Last week on Facebook I stumbled upon this piece of cartoon signed “Ziegler”:

I found it extremely funny (but also quite sad) because it embodies everything that is wrong in Washington right now and particularly the Republicans’ hypocrisy (they pledged to never raise taxes but they do; they say they are against raising the deficit but they always  make it worse; they try to impeach a president on moral grounds but elect a treasonous crook, serial sexual harasser and bully as president and want to put a child molester in the senate ! They always said they would removed those entitlement and, well, they kind of did… Where’s their moral high-ground now? How can they claim to be “good Christian” and allow this? They should be ashamed of themselves!).

So, kudos to the “cartoonist” for this excellent idea that pinpoint Washington’s ethical fallacies. Or is it? I noticed that the style of the cartoon is quite similar to what we find in magazine like The New Yorker, but the font used for the caption is totally wrong for this style — such cartoons usually put the caption in a italicized serif font… So the creator of this piece must have “repurposed” (meaning stole) a previous cartoon in order to create this hilarious concept by adding his own caption.

Considering that the drawing is signed, it didn’t take me long to find the original. The concept is quite similar, so the “thief” just adapted it to the current political situation.

The original was created by Jack Ziegler and was indeed published in The New Yorker, a magazine well known for this style of cartoon. Unfortunately, Ziegler died last March. You can read tributes to his life and work in The New Yorker,  The New York Times and The Washington Post.

You can find many compilations of The New Yorker‘s cartoons in your local public library.

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