Choosing a cartoon (or two) for each issue of the Hood River News is one of the great pleasures, and challenges, of this job.
We subscribe to Creators Syndicate, which provides us a choice of 10-20 different images on national and international issues. Most newspapers our size don’t deal in cartoons that comment on matters beyond the state or region, but it has long been the News’ practice to give readers that window to the world. We try to present a varied selection of images, along the spectrum of viewpoints.
Overall, I have to say, the quality has gone downhill in the 15 years I’ve been here; fortunately, we always have three or four strong ones to choose from.
Last week one appeared on the roll that rather surprised me. The best cartoons stand alone, no framing needed for the audience of 2014. But this one, by Mike Breen, would not so qualify. It shows the Democrat Donkey lifting its shirt and exposing its belly to show the image of President Barack Obama.
What’s that mean? What is the donkey doing? Why would the party image be doing such a thing?
As a child of the 1960s (I was born in 1958 and raised in a newspaper-reading, politically aware household), I understood, but with due respect to our general readership, I wondered how many people would grasp the message.
It’s a take on the famous 1966 photo of Lyndon Johnson lifting his shirt to display the belly scar from his recent gall bladder surgery. I well remember that photo from my youth, just as the other image that underscored the rough side of LBJ: lifting his Beagle by the ears, for which he was roundly criticized, even in the days before PETA.
My personal favorite cartoon of LBJ was the wordless 1968 one by Herblock that showed him driving down a Texas road, a huge smile on his face and a frothy milkshake in his hand: it was published in the days following his announcement LBJ would not run for re-election.
But back to the Breen cartoon and its suggestion of 1966 LBJ meets 2014 Obama. This cartoon is in fact a cartoon about a cartoon. In 1966, cartoonist David Levine used Johnson’s folksy action to lampoon the president over the rising issue of Vietnam, turning the scar into the outline of the southeast Asian nation where American embroilment would prove to be the defining characteristic, if not the downfall, of LBJ’s administration. With the proper context, it’s easy to understand Breen’s point about Obama — once high-hoped, now low-rated — being the 2014 Democrats’ damaging scar.
It’s an interesting point to consider the shelf life of a political image and how much it resonates decades later. FDR c. 1940 and his cigarette-holder grin in an open car stands out, and certainly Nixon arms extended at the top of the airplane ladder to Marine One in 1974. Both appeared regularly over the years, keeping them fresh in the public mind. I’m frankly not sure about the LBJ scar image — it feels like it was pulled out of a dusty drawer — but I’d be interested to hear from readers about the merit or relevancy of the image today.
Any way you look at it, it’s evidence of the value that cartoons bring to any publication.
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