Born September 27th 1840, in Landau Germany - Thomas Nast, political cartoonist of late 1800s America. Click here for dozens of his best cartoons.
Very few of my favourite political cartoonists actually made a
difference - Ze'ev, for example, only comments nostalgically after the events
or personalities have gone; Steve Bell amuses, but his views are ideological, and the ideology he speaks for has long gone...
And of the contemporary cartoonists, who can say; but let me put a word in anyway, for three of the exceptions: Zunar (Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque) who must be doing something right, as he just been arrested again in Malaysia, for the forty-seventh time; and for Khalid Albaih, from Sudan originally, then Qatar, his last known whereabouts seeking political asylum in Copenhagen; and Eaten Fish, the Iranian cartoonist locked up by the Australians on Manus Island, about whom I also cannot resist including my diary entry for Friday April 5 2019:
Ali Dorani, better unknown as Eaten Fish, talking to Libby Purves at the Westminster Reference Library, having finally been released from Manus Island by the Aussies after four years, and found asylum in Norway. Though what he really needs isn't asylum but - he talked more about suicide, depression, sexual harassment and OCD than he did about cartooning - a new form of therapy. Cartooning having been his therapy while he was on Manus Island, it isn't going to work for him, and he seems to know it, "back on Civvy Street". این زندگی است as they say in Pharsi (no, I've no idea how you pronounce that, my GoogleTranslator doesn't provide voice for Persian. C'est la vie, in French. Eso va in Spanish. Elu ha Chayim in Ivrit...)
But back to Nast, who was one of these exceptions to the rule. His campaign against Boss Tweed and his stooges in
Tammany Hall led to his fleeing the country (he went to Spain, where the
Spanish authorities recognised his style in a cartoon he published there; and
arrested him). Tweed gave evidence of the power of the cartoon: "Stop them
darned pictures," he apparently declared. "I don't care what the papers write
about me. My constituents can't read. But damn it, they can see pictures." In the end (click here), it was Tweed who did the running - and Nast was right there to draw the cartoon of it.
Amber pages
The first passenger hauled in a locomotive, George Stephenson, in his own invention, today in 1825
Book matches patented, today in 1892. Now that the epoch of cigarette smoking has ended, and artificial-tobacco asthma-venters don't require matches, but also given that some of those little books were the cutest little art-works, has anyone thought of making money, I mean honouring and commemorating culture, by opening a "Book Matches Museum"?
And the first published Blues music, "Memphis Blues" by W.C. Handy, appeared on hootenanny stalls today in 1912. (He also makes an appearance on Joni Mitchell’s album “Hejira”, which is on Sept 24, and gives me an excuse to share this link, which will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about Handy, and Memphis Blues, and then more).
The first passenger hauled in a locomotive, George Stephenson, in his own invention, today in 1825
Book matches patented, today in 1892. Now that the epoch of cigarette smoking has ended, and artificial-tobacco asthma-venters don't require matches, but also given that some of those little books were the cutest little art-works, has anyone thought of making money, I mean honouring and commemorating culture, by opening a "Book Matches Museum"?
And the first published Blues music, "Memphis Blues" by W.C. Handy, appeared on hootenanny stalls today in 1912. (He also makes an appearance on Joni Mitchell’s album “Hejira”, which is on Sept 24, and gives me an excuse to share this link, which will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about Handy, and Memphis Blues, and then more).
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