Stuff You Should Know
Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
Tue, 08 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000
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Editorial, or political cartoons, have a rich history in the United States and abroad. And though the Golden Age may have passed, the use of images to create satire and sway public opinion is still alive and well. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Yeah, this is about editorial cartoons, a.k.a. political cartoons. They are one in the same. They usually appear traditionally in the editorial section or the opinion section of newspapers. So that's why you can call them either. And this is a profession. that appears to be dying out if you look at the number of editorial cartoonists that are, like, full-time staff at major newspapers. Right.
Because there used to be more than 2,000 about 100 years ago. Now there's less than 20. And Dave, you know, helped us with this and found that stat. And I think we were both initially like, oh, my God, they're all going away. Right. Not necessarily true. Those are full time staffers on newspapers. Newspapers are in trouble. So that's a big reason why we'll get to that.
Chapter 2: Are editorial cartoons still relevant today?
But there are still plenty of editorial cartoonists and political cartoonists mainly working online. Right. Yeah. And for syndication companies like you can work for a syndicate and they'll distribute it to newspapers that want to run your political cartoon, just like with comics.
Yeah. So I won't say like we're at peak the golden age of it, but it's still alive and well and just sort of a different form. Yeah. I've seen the golden age referred to as in the 19th century. And I'm like, these people didn't live through the 80s. That was the golden age, baby.
Oh, man, I saw, if I had a dime for every, like, cartoonish drawing of Tip O'Neill or Ronald Reagan I saw growing up as a kid.
Right, right. I didn't even, like, who are these people?
Yeah, no, that's a really great point that they, editorial cartoons are, like, of the moment. Sometimes, like, of the day. where they, like, they'll still make sense later that week, but they're not hidden because something already changed or moved on. And they don't, as such, it's very rare that an editorial cartoon can still, like, land the way it originally did.
That means that whatever it was talking about was so historic that people decades on know what the ins and outs of it that the political cartoon is referring to. But for the most part, it's like... daily minutia of ongoing politics and government.
And if you just go back like 10 or 15 years, it's like, I forgot John Boehner even existed until I went back and looked at some of the old political cartoons. And it's so important at the time. But, you know, all these years on, it does not matter what that political cartoon was saying. At the time, it wasn't. That's a huge point about those things.
That's why Michael Dukakis drove a tank.
I remember that.
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Chapter 3: What are some historic milestones in editorial cartooning?
Exactly. So I say we go way back to potentially the origin of political cartoons, which were religious in nature because back in the 16th century, when Martin Luther was trying to reform the Catholic Church, and ended up just kind of spinning off his own jam. Religion was politics. They were interchangeable. It was one and the same.
So when he started printing woodcut cartoons that were really unflattering depictions of the Pope, and the bishops and the cardinals who aided the Pope, he was making a political statement. And so some people say that some of these prints from like way back in 1545, there's one called The Birth and Origin of the Pope, that this was essentially the first political cartoon ever printed.
Because that's another thing too. You have to have a mass medium to spread this idea And so this was shortly after the printing press was invented and almost off the bat, Martin Luther was among the people who were using it to make political statements using cartoons.
That's right. And if you're at home saying like, I bet he did that because so many people couldn't read yet. You're exactly right. The printing press was brand new and that changed literacy for the world, basically. But right after it was invented, a lot of people still couldn't read. And so he knew that if he wanted to hit his target audience in the right way,
The birth and origin of the pope was a good way to do it. We'll describe a few of these that are sort of easy to picture. We're not going to get in the weeds, I think, kind of describing in detail pictures on an audio show. But this one is very simple. It was the pope and the cardinals being pooped out by a she-devil.
And then, yeah, and then nursed by other she-devils. Medusa's breastfeeding looks like a bishop in one part of this. It's really something. And that was, I think I said 1545. And then nothing happened for 200 years. And then a guy came along named William Hogarth. And those of you who really, really, really pay attention to the stuff we say might find that that name rings a bell.
And that would be because we talked about William Hogarth in our gin episode. That's right. There was a political cartoon he drew about, you know, drunks basically living at the corner of Beer Street and Jen Lane. And that was Hogarth, who's considered the grandfather of political cartoons. He was a serious painter, but then he got into making fun of rich folks in London.
Yes, for sure. And he also it was a social commentary. So it was satire. It was exaggerated. That's another kind of key part of political cartoons. And it made a point about, in this case, society rather than politics. And so as a result, William Hogarth is considered the grandfather of political cartoons.
He was not making political cartoons, but he definitely set out some of the points on the table that would later be picked up actually fairly quickly by printers, publishers and cartoonists, among whom was Benjamin Franklin, who started he ran what's considered the first American political cartoon back in 1754.
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Chapter 4: Who is the grandfather of political cartoons?
Turns out France is basically the Spears point of satire. Yeah. Did not know that, but it's the truth, everybody. I remember when the Charlie Hebdo stuff came out and we're going to talk about that in the act three here. But that's when I sort of learned like how, you know, astute and on point their satire had been for a long, long time. I didn't know that previously. Right.
Yeah. Doesn't seem like a very French thing, but I don't know. Maybe it is. I didn't either. But there is a guy from the early 19th century, I think, named Honoré Daumier. And Daumier actually got in trouble. I think he actually went to prison for his political cartoons, right?
Yeah, in the 1830s, the French government sort of relaxed their laws against censorship, and so he had a little bit more leeway, I guess, to operate. And initially, in 1831, he was threatened with a 6,000-franc fine in 1831. I don't know what the conversion is, but that's got to be a lot of dough.
It's 45,000 U.S. dollars today, which you'd think it'd be way more, but that's what— Did you really do that? I found a Swedish currency converter, historic currency converter. So inflation and currency conversions. Yes. Amazing. And that's why you're Josh Clark. I didn't make this website. I just used it.
6,000 Frank Fine, he drew a caricature of King Louis Philippe with a pear for a head. And then when he was threatened with this fine, he put out a possibly one of the first or the first multi-panel cartoon, a four panel cartoon showing the metamorphosis from this king going like he's the king as a caricature. And now he looks a little more like a pear, a little more like a pear.
And then he just has a pear for a head. Yeah. And the whole point was, come on, like the guy looks like a pear. And it's ridiculous that you would try to fine me $6,000 for pointing out something so obvious.
Yeah.
And I guess he avoided that fine at the time. But afterward, he's like, OK, I really need to get in trouble. So I'm going to create one called Gargantua. And this one was way worse than saying the king looks like he has a pear for a head. This was the king giant, like gorging himself on taxes that were being fed directly to him by the poor people.
He's sitting on his throne and then he's pooping out like tax breaks and special treatment for the wealthy friends of his. And that one got him in trouble. Yeah, it's a good cartoon. It's like it's a ramp from the ground straight up to this giant's mouth with people in their wheelbarrows just like walking up and getting in his mouth and being pooped out as as spoils.
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Chapter 5: How did political cartoons evolve over time?
Yeah. It really did evolve that quickly, too. I failed. So, yeah, King Louis Philippe put his finger on something that there's something special or something different about a political cartoon that is way different than, say, a news article or even a photograph. You know, you can make the point the news article for centuries and centuries.
could only be read by a select number of people, everybody could get a political cartoon. But there's something more than that, too. There's just something about a political cartoon that people who've been taken down by political cartoons have been able to put their finger on and said, this is way worse than just writing about me for some reason.
Yeah, I think that tracks to even to like if you think about in like high school, if a teacher caught you writing like a note to your friend that said, you know, Mr. Clark is such a jerk. I think that would be taken different than if someone drew a picture of Mr. Clark like bent over being paddled by a line of students or something, you know. Don't you think? Yeah. No, definitely.
Or would it be equal? No, it would be equal unless you put like stink lines coming off of me and then it would be really hurtful.
Oh, man. Stink lines. Who's the first person to do the stink lines?
I don't know. I'll bet it was a political cartoonist who wasn't that great.
Should we take a break?
Yeah, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about one of the more famous political cartoonists of all time, Thomas Nast.
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Chapter 6: What is the impact of caricature in political cartoons?
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