Pursuit of the Naked Truth

If you've been following these Graphical History Tours of mine since the centennial of World War I, you know that most of my posts are about whatever was in the news 100 years earlier. But every once in a while, I like to come forward a bit to discuss some of the major news events from fifty years ago that I can actually remember: the Vietnam War... the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy... Apollo 11 landing on the Moon and Apollo 13 making it back to Earth... the Watergate break-in... the Six-Day War...

So let's take a look at this monumental, life-changing news story from March, 1974:

"The Nudity Crisis" by Cyrus Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 9, 1974

Streaking.

Spring was just around the corner, so college students naturally shed their winter parkas and started running around au naturel, as one is wont to do. 

And news media loved it. Catching snapshots of studly students and comely co-eds dashing through the quad in their birthday suits was a welcome break from reporting the news of rising oil prices, a looming recession, and the criminal indictment of seven of President Nixon's closest aides.

"They Say Streaking Is a Phenomenon Directly Related to the Pressures and Frustrations of Our Society. Was That Who I Thought It Was?" by Don Wright in Miami News, March 5, 1974

I remember the Chicago Tribune, Time, and Newsweek devoting entire pages to streaker photos. (I recall a large photo in the Tribune spread of a guy with one leg in a cast streaking on crutches!) Television had to be a bit more careful about what got caught on camera, but bare all they did. Which begat more streaking, which begat more photo spreads, which begat more streaking... The fad was seemingly everywhere … even on stage at the Oscars!

"The Object of 'Streaking'..." by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1974

Certainly the nation's editorial cartoonists were eager to join in the fun.

"Again Eluding the Congress and the Courts..." by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, March 6, 1974

We editorial cartoonists fancy ourselves to be serious journalists, speaking truth to power. Distilling important news down to its bare essence! Exposing hypocrisy and corruption! But deep down, we are also the kid in the back of the class drawing pictures of the school principal saying "Poop!" in our notebooks.

(Ask Clay Jones to show you his.)

"Streaking" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, March 6, 1974

Even the great Herblock in the capital's newspaper of record couldn't resist dashing off a cartoon of the President in the altogether.

"Good Grief..." by Jeff MacNelly in Richmond Times-Leader, ca. March 11, 1974

Likewise Jeff MacNelly, then early in his newspaper career. What he got right in this cartoon was that many collegiate streakers protected what was left of their modesty by pulling a balaclava over their face.

Had enough of Nixon in the nude? Yeah, me too.

"Senior Streaker" by Lou Grant for Los Angeles Time Syndicate, ca. March 14, 1974

We can now be grateful to Lou Grant for putting Richard Nixon in a streaking cartoon yet mercifully leaving him fully dressed.

"Streaking through 1974" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, March 7, 1974

With the Watergate scandal and economic hardship dominating the news, Republicans were taking a beating in local elections. That included losing the House seat of newly-minted Vice President Gerald Ford.

"We've Been 'Streaking' for Years" by D. Edward Holland in Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1974

For cartoonists (or their editors) who were leery of depicting the President of the United States in the nude, a safer alternative — especially for the dwindling number of Nixon defenders such as Ed Holland — was to draw John Q. Public stripped bare by the Internal Revenue Service.

"Streaking" by Gene Basset for Scripps Howard Newspapers, ca. March 14, 1974

Or one could draw Jane Q. Consumer losing everything to Inflation Bar Sinister.

"Streaker" by Don Hesse in St. Louis Democrat, ca. March 16, 1974

Or heck, why not draw about inflation and taxes? There's no limit to the kinds of major expenses that you could draw stealing the shirt off your back and the pants off your tush.

But you can leave your hat on.

"Like Father Like Son" by Jim Lange in Daily Oklahoman, March 7, 1974

Returning whence the fad began, I'm not sure whether Jim Lange was commenting on the economy in general or college tuition in particular. But I do know that the tuition grant I was awarded a couple years later, a significant amount at the time, would barely cover the cost of one semester's textbooks today.

The average college tuition in 1974 was $1,650/year for a public college, $3,420/year for a private college. Today, adjusted for inflation, that would be $12,155 and  $21,395, respectively. With the proliferation of fees since the '70's, looking at the actual cost of college today is like comparing apples and fruit salad; but the average cost for a four-year public college last year was $21,878, and for a private college, it was $47,961.

"Vulgar Indeed, Miss Finch..." by Clyde Peterson "C.P. Houston" in Houston Chronicle, ca. March 9, 1974

That's enough math and calculus. I'll bring today's NSFW romp to a close with a couple of cartoons that expressed relief that college and university students were blowing off steam in harmless, frivolous ways, in contrast to students of only a few years prior. 

(Side note: I've seen the C.P. Houston cartoon with the word "mirthfully" instead of "joyously"; I do not know which word appeared in the Houston Chronicle. And the Doug Marlette cartoon below must have been drawn for national syndication in place of the local-issue cartoon of his with a streaking theme that appeared in the Charlotte Observer.)

"Once a Campus Revolutionary..." by Doug Marlette for Charlotte Oberver, ca. March 13, 1974

P.S.: If you caught a Joe Cocker earworm a couple paragraphs back and would rather get rid of it, try this one.

Keep the Cons in Constitution Day!

Depending on personal preference, Americans are celebrating Constitution Day or Citizenship Day today. It's the 235th anniversary of the ratification of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787, replacing the deeply flawed Articles of Confederation with a document that has endured for more than two centuries. In spite of allowing disgruntled misanthropes to be in charge of well-regulating their own personal militiae.

The day is often marked with swearing-in ceremonies for new citizens, hence the coincidence of Citizenship Day. Since I've lived in this country all my life, and I'm not swearing in any new citizens, I'm celebrating instead by resurrecting some of the cartoons drawn for an edition of Washington Post Magazine marking the bicentennial of the Constitution in 1987.

by Jeff MacNelly for Washington Post, June 28, 1987

Some of the country's leading editorial cartoonists were privileged to draw full-page, full-color cartoons to illustrate articles by the likes of Garry Wills, Roger Wilkins, Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, Frank Easterbrook and Charlie Haas.

The late Jeff MacNelly fancied the members of the Supreme Court sailing the 200-year-old S.S. Constitution through outer space with gavels for oars. (It works better as an image than in text.) I don't spot Sandra Day O'Connor or Thurgood Marshall — the sole woman and the only non-White man on the Court to that point — in his cartoon, so I'm just going to assume that MacNelly was trying to represent the overwhelming White male majority of the Court through history. 

by Pat Oliphant in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

Pat Oliphant produced this illustration of the imbalance of power that had developed between the Executive and Legislative branches since the dawn of the nuclear age. 

Nearly half of the cartoonists represented in the Post Magazine's package put then-President Ronald Reagan in their cartoons...

by Don Wright in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

...and not at all favorably.

by Doug Marlette in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

by Mike Peters in Washington Post Magazine,  June 28, 1987

That there were no cartoons featuring Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, or any other member of Congress only goes to support the point Pat Oliphant was trying to illustrate. Congress had made some attempts to reassert its prerogatives in the wake of the Nixon Watergate scandal; but with eight years in office, the Reagan administration was rather successful in reasserting the primacy of the presidency.

by Tony Auth in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 9187

That so much of what goes on behind the scenes answers to the President rather than the legislature has had a lot to do in fostering growth over the 20th Century of the imperial Executive Branch. Tony Auth's cartoon suggests that it almost doesn't matter who —if anyone— sits behind the Oval Office desk.

(It also reminds me of the classic Saturday Night Live sketch in which Reagan, portrayed by Phil Hartman, is genial if doddering when the cameras are on, but a cunning mastermind behind closed doors.)

Leaving the presidency aside, two articles in the Post's package centered on groups excluded from the document ratified in Congress Assembled in 1787:

by Jules Feiffer in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

Roger Wilkins's essay, which Feiffer's cartoon accompanies, notes that the people pictured in paintings of the first constitutional convention "are white and male. And, no matter how powerful the celebratory culture is — and it is immensely powerful — a black American cannot help testing those images and the purported constitutional promises against the dailiness of his own life."

The words of Jemmy Madison in Feiffer's cartoon ring hollow against Wilkins's remembrance of growing up in the 1930's, '40's, and '50's.

When the Brown decision was announced on May 17, 1954, I was in my freshman year at the University of Michigan Law School. I was 22 years old. It would be three years before I would go to work in the Black slums of Cleveland and 11 before President Johnson would sent me to work among the smoldering embers of Watts. It would be eight years before the schools of Norfolk, Va., would be integrated, so my future wife — a junior high school student in 1954 — graduated from a still-segregated high school, thoroughly disillusioned. Martin Luther King was an unknown 25-year-old. He had just under 14 more years to live. It would be just over 14 years before King's Poor People's Campaign would descend on the Mall in Washington and begin the fundamental probe to find out just how big the promise of the Constitution really was and to whom it was extended.

To accompany the essay by Rose Bird, then recently having been defeated for reelection to the California Supreme Court, the Post Magazine turned to Nicole Hollander.

by Nicole Hollander in Washington Post Magazine, June 28, 1987

Not to disparage Feiffer or Hollander in the least, I do wonder whether the Post approached any Black or female editorial cartoonists for this project. Feiffer's bona fides on the issue of racial justice are without question and go back before I was born, but I suspect that an editor from the present day would have solicited Ted Shearer, Robert Pious, Brumsic Brandon Jr., or Chester Commodore.

Female editorial cartoonists of the time included Etta Hulme, Kate Salley Palmer and Signe Wilkinson. Hollander's work was not typically found on the editorial page, but her syndicated comic strip "Sylvia" (1981-2012) evolved out of her "Feminist Funnies" comic strip, and prior to that, her work as graphic designer for a feminist publication, The Spokeswoman. "Sylvia" could be every bit as topical as Feiffer's work. Hollander just didn't give presidents speaking parts in her strip.

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That's all for now. So whether you observe Constitution Day, or whether Citizenship Day is your family tradition, or even if you're stretching Mexican Independence Day throughout the weekend...

...please celebrate responsibly.