At cagle.com, in reaction to the nearly-identical Rosa Parks cartoons, they’ve got a blog post from cartoonist Mike Lester on the issue. It raises a point that, in my disgust, I hadn’t even considered:

I’m curious and -not that they need defending, but I would like to believe that a great many in our profession are dictated their cartoons and the heft of the message by some cleverless editor who assumes to feed readers what they think readers need to be fed. Since when do we give people what they expect? It’s my belief that no job pays enough to illustrate opinions that are not ones own but the true pity is that we’ll never know what kind of work would be produced without creative constraints.

I like this. He gives these cartoonists an out, but if they choose not to take it, he hits them with a well-deserved insult that stings more when applied to a cartoonist who should know better. While it is tempting to believe that there’s no way so many cartoonists could think alike in such a dull way, it’s not exactly easy to believe that the same number of editors share the same brain (cue some quip about 10 editors having one whole brain between them).

And let’s give these guys the benefit of the doubt and operate under the assumption that these editors forced this identical idea upon their staff cartoonists. If so many editors have the same concept of dull cartoons for a somber moment, who is to blame other than the years of cartoonists who’ve worked so hard (or not) to build this precedent?

Give an editorial cartoonist a forum, and he’ll talk about how it’s a shrinking field, how cartoonists are losing their relevance, how papers are opting for syndication rather than the unique voice of their staff cartoonist, blah blah blah. Look at what the brilliant minds of our nation’s finest have to say upon the death of Rosa Parks.

(the following cartoons are from today’s cartoons at cagle.com)

Mike Keefe at The Denver Post:

Robert Ariail of The State in South Carolina:

Ed Stein of the Rocky Mountain News:

Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World Herald:

Mark Streeter of the Savannah Morning News:

Jeff Stahler of the Columbus Dispatch:

How relevant, valuable or unique are you when all you can do is come up with the exact same idea as a half dozen of your peers? And these are just the cartoonists on Cagle’s syndicate.

Here’s a real statement. At 10:35pm, on October 24th, 2005, at the very moment I heard that Rosa Parks had passed away, I made the following comment:

I predict no less than 27 cartoons tomorrow with God driving a bus in heaven and saying “Why don’t you come sit up here with me.”

Long-time readers of this blog may remember my encounter with Elmo from March. What started out as an innocent encounter for the purposes of my niece’s Elmo-viewing pleasure turned into something much more bizarre.

Well, in the past few days, you may have seen a story making the rounds about Elmo getting arrested.

Just know that justice still lives on, even in the cracked, dirty streets of Los Angeles.

I really doubt any Lefler 6th through 8th graders will ever read this, but they put on a great show today.

The “Lefler in Action” club put on Leflerpalooza, which, as I posted earlier, was a way to show off what the after school clubs have been up to this quarter.

I was really proud of the D.A.V.E. (our film club, renamed “The Department of Audio and Video Entertainment”) club, and we had six of our best movies played for the audience. CJ’s story of two high schoolers going into the military, Carlos’s parody of the crocodile hunter, Wanufi’s spies at Lefler, Francesca’s spies elsewhere, Maggie’s more emotional music video (for lack of a better term), and Sara’s comedic how-to, which was a big hit with the crowd.

There were some other movies that didn’t get finished in time for the show, but they’ll hopefully be done in time to include them on our D.A.V.E. DVD. I’m going to try to put all the movies online here, or at very least, excerpts from them.

What I saw of all the clubs was impressive, and as proud as I was of my D.A.V.E. peeps, the School of Rock club blew me away. Two different groups played, with the first playing a Blink 182 song and the second playing two Green Day songs. These guys learned all of this over nine weeks, and I was amazed.

I think some of us were a little worried that Leflerpalooza wouldn’t quite go off as we’d imagined. I think if anything, it went way better. Sitting in the crowd today, I really felt like I was seeing something special. Like one day, I’m going to be able to say “I remember seeing their stuff back when they were just in middle school!”

Monday at Lefler Middle School (roughly 48th and Randolph) at 5pm is Leflerpalooza - the showcase of what all the after-school clubs have been working on.

Although the newspaper and comic book clubs haven’t quite panned out to what we’d hoped, I’m still really proud of all three of my groups. The film club (DAVE, for short) has been amazing - some really wonderful people to work with - and I’m really excited for everyone to see what these guys have made.

It’s open to the public, so come see what these guys are up to. There’s also a dance club, School of Rock (these guys actually learned their instruments and learned how to be a band), and others.

I picked up today’s Lincoln Journal Star, which included the “KFOR Best of Lincoln” insert. This is a little annual special where KFOR hires “the independent surveying firm of Research Associates, located right here in Lincoln, to conduct the survey.” We are assured that “…the results would vary no more than plus or minus 4.9% from the reported results that you’ll find in this tabloid.” (Okay, well, they showed first through third place, which makes the percentage claimer a little inapplicable, but anyway…)

There were a few categories that really caught my eye and seemed worthy of attention.

Best Hamburger in Lincoln
1. Runza
2. Wendy’s
3. Burger King

Best Seafood in Lincoln
1. Red Lobster
2. Long John Silver
3. Lazlo’s

Best Coffee House in Lincoln
1. The Mill
2. Starbucks
3. Village Inn