CSotD: 9/11: Obituary cartoons for a moment, not a person
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I noted the other day that, while I would probably look back at 9/11 on the anniversary, it was not the finest hour for political cartooning, and a look through the records did not change that assessment.
I do remember liking this Clay Bennett piece, and featuring it in the presentations I did for high school students in those days. I still like it: It's dignified, it's good art, it marks the moment.
I also remember starting to count the weeping Statues of Liberty and stopping around 30, not because I was running out of comics but because the number had become meaningless. How many is too many?
The moment presented a challenge and some took it on more than others. At its most basic, it was a mandatory moment, an obituary cartoon wrote large, the challenge being to portray the fact that we were sad and shocked.
Perhaps the fact that it happened so close to the actual Statue of Liberty promoted the cliche that emerged, since other national symbols didn't leap to the fore so often.
It can be done better, and has been.
When Bill Mauldin portrayed the national sorrow over Kennedy's assassination, he reached — with no time for reflection — for a symbol that was not in the stock drawer of symbols of America but was appropriate on more than that simple level: The national symbol of the statue, yes, but also the parallel of the assassinated president and with the added element of man-to-man personal grief.
Bennett was not the only cartoonist who avoided the weeping statue, but his understated piece stands out among those, as well. There were some weeping eagles, but several of those went too far, depicting not sorrow but rage and an intention for revenge on an enemy we had not yet specifically identified.
Shock was sufficient. In the hours following the event, more than shock and sorrow was too much.
Cartooning from London, Swiss-born Peter Schrank borrowed a very well-known image to portray world reaction, and, if he wasn't breaking new ground with the graphic choice, he was accurately depicting the moment as it related to the view from beyond our shores.
Again, it was not within his mission to say more than, "Wow," and the message that the entire world was shocked, that it was not just our tragedy, was well worth saying.
It was not all weeping Statues of Liberty and vengeance-seeking eagles, and the Library of Congress gathered together some additional imagery from the day and those that followed.
Some of those images are not cartoons but artist's documents of the moment, and, on his own site, Gerry Mooney has posted a collection of the sketches he did in the neighborhood in the days and weeks that followed.
It's very much worth looking through because the date is slipping from memory to history. Fifteen years can be a long time: This year's first-time voters will have only vague if any memories of the event.
For my part, I was directing educational services at the Post-Star in Glens Falls, NY, and my "Where were you?" involves the realization that, while we didn't know exactly who had hijacked the planes, the likelihood of it being linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban was so high that I immediately began work on a full-page feature about Islam, knowing there would be pushback against Muslims throughout the world that would have no relation to their politics or their culture.
It ran the following Monday and we made it available to other papers, several of which picked it up.
(This is the version we made available at no cost to other newspapers.)
A decade and a half later, I'm more forgiving of the need, at the moment, for the same sort of mandatory group-hug cartoon that appears in the wake of a celebrity death.
There's certainly no doubt we needed the hug, and, if too many cartoonists reached for the same image, well, the real test I suppose is what they did in the weeks and years to come, as the shock of the moment wore off and the question "Now what?" stepped to the forefront of American consciousness.
Or, as this Onion piece suggested three weeks later, didn't.
Personal update: I've had some inquiries about my health issues. The long-term answer is that I'm in good shape. The operation appears to have eliminated all the malignancies and, while you never say never in cancer, we're down to periodic screenings to be sure. In the sort-term, however, recovery from the surgery is taking longer than I wanted and I'm not going to make it to Kenosha, and wouldn't have the stamina to enjoy being there if I did go. You should go for me.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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