American Political Cartoons by Stephen Hess & Sandy Northrop

Author:Stephen Hess & Sandy Northrop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

Pat Oliphant, Denver Post, July 27, 1967.

Pat Oliphant, Denver Post, August 2, 1967.

While most American-born cartoonists seemed to cower from hitting the headline-grabbing issue of civil rights head-on, Oliphant attacked it squarely, calling each incident as he saw it. In one cartoon, penned during rioting that broke out in the summer of 1967, he showed African Americans as victims of the lawlessness and looting within their own society. Two cartoons on the police, who were increasingly being called on to quell civil disturbances, show the cartoonist’s contrasting points of view. In the first cartoon, the police are protagonists; in the next they are—almost—victims. Oliphant would make many more tough calls as he settled into dissecting his new society. A penguin named “Punk” appears in most of the Australian’s work. Although Oliphant was not the first to use an alter-ego character to deliver his own commentary or a punch line, he made more consistent and better use of the technique than cartoonists before him. Punk was born when Oliphant was still living in Australia and worked for a conservative paper, the Advertiser in Adelaide. A friend had brought a penguin home in his knapsack from a trip. “It was an appealing little feller, and I incorporated it in a couple of cartoons I was doing,” Oliphant explained. “It took off. People liked it and wanted to see more. Punk’s continued use in my work after his initial good reception was far from a gimmick.” As a young cartoonist, Oliphant had to fight to have his point of view represented. The penguin gave him a chance to add his own voice to the daily cartoons which were, as Oliphant describes it, “beaten out on a committee anvil somewhere around three p.m. every day by a group of editors of differing degrees of dullness, at a gathering called The Editorial Conference. I would leave these sessions in varying states of desperation and despair. Punk saved me from this. I could at least feel that a small corner of the cartoon was mine. I think it gave me the confidence to continue.” Many other cartoonists now use similar alter-ego characters.

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