The life of an editorial cartoonist seems complicated. Your creativity is reflected in all of your work, both from the standpoint of what you’ve chosen as your topic and how you’ve drawn it.
And you probably get the most angry letters to the editor when readers call you the worst things they can think of while alternately accusing you of being a terrible liberal or a horrible conservative or an overall evil person.
We talked about all of that and more with Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic.
Conversation highlights
STEVE GOLDSTEIN: Steve, when you think about this, is the, is the world your canvas? Can you do a cartoon about whatever you want?
STEVE BENSON: Yeah, there's really no limit on the topics I can choose. I have free reign every day to come in and pick through the news, and I usually prepare myself. In fact, I always prepare myself before coming in and as I come in by reading, by going to the net, by watching TV, listening to the radio.
So I have a pretty good sense of the breaking news and what people are talking about, so that'll be relevant to them when they see my cartoon and start calling me all kinds of naughty names.
GOLDSTEIN: Did it take you a while to get used to hearing those naughty names?
BENSON: It takes a while, you know, it's, but you get used to it over time and it's actually kind of a barometer in a good way for what kind of attention you're getting from readers and what kind of, you know, hot buttons you're pushing because, you know, as one of my colleagues said, an editorial cartoonist throws the first punch in a bar fight, then stands back and watches everybody else join in.
And if we don't get a rumble going, then, then the cartoonist has failed in his job. I mean, you know, we get the threats, we get cancellations. I had a woman out in Sun City call me once. She was so upset. She said, I'm going to cancel my prescription. I said, don't do that, please.
GOLDSTEIN: So the, the dreaded editors, do they, do they respond to, when you get these sorts of complaints, are you, are you backed, Steve?
BENSON: Yeah, I am backed, because there's no cartoon that goes in the paper, without the editor first seeing it. And giving his OK to it. That doesn't mean he tells me what to draw.
Sometimes he will give suggestions on what I should not draw, and he ultimately has, you know, oversight and, and final decision making on what constitutes good and or bad taste. So he is the ultimate arbiter, but he doesn't say do a cartoon on this. You've got to draw it this way.
I, you know, I used to think when I was just a young buck that if an editor, you know, killed my cartoon idea, it was like shooting all the lights out in the universe and it would be dark forever. But what I try to do is come back with the same idea disguised in different trappings so he won't get it.
GOLDSTEIN: Do you have any preference whether it's a local issue or a national issue? Because it seems like at times the local issues can kind of dry up. I mean, there aren't, they, they aren't quite as sexy as it was back in the mid-’80s, for example, when you were drawing Gov. Evan Mecham.
BENSON: That's right. I mean, that was the heyday. I mean, I got a call. I kid you not. I got a call one night from Evan Mecham. I had called him back and he wasn't home so he called me back and he was in bed.
Evan Mecham was in bed and he turned to his wife and said, “Flo, roll over and go to sleep. I need to talk to this young man. I'm afraid his eternal salvation is at stake.” And that is the level of discourse I had with a soon to be impeached governor.
But those were, those were halcyon days. I mean, I just really loved them. And you're right, they can kind of get lost in the, in the tsunami of breaking national news events about which most everybody, relatively speaking, know a lot more than they do about local issues if they're really, you know, paying attention to, to the big news.
So I try to do at least one local cartoon, sometimes more a week just to keep my, you know, feet in the tar pits of Arizona politics.
GOLDSTEIN: So Steve, as we mentioned, you started in 1980 when you were, well, I guess about 10 years old, probably at that point. [LAUGHS]
So, so I'm wondering when you started, have you, have you changed? Has your style changed? Are you less forgiving, more forgiving?
BENSON: Well, I've always felt what's remained consistent in my work, I hope, is that at the core of my cartoon is a message. An editorial cartoon is not designed just to, as comic relief. It's designed to use various tools that are hyperbole, irony, humor to make its point, but ultimately should just use those tools like you would put food on a cafeteria plate. It's not the plate that's important. It's the food that's on it and the food is the message.
So I've always tried to maintain a consistency in having something to say every day that, you know, can add to the, to the conversation and can help me join as a legitimate participant in the rumble.
My style has changed over time, but that's a natural evolution that all artists go through. I mean, I'm not comparing myself to to Vincent van Gogh, but he used to look like a Rembrandt in his early 20s. He mastered the styles of the masters of his day, but then he branched off once he got his feet, you know, on the ground into his own style.
So I can look back on my work and see how I've changed over time. I've seen times where I was kind of in the, in the doldrums a bit stylistically. And other times when I was snapping into, you know, new approaches, different ways of throwing ink around, using brushes, different tools, that kind of thing. And so that is a constantly vibrant and changing aspect of editorial cartooning.
And if you're in it long enough, your style is always being subject to change, to influence from others by different experimentations, you do that kind of thing.
GOLDSTEIN: When it comes to the themes and the topics, I mean, there's this argument that a lot of people, they want to know what's going on in the world of politics, but they don't really take the time, so they're working for kind of bumper sticker sort of ideas.
With what you do, can you in that, in that nice size square do the same thing where you have a really quick, easily understandable message, but then there's also that underlying theme?
BENSON: Yeah, you know, there have been studies done scientifically on why people react so viscerally and so quickly to visual images. And it's part of our evolved nature. When we all lived down the Serengeti Plain, and we saw something off in the distance, a shadowy figure that scared us, we could survive by either killing it or running from it.
And that's what we do when we see these visual images in editorial cartoons. They want to kill the cartoonists or they want to run from him, but it is a very basic instinctual reaction that is paralleled by nothing else in the world of journalism.
Now when I say journalism, I'm not a reporter. I give my views on the news, but I don't write the news. And I have about 7 seconds or less to get my idea across in a way that, you know, resonates and is understood by the readers whether they agree with it or not.
So that involves three basic aspects. One is the stage scene. You have to set the stage. That means what props are you going to use, what scene are you going to create? The second element is caricature. You have to draw figures, public figures who are recognizable, who are exaggerated but still recognizable, who are cartoonish. You know, and, and that people can instantly understand who it is. And then the third thing and the most important thing is the message. So all of those elements are blended together.
When I'm trying to come up with a message and the mode of delivery, and it takes me more time to come up with the mode of delivery in my head than it does to actually draw it.
I used to have a picture of an orangutan in my office sucking on his thumb, and the caption was, “I wish there was a longer work for thinking and a shorter … week for working,” a bit like that.
GOLDSTEIN: So Steve, you're still, you're still a go-to guy, you mentioned, I mean, you have 7 seconds to make this impact. And a lot of people turn to you first.
What do you, hate to ask the legacy question, but what do you think of having the impact like that of being in this corner of the paper where people are gonna go, OK, am I gonna be ticked off, am I gonna laugh? What am I gonna do?
BENSON: Well, you know, it's, it's, I don't want to sound goofy, but it's an honor to have that special corner. I mean, I had a special corner in grade school and it's when I misbehaved, but this one is different than that.
This is where people go on a, on a daily basis and so it gives me an opportunity to express my views every day, and I take it seriously and gratefully and not wanting to be too, too dramatic, but editorial cartoonists have played a very important historical role in not only the preservation of this country, but in the creation of it.
Benjamin Franklin was an editorial cartoonist. He had his own newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1754 during the French and Indian War, he drew a very famous cartoon that is used today as a metaphor, the segmented snake cut into different parts representing the colonies, and it said “Join or die.” And that cartoon today is still remembered and still hearkened to by editorial cartoonists, and that cartoon was used as a battle flag and a rallying cry. When the Revolutionary War came upon the colonists and it helped rally them against the British.
Paul Revere was also an editorial cartoonist, and he used to spread leaflets around, you know, “the British are coming,” and I'm ripping off another cartoonist and spreading his work around, which he was doing.
But so yeah, they do have an effect and they do get the ball kicked down the field and they get people engaged in, you know, the great experiment in democracy that we call free speech.
GOLDSTEIN: So before we let you go, as you and I have, have gone down the, I find interesting rabbit hole of philosophy, let's go back to sort of the, the more the crass aspect of things.
We've got the first Republican presidential debate tomorrow. Any of these characters you're looking most forward to drawing?
BENSON: Well, Donald Trump, it was obviously the Donald. He's, he's by far the most flamboyantly interesting person to draw. I'm thinking about doing a cartoon or kind of preempting the debate where you would show like a GOP airline flying through the sky, a commercial jet, and the pilots are saying, oh, thank goodness we dodged Donald Trump, and he's coming up underneath it as a, as, as a drone ready to take them out.
So, and then, you know, there's what, there's going to be 10 that made the cut. I think that this is going to be an interesting debate because I hear from the right wingers all the time accusing the left, me, and others of determining, you know, what people get to see in the media.
Well, Fox is going to determine what, you know, debate participants, you know, people are going to see tomorrow night, and I'm not so sure the right wing's complaining about that. So it all depends on whose ox is being gored, but yeah, that's that's what I do and I try to, you know, I look at this daunting task of drawing 10 Republicans tomorrow. I have a hard enough time just drawing one.
I mean, you know, I'll only push myself so far, but we'll see how it goes.
