A Letter from the Editor

From time to time, I devote these Graphical History Tours to reports of books I have recently bought.

Having taken my sister to the airport in Milwaukee this week, I was obliged to stop in at the Renaissance Book Store in the concourse. I frequently find old books of editorial cartoons there, and this visit was no exception.

Cover cartoons by Karl Hubenthal, Paul Conrad, Robert Graysmith, and Jeff MacNelly

The Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year — 1974 is one that was not already in my collection, so I had to bring it home. The cartoons are from 1973: the year the U.S. withdrew from the Vietnam War; the Watergate scandal burst wide open; Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency; Syria and Egypt attacked Israel; the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo on Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, resulting in a severe energy crisis; and U.S. troops massacred Native American protesters at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

It was also the year the Supreme Court issued its decision in Roe v. Wade, but there is no mention of it in this particular book.

I was really struck, however, by the book's forward, written by Washington Star-News editor Newbold Noyes. In light of the state of newspaper editorial cartooning these days, I'd like to quote it in full; so aside from a few cartoons from the book and my credit lines, the rest of today's GHT is Mr. Noyes:

"The Boss Says Make It Funny" by Bill Crawford (for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Sept. 4, 1973) on back cover

So far as an editor is concerned, the cartoon on his editorial page is that white-hot point of light beneath the burning glass. Here the newspaper's editorial statement is reduced to its simplest and strongest terms. More readers are likely to register the cartoonist's message, on any given day, than any other commentary. For better or worse, this pictorial comment comes closer to embodying the spirit of the newspaper than any other element in its pages.

So far as the editor is concerned, this is not always for the better. We have to be candid about this: for an editor, the power focused in the cartoonist's penpoint is something of a problem. When editors meet, the things that really are on their minds do not appear on the formal agenda — they surface in talk around the bar.

When the board of the American Society of Newspaper Editors met the other day on the shores of Arizona's Lake Powell, its members did not devote their first cocktail session to the beauties of the second largest man-made body of water, or even to Watergate. They talked instead about the Los Angeles Times' decision to move its editorial cartoon to the the "op-ed" page, that kaleidoscope of other opinion appearing opposite the newspaper's own editorials.

"Alas, Poor Agnew..." by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1973

Was the switch being made on general principles, or because of some clash of opinion on a major issue developing between editor and cartoonist? Was it a good idea for the rest of us? How about moving the cartoon off the editorial page only on those days when it evidenced a major departure from the views of the editor? How would their cartoonist [Paul] Conrad react?

Evidently, the Times' just-announced move touched a sensitive and responsive nerve in editorial circles.

The problem, of course, was not a new one; it was just that here was somebody doing something about a situation that, subliminally, had perplexed us all. I hearkened back, as the talk rolled on, to the time when our morning competitor in Washington warmly supported Eisenhower in its editorial columns, while its editorial cartoonist [Herblock] persisted in presenting the General as the very personification of Simple Simon. The town took wry delight in the Post's embarrassment, but the newspaper somehow survived. It seems to me the cartoonist went on a vacation, or something.

I am going into all this not to suggest that editorial cartoons no longer belong on editorial pages (which seems to me a dubious proposition), but only to make one point: there is potency in this branch of journalistic commentary. A good argument could be advanced, I think, that the editorial cartoonists in this country have more immediate impact on public opinion than editors, or columnists, or TV anchormen, or any other group.

What makes a good cartoon? Everyone has his prejudices. I, for instance, happen to be partial to those that make a serious point with a humorous twist. In times such as these, however, when very little that happens is at all funny, it is fortunate indeed that a good cartoon can be sad, or bitter, or furious.

Some say that, because cartoons rely on over-statement or exaggeration — distortion, if you will — they must be basically mean. I don't agree; a number of my favorite cartoonists, including Gib Crockett of the Washington Star-News, are consistently good-natured in their approach. That quality should be no more unwelcome on an editorial page than it is in real life.

"Yankee Gone Home" by Gib Crockett in Washington Star-News, January, 1973

The essence of good cartooning, needless to say, is simplicity. This is true of almost any sort of artistic expression, graphic or otherwise, but in cartooning it is the name of the entire game. You cannot be subtle in a cartoon. You cannot be balanced. You cannot worry too much even about being fair.

The cartoonist produces his effect by over-simplifying — by stripping away all the qualifications, the "yes, buts" and "on the other hands," and reducing his message to one pure unequivocal statement.

That, obviously, makes editors uneasy. One such pure, unequivocal statement says far more to more readers than a thousand carefully considered, nicely balanced words. So in addition to being more influential with public opinion in general, the cartoonist may even have more effect than the editor on the public's perception of his newspaper's stance.

This is why the editorial nose is always out of joint in relation to cartoonists — more than usual these days, because of the unusually complex and critical nature of the issues we are trying to deal with. My own guess is that, despite their discomfiture, most editors will let cartoonists continue to dominate the editorial pages, just as they have all along.

The reason, in one pure and unequivocal statement, is that the editorial page would be so damn dull without its cartoon!

—NEWBOLD NOYES, November 5, 1973

"And That's the Truth" by Mike Peters in Dayton Daily News, August 16, 1973

This Week's Sneak Peek

Pelican Publishing has informed us editorial cartoonists that there will be no more editions of Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year.

The move is not particularly surprising. The series's longtime editor, Charles Brooks, passed away a couple of years ago. The last two editions have been edited by Steve Kelley, who produced a well-balanced book, and Dean Turnbloom, who didn't. Yet even before that, a significant number of the very best practitioners of our dwindling profession declined to submit their work for consideration; if not for the award-winning cartoons printed on the first several pages, the book's title was often rather dubious.

As for this week's cartoon: I had hoped to be able to include a street sign for Huguenot Walloon Drive in the cartoon as a tribute to the late Mike Nichols; that was the name of the street Nichols and Elaine May would use when they needed to include a street address in their skits. Unfortunately, there was no place for a street sign anywhere in the cartoon.

BECY 2014

Pelican Books' Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year for 2014 is out, and I'm pleased to say that I have four cartoons in this year's edition.

The 2014 edition skews conservative when it comes to the Obama administration. It is tempting to attribute that to its editor, Dean Turnbloom, a naval civilian who was, briefly, a dogmatic conservative cartoonist. (To the best of my knowledge, at least, he no longer draws editorial cartoons.) A conservative bias on Turnbloom's part might explain why there is only one cartoon in the book by brilliant liberal cartoonist Pat Bagley.

But 2013 was, on balance, not a good year for President Obama, so there are plenty of cartoons in this book attacking him not only from the right but also from the left. Yet for all the cartoons lambasting Obama for the clumsy launch of Obamacare, drone strikes, and supposed scandals over the IRS and Benghazi, there are no cartoons lampooning Chris Christie's Bridgegate, Senate Republicans' abuse of the filibuster, or the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the ensuing Republican push to disenfranchise voters. *

Self-selection could also be a factor in a conservative bias in this year's BECY. The cartoonists themselves pick some of their own cartoons to submit to the book's editors (as contrasted with the Best Political Cartoons of the Year, published from 2005 to 2010, for which editors Daryl Cagle and Brian Fairrington determined which topics would be in the book and selected cartoons from Cagle's stable of cartoonists to illustrate those topics).

To demonstrate how this self-selection process plays out, here are the topics of the five cartoons in Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year 2014 by rigid conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez:

• Mocking Obama's claims that he had no prior knowledge of "Fast and Furious," leaks of national intelligence secrets, a Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting conservative groups, or Justice Department phone taps of Associated Press reporters.
• Blasting Obama as a fake Superman amid a rubble of debt, incompetence, scandals, lies, foreign policy, spending, IRS, jobs, and economy.
• Depicting the problems of the Obamacare website as merely the tip of the iceberg.
• Showing Obama blithely riding an Iranian nuke a la Slim Pickens as it falls toward the U.S. Capitol.
• An anti-abortion cartoon.

Compare that with the cartoons by persistently liberal cartoonist Joel Pett:

• Decrying an ineffective social safety net.
• Alleging that the Republican elephant would deny Pope Francis a green card over his statements on social issues.
• Lamenting the illegal ivory trade.
• Apologizing to Martin Luther King Jr.'s statue for the plight of African-Americans 50 years after his "I Have a Dream" speech.
• There are only four Pett cartoons in the book. Son of a gun. I thought there were five.

Yes, there are cartoons criticizing Congress, albeit mostly from an "A pox on both your parties" standpoint. And, yes, there are cartoons criticizing the Tea Party, but mostly in a generic sense; there are but two cartoons critical of Senator Ted Cruz and only one cartoon critical of Michele Bachmann. There is no criticism of any Republican that quite equals the harshness of Mike Lester's cartoon of President Obama feeding a huge, vicious IRS attack dog from a bag of "Pure Tyranny."

The BECY series has always been edited by a conservative, and for the most part, it showed. From its initial 1972 edition until his death, it was compiled by Birmingham (Alabama) News cartoonist Charles Brooks. Last year's edition was edited by Steve Kelley, late of the New Orleans Times Picayune, earning him praise for a well-balanced tome. I've been trying to find R.C. Harvey's review on line, but apparently it's behind a subscription wall. (It should be at the February 13, 2013 post's link down this page.) I'd like to quote from the review anyway:

"To the extent that Kelley's selection reflects a bias, it is probably a bias in favor of cartoons that attack, which editorial cartoons are better at than they are at supporting a particular point of view. Based on the content of this book, I find it impossible to determine which side of the political aisle Kelley favors, which is undeniably a desirable outcome."

I look forward to Harvey's review of the Mr. Turnbloom's work.
* Rereading the book, I see that there are one cartoon about the Supreme Court decision and one cartoon about the new voter disenfranchisement law in Texas.