Old-school reporters count the big shots they’ve met on one finger. The cosmopolitan Ranan Lurie studied at a different school. This helps explain why there’s a major new journalism prize in his honor–and why the proles of his trade say it’s ridiculous.
But this group is no more unlikely than Lurie himself. An Israeli by birth and a New Yorker by destiny, he’s recognized twice in the Guinness Book of Records: (1) as “the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world”–appearing in more than 1,000 papers in more than 100 countries; and (2) for a lineage that has been traced back 30 centuries to the house of David and that identifies as his kinsmen Freud, Marx, Mendelssohn, and the prophet Isaiah.
A Ranan Lurie perhaps? I ask, to be provocative.
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Toles’s response, however brief on the page, consumes the next ten minutes of his life. “I…I…aw, man…I. [He laughs.] I…just don’t know…what I want to say here. I’m trying to picture this quote in print. And I’m trying to say something…I won’t be sorry…I said. I think…his work…tends to be…illustrative and…soft-focused… and it tends to have a…mass-production feel to it. I think…that’s as far as I want to go.”
“I’m not entirely sure that’s the goal,” says Toles, who appears in a mere 200 papers. “Guys who swallow knives are in there too.”
Mark Jurkowitz, who wrote last week’s Globe story, insists he laid eyes on a draft and quoted from it: “You should not lend your name or organization’s reputation to [a contest] fated for ridicule. Regardless of your most honorable motives, to most of us you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.” But Jurkowitz doesn’t have it any longer. Syndicated cartoonist Jeff Danziger says he wrote the original draft but can’t show it to me because it was supposed to be kept private. Jurkowitz says there were about a dozen names on the copy he saw; Danziger says he understands some 30 cartoonists from as far away as Australia signed it. But only three names have actually surfaced–those of Danziger, Wilkinson, and Jules Feiffer.
What most aggravates other cartoonists about the competition isn’t the self-promotion but the rules. According to UNCA, the point of the competition is “to promote the highest standard of excellence in political cartoons depicting the spirit and principles of the United Nations.” Entrants should submit two cartoons drawn in the prior 12 months “reflecting the importance of human dignity, friendship among nations and economic and environmental responsibilities towards other nations.” Here’s the rub: “Cartoons should not malign member nations or their leaders.”
