Abramoff's Attorney Wants Cartoons, As Do Telemarketers

By: E&P Staff Is it possible to write a single blog entry that discusses cartoons about Jack Abramoff and cartoons about the telemarketing business?

Yes, Daryl Cagle just did it.

Cagle wrote that a number of artists have been contacted by Abramoff's attorney, who apparently wants to buy cartoons about the disgraced Republican lobbyist. "There have certainly been a lot of Abramoff cartoons, and none of them are complimentary to Abramoff," observed Cagle, a cartoonist himself. "I suppose these will go into a 'trophy case of infamy.'"

Then Cagle mentioned a contest which optimistically assumes that positive cartoons about dinner-interrupting telemarketers exist.

The "Contact Center Cartoon Contest" (which has a deadline -- midnight Monday, Jan. 23 -- that's almost here) offers $10,000 in cash prizes. Cartoons will be displayed at the Call Center Demo and Conference, Feb. 6-8 in Austin, Texas, where attendees will vote for their favorites.

According to the contest guidelines, "Winning entries will be cartoons that make call center customer service representatives think, be inspired, or chuckle -- a group who labors in high-stress, under-paid, entry-level jobs."

Cagle posted several telemarketing cartoons created by artists represented by his Cagle Cartoons syndicate. "Somehow," he deadpanned, "I don't think these cartoons are what the sympathetic, hard-working, misunderstood telemarketing conventioneers will appreciate."

One cartoon, by Mike Lester of the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, shows a family saying grace before dinner as their dog yaps at an incessantly ringing phone. The prayerful dad says to God: "And finally we ask that you, in your infinite wisdom, send the entire telemarketing industry straight to hell."