Mr. Poppyseed works at the Library of Congress, and occasionally on his lunch hour, he will explore the exhibits in the gorgeous Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Last week he noted that there is a pretty comprehensive Herblock exhibit on display until January 20, 2007. The exhibition is well worth a look, because these cartoons, many of which are from the '60s and '70s, have a great deal of relevance to us today.
Herblock, or Herb Block, was a
Washington Post fixture, and his political cartoons were sharp and pointy and dead-on for decades, taking on both Democrats and Republicans. His cartoons covered presidential administrations for fifty years, from the 1940s through the 1990s. I remember seeing Herblock cartoons in the paper when I was a kid.
From the website,
The exhibition focuses on themes of enduring importance to Herblock that continue to resonate in American society today.
When Mr. Poppyseed was telling me about some of the cartoons dealing with wiretapping and other matters relevant in our current political atmosphere, I was shocked at how unchanged things are today from the way they were nearly forty years ago.
The exhibition's central theme, entitled "Get Out the Vote," chronicles off-year elections from 1946 to 1994. The exhibition also focuses on six major themes of enduring importance to Herblock that continue to resonate in American society today: ethics, environment, extremism, the Middle East, privacy/security, and war.
Herb Block was, as a political cartoonist, what we wish we had in the media today in our journalists. From the Herb Block Foundation website, Katherine Graham, longtime chairman of The Washington Post, had this to say about Herb Block:
Underneath his genius for cartooning and writing lies a modest, sweet, aw-shucks personality. Underneath that lies a layer of iron and steel. For the publishers and editors over him - or under him, as it would be more accurate to say - it's like having a tiger by the tail.
Herb fought for and earned a unique position at the paper: one of complete independence of anybody and anything. Journalistic enterprises run best when writers and editors have a lot of autonomy. But Herb's case is extreme. And because he's a genius, it works.
If only our journalists now were as dogged and tough as Herb Block was. Just because the medium of cartoon is generally more pointy than straight journalistic reporting doesn't give our press - and the editors at our news publications - a pass when it comes to reporting and commenting on the horrid state of affairs in our country.
I haven't visited the on-site exhibition at the Library yet, though I will, but there is a pretty good showing of Herblock's work at the Library of Congress website, and I wanted to encourage you to have a look at some of the prescient cartoons (I've posted a handful of my favorites from the online exhibition) from decades ago. The commentary with each cartoon comes from the LoC website's commentary on each cartoon. Any emphasis is mine.
By altering the U.S. flag with a cross of stars, Herb Block highlighted the debate about the meaning of the founding fathers' belief on the separation of church and state. By placing the presidential portrait next to the cross of stars, Herb Block underscored the friendly relations between President Ronald Reagan and the religious right during his second term of office.
In this cartoon, Block drew Secretary of State Henry Kissinger delivering a box of nuclear material to Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1975, the United States signed a cooperative agreement with then-ally Iran, permitting the U.S. to sell nuclear energy equipment to the middle eastern country. Herb Block agreed with critics of President Gerald Ford's foreign policy and questioned why Iran needed nuclear technology when it was so rich in oil.
In this cartoon created during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1990), Herb Block suggested that President Ronald Reagan's remark in response to an Iraqi attack that killed Americans would cause sleepless, anxious nights not only in the Middle East but also the United States. Following the Iraqi aircraft attack that killed thirty-seven men aboard the U.S. Navy frigate Stark on May 17, the Reagan administration gave no hint of what the United States might do if its ships in the Persian Gulf were attacked by Iran's new land-based missiles.
Threats to civil liberties take many forms in Herb Block's cartoons, as exemplified by his sleek, lunging "Wiretapping beast," later described by Block as "the illegal and unlicensed pet of supposed law enforcement officers." With his depiction of the uncaged panther, Block warned against the Kennedy administration's expression of support in July of 1961 for legislative proposals to permit federal wiretapping related to threats to national security, kidnapping, and serious federal crimes.
Herb Block depicted government wiretapping of private telephone conversations as bats in the night snooping for private gain rather than as guardian angels. In 1955, Block wrote: "The Attorney General of the United States, in his boundless zeal to protect the government from anything which protects the rights of individuals, has modestly requested that he be empowered to authorize taps on telephones at his own discretion." At this time, the Eisenhower administration argued that the fear of communism pervading the country justified investigating American citizens.