Shanghai, June 14

The Shanghai schedule has been packed with EXTREMELY IMPORTANT diplomatic activities. After meeting the consulate staff yesterday morning, I was interviewed by a young Chinese newspaper reporter.

He spoke beautiful English and asked very intelligent questions about such topics as the Danish cartoonists drawing Muhammad, the upcoming U.S. election, and why I have nothing nice to say about the Chinese in my cartoons.

I explained that editorial cartoons generally have nothing nice to say about anyone, and reminded him that criticism of their government doesn’t necessarily translate to negative ideas about the Chinese people, who seem to be among the kindest and most helpful denizens of the entire planet, unless they are faking it as part of a communist plot to lull us into borrowing more money from their banks and spending it on Chinese-made consumer electronics.

Later I had two more media interviews, a roundtable with some Chinese journalists, and an evening program at Shanghai’s most prestigious journalism school. Nearly all the students I met spoke English, and were headed for graduate work in the U.S. Again, a large majority of the journalism students were young women.

I entertained an auditorium of 70or so with cartoons, jokes that defied translation, and live drawings of such familiar Chinese household names as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Mitch McConnell.

Okay, they don’t know McConnell, but I like sharing my drawings of him as an obstructionist moneybag, a turtle, a dinosaur, a cockroach, a cross-dressed hooker and a semen stain on the blue dress of democracy with the largest possible global audience.

I’m pretty sure this serves the national interest.