The Greatest Editorial Cartoonist?
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Who would you choose as the greatest editorial cartoonist of all time?
James Gillray? Thomas Nast? Robert Minor? Paul Conrad?
Last week David Von Drehle writing for The Washington Post made The Case for Pat Oliphant (or here).
There are many forms and expressions of greatness — not one GOAT, but herds of GOATs; nevertheless, I am always up for a spirited round of LeBron James versus Michael Jordan or the Beatles versus the Stones.
Why else would I be so tempted to write that the greatest of all editorial cartoonists has died some 60 years after his Pulitzer Prize debut during the depths of the Vietnam War? The brilliance of Patrick Oliphant, who died Monday at 90, was universally acknowledged. “He was Babe Ruth. He was Magic Johnson. Pat was The Natural,” says Jack Ohman, one of the best cartoonists of the generation after Oliphant. That should be enough.
When I go one step further and say, not just great, but The Greatest, I am undoubtedly influenced by my earliest days as a newspaper reader…
Former Washington Post publisher Donald Graham dissented writing It Was Herblock (or here).
I was the publisher of The Post during the last years of Herblock’s amazing work there. For many of those years, Oliphant worked at the Washington Star. I was pleased for the Star that they had an excellent cartoonist. The Post, I knew, had the greatest ever, a fellow whose work would be looked at 100 years from now. If anyone had suggested we trade with the Star, everyone at The Post would have laughed.
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