Thread: THORNHILL'S VIEW : North County Times

Originally Posted by Skip

JANUARY 11, 2007

Won't people have to form groups for any sort of protection?

Can you count on your police to uphold the United States Constitution and the rule of law?

Originally Posted by Skip

Immigration authorities arrest 60 gang members, associates during North County sweep

How many thousand did they over look to find the couple they arrested?

How many are they allowing to roam the streets free from prosecution?

How many of those that have been aiding and abetting this illegal invasion are still free to continue with their felonious activities?

Maybe they should no longer be called Police.

And what are we going to do when we've completely altered the meaning of the word, "Our" by using it in reference to OUR government?

OCTOBER 12, 2007

OCTOBER 16, 2007

Love the gang sign one. Heck they are all good. Keep em' coming!

'Thornhill's View' ends

'Thornhill's View' ends



By: MARK THORNHILL - Staff Writer
November 11, 2007

North County Times editorial cartoonist Mark Thornhill leaves paper after 18-year enlistment

Thanks for letting me vent.

Today the North County Times publishes my final 'Thornhill's View' editorial cartoon. Eighteen years ago, during the first week of November, my first cartoon appeared in the Oceanside Blade Citizen (which later merged with the Escondido Times Advocate to become the North County Times). I've probably drawn up to 4,000 cartoons since that first crude rendering, most of which

made it into print. A few didn't ---- they were judged too insensitive or too provocative for publication. But, all in all, I was given great latitude to express my opinions.


So I would like to thank my editors over the years (Teresa, Jim, Wayne, Bob, Dan, Denis, Bill, Rusty and Kent) for their generally

undying patience. I sometimes submitted cartoons that I knew would later cause them headaches when upset readers called and demanded my head on a platter. Yeah, there were complaints. At times. And I suppose some readers are wondering if the complaints of some readers had any influence on my decision to leave the NCT. I'm happy to report that no, I wasn't hounded from the NCT by a particular angry mob. I'm choosing to leave the paper to pursue new adventures. I've got some projects lined up. A lot is up in the air. I'll see what happens.

During the past 18 years, while in my capacity as cartoonist, I've had the pleasure of meeting many interesting North County movers and shakers. Some of the local politicians I've caricatured on the Opinion page have been good sports and have even called me to request that I send them original artwork of themselves so they could frame and hang it in their offices or homes.

Other public figures, I'm sure, hated my guts and still do so. I wish to thank them all for helping make North County the great community it is.

I was always somewhat frustrated with editorial cartooning. A typical cartoon picks out a villain and, wham, hits him/her over the head with a sledgehammer, figuratively speaking. Cartoons are often blunt instruments.

There's no room for detailed analysis. Sure, the visual impact of a hard-hitting cartoon can be effective, but many topics are served better by cool-headed dialogue.

Oh well.

The cartoons on this page (and the jump page), are some of my favorites, or at least they highlight some of the big stories I cartooned over the years.

Again, thanks for allowing me to get a few things off my chest.

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11 NOVEMBER 2007

Cutlines to accompany Mark's cartoon roundup

By: MARK THORNHILL - Staff Writer

My first cartoon (top left) ran Nov. 5, 1989. Note the stiff drawing style and feeble attempt at humor. At that time Sheriff John Duffy was taking heat for jetting off to other cities to work consultation jobs.

The cartoon top right (1990) was drawn in response to a proposal pitched to the Oceanside City Council. The idea was to paint house numbers on streets and buildings to help police helicopter pilots navigate the city.

In 1993, conservatives on the Vista school board attempted to introduce material to the high school curriculum that presented scientific criticism of evolutionary theory. Darwinists from all over the country assailed the school board and fought tooth and nail to keep Vista (and some Oceanside) students fed traditional evolutionary creed.

After having read a half dozen books and numerous articles critical of evolutionary dogma, I drew this cartoon, middle left.

The Gatekeeper cartoon (middle right) ran in 1996 in response to President Clinton's efforts to secure the Mexican border. The subject of illegal immigration came up time and time again over the last decade and a half and I drew a ton of cartoons supporting the simple idea that American immigration laws should simply be observed. (Note: Supporting the law doesn't necessarily make one a racist.)

The cartoon at the bottom left, published in 1998, got a lot of favorable reviews from readers on the Right. Yeah, I lean to the Right. I confess to being conservative -- usually. Is that such a crime?

If I were to guess, I'd say that 5 percent of editorial cartoonists working full time at daily newspapers today are conservative; 10 percent haven't made up their minds yet and 85 percent lean to the left. Liberal cartoonists are a dime a dozen. You can quote me on that.

The Dick Lyon cartoon (1999), bottom right, I like mainly because it's visually interesting. Lyon was Oceanside's mayor in the late '90s. I'm sorry but I couldn't resist drawing Lyon as a lion during his reign as king of the Oceanside jungle. Oceanside politics seemed always so volatile in the '90s. Lately, however, everyone over there in City Hall has been behaving almost civilly -- what's up with that?

-- Mark Thornhill

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FLAILING AGAINST THE WIND

Elevating political incorrectness to an art

Thornhill's view will be missed

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer



If past letters to the editor and comments on our Web site are any guide, I'm sure there are those in the community cheering today's announcement that Mark Thornhill is leaving his longtime job as editorial cartoonist at the North County Times.

Don't count me among them.

Mark's decision to move on to the next chapter of his professional life not only leaves a void in the pages of this paper, it leaves a void in the intellectual and political discourse in North County.

Truth be told, Mark's world view, which springs from his biblically based Christian faith, is probably closer to that of the North County community at large than is mine or that of most of Mark's critics. His defenders may not have been as vociferous as his critics, but clearly Mark spoke for an awfully broad swath of this community.

And yet, despite his resonance with the larger community, Mark often found himself swimming alone on a daily basis. To be an openly conservative Christian in the news business is to swim against the current a good chunk of the time.

But having his dissenting voice in our newsroom made us a better newspaper by consistently making us aware of the views and feelings of a demographic all too underrepresented in this and just about every newsroom: conservative believers.

Of course, Mark also took heat from those readers who disagreed with his cartoons, or who chose to find them offensive. He received by far the most hate mail of anyone who's ever contributed to these pages. Much of it was vile, some profane.

It is a disturbing mark of current social conditions that people feel that disagreeing with someone's point of view somehow grants permission to attack the dissenter's very humanity.

And what was lost, I think, in the heated reaction to many of Mark's admittedly pointed cartoons is the reality that he never chose what appeared on our pages. The editorial page editors, and sometimes the top editor and even publisher, made those calls.

In the early 1990s, when I was promoted to opinion pages editor of one of the Times' predecessors, the Blade-Citizen, Mark was already here, providing graphics work and also contributing an opinion cartoon for each Sunday's paper.

What was readily apparent upon seeing just a couple of Mark's cartoons was that he had an immediately recognizable style, and a pretty unique voice among American editorial cartoonists.

The B-C's editor, Rusty Harris (now a managing editor of the Times) and I convinced both Mark and our publisher, Tom Missett, that one cartoon a week was a waste of Mark's talents.

Eventually, Mark was contributing between three and five a week, touching on issues both global and local.

And when we could talk him into entering his work in contests, he won a bunch of awards from fellow journalism professionals, too. Would have won more if he'd entered more.

But he didn't choose what ran. His editors did.

As I told Mark when we made him our full-time editorial cartoonist some 12, 13 years ago: "If you don't make me reject at least a handful of cartoons a year, you're not pushing hard enough."

Well, he met that challenge and most thrown his way. His mark on this community is indelible.

We were surely among a very small number of daily newspapers with a conservative evangelical Christian editorial cartoonist.

Maybe the only one.

Starting tomorrow, that will no longer be true.

Contact columnist Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.

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