[Peace-discuss] Damn pictures

[C. G. Estabrook]

One of the best political comments on the News-Gazette editorial page in some 
time (the standard isn't high) appeared today (below).  The cartoonist, Bud 
Gorrell (www.gorrellart.com) -- no relation to local activist Bill Gorrell, I 
think -- is here reminiscent of Thomas Nast, the best-known American 19th 
century political cartoonist:

      In 1868 Thomas Nast turned his attention to the corrupt New York City 
administration of Tammany Hall Democrats led by William Magear "Boss" Tweed. For 
the next three years Harper's Weekly and the New York Times campaigned against 
him. Nast's cartoons were so effective in depicting Tweed as a sleazy criminal 
that legend has it that the Boss dispatched his minions with the command, 'Stop 
them damn pictures. I don't care what the papers write about me. My constituents 
can't read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures.' Voters ousted Tweed and 
his compatriots in November 1871. An irony of history is that when Tweed escaped 
from jail and fled to Spain in 1876, he was recognized and arrested by a customs 
official who did not read English but had seen Nast's Harper's Weekly 
caricatures of Tweed...


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