Quotulatiousness

January 9, 2021

The (declining) power of the political cartoon

Filed under: History, Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Jack Reilly outlines the rise of political cartooning from (of all people) Martin Luther to the present day, as it faces the final phase of its long career:

The first influential cartoon published in an American newspaper has traditionally been credited to Benjamin Franklin, who drew his famous serpent divided into eight parts with the legend Join, or Die — the message being that fellow colonists must band together to repel the enemy forces then threatening their territory. Long after Franklin’s death, the image would be dusted off for reuse by supporters of American unity.

Thomas Nast, whom many consider to be the greatest editorial cartoonist of all time, rose to prominence during the Civil War. Still in his early 20s, the young German immigrant began producing such arresting pro-Union material that Abraham Lincoln — flipping Napoleon’s rueful commentary about James Gillray on its head — referred to Nast as “our best recruiting agent.”

During the national election of 1864, conducted amidst the Civil War, the Democrats pushed a platform of reconciliation with the slaving south. In response, Nast created his famous Compromise with the South cartoon, depicting an injured union soldier, bowing his head and lifelessly shaking hands with a victorious confederate who stands atop the grave of a fallen Yankee, with Lady Liberty weeping in the foreground. The epitaph on a tombstone reads “In memory of the Union heroes who died in a useless war.” Nast’s lurid but masterful image created a sensation, and showed how politically powerful the cartooning medium could be in an age of mass newspaper readership. Two months later, Abraham Lincoln defeated the Democrat candidate, George McClellan, to secure a second term.

In the decades following the war, Nast would continue to elevate the medium to high art. In 1871, he began an ongoing series for Harper’s Weekly attacking the corruption of Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that controlled New York politics. Nast so mercilessly lampooned William M. “Boss” Tweed as the machine’s ringleader, that Tweed was heard to rage, “Stop them damn pictures! I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles. My constituents can’t read. But they can’t help seeing them damn pictures!”

Eventually, Tweed was convicted of money laundering. (He attempted to escape justice by absconding to Spain, but was soon apprehended by Spanish officials, who reportedly recognized him with assistance from Nast’s cartoons.) As for Nast himself, he’d go on to conceive of the elephant as a symbol for the Republican party, popularize the use of the donkey for the Democrats, and help create the modern image of Santa Claus that Americans have come to love.

“The Third-Term Panic”, by Thomas Nast, originally published in Harper’s Magazine on 7 November 1874.

A braying ass, in a lion’s coat, and “N.Y. Herald” collar, frightening animals in the forest: a giraffe (“N. Y. Tribune”), a unicorn (“N. Y. Times”), and an owl (“N. Y. World”); an ostrich, its head buried, represents “Temperance”. An elephant, “The Republican Vote”, stands near broken planks (Inflation, Repudiation, Home Rule, and Re-construction). Under the elephant, a pit labeled “Southern Claims. Chaos. Rum.” A fox (“Democratic Party”) has its forepaws on the plank “Reform. (Tammany. K.K.)” The title refers to U.S. Grant’s possible bid for a third presidential term. This possibility was criticized by New York Herald owner and editor James Gordon Bennett, Jr.
Image and caption via Wikimedia Commons.

June 7, 2017

The Articles of Confederation – I: Becoming the United States – Extra History

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Published on May 6, 2017

When the thirteen colonies of North America broke away from Great Britain, they struggled to draft their first constitution. After great debate, they created the Articles of Confederation and formed the United States of America.

August 5, 2013

Political symbology

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:36

L. Neil Smith in the latest Libertarian Enterprise:

Author Robert A. Heinlein once observed: “The American eagle eats carrion, never picks on anything its own size, and will soon be extinct.”

Benjamin Franklin wanted our national symbol to be the turkey. He regarded it as a noble creature and didn’t mean it as a joke. It was one of the few times the good Doctor Franklin was wrong. I knew a farm family once, who tried raising turkeys. If it rained they had to get them under cover, fast. Otherwise, they’d look up, gaping, to see where all that water falling on their heads was coming from, and drown.

By the thousands.

On second thought, maybe Ben was onto something, symbolically. That turkey behavior sounds very much like the American electorate today.

The libertarian movement seems to have chosen the porcupine as a symbol. It never starts a fight but always finishes it. Problem is, the porcupine has a brain about the size of a pinto bean, and can be accurately compared to a slow-moving pointy rock. At that, I suppose it’s a lot better than the Hollow French Woman in New York Harbor that the porcupine-bright National Libertarian Party has adopted as its logo.

Personally, I’ve always rather liked the skunk as a national or party symbol. They have a negative reputation they don’t deserve at all. Skunks are highly resourceful organisms, and very, very smart. And they carry the ultimate means of self-defense, something that even wolves and mountain lions respect and give the widest possible berth to. My favorite mental picture is the little guy standing on his front paws, his back legs and tail high in the air, letting the enemy have it.

March 9, 2010

QotD: Early America

Early America enjoyed, perhaps, a little more participatory local democracy than Britain, and had a slightly broader electorate and already the highest standard of living in the world. But the revolution so rapturously mythologized by Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry and others, was really, as Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison and Adams did not forget, a somewhat grubby contest over taxes.

In one of the greatest feats of statesmanship of all history, the Americans, and especially Benjamin Franklin, persuaded the British to expel the French from North America, and then persuaded the French to provide the margin of victory in evicting the British themselves. This precocious manipulation of the world’s two greatest powers by a group of colonists showed astounding finesse and precocity, made more piquant and ironic by the fact that their rebellion was against paying the colonies’ share of the cost of removing the French, and the French were recruited to save the Americans their proportionate share of the cost of their own eviction.

All countries swaddle themselves in myths, and the Americans aren’t more self-indulgent than others; only more successful and operating on the grand scale of a country that in two long lifetimes grew to possess completely unprecedented power and influence in the world.

Even without the great pre-eminence of America, the founders of the country possessed a presentational skill that vastly exceeded the procession of demagogues and lunatics that sent and followed each other to the guillotine in the French Revolution. And they were certainly more persuasive and sophisticated than the British spokesmen for constitutional monarchy.

But their unintended legacy of this gift for theatricality is the endless hyperbole and hucksterism of American materialism and individuality.

Conrad Black, “Send in the clowns”, National Post, 2010-03-09

July 16, 2009

Rephrasing Ben Franklin’s old aphorism

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:04

Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as having said “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. Here’s a modern rephrasing, “The more you cede your own well-being to an 800-pound gorilla, the more that 800-pound gorilla is going to act like a thin-skinned asshole.“.

(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005589.html.)

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