from bradblog.com:

Team Bush began describing candidate George W. Bush as a ‚Äúcompassionate conservative‚Äù in 1998, when Bush began his open run for president, as opposed to the behind-the-scenes operation that had begun with his first run for governor of Texas in 1994. By the time the 2000 presidential campaign was in full swing, probably every American with a television had heard the label. In fact, as the actual election approached, the Bush campaign often took to preferring ‚Äúreformer with results‚Äù — reacting to a margin of diminishing returns for ‚Äúcompassionate conservative.‚Äù

Where did they get the “compassionate conservative” label? Hardly anyone would remember or notice in 1998, but the New York Times had run it front-page on August 7, 1978, when Pope Paul VI died and the Times ran his photograph, captioned prominently as a “Compassionate Conservative,” above the fold. Originally the phrase was a genuine tribute to honor a man who by all accounts deserved it. Its recycling by the Bush campaign was a tactic designed to help Bush seem ‘centrist.’

There’s some good discussion going on over at The Daily Cartoonist. It all stems from an Editor & Publisher article citing the disagreement between columnist Michelle Malkin and cartoonist Ted Rall over this particular piece of his work:
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I got my copy of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ “Golden Notebook” in the mail today. It’s the 50th anniversary of the organization’s newsletter, and if you have any interest in the world of editorial cartooning, you need to find a way to get your hands on it. Editor & Publisher claims the book will be made available for sale to the public, but I’ve looked all over the AAEC’s site for a link and I can’t find anything. (My copy was sent to me for some reason – I’m not a member, so maybe it was a review copy?)

While it is built around a history of the AAEC, no history of a cartoonists’ organization would be useful without the relevant context providing a backdrop, and thus the AAEC’s history ends up becoming a history of American editorial cartooning for the past 50 years.

There’s a lot of stuff that will be pretty meaningless to anyone who doesn’t care about who the officers have been throughout the years or what the admission to the convention was 30 years ago (there’s a Paul Fell sighting on page 81), but there are also some reprints of classic articles like “The Rise and Fall of the Political Cartoon” by Henry Ladd Smith from the May 29, 1954 issue of the Saturday Review and “Why Political Cartoonists Sell Out” by Lee Judge and Richard Samuel West from the September 1988 issue of The Washington Monthly.

The book is in no way a simple glorification of its members – one of my favorite articles is “Editorial Cartoonists & 9/11,” subtitled “A cliche’s high-water mark, or, Liberty wept.” It includes quotes from cartoonists’ discussing the onslaught of cartoons depicting the Statue of Liberty crying in the aftermath, including some damning statements like this one from Ted Rall: “The problem is…the Statue of Liberty crying, with a hole in her chest or with a model airplane smashing into her side only conveys one concept: Lazy Editorial Cartoonist.” (More quotes from the discussion can be found on the AAEC’s website on this page)

I unfortunately have no idea how much this thing costs, but someone at The AAEC should be able to help.

Last week, a story was making the rounds about a column written about suburban Chicago newspaper running television ads boasting of the awards won by a cartoonist it had fired months before. On the surface, it seems pretty slimy, and it seems pretty juicy. No surprise it picked up steam. Criticizing the heartless newspaper companies is about as fashionable as it gets in the cartooning world.

But now Editor & Publisher has a follow-up that shows the good guys and bad guys might not be as obvious as initially suspected, particularly since the media ethics critic who wrote the original column didn’t even talk to some of the people he quoted and misled some of those he actually did speak to.

No disrespect to anyone else, but one of the coolest wedding presents we got came from our friends Van and Amy Jensen. Van and I used to work together at the Daily Nebraskan, and he has since moved on to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette as I have moved along to my freelance cartooning career. Well, long before Van ever went to the DemGaz, I knew of cartoonist John Deering from other friends that worked there. I’m admittedly probably too hard on the whole world of editorial cartooning on this site, but there are a handful of cartoonists whose work I really admire, Deering being one of them, and most of the rest are listed over in the links section. Van has since come to know Deering, and the two are working on a graphic novel together and have started their own Drink & Draw Social Club.

So the other day, I was looking around on the internet and saw Deering’s cartoon with Transformers in it, and I was simultaneously thinking “This cartoon is awesome” and “Dangit, why didn’t I think of that?” It was that perfect kind of professional envy when you wished you’d found a way to make a point that well (and found a way to justify drawing Transformers in an editorial cartoon, which I have only succeeded at twice in the past 8 years).

Well I was very excited to open a package that came in the mail the other day – our present from Van and Amy, who weren’t able to make it to the wedding – and find the original of this cartoon. I am now a proud parent of a John Deering original.

Thanks, guys!