FUNNY BUSINESS ] Pomonacollege MAGAZINE

BEYOND HOOD COLLEGE MAGAZINE ADJACENT What comes next for comedian James Davis ’05? SLIGHTLY OUT OF TUNE Remembering the off-key fame of Mrs. Miller ’39 YOUR BRAIN ON HUMOR Ori Amir is both neuroscientist and comedian—no joke THE WORLD OF BOB’S BURGERS Writing comedy with Wendy Molyneux ’97 FUNNY Fall 2019 BUSINESS Pomona College Magazine 1 2 Fall 2019 Pomona College Magazine 3 PCM 4 Fall 2019 Pomona College Magazine 5 [STRAY THOUGHTS] [ FUNNY BUSINESS ] PomonaCOLLEGE MAGAZINE Last of the Yellow Journalists DEPARTMENTS There was a time when editorial cartooning was a job a young artist could aspire to. In 1900, Home Page 1 there were an estimated 2,000 editorial cartoonists at work in the United States. They still numbered Pomona Walk of Fame in the hundreds by the late ’70s, when—at the start of my career—I briefly became one of them. It’s probably just as well that I moved on to other things. Since then, the American editorial Stray Thoughts 6 cartoonist has become an endangered species, right up there with the pygmy elephant. The total in Last of the Yellow Journalists the U.S. is reportedly below 25 now, and falling. Just in the last two years, two Pulitzer Prize-win- ners—Nick Anderson at the Houston Chronicle and Steve Benson at the Arizona Republic—were Letter Box 8 dumped. In June, following an uproar about a cartoon full of anti-Semitic tropes, the international Social Media: Not the Answer edition of The New York Times followed the example of its national counterpart and fired its last two 38 Pomoniana 10 cartoonists—neither of whom, by the way, had drawn the offending cartoon. From the Perspective of a Trilobite Here’s how bad it’s gotten: Iran now boasts more editorial cartoonists than the U.S. I thought for a while that editorial cartooning would be my life’s work. Old-timers like Herblock Booktalk 12 and Conrad were giving way to subtle, innovative artists like Pat Oliphant and Jeff MacNelly. Strip Haute Cuisine, Hawaiian Style cartoonists like Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau were blurring the line between the Sunday comics and the editorial page. These young guns were transforming the medium—putting irony and satire, Artifact 17 artistic style and sly visual humor ahead of blunt- Bowling for Atoms force commentary. It was an exciting time to be Class Acts 18 an editorial cartoonist. Critical Inquiries And I loved the actual process of creating a cartoon—the immersion in the news, the joyous flash Teamwork 20 of inspiration, the inner howls of laughter as I did Hablas Baseball? my preliminary sketches, the knowledge of famous faces that allowed me to draw Ronald Reagan or How to... 20 Bill Clinton without conscious thought and the ...Become a Concert Pianist feeling of working without a net each time I Bulletin Board 50 wielded my ink brush to create the final product. FEATURES Over the years, I must have done hundreds of Alumni Voices 52 drawings of Clinton, then governor of the state An Unforgettable Halloween where I lived, including one, shown here, that was completed shortly after he was first elected gover- 24 The Many Faces of James Davis Class Notes 53 nor at the tender age of 32. It’s without a doubt The star of Comedy Central’s Hood Adjacent and host of Awake: The Million Dollar Game the most prescient thing I’ve ever produced. Obituaries 58 on Netflix, James Davis ’05 has a serious outlook on comedy. Part of the fun of it was the pure joy of poking In Memoriam 63 fun at powerful people. I used to joke that we editorial cartoonists were the last of the yellow journal- Professor Gwendolyn Lytle ists—the only purveyors of the news who still had license to use caricature and exaggeration to distill complicated situations down to a single, simplistic metaphor. Our work was full of open mockery — 30 Slightly Out of Tune Last Look 64 Mrs. Miller—a frumpy, middle-aged pop chanteuse—sold half a million records and was a 1960s an artform that intentionally stretched the limits of polite discourse. Commencement 2019 And that was probably a big part of its undoing. In a time of heightened sensitivities and social media sensation thanks to her sheer chutzpah and utter incompetence. But was she in on the joke? media mobs, caricature has become a dangerous sport. As Australian cartoonist Mark Knight (whose caricatures are uniformly brutal) learned when tennis player Serena Williams’s husband accused him ON THE COVER of a racist depiction of her, there’s a fine line between the kind of harsh visual exaggeration that cari- 38 This Is Your Brain on Humor PHOTO OF JAMES DAVIS ’05 AT THE COMEDY UNION IN catures depend upon and the perpetuation of cruel stereotypes. Add in the decline of newspapers as a Professor Ori Amir wants to understand how the human brain generates comedy. LOS ANGELES BY DAVID ZAITZ profitable industry, and it’s not surprising, I suppose, that cartoonists have become, at best, expend- He also wants to make you laugh out loud. able and, at worst, potential liabilities. Given all of that, the number of young American artists who now aspire to become the next great editorial cartoonist is probably on a par with the number who plan to repair steam engines. But while 44 The World According to Bob’s Burgers the bell is clearly tolling for American editorial cartooning, I have to admit that I was wrong when I said we were the last of the yellow journalists. Yellow journalism, I’m afraid, is viciously alive and well To break into the world of comedy, Wendy Molyneux ’97 and her sister Lizzie wrote plenty of scripts magazine.pomona.edu on social media and talk radio—minus, of course, the redeeming humor. that went nowhere—until one of them happened to cross the desk of the creator of Bob’s Burgers. —MW 6 Fall 2019 Pomona College Magazine 7 [LETTER BOX] COLLEGE MAGAZINE judicial approach focusing first on the Constitu- Pomona tion’s express words, and then, if any ambiguity Corrections exists, determining the Framers’ actual intent by I’m at a point in life where one is inclined to be FALL 2019 • VOLUME 55, NO. 3 focusing on what reasonable persons living at the somewhat forgetful. Personally, I am a good ex- EDITOR/DESIGNER time of its adoption would have understood the ample of that some of the time, but thankfully not Mark Wood ([email protected]) ordinary meaning of the text to be. This ap- all of the time. So when I saw my class note in proach was followed in the Heller decision refer- the spring/summer 2019 PCM with the Class of BOOK EDITOR enced by Professor Hollis-Brusky. The Heller Sneha Abraham ([email protected]) 1950, I had to think twice: Am I Class of ’50 or decision reflects a proper judicial analysis of the Class of ’51? The ’50ers are a great group, but I CONTRIBUTORS Founders’ original intent and meaning of the Sec- really am a loyal ’51er and always will be. Thus Agustin Gurza (“The World According to Bob’s Burgers”) ond Amendment at the time of ratification. I felt compelled to bring this little editorial glitch is a freelance writer who has worked as a columnist, critic Although Professor Hollis-Brusky asserts that and staff writer at the Los Angeles Times. Two of his sib- to your attention. lings attended Pomona. such an analysis had been made many times —Pat Newton ’51 over the 150 years preceding Heller, resulting in Pomona, CA Andrew Mitchell ’89 (“Pomona Walk of Fame”) is a writer an answer contrary to the Heller majority’s ap- /illustrator whose work has appeared in books, maga- proach and conclusion, the judicial record indi- zines, comics, film and video games. He’s the first cartoonist to have a comic strip published on smart phones. cates otherwise. As the 8th Circuit held in U.S. v. Seay, “Prior to 2009, the Supreme Court had Zan Romanoff (“The Many Faces of James Davis”) is a full- not examined [the Second Amendment right] time freelance writer; her third novel, LOOK, is forthcom- in depth. This changed with the Court’s landmark ing from Dial Books for Young Readers in 2020. She lives and writes in L.A. decision in Heller.” Similarly, in People v. Aguilar, the Illinois Supreme Court (none of David Scott (“Slightly Out of Tune) is a senior communica- whose judges were, at the time of the opinion, tion officer for the University of Illinois system and former members of the Federalist Society) unanimously KSPC deejay. He covered pop band We Are Scientists for noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller “un- PCM in 2006. Like Mrs. Miller’s, his singing is suspect. dertook its first-ever ‘in-depth examination’ of the CONTRIBUTING STAFF Second Amendment’s meaning.”A consistent ap- The spring/summer issue is a splendid piece of Lupe Castaneda Jeff Hing plication of original intent thereby decreases the Carla Guerrero ’06 Robyn Norwood work in all ways, but unfortunately, it contains danger posed by the temptation for jurists to im- an error on page 52, line 7 of the Class of ’49 pose their own policy preferences into decisions notes. I am a member of the Nature PRINTING Submissions and Changes: and/or exercise judicial activism to change the For class notes, address changes, photos and birth or death Society, not the Nature PAINTING Society.

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