CSotD: That Other Massacre
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Here's a collection of cartoons from the week after Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into Watergate, which also brought about the resignations of Attorney General Eliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, who refused to go along with the game.
It was a different time.
More background: Nixon was in a great deal more trouble at this point than Trump is now, but Watergate did not develop quickly.
The first stories appeared in June, 1972, the existence of the White House tapes was revealed in July, 1973, and Nixon didn't step down until August, 1974. And Spiro Agnew had only been forced to resign 10 days before the Saturday Night Massacre in October, 1973, so Ford was not yet confirmed, a point that will help with the following cartoons, which ran the week after the firings.
One more note: Given that the news of the Saturday Night Massacre would not be reported in print until Sunday, and given that most papers print their Sunday editorial sections in advance, and that cartoons often arrived by mail, reaction by cartoonists was somewhat delayed in those first days, which it appears that cautious editors took advantage of.
Some dug out cartoons that addressed the overall crisis, others fell back on cartoons that didn't refer to it at all.
For instance, there was war in the Middle East and most editors had a ready stock of cartoons on the subject in hand if they didn't want to take a stance on Watergate.
It seems, however, likely that both Pat Oliphant and Jeff McNelly penned these cartoons before the Massacre, simply using the overall Watergate theme rather than the specifics.
It's also important to note that the break-ins at the Watergate and at Daniel Ellsburg's psychiatrist office were not the only thing Nixon was being investigated for. Herblock had long objected to the huge personal contributions and "loans" he received from pals with dubious backgrounds.
Though this conservative cartoonist with the unreadable signature suggests that "They All Do It" is a good reason not to investigate such things.
And it was not a landslide in favor of impeachment: Along with cartoons like this, or those others that seemed stubbornly to address other subjects, there were articles on some editorial pages about how Latinos did not like Cesar Chavez and how untrustworthy a witness John Dean was.
We were pretty divided.
In addition to the Middle East conflict, there had also been a spate of UFO sightings, which Bill Sanders worked into a Watergate-themed cartoon about Nixon's refusal to release the tapes.
John Lane greeted Gerald Ford's arrival on the scene with a gag about the dour prospects going forward. Cartoonists didn't seem to grasp how Ford fit into the overall picture, but Lane was right that he was stepping into a mess.
Art Poinier suggested that he had arrived just in the nick of time, without quite declaring him a Nixon ally.
But Bill Crawford suggested that Ford was a "team player," an analysis he may have regretted later, though the timing of Agnew's resignation and the question of what did Jerry Ford know and when did he know it remain a linked pair of mysteries today.
And — particularly given the relative font sizes on that sign — it seems clear that McNelly saw Ford as more than just someone to fill the vacancy.
Some cartoons are clearly massacre-geared, but this Paul Conrad cartoon on Nixon's stubborn insistence on "executive privilege" might have been done before the Cox firing. (The blank space is, I suspect, a printing error — a piece of paper falling onto the type tray — but I couldn't find another version.)
And Nixon did eventually have to hand the tapes over, which this cartoonist — sorry, the sig is indecipherable — noted with a gag addressing his arrogant attitude even as he began to realize the jig was up.
Another cartoonist whose signature I can't figure out had this commentary, obviously after the firings.
And McNelly, who had always been the answer to "Aren't there any funny conservative cartoonists?" ends the show with this piece, that captures the man, and the moment, perfectly.
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