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I heart Michael Ramirez *so hard*

That’s today’s Ramirez cartoon and I just want to take a minute to say how much I admire this guy.

His picture ideas are consistently so awesome. Not just ideologically strong, but visually striking. And he pulls them out of thin air, time after time after time. Hoo boy, I have to tell you, the good strong visual ideas are the hard part.

Most of his cartoons are simple, but he can draw like a dream when he wants to. His likenesses are great and his caricatures are cruel. Despite being a staunch righty, he’s won a ton of journalism awards, including two Pulitzers. I’d say Ramirez is who I want to be when I grow up if he weren’t a year younger than me.

His father is a first generation Mexican-American and his mother is Japanese. He was born in Tokyo (maybe that’s why he didn’t get caught up in the Identity Politics Shuffle — he couldn’t decide which box to tick). I don’t know how old he was when they all moved to the States, but he went to college in California. His brothers and sisters are doctors, and he was headed that way himself before he published a political cartoon in the school newspaper that changed his mind (I don’t know what it was, but everybody demanded he apologize and he thought that was pretty sweet).

No link; I don’t remember where I read all that. I won’t pick any favorites, just do please sample this Google Images search of Ramirez cartoons. Savor. Enjoy.

The thing I love most about Ramirez? That cartoon up there. He said to himself, “black background, a few white circles, blur them a little, it’ll totally look like a circus ring.” And it totally does. Geeenius.

March 26, 2014 — 11:09 pm
Comments: 13