Herblock: The Interview

Library of Congress

Hello. Today features a conversation with Herbert Block, a.k.a. Herblock, the long-time Washington Post political cartoonist, who is, in my view, the greatest at his art who ever lived. Mr. Block drew his last cartoon for The Post in 2001, though his work has appeared more recently in various publications. I promise to try to keep this interview professional, so my hero worship does not show through. Above is my favorite cartoon of Herblock’s, drawn during the McCarthy era.

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Me: Let’s start on a light note. I have been watching for decades as newsrooms across the country become more professional, by which I mean more boring. These places used to be stinking, exhilarating caldrons of creative tension, with shouting matches, occasional fisticuffs, pranks and hijinks, bottles of scotch secreted in plain view, and thus such. Now they are like insurance offices; people are disciplined for raising their voices or “bullying” or acting in a non-collegial manner. Yay, yay, hooray for us, yech. Have you noticed and bemoaned such changes over the years?

Herblock: Bob Casey was a roving correspondent for the Chicago Daily News when I was there. On a western trip, when he learned that some explorers were about to climb a mesa to see what secrets the top of it might reveal, he hired a plane to fly over it the evening before. 

From the fully loaded little plane, he dropped spark plugs, rusty automobile mufflers and whatever junkyard items he could take aboard.   He told me that after the explorers made their descent, they said nothing about their findings.

Later, when I was working for Scripps-Howard, practical jokes and pranks were top priority with some of the artists.  A couple of them told me proudly of how they had tacked a fish under the seat of a chair where an earnest no-nonsense artist sat.

Me: Wow. What did he think was causing the smell?

Herblock: Evidently, himself. He left his drawing board twice to go out and wash his hair.

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Me: Everyone needs editors, but in my experience they tend to be a bit tin-eared and tone deaf on humor. You?

Herblock: At The Post, I once reported to a fellow named Pusey. He was straitlaced, earnest and determined. One one occasion, when a government official had been fired, I did a sketch that centered on him being (literally) kicked out.  Pusey looked at it and objected, saying pointedly that nobody had actually kicked anyone… all they had done was demand this man’s resignation.

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Me: Okay, so: What about our past and possibly future president, Donald Trump?

Herblock: Even aside from the fact that the end doesn’t justify the means, this guy’s aims were never any better than his methods.  The objective was clearly the achievement of personal power and the advancement of one man; and at no time was he doing more good than harm, or anything but harm. 

The fact is that his fraud was apparent from the start, and the case against him had always been well documented.  No time was too early to speak up about him, and there was no time when colleagues in his party could not have smacked him down.  

For all the talk about his being a political lone wolf, he was never really alone and couldn’t have achieved his peculiar success alone.  What sustained him was not so much his gullible followers and fellow traveling demagogues as the tacit support of ‘respectable” people who found it advantageous to go along with him, or at least to look the other way.  They were the ones who kept him going. 

Some were afraid to cross him and some hoped to reap political profit from his activities.  He corrupted countless conservatives by offering a temptation they could not resist – a dirty stick with which to beat their political opponents.  They did not even have to use it themselves.  He and his friends would do the work for them; they merely had to remain silent.

Me: Wow. Do you think he has a chance at reelection?

Herblock: Sorry, I have been talking about Joseph McCarthy.

Me: Ah. You see similarities?

Herblock: McCarthy’s followers were numerous and intense.  There was nothing they couldn’t support in their hero.  At a meeting where someone in the audience asked McCarthy why he wore built-up shoes he said it was because he carried about ten pounds of shrapnel in his leg.  Of course he didn’t carry any shrapnel at all.  His only wartime injury was a temporary one incurred during a shipboard hazing ceremony.  But despite the obvious ridiculousness of the story, those ten pounds of shrapnel carried full weight with his supporters. 

Me: I’ve always wondered if Trump knows his ridiculous, diaphanous lies are lies.

Herblock: Reagan didn’t, exactly. The docudrama president told moving stories of how at the time of World War II he had visited concentration camps in Europe – though he had actually spent the war period stateside.  In speeches, he told of a pilot who, when his plane was hit, stayed with his wounded gunner, saying, “We’ll ride this down together.”  Reagan concluded with the words, “Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously.”  No such Medal of Honor winner existed, and the only place the incident occurred was in a 1944 movie, A Wing and a Prayer.  But Reagan could be remarkably realistic about his unrealism.  

Even when Reagan’s own staff pointed out that an anecdote or a statistic was wrong, he continued to use it.  Like a piece of a movie dialogue,  it didn’t matter whether it was true.  If it was a good line and got an audience reaction, that was enough.

Me: You’re suggesting thatTrump seems different, though.

Herblock:

Me: Yeah, I agree. There’s no art, just artifice. He’s not caught up in a romantic, literary drama; his stories are self-serving. He just lies to benefit himself. He’s a spoiled adolescent. He also has used adenoidal nyah-nyah taunts to belittle perceived “enemies.”

Herblock: McCarthy referred to William Fulbright as “Senator Half-bright.”   In campaigning against Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential candidate, he referred to him as “Alger – I mean Adlai,”  suggesting, by referencing Alger Hiss, that Stevenson was a Communist sympathizer traitor. In an appearance before an overflow crowd of newspaper editors, who had invited him to speak, he accompanied a reference to the U.S. State Department with a wave of a handkerchief in a yoo-hoo gesture. 

Me: Like they were sissy prostitutes for Communism?

Herblock: McCarthy was not exactly a class act. 

Me: Trumpian, in fact. At least McCarthy did us the favor of dying in office. Trump’s lies have continued after his presidency.

Herblock:  When Harry Truman left office he went home on a passenger train and refused to accept high-pay offers from private companies because “the presidency is not for sale.”

Me: As an ex-president, he didn’t hawk bibles for profit, I’m guessing.

Herblock:

Me: Gotcha. Of course, Trump is a man who tried to foment an insurrection to re-install himself as president after he lost, fair and square. That’s bad post-presidential actions.

One of the things that troubles me most about Trump is that his authoritarian, ignorance-based, fact-free model has been adopted by his lickspittles, and his political imitators. The recent pressure placed on colleges to stifle free speech; the anti-intellectual conceit exercised in places like Florida to ban certain allegedly subversive liberal-themed books. It’s galling.

Herblock: Groups have long been busy attacking every form of progressive education, and undoubtedly assume that anything labeled progressive AND educational  must put us in double jeopardy.    If a little learning is a dangerous thing, more learning must be more dangerous.  Someone decided a committee in Congress was the proper body to investigate higher education and went after the colleges and universities.  Colleges are veritable hotbeds of learning.   These are the places where ideas are propagated.  And by whom?  Teachers! Professors!  Intellectuals!!

The yeggheads do not, of course, say they wish to attack eduction  They only investigate it and put on a littl pressure here and there to see that the schools and colleges get the idea.  They have what might be called a one-way interest in education, which can be symbolized by an EXIT sign.  They are interesting in throwout ot teachers, students and books, but seldom show much concern about getting people into schools or providing sufficient facilities for the students…

Yeggheadism isn’t just anti-liberal, it;s anti literate, and with good reason.  To demagogues, education is really dangerous.   It cuts down their votes and their support.  

To the yeggheads we are all either dopey or dangerous; we should be treated like morons or should be ashamed of ourselves for not being morons.  This is why they must keep a constant watch on us.  They have been working for some time to make “intellectual” a dirty word, and would probably be scrawling it on fences if they knew how to spell it. 

I’m tired of hearing people “talk down.”  I’d like to hear more talking up and talking back.  I want to see literate people lean into the face of yegghead tyranny and say “We’re getting rid of you.  You don’t know enough.”  

There is an American answer for the censors, for the bully boys who want to put the strong-arm on education and the arts. For the know-nothings and the politicians who make their pitch to them.  It does not involve polysyllabic words, or in fact, any words at all.  It is a long, loud Bronx cheer.  That, to use on of their own phrases, is something they can understand.  It’s time to throw the book at them… making sure, of course, that it’s not over their heads. 

Me: Mr. Block, I have an awkward question to ask. You are dead, right?

Herblock: Yes, I died in 2001, just four weeks after 9/11. I would have preferred a little before, to tell the truth.

Me: You always tell the truth. So, um, how are we doing this interview?

Herblock: With the exception of this section, you appear to be quoting verbatim from two of my books: “Herblock: A Cartoonist’s Life,” and “Herblock’s Here and Now.”

Me: Yes. With only tiny changes to make transitions clearer. I hope we can do this again.

Herblock: It’s not like I could stop you, is it?

This is the last Herblock cartoon, drawn at 91 years old, two months before his death.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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Send in questions and observations! Now.

Right here:

New story: How Google GPS steered us straight into Hell. At one point Saturday, Rachel and I were snaking through downtown D.C., moving more slowly than pedestrian traffic. We had a wonderful bellwether person. A woman, about 5 foot 6 and weighing roughly 350 pounds, clad only in a rainbow-colored tutu, panties, and a wife-beater T-shirt, was walking in a group.

In the road we weren’t making as good time as she was, on the sidewalk. For literally 25 minutes, we kept creeping up behind her, and then watching her make better headway and lumber out of sight.

*(The worst traffic jam I ever was a part of was when we accompanied Dave Barry and family to the beach from Miami to Key West. It was the return trip. It was so bumper-to-bumper than neither Dave nor I ever wrote about it, through the pain. There didn’t seem to be anything funny to say. I asked Dave about it yesterday, and he said: “From start to finish, it took 237 years, but it felt longer.”)

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Now we enter the real-time segment of the Gene Pool, where you ask me questions and I answer in real time. Many of today’s questions relate to my weekend-oriented challenge to talk about when you feel you became an adult. But not all of them. The first comes from an award-winning journalist, which is one of the cheapest accolades any journalist can use on himself, and does, in countless resume-enhancing biographies. There are 4,598,003 journalism awards out there.

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Q: Were there any Herblock quotes out there that you didn’t have space to fit in? I am asking for my best friend, Dave Barry.

A: Yes, thank you, Gene. Here is one, from when Herblock had become a celeb:

“Some requests came from employees I scarcely knew.   One was from a fellow who did some sorting in the mailroom.  He kept after me to draw a picture of him and, as politely as possible, I kept explaining that I didn’t have time. But one Saturday afternoon when I was at the office catching up on correspondence, he pointed out that now I was not making a deadline and now it must be the right time.  I told him I was not a rapid-sketch portrait artist, but he persisted. I said that for me to do a drawing of him would probably take about a half hour, to which he replied, “That’s all right.” 

“So, deciding to finally get this over with, I gave in and asked him to sit down.  “You mean, me sit here for half an hour while you draw me?  I said yes.  He answered, with a touch of indignation, “I can’t do that, I don’t have that kind of time.” 

Q: Your threats to kill Sam (or any other animal) if we don’t upgrade to “paid” ring hollow, being a shallow copy of this famous National Lampoon cover.

A: Yes. What is generally not known is that National Lampoon actually shot the dog after they didn’t get enough purchases of the magazine. Do you want that fate to befall Lexi? She still lives, for at least another week.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

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Q: What was your answer to the poll question about whether you like Autocorrect?

A: You guys were split down the middle. I hate autocorrect, and not just because it is infantilizing, which it is – all in your business, assuming you are a typographical idiot.   I don’t want a computer to tell me what I meant to say.  I know what I meant to say. I have spent a lifetime knowing what I meant to say, and even if I err, Autocorrect is not likely to tell me it is Wrong to say I despise Indian food.  (I do. With no remorse.  Hey, cancel me again.  I don’t give a shit.)

I invent words.  Pat Myers and I have invented “innotate,” which sounds like ‘annotate” but it is not. It refers to the very fact of having “an-notated’ the “In-vitational,” which is something Pat and I do roughly 600 times week, back and forth, deciding which vulgar childish entries are better than others. (I like rectal jokes; Pat likes Elizabethan-era wordplay.) Autocorrect changes it to annotate. 

I know you can turn it off, but I resent that it is, day by day, the default.  So the hell with these Automatonomous  people in charge.

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Q: It seems that the concerns you expressed about the Post under the new publisher are already coming true. Wouldn’t an editor or publisher at any other news organization be fired for offering to exchange a scoop for killing a story on him?

A:  Yes.  I believe this guy will not last long.  You cannot be a scumbag and lead a great newspaper. 

Q: Re your last post: “Quick before Pat sees it correct “kidnaped”

A: Kidnaped is correct.  Quick, before your spouse sees it, delete your post. 

Q: In response to your query, I answered the poll about becoming an adult, unhesitatingly, as you did: It hasn't happened yet.

For most of my life, I have regarded that fact as a good thing: I was, and remained, "Young at Heart," whatever that means. I gloried in it. Over the years, as first my sexual prowess, then my physical abilities, and finally, my mental capacities became less reliable, I nonetheless took pride in the fact that I was still, internally, a kid.  The same wiseass, wisecracking, wise guy I had always been. "Old People" were still a group to which I did not, happily, belong. Old people were "wise" and that certainly proved itself on regular occasions to be untrue of me.

Recently, I have observed, to my horror, that I am indisputably growing old. Nothing works flawlessly any more. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, although it is well controlled. My knees are blown, my hips are achy, my back is a source of pain.  I am growing feeble, and need to use a cane. I walk slowly. Some people age with grace and beauty and dignity. I have high blood pressure. I have a heart condition. Significant parts of me are bionic.

But old is not synonymous with adult. My wife, Linda, for example, has, for the great majority of our marriage, run our finances. I am bad at that, because I tend to be a profligate spender and an inefficient and sporadic record keeper; which is not a good combination. We eat a fairly healthy diet, again owing to Linda's intervention; she insists on it. Left on my own, I would shamelessly exist on red meat and starch. But the little boy in me has insisted on a weekly "special meal" at which I can eat any damn thing I want, in any damn amount I want, dammit. 

It seems unfair that this teenaged, reprobate self of mine seems to have managed to snag all the frailties of aging - the aches and pains, the immaturities, the freaking cane -- and still has avoided the benefits of wisdom and blissful acceptance of my lot.

Oh, there are compensations. I certainly have learned a lot by living, and I suppose that is wisdom of a sort. And I have found Weingarten's Law to be a reliable maxim: "For any concept, no matter how absurd or demonstrably false it may be, there exists at least one asshole who will loudly and confidently espouse it as in indisputable fact."  But adulthood? Nope. Not there yet. 

I'll let you know if it ever happens.

A: Beautifully told, Don.   This is my brother.  He is six years older, and six years younger than I am, and I am roughly 18, still.

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Q: I'm a public librarian, and have somehow accidentally made it my mission to have the children's collection with the most books about farts, poop, and butts.  (Kids think fart humor is just the pinnacle of all humor).  I came across a title the other day called "What a blast! Fart games, fart puzzles, fart pranks, and more."  The author's name is Julie Winterbottom.  Obviously, I ordered it.

A: And what’s your point?

Q: I became an adult between 18-24 because it was during that time that I got my first real job, as a Teamster, driving a delivery truck for the Washington Star newspaper. I was still in school, but working weeks on end without a day off (including working the graveyard shift) made me feel like a grown-up (as did the Union wage). 

Though I’m now 63, I was reminded just last night that I’m still a little boy: I snorked with laughter as I sent my brother an Instagram photo of a closed toilet lid bearing a note, “do not flush! I’ve gone to get a tape measure. Could be a record!” Having grown up in a house with five brothers, that sort of pride of ownership was commendable. – Michael Moriarty

A: Well done, Dr. Moriarty.

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Q: I first felt like an adult in my late 20s. I had been working a full-time job, living on my own and supporting myself for several years by then. I was telling my father about something, I don't remember what, and he said "here's what you need to do..." and launched into a description of his recommended action. I didn't like his solution and responded with "I'm 27 years old, you can't tell me what to do any more." He stopped, looked at me and said "I can still tell you, you just don't have to listen." And it hit me - I am an adult and I can make my own decisions. I don't always make good ones, but they're mine.

A: Excellent.  I felt I first became an adult when I dropped out of college, with three credits to go, to join a Bronx street gang, to write a story for New York magazine. 

But then I discovered I was still a kid.  Partially because of that decision. 

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Q: I began to think of myself as an adult after my Aunt Reva, my mother's sister-in-law, died when I was 33.   She had lived with my mother and my sister and my "Aunt" Anita (not a relative but not to be addressed by her first name, either) since just before I turned 12, so this was a close family relationship, not some shirttail cousin.   Anyway, I thought of my mother as the adult until Aunt Reva died and my mother decided that Reva's sister, who lived hundreds of miles away and saw Reva once a year, was responsible for all the arrangements, particularly financial.  Because, she said, that is how it is done.  (So far as I know, the sister didn't inherit anything, but my mom still absolved herself of responsibility.)  She had other odd opinions at the time, which were shocking to me not because they were odd but because this was my MOM.  She's the GROWNUP.   I am the KID.  Well, the shock was great enough to propel me into adulthood, where I have resided ever since.  It is always nice to think there is someone older and wiser that you can depend on.  When there isn't, you become the adult because there isn't anyone else. 

A: Adulthood by default.  I like it. 

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Q: I indicated in the previous poll that I was in the 19+ age group when I became an adult.  I had no say in the matter.  I was drafted at age 20, and was sent to VietNam as an infantryman at 21.  I would have done things differently if I’d had a choice.

Why am I still a child?  My wife and i still drive around in our two Miatae, fly our own homebuilt airplane, and ride roller coasters.  A few coaster rides serve even better than a chiropractor for freeing up those tight joints that one develops in adulthood.

—Jack M.—

A: Jack, you are 18.  But I think you know that.  

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Q: What makes me an adult is, I believe, my tendency to Accept Things As They Are.  This includes my bank account, my physical capabilities and limitations, the things I’ve accomplished in life and the things I haven’t.  The future inevitabilities I must be prepared for, and the less-than-inevitables whose odds of occurrence I can hope to sway.  I’m human so there’s no way I have this down perfectly, but I’m a good deal better at it than I was at age 15, or 18, or 24.  At the same time, there’s a part of me which is pointing and giggling, saying “Things As They Are!  That spells TATA!”. I encourage that part of me to exist, and I never want it to go away, but I don’t hand it executive control nearly so often these days.

A: This is pretty close to me. 

Q: Yes, I DID read the comment about the professors who want to be able to fail a student who skips class for an abortion, and it was so ludicrously hideous that I did not want to read even a word of the article. The sick ways that Americans dream up to interfere with other’s lives make me so extremely happy that I do NOT live there.

A: The most horrifying part of that article was where it became apparent that men saw Dobbs as an excuse to beat their women. 

Q: If you need more questions, then you should consider providing an appropriately colored button in the MIDDLE of the Gene Pool, to save us all the effort of scrolling all the way to the top (or bottom) of the article. Yes, on a desktop PC this is not that hard, but on a tablet it is a royal P.I.T.A.

A: Noted.   

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Q: Ways I'm still childish:

Plus-and-minus my age thirty, our subdivision annually cut down the cattails growing around its retention pond.  I would gather up the roughly foot-long sections on the ground, tie them with long grass strands into a toy raft, fashion a tripod sail with sticks and large leaves, walk the raft to the upwind side of the pond, and gleefully sail it across.  Wheee!  Sometimes I did that for hours.  No fellow home owners ever approached me to comment, but kids sometimes joined in the play.

In my forties I substitute-taught middle and late elementary school.  I acted adult enough, but felt internally handicapped by the fact that when the kids objected to what they were told to do, I often identified with their perspective more than with that of the "grown-ups."  Sometimes it was especially hard not to laugh at "class clown" antics (sorry I don't recall examples), but to maintain proper adult decorum instead.

This year I'm going to become a grandmother ... but I still sometimes run my supermarket cart fast on a downhill grade, jump onto its bottom rail, and ride it through the parking lot.  That entertainment has lost nothing over sixty years!

Hypothesis:  Retained child perspective and humor correlate positively.  Right, Gene?

Nancy Meyer

A: Right.

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Q: I worry about health enough that I cut my fingernails and toenails just before stepping on the bathroom scale. This is a sign of age and childishness both. -- Jeff Sawyer 

A: I almost never weigh myself naked.  I always wear something so I can persuade myself that my socks and drawers might weigh seven pounds, and explain everything.  

Q: I chose 19 to 25 as when I became an adult for many of the same reasons you referenced - I had kids, bought a house and realized that the 'big boy' job I had taken out of college to make some money was, in fact, going to be my career.  After reading your commentary, I might consider changing it to somewhere in my late 30s to early 40s.  That was when I started paying attention to 'uninteresting' things because I genuinely enjoyed it.  I learned about topics like economics and history - a far cry from my undergrad philosophy degree.  In fact, just yesterday I had a long conversation with my financial advisor about the pros and cons of investing cash vs. a high yield savings account.  Terms like capital gains tax, dollar cost average and loss harvesting were bandied about.  I left the conversation...invigorated.

A: Resist this! 

Q: When I started teaching at age 28 a friendly kid asked me my name. I started to say "Mike" but had to say "Mr. Creveling." First time as a "Mr."

A: I have always felt sorry for teachers, because of precisely this.   After my first day in seventh grade, where I had my first day of Spanish Class, performed entirely in Spanish, as was the custom at the time,  I came home and told my mom, disconsolately, that I had only learned one word:  the word for “teacher” was “Senorita Weena.” My ma told me it was probably “Weiner,” which it was, and explained.

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This is Gene. We must all vacate the Pool now.

How do I say this without losing my dignity?

I cannot. I must lose my dignity.

I am begging you, on bended knee (I have replacement knees, so this hurts) PLEASE send in more questions and observations here:

See you on Thursday.