From cartoonist Clay Jones about ‘Rahm Matters,’ the shooting of Laquan McDonald, the recall of Rahm Emanuel, and the artistic process
I grew up in several states. I was born in Texas, but Louisiana was home. My mother also dragged me to Georgia, California and Illinois. My first memories are from living in Elgin, which is about 50 miles from Chicago. I attended several games at Wrigley and was a Cubs fan before I even knew there were other teams. I will always be interested in what’s going on in the Chicagoland region.
Watching Mayor Rahm Emanuel squirm underneath the political heat lamp is especially interesting.
Mr. Mayor didn’t seem very interested in the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. This is where police shot McDonald 16 times, 14 times while he was on the ground. It took 13 months for the officer to be charged and the video to be released, which the mayor fought against. There was a rush to settle with the family before the officer responsible was even charged or there was a lawsuit (which sounds more like paying hush money than admitting guilt).
The mayor stated that he had not watched the video before it was released. Did he not have any interest in the case? His constituents have been yelling at him for over a year, but he doesn’t get around to watch the evidence of what they’re screaming about? This is a leader?
After the video came out, proving the police union wrong with the self-defense defense, the mayor fired the police chief. That did not put an end to the calls for Emanuel’s resignation. In fact, they’ve only increased. Now the Justice Department is going to investigate Chicago’s police force.
There really isn’t a procedure on the books to impeach a mayor (as Rahm is not going to resign). Now a state representative has introduced a bill in Illinois’ legislature to recall the mayor.
Rahm is not going to resign unless all his money backers tell him to. It will have to get very loud in Chicago before that happens. It may yet happen. The best route will be a recall vote. I don’t think the legislature is going to have any problem creating a law to recall Rahm. Soon it will be up to the voters.
But hey, go Cubs.
This cartoon was tedious to draw. A lot of cartoonists use a computer program to do the white lettering with a black background. I do it old school, as it’s all by hand. I don’t do it that way because it’s better or out of a sense of morals or purity. I do it by hand because the computer drawing method doesn’t really work for me. I think a lot of cartoonists are doing amazing work on computers. It would be nice to never have to buy paper, pens, pencils or erasers again or have to wash correction fluid off my skin, clothes, and Beagle. After 25 years of doing this, I think I’m too old for new tricks, and I really hate learning software stuff. I have very little patience.
When I started my career, a cartoon would take four to five hours to draw. Over time, it got down to two hours on average. For some reason, it’s taking a lot more time for me to draw cartoons. I don’t think I’ve drawn anything this week in less than four hours. I gave myself additional work with this one because I originally just had the mayor’s name on the desk. While waiting for the toon to dry and walking Chubbs The Beagle, I got the idea to make the sign say “#RahmMatters.” That required more correction fluid, a separate sheet of paper (cheap copy paper for that purpose), and cut and pasting. The real pain in the butt was drawing the hashtag symbol and every “S.”
A colleague has been doing live streams of drawing his cartoons. I don’t know if readers would be interested enough to watch someone draw for two hours. It interests other cartoonists, who don’t have the two hours to watch. I wonder if my readers would be interested in seeing something like that from me. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen.
