Kofi Annan Loved Cartoons

Growing up during the turmoil of the 1960’s and 1970’s, I wanted to help, to make things better. I wanted people to be happy and I wanted people to get along. The only thing I thought I knew how to do was draw cartoons. They made my mother and my friends happy, so I figured maybe I had a shot. I saw the editorial cartoonist Herblock make a difference in my hometown paper, the Washington Post. I set my sights to being an editorial cartoonist at that early age, and it took me a number of years to get there.

In 2005, after years of drawing political cartoons for The New Yorker, I woke up to read a front page above the fold story in the New York Times with the word “cartoon” in the headline. The article was about the recent events surround the publication in Denmark wherein cartoonists drew the image of Mohamed and this ended up causing a lot of violence and protests as a result. It was shocking to see how cartoons could have such an impact.

Soon afterwards, I was invited to be a part of a weeklong event at the United Nations, called Unlearning Intolerance, hosted by the Kofi Annan, then Secretary General. One day in the week, the twelve invited cartoonists from around the world spoke about their work and what cartoons mean to them. Mr. Annan opened the proceedings with these remarks (in part):

“I have always thought that cartoons are one of the most important elements in the press. They have a special role in forming public opinion — because an image generally has a stronger, more direct impact on the brain than a sentence does, and because many more people will look at a cartoon than read an article.

If you are flicking through a newspaper you have to make a conscious decision to stop and read an article, but it is hardly possible to stop yourself from looking at a cartoon.

That means that cartoonists have a big influence on the way different groups of people look at each other.

They can encourage us to look critically at ourselves, and increase our empathy for the sufferings and frustrations of others. But they can also do the opposite. They have, in short, a big responsibility.

Cartoons make us laugh. Without them, our lives would be much sadder. But they are no laughing matter: they have the power to inform, and also to…