Herblock: Two-Fisted 'Observer'

...But Block has firmly established his own conditions of work...

...In a period when Gerald Johnson brings out a book describing the inadequacy of most of the Pulitzer Prize cartoons (two of which have been Herblock's) and lays the fault to the kind of public that American cartoonists draw for, and when Time says that most political cartoonists nowadays draw to please everybody, Herblock stands out like a sore green thumb...

...The man should be allowed these opinions, but I would like to make it clear that he is the greatest two-fisted observer we have had in many a year...

...On the other hand, if Herblock in his modesty claims that he does not know what a liberal is, then let some of us asume that a liberal is a free man and a free man is a man like Herblock...

...Democrats who are wont to call themselves liberal will have to examine more closely their own shamed faces when they have gingerly stepped through the pages of this collection...

...He is unique...

...In fighting the Administration he tackles it as a Republican creation, saying, "If things go badly here, [future historians] are going to wonder how the world caved in on us while we were sitting on top of it...

...Herblock calls it no favor at all that the Secretary of State offered to allow a few correspondents to travel in China, but many newspapers were "grateful" for what they thought was a concession...

...It is not possible that we shall see his like again, but then, in truth, we never really did before...

...This book is no sunny vale for the edification of the complacent or the faint of heart...

...what were we coming to if any public figures were held to be above caricature and comment...

...The idea is crisp and clear...

...And a pretty pass it is which he defends against those he considers the mountebanks, the charlatans, the boobs, the merely stupid, and the sun worshipping devotees who boondoggle with the tools of government and law...

...He draws to please himself and, by so doing, pleases about ten million readers in 200 newspapers...

...He refuses all milk and water, and lives by meat and fire alone...

...deplores the overworking of "secret" classifications on necessary public information...

...blasts the billboard lobby, the gas lobby, and the timidity of the press, it might seem to certain irate but myopic partisans that Herblock is against everything...

...While a man named Herbert Block, who operates under the alias of Herblock, runs the broken field practically unaided, slashing the enemy, affrighting him, smiting the rascals, feinting, jabbing —all in highly comic fashion—most of the rest of us are sitting on the sidelines resting...

...If he is in there merely observing, then either side should immediately appeal to the referee...

...And again he is directly oblique, his anger not quite nullifying his humor, as he reviews the see-saw policies of Russia in "Meanwhile Back at the Kremlin...

...His anger and his sense of shame are bluntly laid bare as with viciously funny and greatly sad cartoons he treats of the Hungarian Revolt in a chapter entitled, "People's Republic...

...Much credit is due the publishers and editors of the Washington Post and Times Herald for the freedom allowed America's outstanding political cartoonist...

...This she implied was treason of a kind...

...Not likely to be lost either is the symbolism of Herblock himself...

...Coupling his "right to know" cartoons and text with the Dulles policy of no press travel in China, he worries about and fights a trend which for a while had newspapers in general accepting such foreign policy dicta without question...

...So far as Block is concerned, we were coming to a pretty pass...

...A group of high school students were discussing the impact of the world on their culture and when the word "rights," as in the Bill of Rights, was mentioned, several rather grumpily declared that such a word did not seem very "spiritual" to them and gave every indication that they were bored with the subject...

...Above all he is funny and full of guts...

...Sadly, Block remarks...

...If he does not get the pretender with the stab of a brush, he cold-conks him with a typewriter...

...The cartoonist suggests that such activities are all doggie and no boon...

...In two chapters, however, Block has wisely allowed his record of the drawing board to stand alone...

...He understands their inability to fight for the rights so much under their noses that they step all over them, but he does not condone, even with silence...

...His concern is for the future, the people who are growing up...

...Or we are content to have left the game entirely for the more rarefied atmosphere of the spectator gallery...

...Reviewed by Walt Kelly TVTith very few exceptions the car-^* toonists of this country should be ashamed of themselves...

...It is plain that Block is alarmed at what is happening to young minds growing up in an atmosphere of the big sell, with happy slogans taking the place of such commandments as once worked...

...His treatment of Nixon as a cat, his Khrushchev as a golfer, doffing his hat, as the ball, a sputnik, soars through the background sky are strong drawings, the symbolism of which are not likely to be lost...

...If they had their way, that might be true some day, but Block is determined that such people shall not have their way...

...As one illustration of his continued amazement at what passes for the commonplace in our era, he cites a radio show that brought him to his feet, his hair standing on end, one sleepy Sunday afternoon...

...With a start she had become aware that one of the lead characters in the cartoon, a forlorn and helpless figure in a ridiculous and shabby situation, bore a remarkable likeness to our President...

...Herblock would like to call himself an observer...

...ridicules the absurd language that labels any hydrogen bomb "clean...

...A careful look at Special for Today will show that Herblock is no complete respecter of the Democratic Party...

...At a Republican convention Herbert Block must be as welcome as man with a mouthful of pins at a balloon ascension...

...The text shows again that a man who will think and feel deeply can be articulate in words as well as pictures...

...He recognizes the flag-waving boobs who scream for the scalps of the unjust in faraway lands safely over many a border...

...There, like mice, too many of us eke out a slender but comfortable living gratifying our egos by squeaking, for peanuts, the safe message that all is right with the world which none of us created and few of us deplore...

...That is to say, he is sore and his thumb is green...

...He claims to be something besides a liberal, because "I don't know what a liberal is...

...As the writer likens the Eisenhower Administration to a TV program, full of grinding grins and giveaways...

...The line is unmuddied with sentiment...

...In his present collection of cartoons and comments he cites a cartoon that moved a lady to write him to the effect that she was hurt, wounded, and on to his little game...

...He is savage on the subject of civil rights, delineating the entrenched reactionary in the South and parts of the North as a monster regardless of party...

...In this he is merciful, for he attacks all fakers in two insensitive spots, the heart and the brain...

...Practically everything he touches in a cartoon flourishes...

...There has been a tendency," says Block, "for government to inquire more and more into the lives and thoughts of private citizens, while at the same time denying the right of the people to inquire into their own government...

...Herblock is not just a courageous man, he is also powerful with a symbol...