Political Cartoons: A Research Note 75 Southwestern Journal of ...

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 75
POLITICAL CARTOONS: A RESEARCH NOTE
Dr. Dean A. Minix
Northern Kentucky University
"Nixon was to cartooning what Marilyn Monroe was to sex." 1
Introduction
Stop those damned pictures! Boss Tweed of Tammany is said to have urged
his lieutenants after viewing Thomas Nast's cartoon "Who stole the People's Money"
explaining "I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents can't
read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures!" 2
As an observer and analyst of American and international politics both
vocationally and ad vocationally for the past 30 some years, political cartoons have
always fascinated me. And, I have always said that if I had any artistic talent, I would
have been a cartoonist. But, given the fact that I have no artistic talent, and only limited
political insight, my career path was pre-ordained--that of an academic. Of course, if you
look at who draws those damn pictures, you might think they were academics. "Put
today's cartoonists together in a room and you will find a sea of 200 casually clad white
males, their ranks interrupted with only an occasional flash of skirt or alternate skin tone.
Most cheerfully admit to being social misfits in their earlier days: a stutterer, nerd, or
general adolescent ne'er-do-well who used his or her quick-draw humor to win friends
1
Doug Marlette, “In Your Face, a Cartoonist at Work,” Houghton-Mifflin, 1991.
2
Roger Fisher, Those Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Cartoon Art, Archon, 1996, p. 2.
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Political Cartoons: A Research Note 76
and gain notoriety." 3 Perhaps cartoonists, like some academics, are like the boy with the
brick--just waiting to flail it threw the first plate glass window they find. "Good cartoons
are like visual rock and roll, writes Newsday cartoonist Doug Marlette. "They hit you
primitively and emotionally. There is something wild and untamed about the best of
them, raw and vaguely threatening like Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis…. A cartoon
cannot say, 'On the other hand.' And it cannot defend itself. It is a frontal assault, a slam
dunk, a cluster bomb." 4
Cartoonists today, like days of yore, come from different political persuasions and
sociological heritages. Today, however, most cartoonists are liberal democrats, but in the
nineteenth century, the opposite was the case. Whatever their perspectives, cartoonists
are political lampoonists who produce a subjective view of their Weltanschauung. The
most important part of any cartoon is the idea that drives or motivates it. "Rollin Kirby,
one of the finest American newspaper cartoonists of the 20 th century, said that a good
cartoon consists of 75% idea and 25% drawing. 'A good idea has carried many of
indifferent drawing to glory,' commented Kirby in 1918, 'but never has a good drawing
rescued a bad idea from oblivion." 5
A cartoonist's job is to attack--to lampoon. They do this through the convention
of satire. Cartoonists do not present the daily news. They interpret the daily news. "As
Chicago Tribune cartoonist Jeff MacNelly has said, 'A political cartoon is not like a
truckload of tomatoes in 90 degree weather. It isn't
3
Stephen Hess and Sand Northrop, Drawn and Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons,
Montgomery: Elliot and Clark, 1996, p. 10.
4
Ibid., p. 10.
5
Ibid., p. 11.
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something that has to be delivered the next day.'" 6 Most good cartoons attack; only the
vary rare cartoons applaud something like a peace treaty. It's like Walter Cronkite said
about the definition of news, "it’s news if it's out of the ordinary." On an aside, why we
consider peace to be the norm, and conflict to be the aberration, I will never understand.
Recorded human history does not give that accounting.
In his perceptive analysis of Nast's effectiveness in The
Political Cartoon, Charles Press stressed the shock value of raw
emotional impact: The Nast cartoon is great because of the emotional
impact of its presentation. It continuously goes beyond the bounds of
good taste and conventional manners. Nast is like the man who rings
your bell and, when you open the door, guns in shouting insults at you
and throwing rocks and mud at you and your wife and on your front
hall walls. Your reaction is that what excites him must be a grievous
wrong you somehow unwittingly committed. 7
Do cartoons peddle the truth, or are they as fallible as their authors Well,
obviously the answer to this question is indeed one of perspective. Where one stands
determines what he will see. Cartoons are propaganda. But, remember the root meaning
of propaganda is information. The question is information decoded by whom and for
what purposes. Pat Oliphant, one of the most outspoken cartoonists in articulating the
need to use the cartoon for critical comment…states that 'our business is valuable enough
to be looked upon as a
6
Ibid., p. 14. 7 Fischer, op. cit., p. 14.
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leading vehicle for printed and savage opinion and someone will always be
offended.'" 8
"From the little we do know about the psychology of political behavior, it is likely
that those cartoons most effective as propaganda have tended not to confront and to
challenge but rather to reinforce and build on a priori beliefs, values, and prejudices.
Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison as frontier farmer-warriors and Abraham
Lincoln as the 'rail-splitter of the West' were served superbly by images of rustic virtue
and primal vigor conforming so well to the popular mythic ideal of the western
wilderness, just as John Quincy Adams in 1828 and Martin Van Buren in 1840 fell victim
to outlandish smear campaigns, mainly because as small, balding men of ideas, they
epitomized East and Europe. The 1964 LBJ countdown television ads, and Roger Ailes's
masterful 1968 Nixon media campaign and the1988 Willie Horton spot, become the stuff
of Madison Avenue legend. They were successful not because they inspired the millions
to behold Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, and Michael Dukakis in alarming new
lights, but because they were built upon existing fears that Goldwater was a reckless warhawk
and the Humphrey and Dukakis were both 'soft on crime' and pandering to minority
ghetto voters." 9
As Roger Fischer writes,
8
Ibid., p. 21.
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By its very nature, political cartoon art in a democratic society has been
one of the purest artifacts of popular culture, seeking to influence public
opinion through its use of widely and instantly understood symbols,
slogans, referents, and allusions. The artist must exploit conventions in
fundamental harmony with the 'cultural literacy' of the public or risk
almost certain failure, for obscurity and snob humor are fatal to the
medium. Thus the context of the effective editorial cartoon, disregarding
altogether its ideology or the issue at hand, can tell us much about the
popular culture of its day. 10
The American Industrial Revolution was the watershed event that promoted what
we now call American popular culture. While early cartoons reflected a rather traditional
cultural heritage with referents to the Bible, the mythology of Homer, the Renaissance,
Shakespeare, etc., the 20 th century saw an erosion of these and similar referents for
caricature. Today's popular culture evokes symmetry with television and Hollywood
characters. Sports analogies are also prevalent. Walt Disney and comic books provide
good grist.
Effective cartooning requires savagery. "Mike Peters once stated, 'cartooning is
not a fair art. You can never treat anyone justly, adding that most cartoonists like me--
who like to attack--are the loaded guns.' Louisville Courier Journal mainstay Hugh
Haynie has defined the cartoon as 'an offensive thing' and Bill Mauldin characterized his
calling as 'a destructive art,' insisting that the proper function of cartoonists is not to act as
'pontificators, or molders of thought' but rather as gadflies who 'circle and stab, circle and
stab.' Jules Feiffer voiced a
9
Fisher, op. cit., p. 15. See also, Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President, 1968, New York, 1969, and
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belief that 'outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good
political cartoon than ill will.' Bill Watterson argued that the cartoonist's role in our
political process 'is not so much to instruct his audience, or illuminate the Truth, as it is to
simply take an honest stand and present it vehemently enough so that it must be
confronted.' Chicago Tribune artist Jeff MacNelly once quipped, 'many cartoonists would
be hired assassins if they couldn't draw.'" 11
As for me, please don't stop those damn pictures. I love them. I envy the talent
and insight that these graphic artists bring to the political dialog--as long as they agree
with me!
Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor, New York, 1947.
10
Fischer, op. cit., p. 122.
11
Fischer, op. cit., p. 16-17.
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Bibliography
Allport, Gordon, and Leo Postman. 1947. The Psychology of Rumor. New York.
Fisher, Roger. 1996. Those Damned Pictures: Explorations in American
Cartoon Art. Archon.
Hess, Stephen, and Sand Northrop. 1996. Drawn and Quartered: The History of
American Political Cartoons. Montgomery: Elliot and Clark.
Marlette, Doug. 1991. In Your Face, a Cartoonist at Work. Houghton-Mifflin.
McGinnis, Joe. 1969. The Selling of the President, 1968. New York.
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