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

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 75POLITICAL CARTOONS: A RESEARCH NOTEDr. Dean A. MinixNorthern Kentucky University"Nixon was to cartooning what Marilyn Monroe was to sex." 1IntroductionStop those damned pictures! Boss Tweed of Tammany is said to haveurged his lieutenants after viewing Thomas Nast's cartoon "Who stole thePeople's Money?" explaining "I don't care so much what the papers say aboutme. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures!" 2As an observer and analyst of American and international politics bothvocationally and ad vocationally for the past 30 some years, political cartoonshave always fascinated me. And, I have always said that if I had any artistictalent, I would have been a cartoonist. But, given the fact that I have no artistictalent, and only limited political insight, my career path was pre-ordained--that ofan academic. Of course, if you look at who draws those damn pictures, you mightthink they were academics. "Put today's cartoonists together in a room and youwill find a sea of 200 casually clad white males, their ranks interrupted with onlyan occasional flash of skirt or alternate skin tone. Most cheerfully admit to beingsocial misfits in their earlier days: a stutterer, nerd, or general adolescent ne'erdo-wellwho used his or her quick-draw humor to win friends1Doug Marlette, “In Your Face, a Cartoonist at Work,” Houghton-Mifflin, 1991.2Roger Fisher, Those Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Cartoon Art, Archon, 1996, p. 2.Southwestern Journal of International Studies – March 04

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 76and gain notoriety." 3 Perhaps cartoonists, like some academics, are like the boywith 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 DougMarlette. "They hit you primitively and emotionally. There is something wild anduntamed about the best of them, raw and vaguely threatening like Little Richardor Jerry Lee Lewis…. A cartoon cannot say, 'On the other hand.' And it cannotdefend itself. It is a frontal assault, a slam dunk, a cluster bomb." 4Cartoonists today, like days of yore, come from different politicalpersuasions and sociological heritages. Today, however, most cartoonists areliberal democrats, but in the nineteenth century, the opposite was the case.Whatever their perspectives, cartoonists are political lampoonists who produce asubjective view of their Weltanschauung. The most important part of any cartoonis the idea that drives or motivates it. "Rollin Kirby, one of the finest Americannewspaper cartoonists of the 20 th century, said that a good cartoon consists of75% idea and 25% drawing. 'A good idea has carried many of indifferent drawingto glory,' commented Kirby in 1918, 'but never has a good drawing rescued a badidea from oblivion." 5A cartoonist's job is to attack--to lampoon. They do this through theconvention of satire. Cartoonists do not present the daily news. They interpretthe daily news. "As Chicago Tribune cartoonist Jeff MacNelly has said, 'Apolitical cartoon is not like a truckload of tomatoes in 90 degree weather. It isn't3Stephen Hess and Sand Northrop, Drawn and Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons,Southwestern Journal of International Studies – March 04

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 77Montgomery: Elliot and Clark, 1996, p. 10.4Ibid., p. 10.5Ibid., p. 11.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 WalterCronkite 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 theaberration, I will never understand. Recorded human history does not give thataccounting.In his perceptive analysis of Nast's effectiveness in ThePolitical Cartoon, Charles Press stressed the shock value of rawemotional impact: The Nast cartoon is great because of theemotional impact of its presentation. It continuously goesbeyond the bounds of good taste and conventional manners.Nast is like the man who rings your bell and, when you open thedoor, guns in shouting insults at you and throwing rocks andmud at you and your wife and on your front hall walls. Yourreaction is that what excites him must be a grievous wrong yousomehow unwittingly committed. 7Do 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 onestands determines what he will see. Cartoons are propaganda. But, rememberthe root meaning of propaganda is information. The question is informationdecoded by whom and for what purposes. Pat Oliphant, one of the mostoutspoken cartoonists in articulating the need to use the cartoon for criticalSouthwestern Journal of International Studies – March 04

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 78comment…states that 'our business is valuable enough to be looked upon as a6Ibid., p. 14.7Fischer, op. cit., p. 14.leading vehicle for printed and savage opinion and someone will always beoffended.'" 8"From the little we do know about the psychology of political behavior, it islikely that those cartoons most effective as propaganda have tended not toconfront and to challenge but rather to reinforce and build on a priori beliefs,values, and prejudices. Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison as frontierfarmer-warriors and Abraham Lincoln as the 'rail-splitter of the West' were servedsuperbly by images of rustic virtue and primal vigor conforming so well to thepopular mythic ideal of the western wilderness, just as John Quincy Adams in1828 and Martin Van Buren in 1840 fell victim to outlandish smear campaigns,mainly because as small, balding men of ideas, they epitomized East andEurope. The 1964 LBJ countdown television ads, and Roger Ailes's masterful1968 Nixon media campaign and the1988 Willie Horton spot, become the stuff ofMadison Avenue legend. They were successful not because they inspired themillions to behold Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, and Michael Dukakis inalarming new lights, but because they were built upon existing fears thatGoldwater was a reckless war-hawk and the Humphrey and Dukakis were both'soft on crime' and pandering to minority ghetto voters." 9Southwestern Journal of International Studies – March 04

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 79As Roger Fischer writes,8Ibid., p. 21.By its very nature, political cartoon art in a democratic society hasbeen one of the purest artifacts of popular culture, seeking toinfluence public opinion through its use of widely and instantlyunderstood symbols, slogans, referents, and allusions. The artistmust exploit conventions in fundamental harmony with the 'culturalliteracy' of the public or risk almost certain failure, for obscurity andsnob humor are fatal to the medium. Thus the context of theeffective editorial cartoon, disregarding altogether its ideology orthe issue at hand, can tell us much about the popular culture of itsday. 10The American Industrial Revolution was the watershed event thatpromoted what we now call American popular culture. While early cartoonsreflected a rather traditional cultural heritage with referents to the Bible, themythology of Homer, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, etc., the 20 th century sawan erosion of these and similar referents for caricature. Today's popular cultureevokes symmetry with television and Hollywood characters. Sports analogies arealso 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 mostcartoonists like me--who like to attack--are the loaded guns.' Louisville CourierJournal mainstay Hugh Haynie has defined the cartoon as 'an offensive thing'and Bill Mauldin characterized his calling as 'a destructive art,' insisting that theproper function of cartoonists is not to act as 'pontificators, or molders of thought'Southwestern Journal of International Studies – March 04

Political Cartoons: A Research Note 81Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor, New York, 1947.10Fischer, op. cit., p. 122.11Fischer, op. cit., p. 16-17.Works ConsultedGordon Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor, New York, 1947.Roger Fisher, Those Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Cartoon Art,Archon, 1996.Stephen Hess and Sand Northrop, Drawn and Quartered: The History ofAmerican Political Cartoons, Montgomery: Elliot and Clark, 1996.Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President, 1968. New York, 1969.Doug Marlette, In Your Face, a Cartoonist at Work, Houghton-Mifflin, 1991.Southwestern Journal of International Studies – March 04