Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1985 (Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year)

Rating:
Summary: Editorial cartoons enjoy the 1984 Reagan landslide
Review: Published annually since 1973, the "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year" features the best work of some of the nation's most talented pen and ink commentators. This 1985 edition, recounting the events of 1984, contains over 300 examples of this sublime political art form by 131 editorial cartoonists. The cover cartoon of Ronald Reagan riding the United States like a horse reminds us that this was the President was reelected in a landslide (there is another cartoon inside that transforms the map into Reagan's face). Consequently, the opening salvos of this volume are devoted to President Reagan, Mondale and the Democrats, and the Presidential Debates. It is interesting to see that it was not the incumbent President but the challenger and his party that offered the better fodder for cartoons. After all, you have a former Vice-President whose administration had failed to be reelected heading the ticket along with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for the second spot on the ticket. Then throw into the mix the scandal of the Gary Hart campaign and Jesse Jackson's association with various undesirables around the world. Editorial cartoonists must have been pinching themselves to make sure all this wonderful nonsense was really going on.

In addition to the devastating defeat of the Democrats in the presidential election there were also the topics of the nation's ballooning budget deficit, the parade of geriatric leaders in the Soviet Union, and the grim spectacle of faminine and starvation in Ethiopia. There are also the old standards of defense spending, the Middle East, religion in the schools, education in the schools, and crime. But usually it is those unique moments in American history, such as Miss America Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to win the crown, being forced to resign because of the publication of nude photographs (Historical footnote: Williams is doing much better today than Ferraro). It always happens that while flipping through these pages that the year under review comes back in all its details. A standard history of the year 1984 could not serve as well.

This particular volume is graced by a foreword by Rep. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and himself a frequent subject of editorial cartoons (a half dozen choice examples of which accompany his words). O'Neil posits that the dictum that a picture is worth a thousand words applies doubly to editorial cartoons and celebrates both their power and their potency. Looking through these pages from almost two decades past proves the point: looking at an editorial cartoon on the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic games in Los Angeles can bring back the issue quite vividly. Then there is the poignancy of a couple of editorial cartoons that addressed President Reagan's announcement that a schoolteacher would be selected as the first "citizen passenger" to fly in space; the flight would probably take place in late 1985 or 1986.

Rating:
Summary: Editorial cartoons enjoy the 1984 Reagan landslide
Review: Published annually since 1973, the "Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year" features the best work of some of the nation's most talented pen and ink commentators. This 1985 edition, recounting the events of 1984, contains over 300 examples of this sublime political art form by 131 editorial cartoonists. The cover cartoon of Ronald Reagan riding the United States like a horse reminds us that this was the President was reelected in a landslide (there is another cartoon inside that transforms the map into Reagan's face). Consequently, the opening salvos of this volume are devoted to President Reagan, Mondale and the Democrats, and the Presidential Debates. It is interesting to see that it was not the incumbent President but the challenger and his party that offered the better fodder for cartoons. After all, you have a former Vice-President whose administration had failed to be reelected heading the ticket along with Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for the second spot on the ticket. Then throw into the mix the scandal of the Gary Hart campaign and Jesse Jackson's association with various undesirables around the world. Editorial cartoonists must have been pinching themselves to make sure all this wonderful nonsense was really going on.

In addition to the devastating defeat of the Democrats in the presidential election there were also the topics of the nation's ballooning budget deficit, the parade of geriatric leaders in the Soviet Union, and the grim spectacle of faminine and starvation in Ethiopia. There are also the old standards of defense spending, the Middle East, religion in the schools, education in the schools, and crime. But usually it is those unique moments in American history, such as Miss America Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to win the crown, being forced to resign because of the publication of nude photographs (Historical footnote: Williams is doing much better today than Ferraro). It always happens that while flipping through these pages that the year under review comes back in all its details. A standard history of the year 1984 could not serve as well.

This particular volume is graced by a foreword by Rep. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and himself a frequent subject of editorial cartoons (a half dozen choice examples of which accompany his words). O'Neil posits that the dictum that a picture is worth a thousand words applies doubly to editorial cartoons and celebrates both their power and their potency. Looking through these pages from almost two decades past proves the point: looking at an editorial cartoon on the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic games in Los Angeles can bring back the issue quite vividly. Then there is the poignancy of a couple of editorial cartoons that addressed President Reagan's announcement that a schoolteacher would be selected as the first "citizen passenger" to fly in space; the flight would probably take place in late 1985 or 1986.