Two Party Opera Welcomes You!
Political cartoons have been a part of American tradition in this country since its beginning. From the time Benjamin Franklin drew the severed snake to get people to support the French and Indian War to Herblock taking on Richard Nixon in the Washington Post. In the early 1870s, Thomas Nast used them to bring down Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall political machine, to which Boss Tweed famously remarked, “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!” Political cartoons take their rightful place in history amongst some of the best forms of protest and rebellion against oppression.
I’m no Franklin, Herblock, or Nast, but I am a citizen living in my own particular time in America, and as you all know, it’s been getting pretty interesting lately.