POLITICAL CARTOONS IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

I had a “Wait . . . you don’t think Jennifer Anniston is pretty EITHER?” moment this week. I was at an egghead/wonk type meeting when one person brought up a political cartoon that they had seen in the newspaper that day. Many heads nodded gravely in assent. Finally, one last person spoke up to say “They still have political cartoons in newspapers?” (at least he didn’t say “They still have newspapers?”) One by one, just like an AA meeting, everyone sheepishly broke down and admitted they hadn’t seen a political cartoon in ____ years!

It is an unsightly ending for what used to be one of the glories of the newspaper. Thomas Nast may not be the father of the political cartoon, but he certainly made them powerful. In addition to his unaccredited role in creating the modern image of Santa Claus, Nast created another institution when his pictures brought down the famously corrupt mayor of 19^th century New York, William “Boss” Tweed. Tweed created the perfect raison d’etre for the cartoonists when he said “I don't care so much what the papers say about me -- my constituents can't read, but damn it, they can’t help seeing them pictures.”, or some variation thereof.

For many years even through the heyday of the last of the great ones Herblock, the political cartoons effectively compressed great ideas into small drawings for the masses. Time pushes some things to the side of the road however like caricature, comic impressionists and juggling acts on the Ed Sullivan Show (notwithstanding America’s Got Talent).

Political cartoons remain in the papers, just as Stations of the Cross still appear on the walls of Catholic Churches, for vestigial if for no other reasons. They are however a medium without an audience today in a society more literate and less balkanized than their pre-mass entertainment, pre-internet world.
Gone is their power to move large audiences with powerful emotional responses to a single image like Bill Mauldin’s cartoon of a seated crying Lincoln at the Memorial after the Kennedy assassination. The viral age of Youtube and Twitter have replaced political cartoonists for mass communication purposes, but it is good to remember that at one time fearless knights roamed the land slaying kings with their pens, and the nation was better for them.