Thanksgiving leftovers

A tip for cartoon consumers: Our holiday week production is often holiday weak. For Thanksgiving, that meant lots of leftovers: Turkeys labeled “farm bill” or “Musharraf” or “debate format.” A plateful of Plymouth Rock/immigration offerings. A pile of inane shopping lines. At least the obligatory feast-amid-famine offerings have a certain seriousness of purpose. But, as with these holiday travel toons, there’s always a way to do it right. Rob Rogers refused to give President Bush a waterboarding pass. Our still-insecure skies suited Mike Keefe’s stylized sarcasm. And Jimmy Margulies illustrated an ageless cartooning maxim: If you’re drawing about something that’s more trifle than tragedy, you’d better make it funny as hell.

-- Joel Pett