{"id":11921,"date":"2014-02-10T15:40:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T20:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=11921"},"modified":"2014-02-10T15:40:22","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T20:40:22","slug":"letter-to-the-editor-from-joe-atkins-tlv-196","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/letter-to-the-editor-from-joe-atkins-tlv-196\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Editor (from Joe Atkins, TLV #196)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Dear\u00a0<em>The Local Voice<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to respond to the letter by William R. Latham in your\u00a0December 19\u00a0edition that was sharply critical of artist Michael Ikeda-Chandler.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Latham has a right to his opinion, but mine is that he\u2019s way off base regarding Mr. Ikeda-Chandler and his work. Ikeda-Chandler is one of the highlights of your publication, an excellent artist who\u2019s exactly on target in every cartoon of his I recall seeing. Political cartoonists are supposed to lampoon, poke fun, satirize, and, by doing so, enlighten and broaden the discussion of the issues of the day. Ikeda-Chandler is directly in the tradition that stretches from Thomas Nast to Bill Mauldin to modern-day artists like Paul Conrad of the\u00a0Los Angeles Times.<\/p>\n<p>Conrad once had this to say about his line of work: \u201cEditorial cartoonists are idealists. &#8230; Political, social, and moral injustices are perceive as monstrosities.\u201d Thus the cartoonist has to \u201csweep aside all the complexities and go to the basic issue; to take suspicions, coincidences, and past events and record them larger than life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ikeda-Chander does these things. I\u2019ve been admiring his work for a very long time. On the wall in my office in the journalism school at Ole Miss are three classic Ikeda-Chandler cartoons. In one of them, he depicts a row of elephants holding Wall Street briefcases and lined up in front of the Welfare Office. One of them grouses, \u201cIt\u2019s only socialism if you give it to the poor!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If that isn\u2019t exactly on target with the truth, I don\u2019t know what is!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joe Atkins<\/strong><br \/>\nOxford, Miss.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8211;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">This letter was originally printed in <em>TLV <\/em>#196 (published January 23, 2014). To download a PDF of this issue, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.payloadz.com\/go\/sip?id=2479858\">HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8211;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">To read the letter Mr. Atkins is responding to, please click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=11916\">HERE<\/a>.<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear\u00a0The Local Voice: I\u2019d like to respond to the letter by William R. Latham in your\u00a0December 19\u00a0edition that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":11917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[2709,2712,28,2710],"class_list":["post-11921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-opinion","tag-cartoon","tag-ikeda-chandler","tag-michael-ikeda-chandler","tag-toon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LetterToTheEditorFeat.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}