STARKVILLE — Marshall Ramsey’s cartoons always seem to get a reaction, whether they are based on sports, politics or national disasters. But more than anything, Ramsey hopes they make people think.
“I think about the impact of what I want to say,” Ramsey told The Dispatch. “At the end of the day, I know that the cartoons are going to cause a reaction and I just want to be thoughtful about what kind of reaction. …I don’t really care if I make them mad or happy. I just want them to think about it.”
Ramsey, editor-at-large of Mississippi Today and editorial cartoonist, has been working in news for over two decades and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He shared the story of his career and some of his cartoons with the Starkville Rotary Club on Monday.
Ramsey said he moved from San Diego, California to Mississippi in 1996, after he was offered a job at The Clarion-Ledger. He said he originally expected to work in Mississippi for two years, but 8,000 cartoons later, he is still in the state.
“Something happened along the way and I totally fell in love with the state,” Ramsey said. “… My wife and I would agree that there are some times that you want to choke each other in a marriage, but there are also great moments of great joy, and that’s the way my marriage has been to Mississippi.”
But Ramsey’s cartoons have gone far beyond Mississippi. His work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Fox News, and newspapers across the United States.
Ramsey displayed some of his favorites from his career to the club, most of which drew laughs. But he also included several cartoons that made the audience fall silent, including the two that drew his Pulitzer Prize nominations.
One followed September 11, 2001, and featured the Statue of Liberty crying as smoke rose from the city. The other, after Hurricane Katrina, depicted utility workers raising a pole in the style of “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.”
“After 9/11… for weeks, you couldn’t do anything funny, because there wasn’t anything funny about it,” Ramsey told The Dispatch. “I would say there are great cartoonists that are really funny and hitting and hard, but they’re like a baseball pitcher that can only throw one pitch. I have a good fastball, but a good curve and a good slide. I can do work on sensitive stuff.”
Recently, Ramsey covered the tornado damage in Rolling Fork with a similar level of concern: two people clinging to each other in the middle of the damage.
“I was in Rolling Fork three days before the tornado hit to speak,” Ramsey said. “…A room this full, probably 50 people. And then that tornado hit, and my first thought was ‘how many people in that room are still alive?’”
But Ramsey said one of the reasons he has fallen in love with the state is because when things get bad, Mississippi gets good.
“We’ve seen it all across the state,” Ramsey said. “Before you can get out of your house, there will be a church van full of people with chainsaws and casseroles to cut you out of the debris and feed you.”
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