The news can be stressful. New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt wants you to laugh at it

Brianna Gosse · CBC Radio

· Posted: Mar 29, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

Barry Blitt says it's an uncertain clip for editorial cartoonists amid governmental tensions successful the U.S. — but laughter, helium says, is the cardinal to dealing with the dense stuff.

In his 3 decades arsenic an editorial cartoonist for The New Yorker, the Canadian-American illustrator has contributed implicit 140 covers to the magazine.

The New Yorker — an American work featuring journalism, commentary, fabrication and satire — turns 100 this year. Along with its written pieces, The New Yorker has go world-renowned for its illustrations and governmental cartoons.

Support for editorial cartooning has been successful diminution successful caller years, with departures of high-profile cartoonists similar The Washington Post's Ann Telnaes and The Halifax Chronicle Herald's Michael de Adder. 

In 2019, The New York Times stopped moving editorial cartoons altogether.

Barry Blitt spoke with The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay astir the challenges facing editorial cartoonists and however to find humour successful the humourless.

Political cartoonists often get their champion ideas from the absurdity of politics. You're a Canadian and you're an American — from your constituent of presumption arsenic an illustrator, however are you looking astatine this unusual infinitesimal betwixt our 2 countries?

It's intolerable to look away; it's similar the proverbial bid wreck. I don't ticker immoderate governmental TV. I can't basal that adjacent astatine the champion of times. Anytime I work thing online it's truly depressing. I'm conscionable filling my sketchbook with choler and absurdity, basically. 

OK, truthful let's get into that sketchbook. If you were to gully an illustration of this tense narration close present betwixt Canada and the U.S., what mightiness you create? 

Oh, conscionable tons of aggravated Trump drawings — Trump being attacked by moose and geese. I'm benignant of numb with everything that I'm putting down. I consciousness a batch of choler and I'm precise tempted to determination backmost [to Canada]. I moved [to New York] astatine the extremity of 1989. I presume that successful Russia a cartoonist can't gully mean drawings of Putin. I don't cognize if that's going to widen here. It's going to beryllium troubling for idiosyncratic successful my presumption to gully Trump and his retinue. It is simply a precise uncertain infinitesimal for maine and for a batch of people.

Three decades is simply a agelong clip to beryllium drafting cartoons astatine the apical of your game, not conscionable successful The New Yorker, but galore precocious illustration magazines. When you locomotion by a newsstand and you spot your screen there, what is the feeling you get?

Just to halt you close determination — I haven't seen a newsstand successful a agelong time.

When I moved down here, and erstwhile I was surviving successful Toronto and Montreal, determination were stores filled with magazines. It was precise intoxicating for an illustrator to look astatine each the enactment that was being published. There were truthful galore places I could inactive effort to merchantability my stuff. That has truly dwindled, determination are truthful fewer magazines left. 

I'm precise thankful The New Yorker is doing good and that they people my stuff. It's thrilling to bash a New Yorker cover; I deliberation I've done possibly implicit 140 of them now. It's inactive incredibly nerve-wracking to get the call. As acold arsenic seeing it aft it's published, I invariably regret ocular decisions I made. That's the mode it ever goes. 

You won the Pulitzer Prize successful 2020 for "work that skewers the personalities and policies emanating from the Trump White House with deceptively saccharine watercolor benignant and seemingly gentle caricatures." How person you seen that duality? 

I've described my ain graphic benignant arsenic passive aggressive. I privation I could skewer with a much vengeful pen and harsh caricatures. I conscionable emotion the caricature enactment of Steve Broadner, Phillip Burke, oregon Robert Grossman. There's been a large galore caricaturists who are vicious successful their graphic style. I effort that and it conscionable doesn't travel retired right. It looks similar I'm yelling erstwhile it's much comfy for maine to suggest it successful a mean voice.

Let's speech astir 1 of your covers that got immoderate backlash. You depicted Barack and Michelle Obama fist bumping — radical had a batch of opinions connected it. Tell maine astir what inspired that cartoon and the issues radical had with it?

When Senator Barack Obama was archetypal moving for president, determination was truthful overmuch innuendo successful the aerial astir him, and evidently a batch of it was racist. When Barack and Michelle fist bumped each different they called it a "terrorist fist jab" connected Fox News. It seemed similar a comic thought to conscionable picture everything they were saying and item however absurd it was. So that's what I did. I drew Barack Obama arsenic a concealed Muslim and determination was innuendo astir Michelle being a Black Panther. So I drew each of that — and I drew an American emblem successful the fireplace. 

A batch of radical didn't get the gag and truthful it was received badly. Jon Stewart connected The Daily Show did an editorial astir it and said, it's conscionable a cartoon, wherefore are we freaking retired astir it? And that seemed to bring the somesthesia down. But the archetypal mates of days erstwhile it came retired were a small shocking for a passive-aggressive cartoonist similar myself.

Many radical are having a hard clip uncovering a laughter amid each the seriousness and hostility successful the world. Why is it important for america to find wit successful things that often consciousness humorless?

It's conscionable 1 mode of dealing with hideous stuff. I'm not a philosopher oregon psychologist, but the easiest mode for maine to woody with dense things is to find a mode to laughter astatine it. It's a mode of shrinking thing that seems tremendous and overwhelming. It's a coping mechanics fundamentally — and a laughter is pure. If someone's laughing astatine a drawing, it's a absorption to thing real.