Leftist Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit her job after Post opinion editor David Shipley killed a cartoon mocking Post owner Jeff Bezos as part of a pack of supine billionaires holding up sacks of cash and bending the knee to Donald Trump.
We noted in 2015 that Telnaes ripped Sen. Ted Cruz by portraying his young daughters at toy monkeys (imagine doing that to a black politician's daughters). In 2020, she continued the animal theme by drawing everyone she thought aided Trump's election denials as "Republican rats."
“I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist,” Telnaes wrote on her Substack. “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
She went on to explain the cartoon against "currying favor" with Trump, like donating to his inauguration as Bezos did:
The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-Lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.
“There will be people who say, ‘Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company,'” Telnaes went on. “That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press.”