Political cartoons have served as a vital source of social commentary for nearly three centuries. Unfortunately, this species of political expression is facing extinction.
We should not be sanguine about it. Political cartoons have long been a language all their own, a unique and irreplaceable vehicle to make a point. In an increasingly visual culture, they should be thriving. But the opposite is true.
The history of political cartooning goes back to early forms of English caricature and satire. The painter William Hogarth used engravings to poke the wealthy and to articulate other flights of fancy. The eight paintings that compose “A Rake’s Progress” explored the fictitious downfall of a wealthy merchant’s son, Tom Rakewell. He abused his privilege, blew his sizable fortune on gambling and prostitutes, married an “old maid” and lost more money, was sent to debtors’ prison, went insane, and died penniless. In Hogarth’s view, wealth and power didn’t make one perfect or invincible in the eyes of the law.
James Gillray, another English illustrator, has been called the father of the political cartoon. A tour de force in sociopolitical commentary, he challenged the boundaries of satire and good taste. His most famous cartoon, “The Plumb-Pudding in Danger, or, State Epicures Taking un Petit Souper,” published about 1818, witnessed the ravenous British Prime Minister William Pitt and French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte carving up the world at the dinner table. The cartoon attacked their ambitions for conquest and domination, and Gillray lampooned Pitt’s skinny frame and Napoléon’s beakish nose to make them look weak and foolish.
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Benjamin Franklin’s woodcarving “Join or Die” from 1754 initiated a politically artistic revolution in America. It contained a snake cut into eight pieces, with the colonies/regions listed beside each slithering section. It was an early example of our disunity, something that worried Franklin. He wrote an accompanying editorial explaining the need to keep the young nation together. The founding father’s memorable political cartoon still gets used as a symbol of American freedom.
Thomas Nast, who is considered the father of the genre here in the United States, was described by art historian Albert Boime as wielding “more influence than any other artist of the 19th century.” This assessment was due to his one-man campaign against political corruption, especially that of William “Boss” Tweed’s thuggish cohort, which took control of the Democratic Party political machine called Tammany Hall. Nast’s thunderous cartoon “The Brains” in 1871, which showed Tweed’s body with a sack of money for a head, ended the corrupt politician’s career. “His impact on American public life,” wrote Boime, “was formidable enough to profoundly affect the outcome of every presidential election during the period 1864 to 1884.”
Many talented cartoonists either dabbled or specialized in political work in the mid-20th century. Winsor McCay (“Little Nemo”), Percy Crosby (“Skippy”), Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), Berkeley Breathed (“Bloom County”), Walt Kelly (“Pogo”), and Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel all turned their hands to this visual form of editorializing. Jeff MacNelly (“Shoe”), Bill Mauldin (“Willie and Joe”), Daniel Fitzpatrick, Paul Hancock, and Herbert “Herblock” Block also made important contributions.
Modern editorial cartoonists continued the tradition of opening an imaginary window to explore topics, all with the ability to intrigue and infuriate society. Politicians on the Left and the Right became little emperors with no clothes. Business leaders were either praised or savaged for their support of capitalism, free markets, and the almighty dollar. War and the military emphasized moments of great heroism when the Allies defeated the Axis powers in World War II, as well as sobering viewpoints when U.S. troops went to Vietnam.
There are still some fine political cartoonists, such as Michael Ramirez, Rex “Baloo” May, and Scott Stantis on the Right; and Pat Oliphant, Tom Toles, and Jules Feiffer on the Left. But in truth, the state of the industry is dismal, and the golden age ended long ago.
Why is this happening? It’s not as though politics has simmered down and there is no controversy worth skewering or politician worth lampooning.
Decline can be attributed partly to cost-cutting. More and more readers are turning away from print to online reading, and at the same time, the infinite space online means advertising rates are a fraction of what they used to be. Declining readership and revenues mean cartoonist jobs are becoming rarer and rarer.
As NPR’s Sylvia Maria Gross pointed out more than a decade ago, “In the 1980s, there were about 300 staff cartoonists at newspapers around the country. Now there are fewer than a hundred. Newspapers are grappling with a steep decline in advertising revenue and trying to reinvent themselves online.” In turn, it’s led to the elimination of newspaper positions such as full-time political cartoonists. Newspapers rely more on subscription services to acquire cartoons instead of utilizing in-house talent.
The intense fight for readers and fear of losing them have made editors more cautious. Political cartoonist Daryl Cagle, in 2018, wrote in the Masthead, a journal of the American Society of News Editors, “Editors prefer cartoons, drawn in a traditional style, which do not express a strong opinion that some readers might disagree with.” A notable example was the case of Iowa-based Farm News, which fired Rick Friday in 2016 after a seed firm withdrew its advertising in protest over a cartoon that pointed out that corporations such as Monsanto, John Deere, and DuPont Pioneer made more money than all the farmers in Iowa put together. The New York Times covered the resulting fuss, and the Des Moines Register called Friday a “free-speech martyr.” Farm News rehired Friday 60 days later, but some of the damage was already done.
Another reason for the decline of political cartoons is widespread frustration with Washington and the political culture. Many members of the public are fed up with the all-consuming nature of today’s politics, and many of them have turned to topics that have nothing to do with Republicans and Democrats. Caricatures of President Trump’s hair and weight are still in demand, but the well will run dry before long.
Sarah Boxer wrote in the Atlantic’s April 2018 issue that political cartooning has become surprisingly “tricky in the age of Trump.” The president is a big and tempting target for the pen-and-ink community, but Boxer wondered whether cartoonists would be “moved enough” to go after him in the same way others of an earlier epoch savaged President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. “Standards of caricature are different” in America, she noted, because there were ways of depicting President George W. Bush that, for racial reasons, no cartoonist would use to caricature President Barack Obama.
The irony is that in our increasingly visual society, political cartoons should be more popular than ever among readers young and old. I’ve read and studied comic strips of all genres for decades, and I hope they can survive and even thrive. But cartoons need to be brave, irreverent, and sometimes outrageous, qualities that have been cowed in this epoch of heightened sensitivities, picky readers, and cash-strapped publications.
Michael Taube, a columnist and political commentator, was a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
