Customer Reviews

Herblock: A Cartoonist's Life

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The fact that Herblock's cartoons give conservative Republicans indigestion every time they're published should be one reason to buy this book. The fact that Herblock can be equally scathing of Democrats who wimp out on their responsibilities is another. Contrary to the assessment of the overly-partisan reviewer below, I maintain that Herblock is an equal-opportunity gadfly and, as this autobiography shows, one who has led an interesting life both at the Washington Post and away from it. Buy this book and piss off a conservative!

The single finest political cartoon image of a politician and the winner of our national "gut feeling" awareness award goes to Herblock's Richard Nixon rising from a casket with his dracula cape, fangs and 5 o'clock shadow just below the hands holding the wooden stake and mallet.

No, Nixon was still alive and kicking when Herblock did that commentary. He was trying to become an "elder statesman" and given his political history of rising from oblivion -- Herblock had him and us dead square.

Walt Kelly (Pogo) and Herblock were the seminal political cartoonists of the middle of the century. They are missed.

This -- all too short -- book covers the only a few highlights out of a 50 year career. Buy the book. Herblock is gone, but his insights will not fade.

GRO

Always expect to find socialist garbage whenever you stumble upon a Herblock book (including this one). Herblock does not just use satire when demeaning his (mostly all Republican) targets, he spews hatred and leftist propaganda into his cruddy drawings (which progressively got worse and worse- his 90s artwork is basically a butcher job). Herblock never noted (or ignored) the acomplishments made by his most frequent presidential targets Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixion and Ronald Reagon, successes that should have satisfied his liberal taste. Eisenhower presided over a decade of economic growth and growing social awareness of Civil Rights (highlighted by his decision to send troops to enforce racial integration at Little Rock, High School). Instead he bashes the President as a do-nothing conservative. Ronald Reagon's administration succeeded in terminating the Cold War without any nuclear action commited by both the Russians and the U.S., a resolution Herblock, judging on his cartoons on the issue, would have approved. Instead, he bashes Reagon as some ignorant right-wing extremist. Then we come to Nixion...certainly he deserved to be a punching bag for Watergate, but here Herblock recklessly attacks Nixion with more vigor than the cartoons he drew mocking Hitler earlier in his career. I wonder how Herblock would feel when he found out Nixion was actually quite a liberal president; he signed bills approving affirmative action, equal rights for women and environmental preservation (even Micheal Moore confessed recently in his new book that Nixion was our last liberal president). More disgustingly, Herblock treated virtually all democratic presidents with kid gloves! FDR is portrayed as a saint in Herblock's cartoons, despite the fact that under his administration, more blacks were lynched or were victims of mob violence than any period under Republican leadership (he didn't even issue a pardon for the innocent Scottsboro Boys). And the Block basically kissed JFK's ass throughout his presidency. There's one cartoon where it's just Kennedy explaining to a reporter how a war room was used to track the whereabouts of his rambunctious family members. No joke, just a cute piece clearly sucking up to the Kennedies. Nope, Herblock never made any cartoons assailing the president for his Bay of Pigs invasion, his dragging on Civil Rights and his decision to escalate the war in Vietnam, but I'm sure he would have if he was a Republican. Even worse, Herblock uses every cliche to push his socialist agenda, like drawing pathetic looking homeless urchins begging for food while capitalists with dollar signs in their eyes bask in their riches. I could go on, but let's just conclude by saying that Herblock's cartoons would be funny for entirely different reasons if it wasn't for the seriousness of his wacko ideaology.

Herbert Block has been the chief cartoonist for the Washington Post since the latter 1940s, yet viewing his cartoons or reading this autobiography leaves one wondering how he managed to keep that stint for half as long as he has.

Actually, the answer is fairly easy to decifer, yet it has little to do with his drawing. Certainly his talent for drawing has been oversold over the years, as a view at the cartoons on display in this bio indicates - they show a range of sloppiness, ugliness, and a complete lack of humor that is usually the death-knell of cartoonists.

But Herblock, his signature throughout his years, has managed to survive in sizable part due to the tolerance of his newspaper. Second only to the New York Times as the institution imposing a leftist distortion on world an national news, The Washington Post was a natural home for an artist lacking any respect for subtlety or nuance. His cartoons' sloppiness and lack of humor would simply not have gotten the longevity they have were it not for the tolerance of his newspaper.

Making it all the worse is the repetition involved. Block's trademark is the slovenly-looking drawing labeled with idiotically boldfaced capital letters that insult the reader all by themselves. That it is repetition in the service of leftism insults the reader all the more, and as Russ Braley noted in his study of The New York Times, Herblock's cartoons were usually so insulting and bad that they regularly drew reader complaints.

A few choice morsels display Herblock's contempt for reality - a cartoon of a schoolyard of dead children, being surveyed by two smiling National Rifle Association lobbyists; a 1972 cartoon of Vietnamese refugees that falsely blames their fate on American bombing (naturally Block never once showed any interest in the boat people); a few days before the outbreak of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a cartoon showing Kennedy and Khrushchev struggling to keep a nuclear monster in its box - Block should have followed in the ensuing crisis with a cartoon showing himself eating crow for such a wrongheaded display of nonexistent moral equality; a particularly repellent tribute to animator Chuck Jones where the Road Runner is Nicaraguan puppet-dictator Daniel Ortega while Wile E. Coyote is anticommunist Nicaraguan rebels and American backing.

Race relations - as always, with the Republicans as the enemy - were often his ugliest subjects, due in large part to his persistent use of crass black stereotypes, a persistence that says more about Block than about Republicans.

Block is often credited with inventing the term McCarthyism and the focus of his fire was forever Richard Nixon, yet throughout that time Block could never figure out what was going on. That his (and others') anger over Nixon was based not on dirty tricks but on Nixon's success in exposing liberalism's tolerance of treason to Soviet Russia is reality that Block would have effectively satirized had he any respect for truth. Certainly this shows when he blasts the Reagan administration over Iran-Contra yet bends over backwards to create bogus excuses for the Clinton administration's far more serial lawlessness.

Cartoonists like Block are the reason why the state of the art of editorial cartoons has been so frustratingly uneven over the years. He also shows how longevity is not necessarily an accurate gauge of quality.

Herblock is old and in the way. His cartoons are not funny, are of low professional skill and epitomize the cheap shot of politics. Katherine Graham thought they were funny, I'm sure there are people who agree with Herblock's cartoons. This goes to show it takes all kinds and that poor taste will always be with us. Probably the poorest (best) example of Herblock's "art" was his memorial cartoon to Katherine Graham. It was the most mawkish cartoon I've ever seen and definitely shows how much he deeply appreciated her lack of control of him. The Washington Post would be a far better newspaper and journalistic institution if these two had never existed.