The Times' regular subscribers hadn't made a peep for a week before Hannity's army of fools drowned the Grey Lady in cut-and-paste postcards mailed in from flyover country. But Times editors didn't notice. Nor did they take responsibility for choosing to publish my work. I was memory-holed. The editor who approved my work remained.
In 2004 it was the Washington Post's turn to throw me to the braying Republican hounds.
Throughout the Bush years my income shrank. No radio station would have me. I was no longer shortlisted for journalism prizes. It became increasingly difficult to get published. I received fewer invitations to speak in public.
You can easily check it out yourself, or you can take my word for it: it's not like my work got worse. I write better now, I draw better, I speak better than I used to. What changed was that gatekeepers at American media outlets became gun-shy.
They would rather publish bland material that doesn't elicit a response than a strong opinion that generates controversy. Who can blame them? Right-wing cancel warriors, no longer content to get leftie content banned, harass and threaten editors who run it.
No account of a cartoonist's shrinking client list over the past 20 years would be complete without noting the financial meltdown of print media in general, brutal budget cuts and a widespread practice of laying off the cartoonist first.
That goes double for left-leaning commentators who have found themselves out in the cold as the 50-yard line of American politics steadily moved to the right under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
The same thing happened on TV. ABC canceled Bill Maher; MSNBC fired Phil Donahue, Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz, all for being too liberal.
Everyone in the media has suffered. But right-wing cancel culture accelerated both of those trends.
I have adjusted to the new media landscape. It's tough going, but I still have a viable career.
But don't let anyone think Republican cancel culture isn't a thing. It is.
And it has won.
Even though there are more socialist voters than either Democrats or Republicans, the Left is out in the cold. 39% of American voters prefer socialism to capitalism. Bernie Sanders' approval rating is 49%, which is 10 points higher than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Yet no newspaper in the United States employs a columnist or a cartoonist who endorsed Sanders or admits to being a socialist.
Nor does any cable news network employ such a host or frequent contributor. This is not normal or okay. A nation with a vibrant and free news media represents a diversity of opinion. In this respect American news outlets are more rigidly censored than those of authoritarian regimes with state-controlled media.
I oppose left-wing cancel culture. I spoke out against liberal boycotts of companies that advertised on Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlesinger. Censorship is toxic whether it comes from the left or the right.
Mostly, though, it comes from the right, and liberals go along with it.
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