David Baldinger - Cartoonist & Photographer

On Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoon Index , there are several pages of editorial cartoons honoring the miners who tragically died in the Jan. 2, 2005 mine explosion. Most are done with respect but there are several that I find kind of tasteless. I can ignore the standard “entering Heaven” clichés but I don’t think there should be any humor involved. I really hate the one by Bob Gorrell . It is the second to last on this page. The drawing is great. he subject is awful. It depicts Death pushing a coal cart full of skulls. I would hate to be a family member of one of those miners and come across that one. I can’t imagine what Gorrell must have been thinking. There are a couple of others there as well that, while not making light of the event, don’t really seem to take it very seriously. Of course, I am not privileged and worthy enough to be represented on Cagle’s site so, above you can find my drawing for the People’s Weekly World Jan. 14, 2005 edition.

I don’t know how I missed this back in November but, apparently, the Washington DC City Paper did an “exposé” of the clandestine meetings of the Frederick Douglas Club of the CPUSA at the NEA cafeteria. I haven’t been able to read the entire article but the short excerpts are hilarious. I guess the great patriot Bob Novak picked up on it and made reference to the meetings as an obvious attempt to red bait the NEA. According to the NEA , their cafeteria is open to the public and is not screened. Since the right of free assembly is one of those pesky constitutional rights, Novak found it all rather nefarious. As I tracked the flow of the story around the Internet, the news seemed to appear on mostly wingnut and homes school blogs. The wingnuts found it all proof that the evil commies were secretly still planning to interrupt their lifestyle of greed and selfishness. You know, those foul concepts like health care for all, a living wage and various other un-American activities. Th...

Just one comment. Do we really trust this guy to get it right?

The People's Weekly World goes on hiatus until the new year. My Christmas wish this year is that all the hypocrites who are bellowing about what the holiday season is called actually go out and do something Christian. As far back as I can remember, the phrase "Happy Holidays" has been used. I guess it is a difficult concept to accept that there are other observances happening through out the month. I hate to break it to the "Christian Right" but the US is a secularist country. We have room for all religions to be accepted and practiced. What the C-R's really want is their version of Christianity forced on the rest of us. They like to babble about various "agendas" promoted by groups they oppose. They should be up front and admit their agenda is to remake the US in their prescribed image. That isn't a place I want to live.

New index page for my site. I've begun redesigning my cartoon website over at *Tripod. I'm changing the name from David Baldinger's Red Ink to David Baldinger's Cartoons & Stuff. I figure it will be a little more professional and also give me the ability to display different types of work instead of only political things. As it stands, the site is closed with only the index page visible. Hopefully, I will have a chance to get it all up and running quickly. I just wish I could afford a domain and a host. Tripod started out as a perfectly fine free hosting site but they are starting to pile on the ads. They aren't as annoying with pop up ads as most but the page ads make it difficult to design a page that isn't cluttered. Their ads force my images down the page at least an inch and a half. *Update: My site is now David Baldinger's Cartoons & Stuff with my own domain

My favorite newspaper comic strip is Mutts . I love the "old time" style Patrick McDonnell uses. He also authored a great book about George Herriman, the cartoonist who scratched out the great Krazy Kat in immortal ink. Anywho, "The Gift Of Nothing" started as an idea last year, as I recall, and this year McDonnell has released a cute, little book illustrating the story. I put this one up there with Shel Silverstein s' "The Giving Tree". Now, both of those are worth giving this holiday.