(LifeSiteNews) — Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who has had his work published in the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, was arrested on Wednesday after detectives found 135 child pornography videos during a search of his home, police stated on January 16.
According to the New York Post, the videos were “linked to an account owned and controlled by the 49-year-old married father of four as well as computer-generated artificial intelligence child pornography.”
The much-lauded anti-Trump cartoonist was nailed by police after law enforcement in Sacramento County, California, received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
When the news of Bell’s arrest broke, several of his cartoons promptly went viral – for all the wrong reasons. Joel Berry of The Babylon Bee posted one that featured Bell demonizing those who use the term “groomer” – in this context, aimed at LGBT activists championing “Drag Queen Story Hour” for children. It has already been viewed over a million times:
Darrin Bell, the cartoonist who made this, was just arrested with child porn on his computer pic.twitter.com/lVuUVhRfB0
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) January 16, 2025
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The cartoon merges the face of an angry white “Modern American” wearing a red MAGA hat with the face of a Nazi brown shirt. The American, with a demonic look on his face, is screaming “Groomer!” with foam flecking his lips. The identical Nazi – who, Bell is clearly telling us, is the Modern American’s spiritual ancestor – is screaming “Jugend-Ver-Derber!” The phrase roughly translates to “corrupter of youth” or “groomer,” and the parallel is made with a club.
Subtlety isn’t Bell’s strong suit.
In Bell’s view, those who object to children being exposed to deliberately sexualized costumes and displays are akin to Nazis. Of course, many of the architects of the Sexual Revolution were groomers and, like Bell, guilty of the sexual exploitation of children.
Crimes against children were a key part of Alfred Kinsey’s work; Michel Foucault was a pedophile; many leading intellectuals openly advocated the reduction or elimination of the age of consent. All, no doubt, would have opposed being called “groomers.”
Then there is a cartoon Bell posted to X on April 23, 2022:
The artist who made these cartoons obsessing over calling Trump and Republicans r*pists, groomers, and Nazis, was just arrested for child p**n. pic.twitter.com/0PY3R2x8hH
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 16, 2025
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Titled “The Groomer,” the cartoon showed an elephant-like person clearly intended to represent the Republican Party opening his long jacket to expose himself to a group of children, with the phrase “bigotry” emblazoned across his chest. His caption: “The #Groomer is trying to turn our children into freaks.” With the discovery that Bell viewed child pornography – a crime better left unimagined and undescribed—the irony here is truly staggering.
It is a classic case of projection – the man viewing child pornography condemning his political opponents as a danger to children. The Pulitzer Prize committee praised Bell for his “beautiful and daring editorial cartoons that took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy, and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration.”
In short, he received the award because his politics were aligned with those making the decision, and he was edgy in the right direction.
Darrin Bell, it turns out, was also worse than a hypocrite, and worse even than a groomer – he was a user of child pornography. To be smeared by someone like that is a privilege.