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AAEC - Editorial Cartoon News
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December 4, 2002
Bill Sanders: 20 Questions or therabouts
In a career that spanned almost four decades, including 24 years at the Milwaukee Journal, Bill "Whitey" Sanders has used editorial cartoons to critique the conduct of America’s elected representatives as well as offer general commentary on the state of American society.
Sanders was poised for a career in professional football as a quarterback, after leading Western Kentucky State College to its only bowl appearance in 1952. Armed with a NCAA national football passing record, Sanders was to play with the Cleveland Browns, but was sidelined by a military tour in Korea and Japan.
There he discovered a passion for drawing editorial cartoons. After two years at Stars and Stripes, Sanders spent four years at the Greensboro Daily News and another four at the Kansas City Star before taking up residency at the Milwaukee Journal from 1967 to 1991.
He has received honors from the Kansas City and Wisconsin Civil Liberties Unions, the International Salon of Cartoons Award and the National Headliners Award. His cartoons have also caught the attention, and comments, of U.S. presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George Bush.
Sanders’ alma mater is currently showing a retrospective of his work, and he recently returned as featured speaker at WKU’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting Awards of Excellence dinner.
The following is an excerpt of an interview done as part of his retrospective at WKU.
What is the role of the editorial cartoonist?
The editorial cartoonist is a purveyor of opinion via the art of cartooning–the same way that a newspaper columnist is a purveyor of opinion via the art of words. We are critics whose primary role is to cut to the heart of an issue leaving aside the fatty tissue of qualifications and euphemisms. We are the ones who must say, "The Emperor has no clothes on!" Humor and comic presentation are but tools and should not be an end unto themselves.
The cartoons in your collection at the Kentucky Building are national in focus. Throughout your career, what percentage of your cartoons have been local in focus?
Ideally the national versus local (city, county, state, regional) breakdown over time should be about 50% for each. Realistically, in my case, it probably pans out to be about 55% national and 45% local. There is an ebb and flow of events that dictate the focus of our work and these breakdown figures are not sustained in any selected short period of analyzation. The bottom line is that the real value of an editorial cartoonist to a newspaper is his or her attention to local affairs. National syndication and the seductive nature of "national attention" have corrupted the fidelity to local issues. The Pulitzer is never awarded to a "local" cartoonist, sighting a "local" cartoon. The "father" of the American political cartoon, Thomas Nast was a "local" cartoonist–as was Ding Darling. Herblock was a "local" cartoonist–but his Washington location made his stage the national scene.
Is the process to draw a cartoon different in every instance, or does it follow a pattern?
Herblock, the great Washington Post cartoonist likened political cartooning to laying brick rather than a lightbulb blinking over your head. It is a repeated laborious process of reading, researching and forming an opinion, then packaging it in a tough but interesting presentation–after much mental formulations, images and rough sketches. The occasional flash of inspiration was extremely rare for me.
Some of the imagery in your cartoons is iconic, ie. Uncle Sam, Grim Reaper, etc. Others draw on popular culture, such as the gunslinger, used car salesman, etc. Did you have any favorite motifs or images that you liked to use?
There are a number of icons or motifs that we all use regularly because they work well with an audience that is familiar with them, such as Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, etc. Also new icons and motifs surface that are sometimes useful such as All in the Family, The Simpsons and nuclear weapons (The Bomb). The older symbols are only useful on occasions–Uncle Sam, Grim Reaper, etc. Ironically one of my most useful "icons" is a radical version of Uncle Sam–the symbol that represents the U. S. I draw him as a little "everyman"–i.e. Sam. I draw HER as a little "everywoman"...i.e. Sam. I draw him as a little Afro-American "everyman" or "everywoman"...i.e. Sam. I also occasionally use a Native American or Hispanic as the average character...Sam. Generally I tend to stay away from "heavy’’ symbols–particularly inanimate symbols because most issues are about people–not things.
Who is/are the cartoonist or cartoonists whose work, historically speaking, you most admire? This individual does not have to fall within your lifetime.
Historically speaking I admired Daumier, David Low and Thomas Nast.
The best political cartoonist this country has ever produced was Herblock of the Washington Post. He was the absolute master of the craft. He did his homework, was extremely knowledgeable and could have easily been an editorial writer or columnist. Another great (and unsung) cartoonist is Ollie Harrington, an African-American whose work was spawned in the late 1930s. He drew for The Daily Worker, a socialist tabloid in New York. In the hysteria of the 1950s, Ollie Harrington was denounced as a "Communist," because of his powerful cartoons for worker’s rights and civil rights. He eventually moved to France where he continued to draw powerful critiques of the political power structure in the United States. Bill Mauldin was also one of the best in the business. I would have to include two Canadian cartoonists, Duncan Macpherson and Roy Peterson, both of whom are just superb.
How has the nature of editorial cartooning changed in the last 20 years?
I have to go back more that 20 years to answer this and only in a very abbreviated way. Fifty years ago editorial cartooning was a very heavy handed, somber-imaged and symbol-ladened art form.
In the sixties ... the literary technique, utilizing conversational dialogue among the political figures as a vehicle of opinion began to emerge. Then a very talented young man, Jeff MacNelly, came into the field and raised the artwork bar considerably with his ability for rendering people and places. However, the main thrust of his cartooning was to go for the gag. Any peripheral opinion was obscure at best but his cartoons were very funny!
Parallel to MacNelly’s development, President Richard Nixon’s corruption began to unfold with the Watergate scandal. MacNelly mined the Nixon administration’s assault on the constitution, the Presidency, civil rights and several federal laws, strictly for its gag value. He worked during the entire scandal without leveling a serious opinion at the culprits–other then their ineptness.
Also, parallel to Jeff MacNelly’s career, there emerged a pattern among newspapers of a movement to the ideological center editorially. There were fewer and fewer newspapers with clearly defined political postures that were expressed in strong editorials and cartoons. MacNelly’s cartoons were very popular because, in addition to being superbly drawn and funny, they rarely stirred the ire of readers. His success spawned a newer generation of young cartoonists that saw the clever gag as ultimate objective for a successful cartoon.
The irony here is that as the profession became crowded with MacNelly clones "going for the gag," Jeff’s cartoons took on a stronger cutting edge and he went on to do some of his most important work, reversing the very trend he started. This gag-as-the-objective movement prevailed until approximately 10 years ago when the opinion cartoon began to find more currency. Generally speaking there are more editorial cartoonists today who have something to say with their work, however there are still too many of them drawing out of vacuous ideology or under the tight reign of timid editors.
Your collection includes several cartoons that indicate a less than enchanted attitude towards television and television news. Would you say this is a fair statement?
Television (wed to space technology) has sewn global societies together on a homogenized thread of news delivery that brooks no escape from events that affect our individual and collective lives. In that regard, it is a marvelous visual medium that makes us immediate spectators to the world’s stage. Be it wars, disasters, tragedies, discoveries or any other form of human behavior – whether it takes place in Bumpas Mills, Tennessee, or Kandahar, Afghanistan, we are privy to it live and in color, instantly.
Our world is better informed today than at anytime in its history because of television. All of that is a great benefit to those whose job it is to comment editorially on events.
As an entertainment media, television exhibits all the creativity of a Pet Rock–continually regurgitating brain-dead material. It is a platform for whacko’s, con men and Bible-thumpers, if they can afford the price of airtime. They contaminate ignorant minds with everything from psychic healing to voodoo medicine.
Television "news"–at the network level (with the exception of CNN) and at the local level is a tinsel, shallow product–a bastard blend of Barbie and Ken newsreaders and reporters who would be hard pressed to hold a job at a major newspaper outlet such as the Washington Post, The Milwaukee Journal, The L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. There are exceptions, of course–but few and far between. Moreover, newsreaders and talking heads live in an unreal economic world, far away from the public they are supposed to serve. I don’t think it is possible for a television "newsperson" to have an income of 6,8,or 10 million dollars a year–plus the perks–and have a clue about what is going on with the factory worker, the store clerk or the elderly. Additionally, some TV "journalists" know squat about a good many of the issues that arise during their "coverage." Yes, you could say I am not enchanted.
Can you estimate how many cartoons you have drawn in your career?
At about 300 cartoons per year at 33 years of drawing–should make approximately 9,900 cartoons? Good Grief!