Today’s Westmorland Gazette stories had a number of splendid, potential cartoons hidden amongst them but the lead leapt out as having the most mileage.
Cumbria County Council and the NHS have conducted a Health Related Behaviour Questionnaire. It has revealed that nearly half of teenagers in the county have had alcohol bought for them by their parents. This is Not a Good Thing for teenagers but, clearly, Quite a Good Thing for cartoonists.
When tackling sensitive material like this, I have to be careful. A cartoon on a similar story about Alcopops, some years ago, so incensed the local skateboard community that I had to go into hiding. The newspaper had more letters about it than any other cartoon I’ve drawn. (I reproduce it below in the hope of generating a few more.)
A truly wise cartoonist would tiptoe carefully around this topic. However, good jokes are rarely the product of tact and tiptoeing, so ...
The sketches I submitted are below and you can see the final artwork on my website from Thursday.
If, incidentally, this blog doesn’t appear next week, it will be because Akela has issued a fatwah.
akelas are more powerful than people realise...
ReplyDeletelove the cartoons, sad but true ;)
I find most of these cartoons horribly unsettling because the children pictured are much younger than teenagers. I definitely think it's a topic worth covering but using toddlers as the subject is too shocking.
ReplyDeleteMy teenagers are allowed an occasional drink in the house as we believe that alcohol should not be demonised - just people need to realise how to drink responsibly and that is what we are teaching our teenagers.
ReplyDeleteSigned,
an obviously bad mother whose children do volunteer work, have great reports from school and who act responsibly.