Fusillade of words

Cartoonists are lauded for our ability to simplify, and we are dismissed for our oversimplifications. But sometimes we deliberately draw more complicated conclusions than we have to. Some readers and editors decry our more cluttered, label-ridden or wordy efforts (it's enough to give us a complex), but the simple fact is, they often work. Take last week, when the vice president inadvertently turned his blunderbuss on a deep-pocket party donor instead of a cowering 14-ounce quail, then clumsily tried to keep it out of the news for a day or so. The one-panel one-liners came easy, like shooting fish in a barrel of monkeys. (This week's favorite was a veep variation on Elmer Fudd.)

But when a story has this much comic potential, daily newspaper cartoonists can hardly keep up with water-cooler cutups, cyberspace smart-alecks and the standing army of late-night stand-up writers. Editorial cartoons are supposed to go for the jugular, not just the jocular, so, like Steve Sack, why not use the scattershot approach and open fire on multiple targets? None of this week's pieces are precision-derision guided missiles, and all may require a few seconds of study. But the multiple warheads they carry make them vewy, vewy effective weapons, as a certain cartoon hunter might say.