Cartoons From 2010 To 2015

[Owoeye Heatley]

One exceptionally rare and significant item is Cartoons for the Cause, a portfolio of plates designed and illustrated by the late nineteenth-century English Arts & Crafts artist and advocate of social reform, Walter Crane (1845-1915).

Influenced by William Morris, Crane aligned himself with the burgeoning Socialist movement of the period, providing cartoons for Socialist weeklies like Justice, The Clarion, and The Commonweal. A number of these cartoons were collected and reprinted in aforementioned portfolio.

In its clarion call for international worker solidarity, Socialism suffered a serious setback during the First World War. The anti-Capitalist message, however, survived the war in some of the expressionist art of bitter social critics such as George Grosz (1893-1959). Arrested during the failed Spartacist uprising led by Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) and the German Communists, Grosz escaped custody and continued to publish bitterly satirical cartoons in the twenties.

While some Liberals and Progressives flirted with Leftist ideas in the Thirties, committed Communists actively worked to recruit the discontented to the cause. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) employed artists and cartoonists such as Robert Miner, Clive Weed, and William Gropper (1897-1977) to illustrate their pamphlets and propaganda literature.

The brief thawing of relations and uneasy alliance established during the war years would abruptly end, freeze again, be replaced by Cold War politics immediately after the common enemy was defeated in 1945.

Big business became bigger during the 1980s, when deregulation legislation gave corporations more freedom. Wall Street witnessed an increase in volatile junk bond financing and illicit insider trading. Herb Block's cartoons from the period offer his commentaries on such issues as gun control, the environment, abortion, and televangelists. He took issue with President Reagan's domestic policies and foreign ventures in Lebanon, Iran and Central America. In June 1989, he drew a grim memorial to the dissidents killed by Chinese soldiers at Beijing's Tiananmen Square area.

This cartoon appeared as the United States government filed suit against the Occidental Petroleum Corporation for dumping hazardous waste at Love Canal and other sites around Niagara Falls, New York. Pressed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department also sued for reimbursement to cover the costs of cleaning up the toxic waste sites and to relocate people whose homes had become contaminated.

During the 1980s, the National Rifle Association directed its efforts toward repealing the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which banned the mail-order sale of guns and ammunition. Using its powerful grass roots organization and heavy treasury to target legislators who supported gun control, it helped to elect a more sympathetic Senate in 1984. And in 1986, it achieved the repeal of the 1968 legislation.

When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he immediately pressed his program to cut taxes, reduce money spent on social programs and deregulate regulatory agencies. He named appointees to consumer protection and civil rights agencies who could be counted on to make them practically inoperative. Some Democrats went along with Reaganomics, but many felt it gave relief to the very rich and too little to the most urgent areas of need. Herb Block comments: "Reagan continued to call for balanced budgets without ever presenting one and tripled the national debt."

On August 21, 1982, President Ronald Reagan ordered eighty Marines to Lebanon, and one month later he sent 1200 more. At a press conference, correspondents familiar with the area had pointed out that U.S. troops barracked at an airport would be in an extremely vulnerable position. On April 18, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut, killing seventeen U.S. Foreign Service and military personnel. On October 23, 1983, another truck bomb destroyed the Marine Barracks, killing 241 Marines and 19 U.S. civilians. Two days later, Reagan ordered an attack on the little Carribean island of Grenada, ostensibly to protect American students, who were unaware that they needed protection.

In this cartoon, Herb Block anticipated the super-giant, super-mergers that came later. In the 1980s, the deregulation of banking in the United States allowed financiers to use unprecedented and risky tactics. Financial innovations such as junk bonds encouraged corporate mergers, leveraged buyouts, and hostile takeovers at a phenomenal rate. By April 1985, the failure of many savings and loan institutions cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. It was described by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh as the biggest white collar scandal in history. Herb Block says, "It was swept under a very large rug."

The Reagan administration made abortion a top issue. Acting Solicitor General Charles Fried filed a brief with the Supreme Court on July 15, asking that the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision be overturned. It was the first time since 1954 that the Justice Department had requested that a key decision be reversed. On July 10, the House of Representatives voted to deny foreign aid to international groups that funded abortions.

On November 2, 1986, an American hostage was released by an Iranian group that had held him captive for more than seventeen months. It was soon reported that his release was linked to a transfer of military spare parts to Iran. President Ronald Reagan commented that such a story "has no foundation" and "is making it more difficult to get the other hostages out." Herb Block comments, "But the story was true, and the trading of arms actually provided an incentive for the taking of more hostages. Appearing on television, Reagan said forcefully, 'We did not, repeat not, trade weapons or anything else for hostages.' When this was proven to be untrue, he later made a carefully worded retraction. He left it to Attorney General Meese to disclose the diversion of arms-sales funds to Nicaraguan contra rebels, a violation of an act of Congress."

As the Iran-Contra scandals grew, a Reagan-appointed commission headed by former Senator John Tower held hearings. President Ronald Reagan told the Tower Commission that (A) He did not know the National Security Council staff had been helping the contras; (B) he had "no definite knowledge of military aid"; and (C) "I was very definitely involved in decisions about the freedom fighters. It was my idea to begin with." Secretary of State George Shultz contradicted Reagan's testimony on knowledge of arms-parts shipments. When continued disclosures became public, the bold Reagan administration lapsed into the passive: "Mistakes were made." The Tower Commission absolved Reagan of blame in the Iran-Contra scandals, attributing his part in them to memory lapses.

Self-serving TV evangelists made the news even as they broadcast their sermons on television. In Herblock at Large, the cartoonist wrote, "Also dealing in megabucks have been the TV evangelists who decry sin and who are up there in direct communication with God --- while at a more mundane level, they rake in millions a year to keep themselves on TV --- and sometimes to keep themselves living in the high style to which they have made themselves accustomed." A good example was Oral Roberts, who raised $8 million dollars after telling his television audience that God had warned him that he would die if he did not receive the money.

Some televangelists exploited those who could least afford to give. Several of these preachers, who preyed on the guilt of their listeners, were revealed as imperfect role models. In April 1987, the Reverend Jim Bakker's television empire, Praise the Lord (PTL), crashed when Bakker's sexual misconduct was revealed and federal and state officials began investigating PTL's funding practices.

On June 3 and 4, 1989, Chinese army troops and tanks rolled into the Tiananmen Square area in Beijing to crush student-led pro-democracy protests that had begun in mid-April. Residents of other cities in China and nations worldwide protested the bloody crackdown. Casualties were estimated at 5,000. Herb Block reprinted this cartoon ten years later as a reminder of the Chinese rulers with whom Americans were dealing.

In the aftermath of World War II, Americans reacted with dismay as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated, the Russians imposed communist control over much of Eastern Europe, and China was on the verge of going communist. People worried that communists might try to subvert schools, labor unions, and other institutions. Government agencies and private groups began to look for evidence of subversive activity. In this climate of fear and suspicion, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which Herb Block had opposed since its inception in the 1930s, became active. And in 1950, a young senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, seeking political gain, began a well-publicized campaign using smear tactics, bullying and innuendo to identify and purge communists and "fellow travelers" in government. Herb Block recognized the danger to civil liberties posed by such activities and warned of them in his work. He coined the phrase "McCarthyism" in his cartoon for March 29, 1950, naming the era just weeks after Senator McCarthy's spectacular pronouncement that he had in his hand a list of communists in the State Department. His accusations became headline news, vaulting him into the national political spotlight. For four years McCarthy attacked communism, while in his cartoons Herb Block relentlessly attacked his heavy-handed tactics. In June 1954, McCarthy was censured and in December condemned by the Senate.

The Cold War revived the anti-communist hysteria that had gripped the United States after World War I. In 1947 Congress revived the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), opposed by Herb Block since its inception in the 1930s and declared by President Truman to be itself the most un-American activity. Herb Block comments: "The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, helped provide the committee with material from its aptly named ‘raw files'. Some producers, directors and screen writers refused to testify or to play the ‘name game' in which the committee demanded the names of associates, who could then be called on to name others thus providing an ever-expanding list of suspects to be summoned."

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