Author: DOuG pRATt

From MAD to Watergate

In celebration — if that’s the right word — of the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, the Washington Post features eight cartoons, including this Time magazine cover by Jack Davis.

From the Washington Post: In Davis’s Time cover, the conspirators encircling Nixon are, clockwise from upper left: James McCord, Jeb Magruder, H.R. Haldeman, John Dean, John Mitchell and Maurice Stans. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine; Estate of Jack Davis 1973)

An iconic Davis magazine cover — rendered for Time in April 1973 beneath the headline “Watergate Breaks Wide Open,” and now in the Portrait Gallery’s exhibit — imagines a circle of conspirators ensnared in its tools of taping and surveillance, each finger-pointing at someone else. The art nods to an 1871 cartoon by Thomas Nast, who was skewering the fiscal chicanery of William “Boss” Tweed’s corrupt Tammany Hall political machine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/06/16/cartoons-watergate-nixon-herblock/

Gun Culture Club

Some hard truths about the NRA, and how school shootings are the price we must pay for a twisted definition of freedom.

Pat McCrory, former Republican Governor of North Carolina, pays lip service to the gun problem. His view is the left is as bad as the right, and he feels stronger law enforcement is needed.

Note: Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert is heard at about 14:30 into the program, sounding very much like Sarah Palin. She implies that school shootings are necessary “dings in the frame.” There are some wild allegations being made about Boebert. The sometimes reliable Daily Beast has these comments:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/liberals-rush-to-spread-bogus-lauren-boebert-escort-and-abortion-rumors

Parkinson’s Claims Another Cartoonist

Stuart Carlson’s final cartoon, May 31, 2022

Six years ago, Richard Thompson, creator of the Cul de Sac comic strip, died after some years of coping with Parkinson’s Disease. The previous year, Wisconsin political cartoonist Stuart Carlson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Carlson passed away on Friday.

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/06/13/stuart-carlson-rip/

I was somewhat taken aback, seeing that Carlson and I were born only days apart. We even lived near one another, until I was seven. Carlson stayed with, and succeeded at, a career dream that I decided to abandon. The newspaper where he worked for 25 years notes his passing, but doesn’t mention he was forced to accept a “take it or else” buyout in 2008.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2022/06/13/milwaukee-journal-sentinel-editorial-cartoonist-stuart-carlson-dies/7603770001/