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June 11, 2001
20 YEARS OF SPIKED PUNCH --A Portfolio of Bob Englehart?s Previously Unprinted Toons
By LARY BLOOM(Hartford Courant, April 29, 2001)
Bob Englehart wants to ?provoke thought and discussion.? He has donethis over 20 years as editorial cartoonist at The Hartford Courant. Hehas also provoked adjectives from readers, many of them unflattering,and aimed in his direction: ?ignorant,? ?insensitive,? ?bigoted,??childish,? ?shocking? and its inevitable partner in outrage?appalling.? And this is when his work gets published.
On rare occasions, it doesn?t get published. It is considered by hisboss (or even by his wife, as you will see; and in rare cases byhimself) unsuitable for print. This doesn?t happen often ? the Courant?sgeneral policy is to allow the widest possible latitude and to let theeditorial cartoonist (in his own words) ?provoke the idiots to reveal themselves.?
But what is the widest possible latitude? How many people have to beoffended for a cartoon to be gratuitously offensive? There are those whowould say, rightly we think, that it?s the job of an editorialcartoonist to make an enormous pest of himself, to tweak, to challenge,to point out what no one else is willing to point out and to take astand. Englehart grew up on Oliphant, Mauldin, Conrad and Mad magazine ?all of which told the truth in humorous ways and didn?t pull punches.
He says that, if anything, editorial cartooning in general hasdeteriorated since then. ?The newspaper industry is weak and impotent.There used to be room for hard-hitting cartoons.? Now, he says, themerely funny cartoon is the standard. The bite is largely gone. It?s anattitude, he says, that reflects the idea that we can no longer actuallydo anything about our problems ? we can merely laugh at them.
Englehart, however, retains a bite ? his work has been known to inspireprotests in the front of the Courant building and to otherwise stir thepublic. So is he guilty of taking too big a bite? Not generally, sayshis boss, editorial page editor John Zakarian, whose responsibilitiesinclude deciding on a daily basis whether Englehart goes too far ? ithappens only a half a dozen times a year. Zakarian says that Englehartis one of the best there is ? that he deserves a Pulitzer Prize ? eventhough he acknowledges he doesn?t always see eye to eye with hispersistently irreverent artist.
It?s also true that Englehart doesn?t always see eye to eye withhimself. He may act on his instinct ? as he did when he commented on theaccidental death of Sonny Bono by showing him crashing into a tree whilesinging, ?I got you, babe.? But he knew better than to try to getapproval for it. ?I think about defending it in public. If it?s justsome whimsical thing that may cause some hurt more than help, I?m notlikely to want to publish it.?
His thinking about this has changed over the years with time and location.
Englehart came to The Courant in 1981, after stints at Chicago Today,the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and the Dayton Journal Herald. Heimmediately noticed that in New England people didn?t seem to laugh asmuch. ?The Midwest is more tolerant in terms of humor. I think it?sbecause the Midwest doesn?t have the intense history that New Englanddoes. It?s extraordinarily boring living in the Midwest and the onlyentertainment is to make each other laugh. In New England people lovetheir institutions a little too much, and there?s no humor in institutions.?
Englehart found right off the dangers and joys of addressinginstitutions in his cartoons. Soon after becoming The Courant?s firststaff editorial cartoonist, he decided to comment on the news thatNortheast Utilities announced it wanted to raise its profit level to thehighest among such companies. So he took it upon himself to provide anew logo for the firm, featuring a screw and a U.
What followed was a public furor ? but, as they like to say in thenewspaper business, reaction was mixed. Englehart recalls, ?About halfof our readers were disturbed that the venerable and historic HartfordCourant could publish such a thing. The other half said, ?Thank God thenewspaper has finally come alive.?? He recalls that the reaction in thebuilding was telling. ?It scared the pants off my bosses ? they didn?trealize that an editorial cartoon could stand for something and canrouse public outcry.
After that, he.was obliged to send advance copies of his work not onlyto. the editorial page editor, but the editor and the publisher ? threepeople ?in front of me, standing between me and the reader.?
Even so, this didn?t prevent dramatic public outcry. In 1992, forexample, Englehart commented on the rise in violence in Hartford when heoffered a drawing of the outside of the Hartford Civic Center thatfeatured, among other things, a message on an oversized marquee:?Whalers Gun Nite, First 500 People Get a Free Revolver.? Nearly 30 cityofficials gathered the next evening outside The Courant, braving gustywinds and 25 degrees, to protest the negative portrayal of the city.
Englehart?s commentaries are not meant to be ?balanced.? They have asharp point. It goes with the territory that sometimes that sharp pointis turned on him, as when then-Governor William A. O?Neill took it uponhimself to present his version of Englehart as a particular part of thehuman anatomy (that starts with ?a? and ends with ?e? and has ?sshol? inthe middle). Today, we present a few cartoons you never saw, withcommentary written by Englehart. Most are in rough form. As he explains,?Before any cartoon is published, I have to show the boss a roughdrawing of what it will look like. He makes his decision whether or notto publish it from this quick sketch. Some of the ?roughs? are notsigned because it isn?t necessary. He knows who drew them.?
You may ask, if they were offensive back then, aren?t they still toooffensive for a newspaper to publish? Good question. But timing isalmost everything. Insensitivity at the time of Orville Redenbacher?sdeath is one thing, but once a reasonable period has passed, couldn?t weallow ourselves a smile when we think of him popping out of a coffin?
.... with a Commentary by the Artist
athletes and Scalia wrote the majority opinion. I wanted to run thisidea, but no ?piss? cartoons had been published in The Courant up tothat time. Since then, a couple have sneaked through, but urine remainsa very tough sell.?
?When Oksana Baiul crashed her car in Bloomfield [Connecticut] in 1997and was charged with DWI, I couldn?t resist. I showed this to my wifeand she said, ?If you run that cartoon I?ll never speak to you again.She?s just a kid who never had a childhood.? Any man who?s married knowsthere?s a hierarchy of bosses. This one never left the house.?
?In 1986 when [William Rehnquist] was before the Senate JudiciaryCommittee to be approved as chief justice, a story was published that hebelonged to a country club that didn?t allow Jews to be members and helived in a subdivision that didn?t allow blacks to buy houses in it. Itdidn?t run here because the boss thought it was ?demeaning.? I said,?Thank you. It?s supposed to be.? I sent it to the syndicate and it ranin hundreds of papers all over the country and in Newsweek. I showed itto him in the magazine and he said, ?I don?t know if that reflects theirbad judgment or mine.??
?I had this idea when the movie first came out in 1993. I neversubmitted this because it had no obvious political message so I justshowed my pals. One of my Jewish friends said, ?If anyone thinks it?sinsensitive, tell them a Jew said it?s OK.??
?When President Daddy Bush passed out a state dinner in Japan in 1992,Dan Quayle essentially became the president of the United States for ananosecond, which was too long for me. When I sent this cartoon to MikeWaller, who was the publisher then, he called me on the phone andyelled, ?Are you advocating the assassination of the vice president ofthe United States?? I said, ?Yes, sir.? He said, ?Not in my goddam newspaper!??
?When the Pope visited the United States in 1987, I had drawn a cartoonthe day before that angered a lot of Catholics and the boss didn?t wantto do it two days in a row.?
?I knew this wouldn?t get in the paper but I sent it in anyway. Ithought it was funny and warped, a combination I enjoy immensely. Ifnothing else, it would wind up on the bulletin board.?
?My mother died of breast cancer in 1980. I thought the HMO?s policy wascallous, and this idea reflected their mindset, but I knew it didn?tstand a chance of being published. Boobs and nipples go on the featurepage, not on the editorial page.?
?Right up there with drawings of puddles of urine on the editorial pageis any depiction of sex or sexual organs. When Clarence Thomas wentthrough his ?high-tech lynching? in the Senate in 1991, I submittedthis. It was thought to be bad taste, but I thought it told his story inone simple graphic.?
?The editors generally don?t like into border wars, nor do they like toshow cartoons of negative stereotypes (unless they agree with them). Me,I love to insult entire states, like, say, Florida.?
?The boss said the cruise missile, which had a rounded nose, was ?toophallic,? given the sexual context of the circumstances at that time,what with news of Clinton and Monica cavorting in the Oval Office. So, Ire-drew the cartoon to sharpen the snout, although there was at thattime no pointed-nose missile in existence.?
?The boss didn?t run this because he said he didn?t want his readerslooking at a toilet the first thing in the morning. I said, ?Why not?They are anyway.??
?Everybody thought this was ?too inside.? I saw it as a tease tonewspapers that have to spend a large part of each day dealing withmistakes made in the previous edition.?