylor Jones: Well, let's hear it for Tiki Torches.
Ed Wexler: Tiki Torches, yeah, I'm seeing this.
Daryl Cagle: Here you have Trump with, Stormy Daniels.
She's singing, Happy lawsuit, Mr.
President.
Happy lawsuit to you, like Marilyn Monroe.
Unfortunately, I don't think newspapers printed this cartoon.
Taylor Jones: No?
Bloggers may have.
Daryl Cagle: I thought this was a great one here.
You got Biden family having picnic lunch and, Hunter Biden is just
the stinky skunk at the picnic.
And that's so funny.
Ed Wexler: I love the liver spots.
that's a good Kamala.
Taylor Jones: She's fun to caricature, you
know, apparently, uh, back when she was, maybe, the, the, I guess the district
attorney of San Francisco before she became attorney general of the state
and, apparently Michelle Obama, was sort of remarked that, that her husband
was, quite attracted to, Kamala.
but since then, you know, Kamala's sort of disappearing
into her neck, if you've noticed.
Ed Wexler: Of all the people sitting at the table, The one that
bothers me least is Hunter Biden, because I feel sorry for him.
I feel bad
for him too.
He's a drug
addict.
He's a, he's a, a screw up.
The stuff he's done has been stuff that he's suffered for and, he's an
albatross around dad's neck and I think
that's just kind of sad.
Taylor Jones: What do you think of his paint, of his artwork, if
you've seen some of his paintings?
Daryl Cagle: You know, he's not that bad.
I agree.
that kind of surprised me because I would have expected some kind of George W.
Bushy paintings that just make you cringe, but he's actually pretty
good.
Ed Wexler: How would you describe his paintings?
I haven't seen any.
Daryl Cagle: I think his paintings look like, uh, you're going to
University of California and you're an art major and you got a good grade.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, abstract expressionism, I guess.
But they're, but, you know, they're, they're not bad.
I, they're, uh, I saw in the New York Times the other day, they had
an article about his, uh, gallerist.
And, I mean, of course the prices are outrageous, but they really,
you know, I, I think I would've, I would've stopped in the gallery if I'd
been in Manhattan and taken a look.
Daryl Cagle: So, Trump crucified.
This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice.
Heck you nailed yourself up there.
You're still clutching the hammer his top secret documents and you know I
think he's just getting out of that.
He's essentially won that case with his crooked judge.
Ed Wexler: I
usually stay away from religious symbols in my cartoons Did
you get letters from this one
hate
mailing
personally?
Taylor Jones: I don't know.
I don't know where it appeared.
Maybe it nobody, maybe nobody printed.
I don't know.
Daryl Cagle: The crucifixions don't get printed much.
I, I think everybody's done some, and I've never gotten really angry
mail about crucifixions either.
it's not something that drives people crazy.
Ed Wexler: It's not, it's a bit surprising.
Daryl Cagle: I thought this was lovely too.
Here's Trump winning the Iowa caucuses that's great fun.
Here's Judge Cannon.
Ed, this is very nice, and, she certainly is, quite the Trump proponent,
and it looks like now the whole case is just gonna fade away, and,
that is quite a victory for Trump.
You know, we went into this thinking that, things were looking bad for Trump
and actually things are not looking so bad
and nobody's talking about him being a criminal, indicted criminal,
The case that got him, to be the felon is just not something that we care too
much about and, not something anybody else would have been prosecuted for.
Taylor Jones: Ed, I love your Eileen Cannon.
I think you've done at least two or three of them, haven't you?
Ed Wexler: I think I've
done
three.
Taylor Jones: She's you just, you know, you've got that.
That's
Ed Wexler: She's only famous for one photograph.
Exactly.
And you've made the most of it.
You've got the smile, right?
And those little twinkly, very, very, you know, those, those irises are like black.
Daryl Cagle: Well, she is just terrible.
By the way, that's Trump's actual.
Signature that I dropped in.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, you do that.
Well, too
Daryl Cagle: I thought this was fun here.
Don Jr.
and Eric and Don says How should I know where the accountants get their numbers
and Eric says i'm not a money guy.
I pour concrete They're Twumpy Dumb and Twumpy Dumber.
That's fun.
Ed Wexler: He actually said that too
concrete.
Daryl Cagle: This is when they were both testifying in, in New
York at his hush money trial.
And, this
is great.
Ed Wexler: Another, another, uh, little, little Disneyism there.
Daryl Cagle: These are actual quotes, and of course, you know, one of the great
things about being a cartoonist is you can make people say anything you want,
but the downside of that is people don't really trust that what you're making them
say is something that they actually said.
It's nice if people can recognize that they actually said things like that,
because that does give it more power.
But I'm not quite sure how to do that.
Ed Wexler: I don't know, how about, uh, using some big, quotation marks?
Daryl Cagle: Maybe put a little thing in the corner that says
Ed Wexler: Actual verbatim.
Daryl Cagle: Actual quotes, maybe a little arrow.
Actual quote.
Uh
Didn't somebody do that in the National Yeah, I think it's been done.
Stan Mack, Real Life Funnies.
Here, you've got Trump and Uncle Sam and he's saying, take two Tide
Pods and call me in the morning.
That's very funny.
This is a COVID cartoon.
I'm sure as he's been talking about people drinking bleach.
Ed Wexler: Boy, I was, I was full of attitude about Trump.
That's one of the uglier Trumps I've ever drawn.
Daryl Cagle: There was, news at the time of, kids eating Tide Pods because they
look like candy or they look like toys.
Taylor Jones: Apologies for the sun having to put on the sunglasses, but the glare,
it's starting to make, give me a eye ache.
So
Daryl Cagle: it does make you look like a funny cartoon character.
Ed Wexler: Has those circles.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
My pupils.
I can do funny things.
Oh, wow.
Daryl Cagle: Another cartoon thing with the screaming head
popping out of the phone.
Taylor Jones: Now that, yeah, that's something that I think, I think an
animator would think of, you know, certainly that's a great one, Ed.
I'd never seen it.
Ed Wexler: Thanks Taylor.
Daryl Cagle: I think of, uh, of like, uh, Bullwinkle pulling
the rabbit out of my hat.
Ed Wexler: You know, I think I was thinking of that
too.
yeah, he pulls him out of a top hat.
Right.
Daryl Cagle: Yeah.
So Taylor, this is one of the ones that you sent me as one of your favorites.
I wonder if you could talk about this.
What did you have in
mind here?
Taylor Jones: Well, this is some of the work I do for Hoover Digest.
Now, Hoover Digest, which is the journal of the Hoover Institution,
it's a conservative think tank.
it's not always my politics, but, they're great people, great folks to work for.
And I adore my editor been with, I've been doing work for them for, uh, 26
years now and, of course, you know, they, they, they take a conservative
view, the Hoover Digest, the Hoover Institution, they don't, you know,
they're not involved in evangelical stuff.
They're not, they're not climate deniers.
They're not, anything like that.
but they, they always have a conservative or in foreign affairs,
a neocon perspective on, events.
And, this was simply, you know, with the, to me,
Daryl Cagle: Well, you got the guy that's picking his pocket.
He's white and he's kind of scruffy.
Right.
Picking the wallet out of the pocket of the Black Lives Matter protestors.
Right.
Well, there's What is the point you're making here?
Taylor Jones: well, the point, okay, the point is that, uh, leave it to the
left to come up with stupid slogans.
whereas, defund the police has got to be among the dumbest ever.
Because, first of all, when anybody talks, when anybody who supports defunding the
police, the first thing they say, well, it's not really defunding the police.
They're just reallocating resources to different things that, maybe some
of it to social work, et cetera, you know, but, at this, at the
time, as you remember this was, like during the, the George Floyd murder.
And there were a lot, there were lots of demonstrations
and some of them got violent.
Fox pretty much blew it out all out of proportion by having
it on, on the news constantly.
But, I can take my glasses off.
This is kind of silly, making a serious point like this,
but, the point is that, you take too many cops off the
street and this is what you get,
Ed Wexler: you're stuck with the slogan.
Daryl Cagle: why the character of the guy that's picking his pocket and what's
the symbolism of picking his pocket?
Taylor Jones: Well, first of all, as you probably know, in political cartoons.
And, television advertisements, the, the thieves are always white,
you know, they're never black.
And, uh, because you can't do that.
And so I did the typical thing.
I sort of tried to make a joke out of that by having a, you know, uh, the
white thief steal the wallet out of the, uh, maybe it's a cell phone, but
it's a wallet or supposed to be out of the Black Lives Matter protester
who happens to be African American.
I don't know if you should read anything more to it than that.
That's the best I can do, Daryl.
Daryl Cagle: Okay, did that go along with the article and what the
article was saying?
Taylor Jones: Yes, it did.
My editor gives me a lot of leeway into how to approach things, for
which I'm, eternally grateful.
But still, I have to, come up with an illustration that does make the point
that that the writer is trying to make.
Ed Wexler: That's a similar gig to the, Washington Whispers that we both did.
Taylor Jones: Right, that you and I both did.
Ed Wexler: Yeah, we both did.
Daryl Cagle: So here's another Hoover Digest one where you have the protester.
There was a time when the protesters were throwing paint at paintings in museums.
And I assume that this is at that time.
It was during COVID.
And she's painting a Hitler mustache on Columbus, who, uh, Columbus is, is
no longer the heroic figure he was.
Taylor Jones: Right,
exactly.
Well, he's, of course, he's still a hero on Staten Island where I used to live, the
most Italian entity in the United States.
But, this was, the Hoover Institution, they've, uh, well,
contributors to the Digest.
There've been a number of stories, about, political correctness
and, and, wokeness, et cetera.
And, I think I can speak for just about any political cartoonist.
We hate wokeness as much as the people on Fox News hate it.
And, we may agree with a lot of the politics and the ideology, but
restraining what people can say and, and where they can say it, And, and
it's also very, very touching . And
Daryl Cagle: you
know, Taylor, we get complaints from cartoonists about other
cartoonist cartoons all the time.
Taylor Jones: really well.
Daryl Cagle: It is something that cartoonists like to
do as much as the readers,
Taylor Jones: have, we got some cartoonists in your, in your stable
who are big on, they're in favor of everything, you know, being woke.
Daryl Cagle: There are cartoonists who argue that we should drop
other cartoonists because they don't like their points of view.
Ed Wexler: wow,
Taylor Jones: really?
Ed Wexler: Wow.
Taylor Jones: Wow.
Well, I know you have your conservative cartoonist section and you could run a
lot of my Hoover Digest stuff with that.
Daryl Cagle: So here you go, Taylor.
You've got the, the cave man and the cave lady and he is, doing
some sexual harassment here.
I guess sexual harassment is old as the cave men.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, it's a lot older than that.
I've got some, um, I've got some butterflies in my garden
who are committing a sexual harassment all the time.
There's a species of butterfly, that's Florida State Butterfly, the Zebra
Longwing, and it's, you see it in the Gulf, along Gulf Coast states, but, these
butterflies, the males, will gang up on the female, still in its chrysalis, it
hasn't emerged from its chrysalis, so they will actually gang up on it, and sort of
fight with each other, to be the first one to, get to her, Even before she completely
exits her chrysalis as a butterfly.
Daryl Cagle: It's like a little Jeffrey Epstein estate.
Taylor Jones: Exactly right.
So, yes, sexual harassment is nothing new.
Daryl Cagle: what was the point that you're making here?
Taylor Jones: Exactly that.
Daryl Cagle: Is that the point?
That it's old, stuff?
Taylor Jones: Time immemorial.
Daryl Cagle: I thought Dumb and Dumber was great, but you've got the Jim
Carrey and Jeff Daniels caricatures as the donkey and the elephant, and they
look like both Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey and the donkey and the elephant.
And that's really hard to do.
Ed Wexler: It's
a beautiful drawing.
Very.
It's elegant.
Taylor Jones: Well, thank you much.
You know, uh, Ed, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't always work, you
know, sometimes you try it and it fails miserably, but thank you very
much and, and, uh, you know, the thing is I did this, I think in 2014
Daryl Cagle: it says it's for Elvin and Don.
Who are Elvin and Don?
Taylor Jones: there was a reason for that and I'd have to go back for that.
There was, there was
a reason.
Daryl Cagle: Here are the Honeymooners.
And you got Jackie Gleason wearing his MAGA hat and, Art Carney
wearing his mask on his eyes.
And the wife, Alice, wearing her mask and said, It's a COVID cartoon, but they
are all quite in character with the way that they're wearing their accoutrement.
Taylor Jones: Well, of course, you know, the point having a blue mask for, Alice,
and having, Ralph with his red MAGA hat, and, of course, Art Carney being an idiot.
But,
Daryl Cagle: Because he's undecided.
Taylor Jones: That's, that's true, too.
Ed Wexler: He's just wearing his mask wrong.
I said, okay.
Daryl Cagle: Another
evergreen.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
Well, I thank you.
it's nice to do those now and then, but Ed, I'm sure you will agree that when
you have to put masks of any kind on, and sometimes with hats, but definitely
with masks of any kind on the characters, You're drawing, you kind of got to do the
character first and then add the mask.
Ed Wexler: Absolutely.
I think I've only done it once with the Prince Charles, King Charles.
Daryl Cagle: Well, that's a great cartoon.
Taylor Jones: Thank you.
I had fun with it.
Ed Wexler: And Jackie Gleason is not the easiest guy to draw.
I, I had to do that once for how to design him as an animated character.
And it was great because there's not that many photographs of him.
I found at the time anyway.
Taylor Jones: You'd certainly be an expert on this sort of thing.
But, for comedians who are really physical comedians and, and rubber
face comedians, they can be, they can, you know, like Robin Williams, they
can be hard to caricature, you know,
Ed Wexler: for sure.
Taylor Jones: As opposed to someone like Jerry Seinfeld.
Daryl Cagle: Well, you got Jim Carrey as a donkey.
Ed Wexler: That's beautiful.
Oh, I love this.
Daryl Cagle: Joni Mitchell.
Very nice.
I should say that, I asked you guys to send me some of your, favorite
caricature art and, these are just great.
I enjoy this.
You know, we do so much Trump bashing, it's nice to step back a little bit and
realize that people draw other stuff.
Ed Wexler: That's right.
Taylor Jones: You know, Joni Mitchell's got a great face and she has these
magnificent hands It was just fun to do.
And, and I guess her most famous album was blue and, I thought of
that, I think after I began the sketch
Daryl Cagle: you were just
starting with, she paints a picture with her music
and then it became
blue and that's great.
And here is Pope Benedict.
And that is so true.
He turned out to be such a, vile, uh, abusive cardinal hider, terrible.
Who is the cardinal on top?
Taylor Jones: It's just a, it's just a, you know, that's
always a problem in caricature.
If you're, if you're caricature an editorial cartoon and you include a
character that's not a particular person.
Ed Wexler: And he looks kind of specific.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, sometimes it, gets up confusing people, but that's just,
I just figured that, you know, it looks like a typical Cardinal to me.
Ed Wexler: Well, what's the bottom guy's name?
Ratzenberg?
Ratzenberger?
.
And you know, I have to say that I know he did actually apologize for,
the sins of, uh, So many, priests, but as little and late as that was, I
don't think Pope John Paul ever did.
Daryl Cagle: I don't know that they acknowledged the, protecting
the cardinals and the cover ups.
They apologized for the actual abuse broadly.
And not specifically.
Taylor Jones: Well, what can I say?
I don't know this, the, the, the guy on the mortar board is supposed
to be a, Cardinal, you know, just a priest, you know, idea was a priest.
Ed Wexler: He's a
great character.
The, the guy on top is a great character.
Daryl Cagle: He
is.
Ed Wexler: He looks like a great caricature of someone in particular.
Daryl Cagle: Well, I think this is very good.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Daryl Cagle: Dinosaur chasing another birdie dinosaur.
And he says, bon appétit he says, GAW and we know that paleontologists
theorized that Tyrannosaurus Rex was as smart as a baboon and could use tools.
we don't have to always draw the current events in our editorial cartoons.
Taylor Jones: Well, right.
Well, this was actually, I remember just listening to the radio, or either
that or the science section of the New York Times, and there was a story
about, some thought that, because the brain case of Tyrannosaurus
Rex was pretty big, That they had pretty big brains for, a, dinosaur.
And, there was a thought that they could use tools and those that just gave me the
thought, use their little tiny fore-arms.
Daryl Cagle: Very good.
And they speak French.
Taylor Jones: Yes, they do.
Daryl Cagle: Here you have a wonderful Zelinsky.
I think this is great.
Taylor Jones: You know, this turned out to be harder to do.
Zelinsky's face is easy to caricature, But I did base that on a famous, it's one of
the famous portraits of George Washington.
And it's one that actually was pretty hard, to kind of morph, to make Zelinsky
fit it, because Zelinsky is a very short man, and Washington was quite tall.
and, Washington's uniform was, tapered, there's a very tapered cut to it.
And to fit Zelensky into that so that it was believable was kind of difficult.
Ed Wexler: Because Zelensky's kind of stocky, too.
Taylor Jones: Yes, he's, he's,
Ed Wexler: he's the opposite of
George Washington.
Daryl Cagle: And he is very much like, like their George Washington.
Taylor Jones: Exactly, yeah.
I think so.
Daryl Cagle: I think this is just brilliant.
Crowd scene of all these past presidents and you have a story to tell about this.
We remember the shoes being thrown at George Bush in the lower left
when he was speaking in Iraq and that came to be what he was known for.
But you didn't take that out and you put John Adams in there.
Taylor Jones: Yes,
this was done for, I had kind of a, I've been with three syndicates before, the two
before you were Tribune Media Services.
I'm sorry, we're Los Angeles Times Syndicate, which I was with for 23 years,
and then Tribune Media Services with eight years, and my time with Tribune
Media Services was, to me, pretty unhappy.
Daryl Cagle: Well, isn't it so much nicer to be with us?
Taylor Jones: Absolutely, but you know, yes, I think so, but And I, of course, I
was canned eventually by Tribune Media, but, I just didn't like dealing with
them and, they, the Tribune had bought Los Angeles Times, and like so many
mergers, they didn't care about the, you know, they were, they were going
to do it their way, and they didn't, so they bought up everything from the Los
Angeles Times syndicate, and from my point of view, they didn't care anything
about it, so I kind of languished.
And, of course it was a, very much a time, the beginning of the
era of newspapers contracting.
So, yes, I drew the, I drew the original with the shoes and
they made me take the shoes out.
Therefore, John Adams.
Daryl Cagle: And the reason being that that was critical of George W.
Bush?
Taylor Jones: They, they decided they, well, they, it wasn't Bush per se.
They decided they didn't want to have anything critical
of any of the presidents.
And I, understood that.
Cause this was, published.
Right around the time of, Obama's first inaugural.
Ed Wexler: I think this one could have been a cover of Time Magazine.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that, Ed, what the Chicago Tribune did was they had a supplement.
Of course, you know, Obama was associated with Chicago and they had a supplement
in the newspaper for the inauguration with all stuff about Obama and that
was either on the front or on the back.
I forget
Daryl Cagle: Well, I think it's wonderful and I think it's just outrageous to ask
you to take the shoes away from George W.
Bush
Ed Wexler: A
fun bit of business in there
It is
on that.
Taylor Jones: You, you
bought that for me, didn't you, Daryl?,
Daryl Cagle: I did.
I have this one.,
So Ed, we are back to you and here you are on the Hollywood Reporter
with both the front and back
Ed Wexler: cover.
This was my first cover for the Hollywood Reporter.
Wow.
I wasn't hired to do a cover.
I was hired to make this an inside illustration, but they liked it.
Daryl Cagle: So this was a two page spread inside?
Yeah.
Ed Wexler: and, they wound up using it on the cover as
well, but that wasn't the plan.
And it led to a whole bunch of stuff.
Daryl Cagle: This is just wonderful.
Taylor Jones: Ed, I wanted to ask you, I was looking at this when, when Daryl
first presented this podcast to us, he had some of your, Hollywood Reporter scenes.
And first of all, I love the Kathy Bates up there.
That's just, that's just great.
Daryl Cagle: Did she do a
nude scene?
Ed Wexler: She was naked in a movie.
She was in a bathtub.
That's how good this movie was.
Taylor Jones: But I want, now I'm just going to make sure, uh, that's, , John C.
Reilly up there in the, toward the, uh, Yeah, yeah, under the, Okay, John C.
Reilly and, I love the Zeta Jones.
Is that Polanski?
I, uh, that's Polanski there in the, uh, uh,
Ed Wexler: where's Polanski?
Oh, yeah, on the right.
Taylor Jones: Yeah,
right, okay.
Ed Wexler: Yeah, yeah,
that's him for sure, yeah.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
Excellent, excellent.
Oh, one other.
Is that Almod ovar by Rashida Jones?
Ed Wexler: Yes.
Taylor Jones: Okay, great.
Ed Wexler: I had a good time.
Daryl Cagle: Oh, that's great.
Here's another one.
Is this front This is the alternative
covers?
Ed Wexler: These were inside the section covers.
Two different years of the Academy Awards.
Taylor Jones: Great.
They're great.
Ed Wexler: And I remember, I remember some, they contacted Jon
Stewart about using the image for something else, and he didn't okay
it, so I don't think Jon Stewart cared for this, or either of these.
Daryl Cagle: What a poor sport if he didn't care for this, because it's great.
I should add that, it's not uncommon for editorial cartoonists to do other stuff,
too, because it, isn't really a business plan to be an editorial cartoonist.
There's got to be other stuff in the mix, and, your other stuff is
fantastic.
Taylor Jones: I love the rendering of, John sitting there as a thinker.
The rendering of the, uh, the suit, every, the hands is just great.
Ed Wexler: Thank you, I
spent a lot of time figuring that one out.
Daryl Cagle: Here
is Kirk and Spock, Nemoy and Shatner.
Those are great.
Ed Wexler: Thanks.
I think I did this for myself.
I don't think it was published anywhere.
Taylor Jones: Really?
Ed Wexler: Just, I just did it because I wanted to do it.
Daryl Cagle: Well, the world needs it, Ed.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Taylor Jones: you can post,
You can post this with Cagle because, I mean, somebody's going to, you know, Star
Trek is such great fan, such great fans.
And even though Nimoy is gone, Shatner apparently will never be gone.
And, somebody would publish it for sure.
I, for some reason, you know,
Daryl Cagle: they would, somebody would want it.
And it is amazing how William Shatner goes on and on, and he
doesn't look as old as he is.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, he's in his 90s.
Ed Wexler: He's like 93 or 4, I mean, or 92 or 3, I should say.
He's got all his marbles.
Taylor Jones: Yep.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Taylor Jones: Great.
And he's never taken himself very seriously.
Daryl Cagle: This is great one, Ed.
Ed Wexler: Thanks.
Thanks.
Part, the part that I like works the best here is the Sopranos
with the lasagna in the front.
I don't even remember some of these shows.
Daryl Cagle: Well, let's look at it bigger because you got to look at it bigger.
Ed Wexler: And, uh, Larry David with his, uh, contemplating whether the
glass is half empty or half full.
Daryl Cagle: Oh, I see.
That's great.
Taylor Jones: Yeah,
that is, that is.
Great idea.
Uh, Ed, not, not questioning the caricature, but I'm not certain who the,
uh, The fellow behind Tony Soprano with
Ed Wexler: Tony Shalhoub, I believe.
Taylor Jones: Oh, yes, yes, indeed.
Indeed.
Ed Wexler: Reacting to the cigar smoke.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
Right.
Was this his Monk character?
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Yeah.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
OK.
Ed Wexler: He won a few Emmys.
So I think I did him a few times over the years.
Taylor Jones: He's
one of the great contemporary actors.
Daryl Cagle: And here is another one.
This was quite the client for you, Ed.
Ed Wexler: Oh, they were a great client.
And then one, one day they got a new editor who didn't think
caricatures were funny on the covers.
Taylor Jones: Wow.
Ed Wexler: They just, they just stopped using me altogether.
Daryl Cagle: Well, you were defining them and sometimes editors don't like to
be defined except by what they choose.
Ed Wexler: I suppose.
The thing with doing these was the limited amount of time, uh, when
they announced the, nominees To when the artwork was due at the magazine.
It was it was kind of limited.
It's like two weeks I think.
Taylor Jones: Wow.
Daryl Cagle: Did you draw them all separately and
then?
Ed Wexler: I drew them all separately in Photoshop.
Yeah, but I was also working a full time job So I was like,
I would do these all nighters.
Taylor Jones: Well, crowd scenes, they can be very tricky to choreograph, you know
Yeah, yeah,
Ed Wexler: and you just have to figure out a couple of bits
of business And then kluge
it all together somehow.
Taylor Jones: Right.
Daryl Cagle: Well,
it keys off of Johnny Depp up at the top and, on each one of these you
have, a character that's kind of drawing your eye and then you pull away.
That's really very nice.
Another impressive one.
Here with your Martin Scorsese stealing the show.
Leonardo
DiCaprio looks wonderful.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
Yeah.
Ed Wexler: Big skull.
Um, Don Cheadle.
Taylor Jones: Don Cheadle.
They just, that's just perfect.
That's you get the eyes are just perfect.
Ed Wexler: Thanks.
He, he broke down into, into symbols very, very easily.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
Great.
Daryl Cagle: This one is equally great.
Taylor Jones: Oh, wow.
Great.
Yeah.
I want to tell a little story of the cowboy movies.
What's the name of the cowboys on top?
Daryl Cagle: The gay cowboy movie.
Taylor Jones: Brokeback Mountain.
Ed Wexler: Brokeback Mountain, Yeah.
So it's, the wife of one of the characters, suspecting
that something was going on.
So she's whacking him with the flowers.
That's what, that's what that's supposed to be.
I always, I always try to have fun with the logos and mastheads when I can.
Taylor Jones: Well, the Gyllenhaal and, again, I've suddenly forgotten
the name of the other actor.
they're perfect.
Daryl Cagle: I drew a Brokeback Mountain cartoon a long time ago.
And it was one of my most popular cartoons ever to remember what it is.
Maybe I'll drop it into here.
Ed Wexler: What was the joke?
Daryl Cagle: I'm not remembering right now, but of course we will remember
if I happen to drop it in in post.
First ladies.
Taylor Jones: Oh, that's
wonderful.
Yeah.
Ed Wexler: I think this was for US News.
I think this was a Washington Whispers.
Taylor Jones: I think they were, let's see.
First was on Washington Whispers.
It was Kate Sally Palmer who has a job for like about 20 years.
Daryl Cagle: Both of you guys drew for U.
S.
News and World Report.
Taylor Jones: Right.
Ed Wexler: Yeah.
Taylor Jones: that's a great Michelle.
All of them are great.
But, um, I, I, I,
Ed Wexler: At different times, we worked for them.
Taylor Jones: I hadn't thought of that the way, the way you've got her
mouth there with that underbite.
That's just,
Ed Wexler: thank you for, thank you for appreciating
that.
That was a struggle.
Taylor Jones: Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, uh,
Ed Wexler: The, Eleanor looks like, I'm complimenting myself, but it
looks like one of your drawings to me.
Taylor Jones: All right.
Well,
Daryl Cagle: John
Boehner, they really did push him into a box
Ed Wexler: They had him in a box.
Taylor Jones: I remember seeing this originally.
That was a fun
Ed Wexler: I'm a little surprised you picked this one, but
Daryl Cagle: so tell us about
this one.
Ed Wexler: You know, I just.
He's just a funny, this was not a paid job.
This didn't appear anywhere.
I just wanted to see him
Daryl Cagle: What's his name again, Jeremy?.
Ed Wexler: Ron
Jeremy,
Ron Jeremy, he's
a real sleazeball kind of a porn actor.
You know, I really
Daryl Cagle: You captured the steaze.
He,
Taylor Jones: everything about
this is perfect.
The, I mean the eyes, you know, it's a funny thing.
It's almost like it almost looks Rembrandt in the way that, you know,
Oh, kind of a thing in the face.
But I love the, I love the reflection off his belly.
Ed Wexler: A little, a little
greasy.
Daryl Cagle: He's such a foul, nasty character.
Ed Wexler: You know, I sent this
to him.
I said, I don't know how I got his address, but I sent it to him and
he, he just wrote back, thanks a lot.
Taylor Jones: How did you get his address?
Ed Wexler: I forgot how I got it.
I don't know how I got it.
Daryl Cagle: Crazy.
And then he went to, uh, jail for what?
Rape or sexual harassment or something?
Ed Wexler: Yeah, I
think it was rape.
Taylor Jones: Well, you had fun with the chest
and belly hair, that's for
sure.
Ed Wexler: I had fun with a lot of things in this one.
And those are cheap apartment, window shades.
You know, the cheapest kind you can get from Builder's Emporium.
Daryl Cagle: Walt Disney,
Ed Wexler: this one made the rounds.
this one has some history.
I did it originally for Hollywood Reporter.
It was, an issue that was dedicated to famous directors or studio ads.
Something like that.
I did the Warner brothers and this one, I wound up adding the copy.
it all started with a mouse and I sold a bunch of prints that I was feeling.
That was my entrepreneurial phase.
I, sold a bunch of matted prints of this and that was a pain to do.
Daryl Cagle: Why was it a pain to do?
Ed Wexler: Matting them.
I sold them in mats.
So I had to get the mats cut and packaging them and wrapping them.
that was the
pain part.
Taylor Jones: I mean, being that you worked for Disney for so long, what
kind of restrictions did you have on,
Ed Wexler: I didn't have any.
I didn't have any.
the first time I was asked to caricature a Disney person I was doing a lot of work
for California Magazine and, they were doing an article about, uh, it was when
Disney was starting Disneyland in Paris.
And they were talking about that.
They wanted me to caricature Michael Eisner.
And I didn't think that was a good idea at the time.
So I, I did an illustration of what I thought was a typical, erudite French guy
selling souvenirs at Disneyland instead.
I don't think I'd put in this batch for you, Daryl.
Daryl Cagle: Well, I only have two more cartoons, but I picked out the most.
popular cartoons that each of you has ever drawn in the many
years that you've been with us.
And, Taylor, this is yours.
You've got, Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Barbie says, So, Oppie, who's going to clean up at the box
office this summer, you or Barbie?
And Oppenheimer says, God help us.
Your most popular cartoon ever.
And
in how many years?
It's probably been
20 years you've been with us.
Taylor Jones: Well, 15 with you.
I didn't realize that until I was going through all the
cartoons, back to the beginning.
And, uh, well, gee, uh, well, you know, you can thank Barbie for that.
Thanks to Barbie Madness, you know.
Daryl Cagle: Well, congratulations.
This is your, this is your top cartoon.
And Ed, this is your top cartoon.
It's a COVID cartoon.
And, that looks like your self image with your wife.
Ed Wexler: Hey,
watch it.
Oh.
Daryl Cagle: And she says, I didn't think it would all go away, that
Social Security and Medicare.
Ed Wexler: That one made the rounds.
Taylor Jones: Well, you know, of course, Social Security and given
the average age of the people who are still reading newspapers,
Daryl Cagle: I guess that explains it.
Social Security and Medicare in a cartoon.
That gets newspapers to print it.
Ed Wexler: And puppies, too.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, well, right.
Daryl Cagle: Gentlemen, that is all of the cartoons we have today.
We've got to do this again soon, because you sent me a lot more cartoons than that.
Taylor Jones: Yeah, and I, I don't know about Ed, but I spent about
10 hours going through cartoons.
Ed Wexler: I spent a long time too.
All the stuff that you want.
Daryl Cagle: I have a
lot of leftovers.
Ed Wexler: One day we can do those.
Taylor Jones: I get really bored drawing Trump.
I'm so sick of him.
It's, it's, and to think that's really what I should do all the time.
Daryl Cagle: I hear about cartoonists getting sick of Trump,
and you know newspapers don't like to print, Trump cartoons.
It's a different audience on the internet and for these podcasts, which
is an audience that only wants Trump.
And that's a surprise for me.
All these cartoons that didn't get reprinted that much in newspapers are the
ones they want to see on these podcasts.
Taylor Jones: Have you got, Daryl, have you got any idea
of who is listening to you?
I mean, who is listening to your podcast?
Any idea of the demographics?
Daryl Cagle: Oh, yes, it is, by far mostly, males over age 55.
In fact, those are also the people that are fans of newspapers and fans of our
editorial cartoons in other places.
and it is frustrating because we'd like to reach a wider demographic.
We hear so much about, the kids studying our cartoons in school, and they
write to us about their homework, and, we do a lot of sales to high school
textbooks, and to the testing services, because the cartoons are on the AP
History test in 8th and 11th grade.
but, you know, kids leave high school, and then they never
look at the newspaper again.
Taylor Jones: Well, yeah, of course, hardly anybody under the age of 40.
They get, just get their news with their phones, correct?
Daryl Cagle: They
silo themselves on the phones.
If you want to get nothing but news about kitties and video games, that's
the news you get on your phone.
And I think that's just a shame because, you know, newspapers
were edited to let people know all the things that they should know.
there was someone who was making decisions that were thoughtful about what a
well rounded person should know about.
And not just video games and kitties.
that's a shame that that's lost.
Taylor Jones: Do you think that, years from now, looking back in history,
that the newspaper, as we know it, really, Dates back to the New York
Times in the 1850s or sixties, and then really until about 2000, 2010.
And that's really been the lifespan of, uh, of, of newspapers that, uh,
Daryl Cagle: why do you pick
the New York Times in the mid 18 hundreds?
Taylor Jones: The reason why is because I, I don't know my history
enough about this, but it seems to me that was very important.
Because they kind of set the standard for, modern journalism.
And, it,
Daryl Cagle: You give them a lot of credit.
I don't like the New York Times.
They're just
terrible about editorial cartoons.
Taylor Jones: I'm sorry that's true.
I wasn't thinking about editorial cartoons.
But it seems to me that modern, journalism really began, at that
era with that particular newspaper.
Daryl Cagle: Well, I'm not inclined to give the New York Times compliments here.
Taylor Jones: Well,
you know, before then you had these rags that were, in a way kind of like
how a lot of news is disseminated now.
Uh, you had all these partisan, newspapers owned by rich people.
that were doing the, bidding of this or that.
I know that in the early days of our republic, it was very much the case
that, you know, Jefferson had his, favorite, newspapers that supported him.
Hamilton, they were constantly trying to, trying to, dig dirt
on each other, these newspapers.
and, in a way it's a lot more like it is now.
Daryl Cagle: I think I will cut that out.
Taylor Jones: You can probably cut about most of what I said out there.
Okay.
Gentlemen, it was a pleasure having you
nice seeing you
always.
Ed Wexler: So that is the Caglecast for today.
please remember to subscribe, wherever you're watching the Caglecast and sign up
for our newsletter at Cagle.com/Subscribe.
And, you will always be reminded of the podcast when they
come on and any cartoon news.
And a new thing we're doing in the newsletter is we're We send you the top
five most popular cartoons every day.
And that's very exciting.
And it changes from day to day you never know what they're going to be.
So thank you everybody.
And, thank you again, gentlemen.
This was very nice.
It takes a long time
to go through stuff, doesn't it, Taylor?
Okay, I'll see you guys later.