A Gray Future for Political Cartoons

Not everyone would be proud to be called a “sniveling pile of monkey dung.”

Or to receive this letter: “I wouldn’t shoot you, but I would sure as hell pay for the shells if someone did.”

Steve Benson, however, takes perverse pleasure in being the target of such invective. “Hate mail,” he says, “is proof that the public still has a pulse.”

Better yet, it’s proof he can get that pulse racing.

And, he hopes, it’s a sign that his passion--political cartooning--does have a future in American journalism, despite gloomy warnings that the genre has been dumbed down, hoked up and censored to near-extinction.

“Political cartooning is on the endangered species list,” said John Soloski, director of the University of Iowa’s Journalism School, even though “there’s probably no section of a daily newspaper that draws as much reaction day in and day out.”

Concerned by the state of their art, top cartoonists from around the nation gathered here recently at a public symposium that drew several hundred listeners. The conference honored Times cartoonist Paul Conrad, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who began his career at the university paper here.

But it also explored whether the traditional American political cartoon--opinionated, gutsy, often infuriating--will survive into the new millennium, given the trend toward softer, more humorous cartoons that find gags in even the most somber of news.

Conrad, for one, was pessimistic.

Others at the conference blamed editors for spiking edgy cartoons, syndicates for promoting homogenized humor, award committees for honoring fluff over controversy. Conrad, however, pointed the finger at his fellow cartoonists, accusing them of failing to learn enough about the issues they cover to develop opinions worth drawing.

“Cartoonists just plain don’t read anymore,” he complained. “That’s why they go for the gag.”

Of course, there’s always the possibility that cartoonists are just responding to public demand. Many readers want their cartoons to be funny, a break from all the depressing news stories.

A good gag can be “a relief,” explained Guy Cooper, who edits Newsweek’s cartoon-and-quote roundup.

But cartoonists at the symposium argued that treating the news as fodder for one-liners cheapens their craft. As Benson, the cartoonist for the Arizona Republic, put it: “We shouldn’t allow content to be sacrificed for chuckles. First and foremost, a cartoon must have something of relevance to say.”

The shift toward lighter cartoons comes as the profession itself is in decline. Only about 100 daily newspapers employ staff cartoonists, down from about 170 two decades ago.

This trend, naturally, is of great concern to cartoonists. But academics who have studied the field insist that the rest of us ought to care, too, as cartoons have long been a forceful means to press for social justice, hold politicians accountable and critique our evolving culture. “From the view of history, it is clear that our political discourse would have been considerably poorer without them,” William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States, once wrote.

Historically, “editorial cartoonists have represented the far limits of free expression in our country,” said Chris Lamb, a journalism professor at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. “These guys draw the limits.”

And, since even the most stinging editorial doesn’t hurt as much as a dead-on caricature, cartoonists often get results where writers can’t.

“It’s the old saw about a picture’s worth a thousand words,” said Lucy Caswell, curator of a cartoon library at Ohio State University. “The people who are out there drawing about the mayor and the school board and the potholes in their street have a huge impact on their communities.”

For all the grumbling about the state of their craft, a few cartoonists at the symposium did find some bright notes.

They spoke of the Internet allowing cartoonists to distribute their work--even animate it--without help from hard-to-break-into syndicates. And they noted that even as political cartoons have gone softer, the funny pages have taken on a harder edge, with comic strips like the Boondocks, Non Sequitur and Stone Soup raising important social issues.

Then, too, there was all that hate mail to console them:

“You pathetic little twit.”

“I look forward to your funeral.”

Proof positive that, as Des Moines Register Editor Dennis Ryerson put it: “Readers love to love and they love to hate,” so they appreciate cartoons that provoke strong emotions.

“Cartooning is not going to go away,” insisted Jan Eliot, who draws Stone Soup. “It’s too much of an endearing, amazing, interesting art form. It’s too much fun.”