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Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is Stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: should Know. And that's it. It's the and On edition.
0:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's about editorial cartoons aka political cartoons. They are
0:30
Speaker 3: one and the same. They're you know, usually appear in
0:32
Speaker 3: the traditionally in the editorial section or the opinion section
0:36
Speaker 3: of newspapers, so that's why you can call them either.
0:39
Speaker 3: And this is a profession that appears to be dying
0:44
Speaker 3: out if you look at the number of editorial cartoonists
0:47
Speaker 3: that are like full time staff at major newspapers, because
0:52
Speaker 3: there used to be more than two thousand about one
0:54
Speaker 3: hundred years ago. Now there's less than twenty. And Dave,
0:58
Speaker 3: you know, helped us with this and found that staff.
1:00
Speaker 3: And I think we were both initially like, oh my god,
1:02
Speaker 3: they're all going away. Not necessarily true. Those are full
1:06
Speaker 3: time staffers on newspapers. Newspapers are in trouble, so that's
1:09
Speaker 3: a big reason why we'll get to that. But there
1:12
Speaker 3: are still plenty of editorial cartoonists and political cartoonists mainly
1:16
Speaker 3: working online.
1:18
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And for syndication companies, Like you can work
1:21
Speaker 2: for a syndicate and they'll distribute it to newspapers that
1:24
Speaker 2: want to run your political cartoon, just like with comics.
1:28
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's I won't say like we're at peak
1:32
Speaker 3: the Golden age of it, but it's it's still alive
1:34
Speaker 3: and well in just sort of a different form.
1:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've seen the Golden Age referred to as in
1:39
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century. You know, I'm like, these people didn't
1:42
Speaker 2: live through the eighties. That was the golden age.
1:46
Speaker 3: Baby, oh man, I saw if I had a dime
1:49
Speaker 3: for every like cartoonish drawing of Tip O'Neil or Ronald Reagan.
1:54
Speaker 3: I saw growing up a security right, I didn't even like,
1:56
Speaker 3: who are these people?
1:57
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, that's a really great point that they editorial
2:02
Speaker 2: cartoons are like of the moment sometimes of the day
2:06
Speaker 2: where they like, they'll still make sense later that week,
2:09
Speaker 2: but they're not hitting because something already changed or moved
2:12
Speaker 2: on and they don't. As such, it's very rare that
2:16
Speaker 2: an editorial cartoon can still like land the way it
2:21
Speaker 2: originally did. That means that whatever it was talking about
2:24
Speaker 2: was so historic that people decades on know the like
2:28
Speaker 2: the ins and outs of it that the political cartoon
2:31
Speaker 2: is referring to. But for the most part, it's like
2:35
Speaker 2: daily minutia of ongoing politics and government. And if you
2:40
Speaker 2: just go back, like ten or fifteen years, it's like,
2:41
Speaker 2: I forgot John Bayner even existed until I went back
2:45
Speaker 2: and looked at some of the old political cartoons, and
2:48
Speaker 2: it's so important at the time, but you know, all
2:52
Speaker 2: these years on, it does not matter what that political
2:54
Speaker 2: cartoon was saying at the time it was. And that's
2:57
Speaker 2: a huge point about those things.
2:59
Speaker 3: That's why Michaels Ducaucus drove a tank. I remember, who's
3:03
Speaker 3: Michael doucaccas funny stuff? Oh yeah, his wife Kitty, that's right.
3:09
Speaker 3: And dan Quail spells potato wrong. It's so funny to
3:13
Speaker 3: kind of think about the greatest political hits of our childhood.
3:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's really far away, Chuck.
3:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, But like you said, it's sort of like greatest hits.
3:24
Speaker 3: You can look back at some Nixon Watergate political cartoons
3:28
Speaker 3: and totally get it, and they land, but they're not
3:32
Speaker 3: always funny. And that's the whole point of this, or
3:34
Speaker 3: not the whole point. But it's satire. It's satire. Can
3:39
Speaker 3: be super super funny, like if you read The Onion
3:41
Speaker 3: or something like that, or a well made satirical film
3:45
Speaker 3: or television show, but it's a different kind of humor.
3:49
Speaker 3: A lot of times satire isn't necessarily laugh out loud
3:52
Speaker 3: stuff because the point of satire usually is to influence
3:57
Speaker 3: what somebody thinks about something through in this case, image right.
4:02
Speaker 2: One of the explanations I saw for satires that it
4:05
Speaker 2: uses like a surface level presentation of a point to
4:09
Speaker 2: point out that the counterpoint is actually the more sensible thing.
4:15
Speaker 3: I can if I thought about that and saw it
4:17
Speaker 3: written down, I could probably figure out exactly.
4:19
Speaker 2: Okay, I've got one for you, Alexander Pope said, Praise
4:23
Speaker 2: undeserved is satire in disguise. No, still nothing. Okay, go
4:29
Speaker 2: watch the movie Soul Plane or Brian's Song and you
4:32
Speaker 2: will know what I'm talking about with satire.
4:36
Speaker 3: Brian's Song. You know they used to use that in
4:40
Speaker 3: crying studies. That's the one thing I remember about Brian
4:43
Speaker 3: Song was when I was a kid, I saw a
4:44
Speaker 3: news report where they're like, this new movie is so sad,
4:50
Speaker 3: and it showed people like in a room watching Brian's
4:52
Speaker 3: Song with these little tear gutters strapped to their face. Yeah,
4:57
Speaker 3: and just like bawling at that movie.
4:59
Speaker 2: And I'm sure the pull cartoon of the day about
5:01
Speaker 2: right had people crying and somebody said, are they watching
5:04
Speaker 2: Brian's song? And the guy says, no, they just found
5:07
Speaker 2: out Ronald Reagan was re elected governor.
5:10
Speaker 3: Well, we also you and I are as we said
5:13
Speaker 3: on record many times before I grew up as adherence
5:16
Speaker 3: to Mad magazine, and they didn't. I mean, they did
5:20
Speaker 3: political cartoons essentially, it just wasn't for a newspaper, but
5:23
Speaker 3: there was plenty of that stuff in there.
5:24
Speaker 2: Nice point. One of the other things about political cartoons
5:29
Speaker 2: is they present opinion. They do it in a way
5:33
Speaker 2: that's humorous, that's recognizable, you don't have to know how
5:36
Speaker 2: to read, which was for a long time the point
5:38
Speaker 2: of political cartoons. And it's presented in a way so
5:43
Speaker 2: that it takes everything you know. It makes assumptions about
5:47
Speaker 2: what you know. But usually they're pretty good at that,
5:49
Speaker 2: and it takes everything you know and can turn it
5:52
Speaker 2: on its head, can point out the folly, the ridiculousness
5:55
Speaker 2: of usually governments, politicians, policy sees that kind of stuff,
6:01
Speaker 2: but sometimes it's aimed unfairly at groups of people. The
6:07
Speaker 2: other point about it is that the actual like types
6:11
Speaker 2: of art it uses have been shown to neurologically like
6:16
Speaker 2: hit us different than say, like a photograph.
6:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, like when you draw a caricature or someone, or exaggerate,
6:24
Speaker 3: exaggerate the three year old if you exaggerate.
6:29
Speaker 2: Some Wait, hold on right, you can't do it as
6:33
Speaker 2: well as you.
6:34
Speaker 3: That's right, that's pretty good. Uh yeah, it's it's has
6:38
Speaker 3: more of a like, neurologically more of an impact than
6:40
Speaker 3: an actual photograph of somebody doing something even ridiculous.
6:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called a super normal stimulus or a super stimuli,
6:48
Speaker 2: which is it just hits your brain that much harder.
6:52
Speaker 2: And so the caricature like, it's just something people just
6:56
Speaker 2: figured out over time, building little by little to create
6:59
Speaker 2: like the optimal political cartoon, which apparently popped up around
7:04
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties.
7:06
Speaker 3: Well, or if you go to you know, a theme
7:09
Speaker 3: park or the streets of Paris or something, and you
7:12
Speaker 3: see a caricature artist parked next to the realistic like
7:15
Speaker 3: I'll do a realistic pencil sketch of you. Yeah, you
7:18
Speaker 3: got like one person over there, you got ten people
7:21
Speaker 3: in line, trying to get a big, old fathead version
7:24
Speaker 3: of themselves.
7:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they want to be super stimulated.
7:29
Speaker 3: Can I amend one thing that you said. You said
7:31
Speaker 3: that they use humor almost always that's the case, But
7:36
Speaker 3: some of my favorite political cartoons over the years sometimes
7:39
Speaker 3: they'll have just the really brutally cut, punchy sad ones. Yes,
7:44
Speaker 3: they're very very effective, you know, hilarious.
7:48
Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, they definitely. It doesn't always have to
7:53
Speaker 2: be humor, right.
7:53
Speaker 3: For sure, but what it always has to do is
7:56
Speaker 3: prove some kind of a point. There's never a political
7:59
Speaker 3: cartoon like, oh, this is just funny or something, because
8:03
Speaker 3: that's a comic striper. That's family circus exactly.
8:07
Speaker 2: So I say we go back way back to potentially
8:12
Speaker 2: the origin of political cartoons, which were religious in nature,
8:17
Speaker 2: because back in the sixteenth century, when Martin Luther was
8:20
Speaker 2: trying to reform the Catholic Church and ended up just
8:24
Speaker 2: kind of spinning off his own jam, the religion was politics.
8:28
Speaker 2: They were interchangeable, it was one of the same. So
8:31
Speaker 2: when he started printing wood cut cartoons that were really
8:38
Speaker 2: unflattering depictions of the pope and the bishops and the
8:41
Speaker 2: cardinals who aided the Pope. He was making a political statement.
8:46
Speaker 2: And so some people say that some of these prints
8:49
Speaker 2: from like way back in fifteen forty five, there's one
8:52
Speaker 2: called The Birth and Origin of the Pope, that this
8:56
Speaker 2: was essentially the first political cartoon ever printed. Because that's
8:59
Speaker 2: another thing too, you have to have a mass medium
9:03
Speaker 2: to spread this idea. And so this was shortly after
9:07
Speaker 2: the printing press was invented, and almost off the bat,
9:11
Speaker 2: Martin Luther was among the people who were using it
9:13
Speaker 2: to make political statements using cartoons.
9:16
Speaker 3: That's right. And if you're at home saying like, I
9:20
Speaker 3: bet he did that because so many people couldn't read yet,
9:23
Speaker 3: you're exactly right. The printing press was brand new and
9:27
Speaker 3: that changed literacy for the world basically, but right after
9:33
Speaker 3: it was invented, a lot of people still couldn't read,
9:35
Speaker 3: and so he knew that if he wanted to hit
9:37
Speaker 3: his target audience in the right way, the Birth and
9:41
Speaker 3: Origin of the Pope, it's a good way to do it.
9:42
Speaker 3: We'll describe a few of these that are sort of
9:44
Speaker 3: easy to picture. We're not going to get in the weeds,
9:47
Speaker 3: I think, kind of describing in detailed pictures on an
9:50
Speaker 3: audio show. But this one is very simple. It was
9:52
Speaker 3: the Pope and the cardinals being pooped out by a
9:57
Speaker 3: she devil.
9:58
Speaker 2: And then yeah, and then nursed by other she doubles
10:01
Speaker 2: Medusa's breastfeeding. It looks like a bishop in one part
10:05
Speaker 2: of this. It's really something. And that was I think,
10:10
Speaker 2: I think, I said fifteen forty five, and then nothing
10:14
Speaker 2: happened for two hundred years. And then a guy came
10:18
Speaker 2: along named William Hogarth. And those of you who really,
10:22
Speaker 2: really really pay attention to the stuff we say might
10:27
Speaker 2: find that that name rings a bell, and that would
10:29
Speaker 2: be because we talked about William Hogarth and our gin episode.
10:33
Speaker 3: That's right, there was a political cartoon he drew about,
10:37
Speaker 3: you know, drunks basically living at the corner of Beer
10:41
Speaker 3: Street in jen Lane. And that was Hogarth, who's considered
10:45
Speaker 3: the grandfather of political cartoons. He was a serious painter,
10:50
Speaker 3: but then he got into making fun of rich folks
10:53
Speaker 3: in London.
10:55
Speaker 2: Yes for sure. And he also it was a social commentary,
10:59
Speaker 2: so it was sad attire, it was exaggerated. That's another
11:02
Speaker 2: kind of key part of political cartoons, and it made
11:08
Speaker 2: a point about in this case society rather than politics.
11:12
Speaker 2: And so as a result William Hogarth is considered the
11:16
Speaker 2: grandfather of political cartoons. He was not making political cartoons,
11:20
Speaker 2: but he definitely set out some of the points on
11:23
Speaker 2: the table that would later be picked up actually fairly
11:26
Speaker 2: quickly by printers, publishers, and cartoonists, among whom was Benjamin Franklin,
11:34
Speaker 2: who started He ran what's considered the first American political
11:39
Speaker 2: cartoon back in seventeen fifty four.
11:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was only, you know, a couple of
11:44
Speaker 3: decades after Hogarth. Yeah, Hogarth's Hogwart his earliest work. So
11:53
Speaker 3: it was sort of in the same era. And as
11:55
Speaker 3: we all know, or maybe some people don't know this,
11:57
Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin ran a newspaper, yeah, the Philadelphia Gazette, and
12:02
Speaker 3: it was a cartoon. It was a cut up rattlesnake,
12:06
Speaker 3: with each section of the snake being a colony, like
12:10
Speaker 3: you know, New York had the abbreviation of the colony
12:13
Speaker 3: and it said join or die, and it was, you know,
12:15
Speaker 3: to try and rally people to unify against France and
12:19
Speaker 3: the lead up to the French and Indian War. And
12:21
Speaker 3: he is credited as even though he probably didn't draw
12:25
Speaker 3: this thing, he ran it. He is credited for making
12:27
Speaker 3: the rattlesnake a popular symbol for the colonies of the
12:30
Speaker 3: well not United States yet, the colonies. Yeah, it's all
12:32
Speaker 3: I need to say.
12:33
Speaker 2: And that's a pretty famous image that cut up snake
12:35
Speaker 2: as far as the US is concerned. But that was
12:40
Speaker 2: almost like a little side step for political cartoons because again,
12:45
Speaker 2: nothing happened for a good fifty years. And then along
12:48
Speaker 2: came James Gilray. He is considered the father of political cartoons.
12:53
Speaker 2: He was drawing satirical images to lampoon and point out
12:57
Speaker 2: the folly of people in charge. In this case, the
13:03
Speaker 2: King George the Third was his favorite, his favorite target
13:07
Speaker 2: because he was British. He was also anti colonial too,
13:11
Speaker 2: and so there was one very famous one that he
13:13
Speaker 2: did that depicts the Prime Minister at the time, William Pitt,
13:17
Speaker 2: with Napoleon carving up the world to eat. Yeah, it's
13:21
Speaker 2: in the form of a plum pudding also known as
13:24
Speaker 2: plum poutine, and Pitt and Napoleon are sitting at a
13:29
Speaker 2: table carving it up, just greedily eating the rest of
13:32
Speaker 2: the world. And apparently Napoleon was well aware of James
13:35
Speaker 2: Gilray because he had a pretty great quote, didn't he.
13:39
Speaker 3: H Yeah, I used to do a good Napoleon. I
13:42
Speaker 3: am I gonna try, though. Really he said that Gilray
13:45
Speaker 3: did more than all the armies of Europe to bring
13:47
Speaker 3: me down. And if you look at this cartoon, it's
13:52
Speaker 3: it really sort of looks like what we know as
13:55
Speaker 3: a modern political editorial cartoon. It's really really cool looking
13:59
Speaker 3: and it looks great. The art is great, but it
14:01
Speaker 3: just it sort of has that look. It seems like
14:04
Speaker 3: one of the probably the first person who was making
14:07
Speaker 3: these cartoons that look like what we have today.
14:09
Speaker 2: Right, that's why Gilbert is considered the father of the
14:12
Speaker 2: whole thing, that's right, And he came around. I think
14:15
Speaker 2: that the plumb Pudding in Danger was the name of
14:18
Speaker 2: the one we were just talking about. That was in
14:19
Speaker 2: eighteen and oh five. And at the same time, magazines
14:23
Speaker 2: started being established and founded around this time that were
14:27
Speaker 2: dedicated to satire. So the form, the art form of
14:32
Speaker 2: political cartoons and political satirical magazines came together at the
14:37
Speaker 2: very beginning of the nineteenth century, not just in Britain
14:40
Speaker 2: but France. Turns out, France is basically the spears point
14:45
Speaker 2: of satire. Yeah, did not know that, but that's it's
14:49
Speaker 2: the truth.
14:49
Speaker 3: Everybody I remember when the Charlie Hebdos stuff came out,
14:53
Speaker 3: and we're going to talk about that toward in the
14:55
Speaker 3: act three here, But that's when I sort of learned, like, how,
14:59
Speaker 3: you know Stute and on point their satire had been
15:02
Speaker 3: for a long long time. I didn't know that previously, right, Yeah,
15:05
Speaker 3: that doesn't seem most very French thing, but I don't know,
15:07
Speaker 3: maybe it is.
15:08
Speaker 2: I didn't either. But there was a guy from the
15:11
Speaker 2: early nineteenth century I think named Honore Domier, and Domier
15:18
Speaker 2: actually got in trouble. I think he actually went to
15:21
Speaker 2: prison for his political cartoons.
15:25
Speaker 4: Right.
15:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. In the eighteen thirties, they the French government sort
15:29
Speaker 3: of relaxed their laws against censorship and so he had
15:32
Speaker 3: a little bit more leeway I guess to operate, and
15:37
Speaker 3: initially in eighteen thirty one he was threatened with a
15:39
Speaker 3: six thousand franc fine in eighteen thirty one. That's I
15:43
Speaker 3: don't know what the conversion.
15:44
Speaker 2: Is, but that's got to be a lot of dough
15:46
Speaker 2: forty five thousand US dollars today, which you think it'd
15:49
Speaker 2: be way more. But that's what did you really do that?
15:53
Speaker 2: I found a Swedish currency converter, historic currency converter.
15:58
Speaker 3: So inflation and currency conversions. Yes, amazing, and that's why
16:04
Speaker 3: you're Josh Clark.
16:06
Speaker 2: I didn't make this extra money. I just used it.
16:10
Speaker 3: Six thousand franc fine. He drew a caricature of King
16:13
Speaker 3: Louis Philippe with a pair for a head, and then
16:17
Speaker 3: when he was threatened with his fine, he put out
16:19
Speaker 3: a possibly one of the first or the first multipanel cartoon,
16:24
Speaker 3: a four panel cartoon showing the metamorphosis from this king,
16:30
Speaker 3: going like, he's the king as a caricature, and now
16:33
Speaker 3: he looks a little more like a pair, a little
16:36
Speaker 3: more like a pair, and then he just has a
16:37
Speaker 3: pair for a head.
16:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the whole point was, come on, like, the
16:41
Speaker 2: guy looks like a pair, and it's ridiculous that you
16:45
Speaker 2: would try to find me six thousand dollars for pointing
16:47
Speaker 2: out something so obvious. Yeah, And I guess he avoided
16:50
Speaker 2: that fine at the time, but afterward he's like, Okay,
16:55
Speaker 2: I really need to get in trouble, so I'm going
16:58
Speaker 2: to create one called Argantua. And this one was way
17:03
Speaker 2: worse than saying the king looks like he has a
17:05
Speaker 2: pair for a head. This was the king Giant like
17:10
Speaker 2: gorging himself on taxes that were being fed directly to
17:14
Speaker 2: him by the poor people. He's sitting on his throne
17:17
Speaker 2: and then he's pooping out like tax breaks and special
17:22
Speaker 2: treatment for the wealthy friends of his, And that one
17:26
Speaker 2: got him in trouble.
17:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good cartoons, Like it's a ramp from
17:30
Speaker 3: the ground straight up to this giant's mouth with people
17:33
Speaker 3: in their wheelbears, just like walking up and getting in
17:35
Speaker 3: his mouth and being pooped out as spoils.
17:39
Speaker 2: It's a great, great piece of art too, Yeah, not
17:42
Speaker 2: just the political version of a political aspect. It's beautiful
17:46
Speaker 2: as far as art goes.
17:48
Speaker 3: But that got him six months in the Huscal, but
17:51
Speaker 3: they let him out and he started working again. King
17:55
Speaker 3: Philippe was asked about this, and you know, kind of like,
17:58
Speaker 3: why are you cracking down on this? But can have
18:00
Speaker 3: a pamphlet printed with words that are very critical of you,
18:03
Speaker 3: And he said, a pamphlet is no more than a
18:06
Speaker 3: violation of opinion. A caricature amounts to an act of violence.
18:11
Speaker 2: You started out with almost a French accent there for
18:13
Speaker 2: a second, and then.
18:14
Speaker 3: I debated it. Then I came back, and then it
18:16
Speaker 3: was British for a hot second, and then it was
18:18
Speaker 3: just regal general regal.
18:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really did evolve that quickly too, that failed. So, yeah,
18:27
Speaker 2: King Louis Philippe put his finger on something that that
18:30
Speaker 2: there's something special or something different about a political cartoon
18:34
Speaker 2: that is way different than say a news article or
18:38
Speaker 2: even a photograph. You know, you can make the point
18:42
Speaker 2: the news article for centuries and centuries could only be
18:45
Speaker 2: read by a select number of people. Everybody could get
18:48
Speaker 2: a political cartoon. But there's something more than that too.
18:51
Speaker 2: There's there's just something about a political cartoon that people
18:55
Speaker 2: who've been taken down by political cartoons have been able
18:58
Speaker 2: to put their finger on and say, there's this is
19:01
Speaker 2: way worse than just writing about me for some reason.
19:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that tracks too, even to like, if
19:08
Speaker 3: you think about, in like high school, if a teacher
19:12
Speaker 3: caught you writing like a note to your friend that said,
19:16
Speaker 3: you know, mister Clark is such a jerk. I think
19:20
Speaker 3: that would be taken different than if someone drew a
19:22
Speaker 3: picture of mister Clark like bit over being paddled by
19:27
Speaker 3: a line of students or something. You know, Uh, don't
19:30
Speaker 3: you think would it be equal?
19:33
Speaker 2: No, it would it'd be equal unless you put like
19:35
Speaker 2: stink lines coming off of me and would be really hautful.
19:39
Speaker 3: Oh man, stink lines. It was the first person to
19:42
Speaker 3: do the stink lines.
19:43
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'll bet it was a political cartoonist too.
19:45
Speaker 2: What's that great?
19:47
Speaker 3: Should we take a break?
19:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take a break and we'll come back and
19:49
Speaker 2: talk about one of the more famous political cartoonists of
19:52
Speaker 2: all time, Thomas nast.
20:07
Speaker 1: Lately, I've been learning some stuff.
20:10
Speaker 4: About insomnia or aluminia.
20:14
Speaker 1: How about the one on border like disorder that at
20:19
Speaker 1: birth order?
20:21
Speaker 5: That one be warm, but it was so nice I
20:25
Speaker 5: learned this. Why except for body, listen.
20:29
Speaker 1: Up, stop.
20:34
Speaker 5: Stop stop stop.
20:40
Speaker 3: All right, we're back, Josh promised. Talk of Thomas Nast. Uh.
20:45
Speaker 3: He's the most famous American political cartoonist, probably very influential
20:50
Speaker 3: cartoonist of the nineteenth century. And that's you know, early
20:53
Speaker 3: on you were like, what what was going on back then? Well,
20:56
Speaker 3: the Civil War was going on back then, and he
20:59
Speaker 3: was a German immigrant who drew for Harper's Weekly when
21:04
Speaker 3: Harper's Weekly was really growing in their readership with a
21:07
Speaker 3: lot of pro union political cartoons.
21:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one I think kind of tracks with
21:14
Speaker 2: what you were saying. It's not at all funny, but
21:17
Speaker 2: it's super poignant, right, called Compromise with the South. The
21:22
Speaker 2: Democrats had run on a platform that the Civil War
21:25
Speaker 2: had been a failure up to this point for the
21:27
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty four election when Lincoln was standing for reelection,
21:31
Speaker 2: and that we should basically work with the South to
21:34
Speaker 2: just forget about the Civil War and end this. And
21:37
Speaker 2: Thomas Nast didn't like that one bit. So this Compromise
21:40
Speaker 2: with the South image shows an amputee Union soldier standing
21:47
Speaker 2: on a crutch, shaking hands with his head bowed, shaking
21:50
Speaker 2: hands with a triumphant Confederate officer who's Jefferson Davis. Is
21:56
Speaker 2: it Jefferson Davis. He's got like his boot standing one
21:59
Speaker 2: foot on a Union soldier's grave, and Colombia, who represents
22:05
Speaker 2: the United States, is weeping at that grave. And then,
22:08
Speaker 2: also poignantly, there's a Union soldier, an African American Union
22:12
Speaker 2: soldier and his wife who are now on the Southern
22:14
Speaker 2: side and they're shackled back to being slaves.
22:19
Speaker 3: So it's a gut punch man, it is.
22:22
Speaker 2: It's a really good example of a political cartoon that
22:25
Speaker 2: isn't funny but really gets the point across. And apparently
22:28
Speaker 2: it had a huge impact on America, especially the Union, right.
22:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean some people say that had a lot
22:35
Speaker 3: to do with Lincoln getting re elected. Lincoln referred to
22:39
Speaker 3: Thomas Nast at one point as our best recruiting agent,
22:43
Speaker 3: and in the eighteen sixty eight election, Ulysses S. Grant
22:48
Speaker 3: credited his win to the sword of Sheridan and the
22:52
Speaker 3: pencil of Nast.
22:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
22:54
Speaker 3: I had never heard of Colombia, but you'll see in
22:57
Speaker 3: a lot of these political cartoons, Colombia as a presentation
23:00
Speaker 3: of America was used a lot. And I think this
23:04
Speaker 3: is just a guess. I didn't look it up, but
23:05
Speaker 3: it seems like Lady Liberty's Statue of Liberty has sort
23:07
Speaker 3: of replaced Columbia as far as the cartoon ship goes,
23:12
Speaker 3: because anytime there's like a sort of one of the
23:15
Speaker 3: sad gut punch ones, it's some shameful thing America has done,
23:18
Speaker 3: and like Lady Liberty is crying somewhere or something like that.
23:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Uncle Sam also displaced clos well, and
23:27
Speaker 2: Thomas Nast is the one who popularized the current image
23:31
Speaker 2: of Uncle Sam with his hat and that's right. All
23:34
Speaker 2: that that was Thomas Nast as well. He had a huge,
23:37
Speaker 2: huge impact as a political cartoonist.
23:40
Speaker 3: Well, he did the he was the guy who came
23:42
Speaker 3: up with the elephant and the donkey for the two
23:46
Speaker 3: political parties, that's right, and also popularized our current conception,
23:51
Speaker 3: American conception of Santa Claus.
23:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, because remember German immigrants are the ones who really
23:57
Speaker 2: brought Christmas to the United States, and Thomas Nass was
24:01
Speaker 2: a German immigrant, so he loved Christmas, and yeah, he
24:05
Speaker 2: gave us our version of Santa Claus. The thing that
24:07
Speaker 2: he's most remembered for as a political cartoonist, though, is
24:10
Speaker 2: that he is credited with taking down William Boss Tweed,
24:17
Speaker 2: who was one of the most corrupt political officials in
24:20
Speaker 2: the history of the United States. Apparently in a decade.
24:23
Speaker 2: He is thought to have stolen a billion dollars from
24:28
Speaker 2: New York City in today's money.
24:30
Speaker 3: That's incredible. Yeah, he's popped up a lot in our
24:34
Speaker 3: obviously our New York centric episodes about the history of
24:37
Speaker 3: New York. Very corrupt person for the Tammany Hall political machine.
24:42
Speaker 3: And I think Nast had more than one hundred and
24:46
Speaker 3: forty Boss Tweed cartoons alone in Harper's.
24:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, it was a big deal. Boss Tweed,
24:53
Speaker 2: very much like King Louis Philippe, was aware that, like
24:56
Speaker 2: these things were having an effect on him, and he
24:58
Speaker 2: apparently said, stop them, damn pictures. I don't care a
25:01
Speaker 2: straw for your newspaper articles. My constituents can't read, but
25:05
Speaker 2: they can't help seeing them damn pictures. And I mean
25:09
Speaker 2: there was a lot of reporting at the time by
25:12
Speaker 2: some of the New York newspapers like about Boss Tweed,
25:16
Speaker 2: and they definitely had some effect on getting him investigated
25:19
Speaker 2: and ultimately put into prison where he died. But like,
25:24
Speaker 2: you really can't, like you could put all those articles
25:29
Speaker 2: and combine them pretty much equally with Thomas Nast's political
25:33
Speaker 2: cartoons and be like, this is what took down Boss
25:36
Speaker 2: treat these two things basically equally.
25:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And you know, there are a lot
25:42
Speaker 3: of times I think people think about political cartoons as
25:45
Speaker 3: coming from the political left or the you know, the
25:48
Speaker 3: liberal progressive side, and that is certainly true, but they're
25:52
Speaker 3: you know, all kinds of newspapers have always had political cartoons,
25:56
Speaker 3: and all sorts of issues have been attacked from all
25:59
Speaker 3: l from political cartoonists over the years have been you know,
26:03
Speaker 3: plenty of examples of both, and Nasa was one of
26:05
Speaker 3: those that was sort of a contradiction. There's you know,
26:09
Speaker 3: we'll talk a little bit about immigration and political cartoons
26:11
Speaker 3: throughout history, and he was one who kind of hit
26:15
Speaker 3: it from both sides. He would draw one one year
26:18
Speaker 3: in eighteen seventy criticizing anti immigration the No Nothing Party,
26:24
Speaker 3: and that was called throwing down the Ladder by which
26:27
Speaker 3: they rose, and about a year later had political cartoons out,
26:31
Speaker 3: you know, criticizing Irish immigrants as violent drunks taking over
26:34
Speaker 3: the country.
26:35
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And this was a time when immigration was huge,
26:39
Speaker 2: huge issue in the United States for probably the first
26:42
Speaker 2: time it would became like a flashpoint like issue that
26:46
Speaker 2: you could run an entire campaign on.
26:48
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
26:49
Speaker 2: For example, there was a cartoon from nineteen oh three
26:53
Speaker 2: in a satirical weekly called Judge called Unrestricted Dumping Ground Man.
26:59
Speaker 2: This one's tough, it is, and there's a lot going
27:02
Speaker 2: on in this cartoon. It's color which is it really
27:09
Speaker 2: pops But Uncle Sam is basically standing at the shores
27:13
Speaker 2: of the United States and there's a bunch of immigrants
27:16
Speaker 2: swimming to the shore, but they're rats with human faces,
27:19
Speaker 2: which number one is unsettling, but number two is really offensive.
27:23
Speaker 2: And they're being dumped out of basically it looks almost
27:26
Speaker 2: like a mailbox or something that says the slums of Europe,
27:30
Speaker 2: and they're being dumped into New York Harbor and Uncle
27:34
Speaker 2: Sam's just standing there watching, wondering if he can do
27:36
Speaker 2: anything about it. And then William McKinley is floating in
27:40
Speaker 2: like a cloud. The reason William McKinley was featured is
27:43
Speaker 2: because he was president. He was assassinated by a guy
27:46
Speaker 2: named Leo Cholgosh in eighteen ninety nine, and chol Gosh
27:51
Speaker 2: born in Michigan, but he was considered an immigrant because
27:56
Speaker 2: his parents were immigrants. So like, this was the kind
27:59
Speaker 2: of stuff that was being run in papers and magazines
28:03
Speaker 2: at the time, basically saying like like immigrants are rats,
28:07
Speaker 2: and like you can't let them in.
28:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and those rats. Also, just to further drive
28:12
Speaker 3: the point home, they had labels on these individual human
28:17
Speaker 3: rats that said like mafia, anarchist, socialist, So it was
28:22
Speaker 3: you know, pretty on the nose, I guess you could say, right.
28:27
Speaker 3: There was another ad as far as the Immigration Front
28:31
Speaker 3: goes Teddy. Roosevelt at one point talked about hyphenated Americans
28:35
Speaker 3: being able to vote, like that shouldn't happen, Irish, American, German, American.
28:40
Speaker 3: And this one was from Puck Magazine, which was is
28:44
Speaker 3: that American? Was that British? I thought that was British.
28:47
Speaker 2: I think Punch was British and Puck was America.
28:50
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, Punch was British. But it had
28:52
Speaker 3: a caption again Uncle Sam saying, why should I let
28:55
Speaker 3: these freaks vote when they're only half American?
28:58
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, it's a yeah, it's it's a really bizarre cartoon.
29:03
Speaker 2: It's tough to describe, but go look that one up.
29:06
Speaker 2: So one of the other things we said is that
29:08
Speaker 2: political cartoons sometimes also target policies social issues, and there
29:14
Speaker 2: was a really good one that Dave turned up called
29:16
Speaker 2: from the Cradle to the Mill that really got across
29:19
Speaker 2: child labor or the need for child labor laws. It's
29:22
Speaker 2: this innocent looking little probably five year old kid. I
29:25
Speaker 2: think he's holding a Teddy Bear still, and this dark,
29:29
Speaker 2: ghoulish spirit.
29:30
Speaker 3: Named Necessity grim Reaper basically.
29:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially has come into the child's house and is
29:35
Speaker 2: taking him by the hand to lead him off to
29:37
Speaker 2: the mill for work. And it really it gets the
29:41
Speaker 2: point across. Like, you know, this was from nineteen twelve,
29:45
Speaker 2: and if child labor was still an issue to date,
29:48
Speaker 2: you could run it today. It just really just captured
29:51
Speaker 2: what the problem was.
29:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was a time, you know, we talked
29:55
Speaker 3: about the in France, you know, when the one political
29:59
Speaker 3: card this was put in jail for six months. In
30:02
Speaker 3: America at this point there were limits on freedom of speech.
30:05
Speaker 3: So in nineteen seventeen that artists who drew that was
30:08
Speaker 3: targeted by the freshly passed Espionage Act, which was part
30:16
Speaker 3: of which was an attempt to silence critics of US
30:18
Speaker 3: going into World War One, and they almost did put
30:21
Speaker 3: him in prison for a cartoon called having Their Fling.
30:25
Speaker 3: And this is a pretty brutal one too, and it
30:28
Speaker 3: showed the like editors, capitalist politicians, and preachers like cheering
30:34
Speaker 3: entry into an orgy of death.
30:37
Speaker 2: Basically, Yeah, that one hits as well for sure. Speaking
30:41
Speaker 2: of world wars, World War two was a big kind
30:45
Speaker 2: of a accelerator of political cartoons because by this time
30:48
Speaker 2: newspapers have really hit in the United States and around
30:53
Speaker 2: the world. But there were a lot of newspapers in
30:56
Speaker 2: the middle of the century, the twentieth century and so
30:59
Speaker 2: World War two like produced a lot of fodder for
31:03
Speaker 2: political cartoons. One of whom one of the I don't
31:06
Speaker 2: know if he was one of the most famous at
31:08
Speaker 2: the time, but today one of the most noteworthy was
31:11
Speaker 2: Doctor Seuss. Well, I think we mentioned in our Doctor
31:13
Speaker 2: Seu's episode was a political cartoonist for a little while
31:17
Speaker 2: during World War one or two.
31:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, Theater Geisel. Yeah, we did talk about
31:23
Speaker 3: this because some of the stuff he worked for a
31:25
Speaker 3: New York newspaper called PM for I think two or
31:27
Speaker 3: three years in the early forties, and it's, you know,
31:30
Speaker 3: it looks like doctor SEUs stuff in his total signature style,
31:35
Speaker 3: but he would would you like some of them would
31:38
Speaker 3: be like against racist and discriminatory hiring practices and policies
31:45
Speaker 3: that are hampering the war effort. But he also, and
31:47
Speaker 3: we talked about this in the Sue's episode, you know,
31:50
Speaker 3: many years later, was kind of called out for having
31:53
Speaker 3: a lot of racist caricatures drawn in his in his work.
31:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially there's one of Tojo, who ran Japan at
32:00
Speaker 2: the time during World War two, and in just the
32:05
Speaker 2: most racist Japanese stereotype you can possibly imagine, but.
32:09
Speaker 3: Doctor style, yeah, exactly. So.
32:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was another prominent cartoonist that actually emerged from
32:17
Speaker 2: World War Two was drawing editorial cartoons on the front
32:21
Speaker 2: lines of World War Two. His name was Bill Malden.
32:24
Speaker 2: I want to say, Maudlin's so bad, but it's Malden.
32:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
32:27
Speaker 2: And if you see pictures of him when he was
32:31
Speaker 2: drawing these cartoons during World War Two, he looks like
32:35
Speaker 2: a baby. He looks like the kid that necessity comes
32:38
Speaker 2: and takes from his house to the mill in that
32:40
Speaker 2: one nineteen twelve political cartoon.
32:43
Speaker 3: Now I'm looking up a picture of him because I
32:45
Speaker 3: didn't actually look up the artists, and yeah, he looks
32:48
Speaker 3: like a child.
32:48
Speaker 2: He really does. And he came up with two of
32:51
Speaker 2: the most beloved characters recurring characters in the history of
32:57
Speaker 2: political cartoons, in part because there's not really that many
33:00
Speaker 2: recurring characters in political cartoons, right, But there were two
33:04
Speaker 2: gis named Willy and Joe, and he just depicted their
33:08
Speaker 2: life in the front lines humorously for the most part,
33:12
Speaker 2: but sometimes kind of poignantly as well.
33:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these a lot of times were just I
33:18
Speaker 3: don't think we mentioned like, you know, sometimes it'll be
33:21
Speaker 3: an image with a kind of like the back of
33:24
Speaker 3: the New Yorker with those cartoons, that they'll have a caption, right,
33:29
Speaker 3: my ideas, most of these had captions the Willy and
33:36
Speaker 3: Joe stuff, but not all political cartoons use words at all,
33:40
Speaker 3: Sometimes very few words. Sometimes this word's just in the image,
33:43
Speaker 3: like on a sign or you know, something like that.
33:46
Speaker 3: But sometimes it's like a character saying something.
33:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's one that I think really kind of stands
33:51
Speaker 2: out of Bill Mauldin's that shows a GI returning from
33:56
Speaker 2: World War Two. He's sitting in at a at a
33:58
Speaker 2: table and he's being interviewed by the press, and there's
34:00
Speaker 2: an Army pr man standing next to him and has
34:04
Speaker 2: his arm around his shoulder, and he's speaking on behalf
34:07
Speaker 2: of this GI and he says he thinks the food
34:10
Speaker 2: over there was swell. He's glad to be home, but
34:12
Speaker 2: he misses the excitement of battle. You may quote him,
34:15
Speaker 2: and it's just kind of well, I don't know. I'll
34:17
Speaker 2: leave it to you to decide what it means.
34:19
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, there's another one here that I'm looking at
34:22
Speaker 3: that's Willy and Joe reading the papers of their new
34:27
Speaker 3: a new soldier brought to the battalion, and the new
34:29
Speaker 3: soldier is clearly like, you know, thirteen years old or something.
34:32
Speaker 3: M H and Willy and Joe. He says, oh, that's okay.
34:35
Speaker 3: The replacement center says, he comes from a long line
34:37
Speaker 3: of infantrymen.
34:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, his uniform is like hanging off of him.
34:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, so clearly making a point about like sending children
34:45
Speaker 3: to war.
34:46
Speaker 2: There was another thing too, that was a recurring theme
34:48
Speaker 2: in these in Malden's World War two cartoons, and that
34:53
Speaker 2: is how important hearing from people back home was to
34:56
Speaker 2: gis like getting male was a recurring throughout that. And
35:01
Speaker 2: there was one that I saw that it was like
35:04
Speaker 2: you were saying, there's no dialogue, there's no caption or
35:06
Speaker 2: anything like that, but it's a soldier and he's sitting
35:09
Speaker 2: there with like he's sitting down with his back against
35:12
Speaker 2: a tree. He's holding his rifle up, but at his
35:14
Speaker 2: feet is a bunch of packages that say do not
35:18
Speaker 2: open until December twenty fifth, So like he's in battle
35:21
Speaker 2: carrying around this package that he can't wait to open
35:24
Speaker 2: until Christmas. It's like it's got a touch of humor
35:28
Speaker 2: to it, but more than anything. It really struck me
35:30
Speaker 2: as quite touching, you know.
35:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure. The one that artistically is like
35:39
Speaker 3: I think one of the coolest ones was actually from
35:42
Speaker 3: a German. I mean, I really hates saying this out loud.
35:46
Speaker 3: It was from a Nazi and what was his name?
35:49
Speaker 3: His name was Harld. He was a Norwegian Nazi named
35:53
Speaker 3: Harold Domslash and in nineteen forty four he drew a
35:57
Speaker 3: political cartoon. The caption reads, the USA shall save European
36:01
Speaker 3: culture from destruction with what right? And it's a picture,
36:06
Speaker 3: you know, sort of pointing out all the hypocrisies of America,
36:11
Speaker 3: like you know, this this big winged, sort of multi arm,
36:15
Speaker 3: multi leg beast made out of a drum, and it
36:18
Speaker 3: has a Klansman head and holding a money bag and
36:23
Speaker 3: there's a news hanging off. It's just crazy looking. It
36:25
Speaker 3: looks like something like Pink Floyd would have used on
36:28
Speaker 3: an album cover.
36:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is nuts. It's called culture Terror, but spelled
36:33
Speaker 2: with a K, and I think terror is spelled differently too,
36:36
Speaker 2: I guess in the Norwegian.
36:38
Speaker 3: Well there's your band, then just call your band that
36:40
Speaker 3: and use that as the album cover.
36:41
Speaker 2: Culture ear. Yeah, that's a great idea halfway there, but
36:44
Speaker 2: go check it out because it's it's striking as just
36:47
Speaker 2: the art alone is striking, but that the nazis calling
36:52
Speaker 2: out America for our own misdeeds misdeeds, great, thank you.
36:58
Speaker 2: That was also carried on by some Americans too. There
37:01
Speaker 2: was a black cartoonist named Jay Jackson who drew for
37:05
Speaker 2: the Chicago Defender, which is a black newspaper. And during
37:09
Speaker 2: World War Two, did you see the one of the
37:12
Speaker 2: blind leading the blind? Yeah, I mean talk about striking.
37:17
Speaker 2: So it's America. It's a figure representing America, and he's
37:22
Speaker 2: leading a figure with the swastika, so he's representing Germany.
37:26
Speaker 2: I think it even says Germany on the guy, and
37:29
Speaker 2: they're both blind, and they're both wearing dark glasses and
37:33
Speaker 2: on the lenses it says race hate. So what he's
37:36
Speaker 2: saying is that, like you know, both of these countries
37:38
Speaker 2: that are fighting this war for moral superiority are both
37:41
Speaker 2: blinded by their hatred of different races. And it's one
37:46
Speaker 2: of the better political cartoons I've ever seen. Again, not
37:49
Speaker 2: funny like you were saying, but still yeah, just an
37:53
Speaker 2: amazing point.
37:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, we should probably take our last break, right,
37:59
Speaker 3: before the break, I want to make that they've been
38:00
Speaker 3: giving out a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. They started
38:04
Speaker 3: at nineteen twenty two, and Bill Mauldon won that Pulitzer
38:08
Speaker 3: for his World War Two work. And we'll talk about
38:11
Speaker 3: someone else who won several of those awards right after this.
38:27
Speaker 4: Lately, I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia.
38:34
Speaker 1: How about the one on borderlight disorder that are got
38:39
Speaker 1: birth order?
38:40
Speaker 5: That one be warm, but it was so nice I
38:44
Speaker 5: learned this. Why except ebody, listen up, shop lead stop,
38:55
Speaker 5: stop stop.
39:00
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. I just want to point out I think
39:02
Speaker 2: we said we weren't really going to describe images, right
39:06
Speaker 2: well mine, yeah, we've been doing it pretty prolifically. I
39:09
Speaker 2: hope it's going well. I can't tell all right no more,
39:12
Speaker 2: so I think we should talk about a guy named
39:15
Speaker 2: HERB Block or her Block was his pen name, cartoon name,
39:20
Speaker 2: and he's considered probably the most important political cartoonist of
39:24
Speaker 2: the entire twentieth century. He's got three Pulitzers for cartooning alone,
39:29
Speaker 2: and an additional Pulitzer for public service that he got
39:32
Speaker 2: for just excoriating Nixon over the Watergate scandal.
39:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I imagine if you're a political cartoonist during Watergate,
39:41
Speaker 3: you're kind of licking your chops a bit.
39:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. McCarthyism, Like he was really around during
39:47
Speaker 3: a fraught time politically.
39:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, he drew just Block alone drew more than one
39:52
Speaker 2: hundred cartoons about Watergate between seventy two and seventy four.
39:56
Speaker 2: And that's something that I think bears pointing out. Political
39:59
Speaker 2: cartoon tunists are expected to draw a cartoon a day.
40:03
Speaker 2: Like you didn't write an article every day, you didn't
40:05
Speaker 2: go cover something. You drew a political cartoon five days
40:08
Speaker 2: a week to run in the daily newspaper.
40:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, and twenty five of them for Saturday and Sunday.
40:15
Speaker 3: Right and Block Actually, I mean I talked about the
40:19
Speaker 3: time that he was there. I mean it's actually pretty vast.
40:22
Speaker 3: He was there from forty six to two thousand and one. Yeah,
40:25
Speaker 3: so he got to cover quite a bit politically. He
40:27
Speaker 3: coined the term McCarthyism. I think we talked about that
40:30
Speaker 3: in the McCarthyism episode in nineteen fifty cartoon. He was definitely,
40:35
Speaker 3: you know, on the on the left side of the
40:37
Speaker 3: political spectrum because he would go after you know, environmental polluters,
40:43
Speaker 3: in war, the immorality of war, the government, you know,
40:47
Speaker 3: as a whole. And they have named since two thousand
40:52
Speaker 3: and four the best editorial political cartoonists is named after him,
40:57
Speaker 3: the herb Block Prize.
40:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I went to see who some of the
41:02
Speaker 2: recent candidates or winners were, and there's one that I noticed.
41:07
Speaker 2: I was looking through current political cartoons and this guy
41:10
Speaker 2: kept coming up, same as Pedro ex Molina, and he
41:14
Speaker 2: draws for counterpoint. So he is super lefty. He was
41:17
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty four finalist for the her Block Prize.
41:20
Speaker 2: But his cartoons are just on point. He's I think
41:25
Speaker 2: probably the best working today of the younger generation.
41:29
Speaker 3: Oh cool.
41:30
Speaker 2: One of the ones that I saw was there's an
41:32
Speaker 2: old like an extension court outlet. You know, I have
41:37
Speaker 2: like the two outlets that you can plug into.
41:40
Speaker 3: Oh you sent me this one, right, yeah.
41:42
Speaker 2: And it just looks old and worn and everything. And
41:44
Speaker 2: one of the outlets says Biden and the other one
41:47
Speaker 2: says Trump. And then and also in the picture is
41:50
Speaker 2: an Apple charger and that says gen Z. They have
41:53
Speaker 2: nowhere to no one, yeah, yeah, and it's just there's
41:57
Speaker 2: no words aside from the names and the and gen
42:00
Speaker 2: and like it just again really gets the point across.
42:04
Speaker 2: But I like that guy's work.
42:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. It also instead of saying jenc could have said
42:09
Speaker 3: a lot of America.
42:11
Speaker 2: Right right for sure.
42:14
Speaker 3: So we should finish up by talking a bit about
42:16
Speaker 3: Charlie Hebdoe. As promised early on, you mentioned that France
42:21
Speaker 3: has been a hot bed for satire since the get go,
42:26
Speaker 3: and the radical satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has been around
42:32
Speaker 3: for a long long time, since nineteen sixty. Their original
42:34
Speaker 3: motto was mean and nasty, and they made we probably
42:39
Speaker 3: would not hear in the States unless you just are
42:41
Speaker 3: sort of in the know, not known much about Charlie
42:43
Speaker 3: Hebdo had it not been for a couple of tragic events.
42:47
Speaker 3: On Halloween Day in twenty eleven, they published an issue
42:53
Speaker 3: number one thousand and eleven they retitled instead of Charlie Hebdo,
42:57
Speaker 3: they retitled the issue Charlie Hebdo for Sharia Law and
43:03
Speaker 3: they were. It was a cover in response to the
43:06
Speaker 3: Tunisian News, where an Islami's party had won parliamentary elections there,
43:11
Speaker 3: and on the cover it featured a cartoon rendering of
43:14
Speaker 3: the prophet Mohammad and the caption read one hundred lashes
43:17
Speaker 3: if you do not die laughing. And in Islam, any
43:21
Speaker 3: image of Mohammad is very much forbidden, much less you know,
43:26
Speaker 3: a cartoon making fun of something. And violence ensued because
43:30
Speaker 3: of this.
43:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in two thoy twelve, no, that same year,
43:36
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, so within a couple months, the offices were firebombed.
43:41
Speaker 2: No one was hurt, but in response, and I didn't
43:44
Speaker 2: know this, I thought it was just that cover, that drawing,
43:47
Speaker 2: which is you know, like you don't do that. It's
43:49
Speaker 2: a violation of like a huge violation of Islamic custom
43:54
Speaker 2: to make any kind of, like you said, picture of Muhammad,
43:57
Speaker 2: let alone making a cartoon. But they they went even
44:01
Speaker 2: further after the fire bombing, and they in twenty twelve
44:05
Speaker 2: they published more cartoons, one of which was Mohammed naked
44:10
Speaker 2: on all fours. And that actually, from what I can tell,
44:14
Speaker 2: is what triggered the murders of a bunch of the
44:18
Speaker 2: people who work at the offices in twenty fifteen.
44:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was two men stormed into the offices murdered
44:27
Speaker 3: twelve people. This was, you know, the biggest news. There's
44:32
Speaker 3: a cat walking around outside my house right now that
44:35
Speaker 3: I do not recognize. Very interesting. Sorry, just caught me
44:40
Speaker 3: off guard.
44:40
Speaker 2: Yeah it did.
44:41
Speaker 3: I was like, did one of my cats get out?
44:43
Speaker 3: It's like, nope, it's not one of my cats.
44:44
Speaker 2: It's a burder.
44:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, murdered twelve people. Probably not the best time to
44:48
Speaker 3: mention that during the middle of this awful retelling, including
44:51
Speaker 3: the editor of Charlie Hebdo for other cartoonists and also
44:56
Speaker 3: went on to kill four Jewish people and then the
44:59
Speaker 3: French police took them out.
45:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so like immediately there were protests and marches
45:05
Speaker 2: in France, like millions of people across the country, and
45:09
Speaker 2: basically a meme was developed almost immediately. It was just
45:12
Speaker 2: sweet Charlie and it means I am Charlie, and they
45:16
Speaker 2: were saying like I'm standing up for freedom of expression,
45:20
Speaker 2: freedom of speech, and that was pretty much the zeitgeist
45:25
Speaker 2: across all of France, like everyone stood up and supported
45:29
Speaker 2: Charlie Hebdo after that tragedy, and I saw chuck that
45:33
Speaker 2: ten years on. The ten year anniversary just came and
45:36
Speaker 2: went in this past January. They apparently people have changed
45:41
Speaker 2: their opinions in some cases, just like thirty one percent
45:45
Speaker 2: of people polled agreed with the idea that Charlie Hebdo
45:49
Speaker 2: brought that on themselves, whereas that same the answer to
45:54
Speaker 2: that question would have probably been in the low single
45:56
Speaker 2: digits right after the shit time. Yeah, I just thought
46:01
Speaker 2: that was interesting. I mean, how different things can change
46:04
Speaker 2: in ten years, you know.
46:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in the wake of a tragedy like that. Yeah.
46:10
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I agree one or the other. I
46:12
Speaker 3: just I think a lot of times opinions change on
46:15
Speaker 3: stuff like that over time for certain people.
46:17
Speaker 2: Ten years is a long time these days. It didn't
46:20
Speaker 2: used to be, but man, oh man, a lot can
46:23
Speaker 2: happen in ten years. We've learned to pack it in.
46:26
Speaker 3: So we mentioned early on that there's only twenty like
46:30
Speaker 3: on staff major newspaper cartoonists. The reason for that, as
46:34
Speaker 3: we all know, is newspapers are having a tough time.
46:38
Speaker 3: Declining subscriptions. Mean they don't want to have further declining
46:42
Speaker 3: subscriptions by angering readership on either side of the political
46:47
Speaker 3: spectrum because people might cancel over something like that and
46:50
Speaker 3: they just can't afford that anymore. So people are more
46:52
Speaker 3: sensitive these days. They're sadly editors are not standing behind
46:57
Speaker 3: their cartoonists like they used to. They flag something, they
47:01
Speaker 3: you know, they'll pull it and the cartoonists may quit
47:04
Speaker 3: or maybe fired.
47:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if people complain about a political cartoon,
47:08
Speaker 2: it used to be like, hey, it's it's true. Now
47:11
Speaker 2: it's like oh sorry, and then they print a retraction
47:14
Speaker 2: and then fire the political cartoonists. That's new. That's that's
47:18
Speaker 2: the way that the industry is changing. But it seems
47:24
Speaker 2: to be pretty much relegated to newspapers and just some newspapers,
47:32
Speaker 2: you know, like Mike Lukovich at the AJAC. He's one
47:36
Speaker 2: of the premier editorial cartoonists still working today for a newspaper.
47:39
Speaker 3: Man. He's been around for a long long time.
47:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he doesn't pull punches, and I think that
47:45
Speaker 2: AJAC is still behind him every single time.
47:48
Speaker 3: Yeah.
47:49
Speaker 2: So it's not it's not like it's going to happen,
47:52
Speaker 2: you know, no matter what newspaper you work at, it
47:54
Speaker 2: just depends on the usually the outlook of the publisher, right,
47:57
Speaker 2: And if you offend the publisher, used to be like
48:00
Speaker 2: the editors would talk them down, but the editors don't
48:03
Speaker 2: do that anymore, and so you can get fired. And
48:05
Speaker 2: there was a very well known political cartoonist, another Pulitzer
48:08
Speaker 2: winner named Anne Telnay's And in twenty nineteen she kind
48:12
Speaker 2: of saw the writing on the wall and she published
48:15
Speaker 2: like a series or not a series as multi multipanel
48:19
Speaker 2: cartoon that basically was an infographic explaining what political cartoonists do,
48:26
Speaker 2: the danger that they're in right now in the United States,
48:30
Speaker 2: and as far as like being canceled and fired, and
48:33
Speaker 2: then what the problem, what the ultimate problem with that is,
48:38
Speaker 2: And she essentially says, political cartoonists are the canary and
48:41
Speaker 2: the coal mine. If we start getting fired for expressing
48:45
Speaker 2: opinions and views that are legitimate because people don't want
48:49
Speaker 2: to hear that, that is a big red flag that
48:52
Speaker 2: freedom of expression is under attack in your country. And
48:55
Speaker 2: she was saying that's basically happening right now. And she
48:59
Speaker 2: ultimately quit just earlier this year. Right.
49:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, she had been at the Washington Post for seventeen
49:05
Speaker 3: years and quit because her editors there at the Post
49:10
Speaker 3: refused to publish one of her cartoons based only on
49:15
Speaker 3: her opinion. So it's, uh, yeah, that's kind of the
49:19
Speaker 3: state of things at the Washington Post these days.
49:22
Speaker 2: Yes, So, and across a lot of newspapers. Like again,
49:26
Speaker 2: they're like an endangered breed, but that's specifically at newspapers.
49:34
Speaker 2: It's still a very thriving art form, and you can
49:38
Speaker 2: make a really good case that it's still around and
49:42
Speaker 2: very popular. It's just transmuted in a lot of cases
49:44
Speaker 2: to memes. I'll give you an example of when I
49:47
Speaker 2: saw recently, you know that this is fine, the dog
49:52
Speaker 2: sitting at the table drinking coffee in a room that's
49:54
Speaker 2: on fire. I haven't see this is fine.
49:57
Speaker 3: I don't see any memes though it's.
49:59
Speaker 2: A great meme. But in one panel, he's just sitting
50:02
Speaker 2: there and it says arson is free speech now. And
50:05
Speaker 2: then the next panel it's him just sitting there drinking
50:07
Speaker 2: the coffee in the room on fire and says this
50:09
Speaker 2: is fine, and that I mean, it's a meme. Somebody
50:13
Speaker 2: put it together, probably using a meme generator. But you
50:16
Speaker 2: can also make a case that that is in a
50:18
Speaker 2: lot of ways, it bears a stronger resemblance to political cartoons.
50:22
Speaker 2: All right, you got anything else?
50:25
Speaker 3: I got nothing else?
50:27
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, since we got nothing else, that means this
50:30
Speaker 2: episode is done and it's time for listener mail.
50:36
Speaker 3: This one's scrabble centric. Before I read this email, we
50:39
Speaker 3: do have to acknowledge that we failed to mention the
50:43
Speaker 3: ultimate Simpson's reference, of course, of quigibow, very very old
50:48
Speaker 3: Simpson's reference from an early episode where Bart Simpson I
50:52
Speaker 3: think it was Bart, argued for quijibow, which was just
50:56
Speaker 3: the letters as they appeared on his rack was a word,
50:59
Speaker 3: right right, Okay, So sorry about the quiji bow we
51:02
Speaker 3: heard from a lot of people, but this is a
51:04
Speaker 3: different email. Hey, guys, the real reason I'm writing is
51:07
Speaker 3: tell you about the role of scrabble in my family's history.
51:09
Speaker 3: My parents love to play scrabble, and my dad, being
51:11
Speaker 3: the kind of guy he was, made a table to
51:14
Speaker 3: record their stats by hand, using a ruler about to
51:17
Speaker 3: make sure the lines are straight and the columns are
51:20
Speaker 3: each the same width from page to page. Ended up
51:22
Speaker 3: using five pages or so of very thin lines. He
51:26
Speaker 3: would record the date in the game that was played,
51:28
Speaker 3: in the final score, and my mom's final score. Two
51:32
Speaker 3: more columns in which he would track a running total
51:34
Speaker 3: of mini games of how many games each of them
51:37
Speaker 3: had won. Besides being a perfect example of my dad,
51:40
Speaker 3: there's also interesting thing about the dates. There are three
51:43
Speaker 3: periods when they begin to play all the time, following
51:46
Speaker 3: periods for which they hardly played it all in between
51:49
Speaker 3: each my two siblings and I were born. That's pretty funny.
51:53
Speaker 3: They're like, why did things drop off for two years?
51:57
Speaker 2: We had other things to do.
51:58
Speaker 3: Exactly when my dad died, I inherited their scrabble board
52:02
Speaker 3: and their record was in it. And this is one
52:05
Speaker 3: of my most precious possessions. That is from Reverend Eric.
52:10
Speaker 2: That's a sweet email. Thanks a lot, Reverend.
52:12
Speaker 3: That's great.
52:13
Speaker 2: I can just imagine man making your own columns and
52:16
Speaker 2: rows with the ruler. That's dedication right there.
52:19
Speaker 3: I know those dads. I'm not that dad, and my
52:21
Speaker 3: dad wasn't that dad, but I've known those dads.
52:23
Speaker 2: Yep. If you want to be like Reverend Eric, can
52:26
Speaker 2: send us an email that tells us how sweet your
52:29
Speaker 2: parents were. We love those kinds of things. You can
52:31
Speaker 2: send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:38
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
52:41
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:45
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.