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The power of cartoon art is an historical fact.
Cartoon greats from Daumier, to Nast, to Disney, to Herblock and Mauldin have
demonstrated on paper and screen the remarkable capacity of cartoon art to entertain,
inform, and motivate people from all walks of life -- young and old,
educated and illiterate. The attraction is the same: A cartoon's ability to distill
complicated issues to their core. For 200 years, with special visual tools and the
power of allegory, editorial cartoons have steered viewers to lasting impressions and
political action.
Simplification and Strength of the Story
The ability to employ humor and metaphor in combination with visual devices
(caricature, icons, animalism) enables a cartoonist to take strong positions
where writers or electronic media are otherwise limited. The cartoonist is able
to "go negative" without inviting a backlash, break a story with only one source,
and occasionally, to engage in prophesy.
Freedom
In the history of American case law, there has never been a successful
libel prosecution against a cartoonist. The U.S. Supreme Court
(Falwell vs. Hustler Magazine) has upheld cartoon art as satire and
protected by the 1st Amendment.
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