Tom Toles, National Treasure

I'm not sure "He treats everybody like children" is the best thing Obama supporters could be saying about him.

He treats people like children when they act like children, specifically WATB Repiglicans and Conservadems. Give me a heapin' helping of real health care reform.

that's funny!

Yes, Tom Toles is a national treasure. The biggest improvement in the WaPo over the past decade was the day that Tom Toles was chosen as the editorial cartoonist to replace the late Herblock, who had been phoning it in ever since Nixon resigned.

Which makes me ask: why can't a paper carry multiple editorial cartoonists, the way they carry multiple cartoonists in their comics sections? Why can't Toles be syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, rather than limited to the WaPo? I've never understood this.

Tom Toles was my introduction to politics. I was a kid, and I picked up what I thought was a comic book, but was a series of Toles' editorial comics from 1980 to 1988 regarding Reagan. It was only moderately funny to my 8 year old brain, but I went back to it again and again over the next decade or so and it helped me get interested in all sorts of political issues from the 80's - tax policy, supply-side economics (as told by a left-leaning cartoonist), AIDS policy, missile defense, the USSR, and the Libyan invasion of Chad in the mid-80's.

In any case, I believe he is syndicated. I used to read his stuff in all sorts of newspapers around the country, and even the world. I've also never subscribed to WaPo or even seen a physical copy outside of an airport.