The Pulitzers Draw a Blank

We editorial cartoonists have had our collective nose out of joint all week over a snub by the Pulitzer Prize Board, which announced that it would not award a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning this year. They named a three-way tie for Honorable Mention among Ken "Tom the Dancing Bug" Fisher, Lalo Alcaraz, and Marty Two Bulls Sr., but no winner.

The first Pulitzer for editorial cartooning was given to Rollin Kirby in 1922. That might have been a one-time thing, if they hadn't revived the editorial cartooning award in 1924. The Pulitzer board skipped us over four more times before this year, most recently in 1973.

Like 2020, 1972 was a very eventful year, with plenty of excellent cartoons the Pulitzer board might have considered. I was only just beginning to appreciate editorial cartoons myself in 1972, but I offer here a sampling of what the judges might have had before them when considering the Best Editorial cartoon award for that year.

These cartoons don't include all of the best cartoons, or certainly best cartoonists, of the day; I've tried to approach this with the mindset of a theoretical Pulitzer judge, so the emphasis is on Most Important Issues rather than Funniest Gags. I therefore offer apologies up front to the cartoonists I have included and to those I have not.

"We Must Not Falter..." by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, April 28, 1972

The war in Vietnam was perhaps the biggest news story in American media throughout 1972, so there were plenty of very good cartoons about it. Take for example this Bill Sanders cartoon, quoting Richard Nixon announcing U.S. escalation of bombing North Vietnam.

Pat Oliphant won a Pulitzer in 1967 for a cartoon drawn specifically with the Pulitzer committee in mind, and which he considered then and now one of the worst cartoons he has ever drawn. From that point forward, he has boycotted the Pulitzer Award Game; but if he hadn't, the committee might have considered this excellent cartoon:

"Greetings, French Liberators" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, April 17, 1972

In Oliphant's absence, the committee might have considered this cartoon in a similar vein by Jules Feiffer:

"The South Vietnamese Have Made Great Progress..." by Jules Feiffer in Village Voice, New York, 1972

The war wasn't the only major event of the year, of course. President Nixon's state visit to the People's Republic of China was a game changer in geopolitics.

No caption, by Mike Peters in Dayton Daily News, February, 1972

And, of course, there was a presidential election, and a third-degree burglary at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. 49 years ago this week that ended up making a bit of news.

"The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, August 28, 1972

It's almost unfair to include Herblock for consideration. By 1972 the Dean of American Editorial Cartoonists, Herblock had already won two Pulitzers, in 1942 and 1954. Likewise, it's probably unfair to include John Fischetti, the 1969 honoree.

"...Halt the Erosion of Moral Fiber..." by John Fischetti in Chicago Daily News, October, 1972

The Pulitzer committee has lately shied away from cartoons about individual U.S. politicians (which disqualifies all the above cartoons), but there were more general observations about the election which might have caught their attention.

"My Fellow Americans..." by Bill Canfield in Newark Daily News, May, 1972

Democratic candidate George Wallace of Alabama was shot while campaigning for the presidency. While his injuries would not prove fatal, the attempted assassination was less than a decade after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., seeming to augur political murder as becoming the norm. Thankfully, it has remained the exception, not the rule.

"Remember the Good Ol' Chicago Days..." by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, July, 1972

On a lighter note, perhaps Hugh Haynie's observation of a generational shift in political involvement would have swayed more optimistic judges.

"Second and Third Will Not Be Awarded" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, October, 1972

But when one turns to global issues, any rose-colored glasses again turn blood red. Terrorism on behalf of the Palestinian cause spilled out from the Middle East, as eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by Black Septembrists at the Munich Olympics. Earlier in the year, thirteen unarmed civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by British Army paratroopers on "Bloody Sunday" in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Other, more generalized issues of the day which might have interested the Pulitzer folks included pollution, drug use, the cost of living, or, for the same reason that the Oscars love films about movie making, freedom of the press.

No caption, by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, 1972

I'm obliged to point out that the Pulitzer committee stopped giving awards for specific cartoons in 1976, having begun in 1964 awarding a cartoonist for his or her entire output for the year. (Tony Auth's 1975 cartoon is somewhat of an outlier; otherwise the last award given to a specific cartoon was that given in 1967 to Pat Oliphant. In 1990, the award to Tom Toles did cite a specific cartoon, but only as "exemplifying" his body of work.)

I must also note that just because the Pulitzer committee doesn't give out an award in a particular year does not necessarily mean that the judges didn't find any work worthy of their consideration. It can also mean that there was a hung jury — that none of the pieces under consideration could garner support of over half of the Pulitzer board.

And, as Poynter points out, it doesn't just happen to us cartoonists.

It is fairly unusual — but not unprecedented — for the Pulitzer Board to decide not to name a winner in one of its journalism categories. Since 2000, the board has chosen not to give an award five times. No awards were given in Feature Writing in 2014, Editorial Writing in 2012, Breaking News Reporting in 2011, Editorial Writing in 2008 and Feature Writing in 2004.

I'm not an insider, so I don't really know how the Pulitzer committee works when there isn't a majority vote winner. With so many categories, they obviously don't fight it out for hours like Twelve Angry Men; and I hope they don't operate like the U.S. Senate, allowing one person to thwart a vote by merely threatening to filibuster everybody else.

Yet somehow, the committee managed last year to ignore the three editorial cartoonists nominated by a jury of their peers, coming up with New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt instead. The committee similarly passed over finalists to award non-finalists in 1979, 1987, 1990, 1996, and 1998. Apparently there must be some degree of back and forth negotiating behind those Pulitzer doors. 

In view of all this, I guess this year's Pulitzer decision isn't as insulting to our profession as many of us initially took it to be. At least, that is, compared to those occasions when the Pulitzer folks passed over the finalists to give Best Editorial Cartoonist to a non-editorial-cartoonist.

Do you think Barry Blitt or Berkeley Breathed even paid that $75.00 entrance fee?

The Whole World Was Watching

Last week, Selective Serviceback Saturday shared cartoons from 150 years ago about the first presidential election held after the 15th Amendment extended the right to vote to African-American citizens of the U.S. Today, against my better judgment, we step ahead 100 years from 1868 to the last presidential election held before the 26th Amendment extended the right to vote to 18- to 20-year-old citizens of the U.S.

Others in the cartoon-rehashing game have a much better recollection of the 1968 presidential election than I, so this won't be a comprehensive retrospective by any means. So much of what I do remember is actually Frank Gorshin's and David Frye's impressions of the candidates. Here goes anyway.

"I Think We Can Start Bringing Them Home Soon" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, September, 1968

The #1 issue of interest to those 18- to 20-year-olds had to be the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. They couldn't vote for president, but they did have to answer to their draft board.

President Lyndon Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, had won his party's presidential nomination. His long liberal record, at the 1948 Democratic Convention and as lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was overshadowed by his association with Johnson and the war. He tried to promise to bring an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, only to be publicly contradicted by Johnson and Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. (Laird in Oliphant's cartoon is Wisconsin Congressman Melvin Laird, who would become Richard Nixon's first Secretary of Defense.)

"Anchored" by Tom "Obadiah" Curtis in National Review, October 22, 1968

An eleventh-hour announcement that the Johnson was halting bombing raids over North Vietnam would fail to give enough lift to the Humphrey campaign. Perhaps today we'd call it Johnson Fatigue; liberals who ought to have agreed with Humphrey on civil rights and other issues remained disenchanted; Michigan's New Democratic Coalition and the California Young Democrats withheld their endorsements, and even Norman Mailer mused that Nixon wouldn't be all that bad.

"Making Like a Dove" by Roy Justus in Minneapolis Star, August, 1968

On the Republican side, Richard Nixon's anti-communist record should have indicated that he would continue the war in Vietnam, but he claimed to have a secret plan to end the war within 90 days. What he didn't tell America was that he meant within 90 days of his re-election to a second term, and that the plan involved spreading the war to Laos, Cambodia, and Kent State.

"The Newer Than New Nixon" by Robert Zschiesche in Greensboro Daily News, October, 1968

On domestic issues, Nixon's promises to bring Law and Order appealed to what he called the "Silent Majority" horrified by political assassinations and by riots in America's inner cities, universities, and at the Democratic National Convention. (Not to mention promiscuous sex and drug use. But there, I mentioned them anyway.) Consistently leading in the polls, Nixon offered mostly pablum, and — still smarting from his experience in 1960 — refused to meet Humphrey in any debates.

"The Fraidycat" by Cy Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 24, 1968

Nixon's campaign themes included promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who would reverse the decisions of the Earl Warren court (Johnson would withdraw his filibustered nominations of Abe Fortas and Homer Thornberry in October), to fight inflation, and to replace the draft with an all-volunteer military. Behind the scenes, he urged South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to refuse peace talks until Nixon could take office.

"Measuring Up" by Ranan Lurie in Life, October, 1968

Henry Luce's Life magazine endorsed Nixon in the election, but its cartoonist Ranan Lurie clearly was more ambivalent about the voters' choices. So were a number of others who put themselves forward as third party candidates. Most notably, Alabama Governor George Wallace ran at the head of the American Independent Party on a segregationist platform, declaring that "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats."

"Foreign and Domestic" by Herblock in Washington Post, October, 1968

He chose as his running mate retired Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, who had advocated bombing North Vietnam "back to the stone age," using "anything that we could dream up, including nuclear weapons." Yet while LeMay was more hawkish on the war than Wallace, the general stood to the left of him on Wallace's signature issue.

"There Seems to Be More Than a Dime's Worth of Difference..." by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, October 25, 1968

On the left, the most notable third-party candidates were comedian Dick Gregory and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver heading rival wings of the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Communist Party USA's Charlene Mitchell. Gregory made a tour of college campuses, where he promised to paint the White House black, then bring the troops home from Vietnam and "send LBJ with nothing but a barbecue gun." His counterfeit dollar bills won him considerable attention, not least from the Secret Service.

Mitchell's running mate wouldn't be old enough to serve as Vice President until 1980, and Cleaver (also not yet 35 years old) fled the country after a shoot-out between police and Black Panthers in Oakland, California. But then, getting elected was never really the point of their candidacies.

"Out of the Running," unsigned (perhaps Ted Shearer), in The Afro American, Baltimore MD, October 19, 1968

The Afro American, in an editorial accompanied by the above cartoon, counseled its readers against casting their vote for any of the three African-American candidates:

"Dick Gregory, Eldridge Cleaver and Mrs. Charlene Mitchell are all doomed to defeat this year, and all of them know it. Their exercises in futility would be more tolerable as means of protests against ills in the society in some other election year. ...
"The danger is that some voters, frustrated with conditions as they are or wishing to make an individual protest also, may throw away valuable votes."

As it was, their campaigns, even lumped in with votes for comedian Pat Paulsen and comic strip characters Pogo and Snoopy, were not enough to throw any state from one of the front runners to another.

"Remind Me to Get That Fixed" by Dan Dowling, Kansas City Star,

Wallace, on the other hand, carried Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, the last third-party candidate to win electoral votes by getting a plurality of any state's votes. But it was not enough to throw the election into the House of Representatives; even in the unlikely event that Humphrey had won Wallace's five states in a two-candidate race, he would still have fallen well short of a majority in the electoral college.

But since fewer than 500,000 votes separated Humphrey and Nixon, who can say how Wallace's 9.9 million would have divided up without him?

And yet, 50 years later, with one election decided by the Supreme Court, and two awarded to the second-place candidate, we still haven't fixed our cuckoo electoral vote system.

Pogo and the Jack Acid Society

Hunting up Pogo on line last week, I came across a mention that in the early 1960's, Walt Kelly had satirized the John Birch Society in a series about the "Jack Acid Society." I had never seen that series, and was curious to find any other mention of it.

I found a site where someone had posted scans of several pages of a Pogo book where Pogo and Churchy fall in with (and eventually out the window of) the Jack Acid Society. It's mostly the zany madcap humor typical of the strip: thousands of monkeys at typewriters are producing pages of gibberish which the leaders of the Society treasure as profound literature; the real powers behind the group keep deposing the nominal figureheads of the Society at their whim.

On page 5, the incumbent leader of the Jack Acid Society is a chicken -- a chick, really -- named Prince Pompadoodle.

In some panels, he reminds me a little of Newt Gingrich. He may, I suppose, have been a caricature of a real John Bircher; Kelly certainly liked to de-anthropomorphize real people for his cartoon.

Before long in the story line, Pompadoodle is imprisoned within a bass drum and replaced with the unassuming Pogo. But Walt Kelly apparently liked Prince Pompadoodle's name, and brought the character back in 1968. By then, Pompadoodle had matured a bit, growing tail feathers, a southern accent, and a marked resemblance to Alabama Governor George Wallace.

As far as I know, Walt Kelly never found an excuse to revisit the character as a roosterfication of French President Georges Pompidou.

Q Toon: John Corley McCain, Jr.

Arizona Senator John McCain makes another appearance in this week's cartoon for his dogged insistence that gay and lesbian servicemembers lie about their lives and loved ones if they have the temerity to wish to defend their country.

The reference in this cartoon, for those too young to remember it (or in those Southern school districts where the Texas School Board version of U.S. history holds sway) compares McCain to Alabama Governor George Wallace blocking the University of Alabama door in 1963.