FEIFFER'S REAGAN
Feiffer, Jules
Feiffers Reagan BY JULES FEIFFER Ronald Reagan, with his deep-creased handsomeness, stands tall in the White House, John Wayne's answer to our problems. In his wrinkles you can chart the tracks of...
...his patriotism, a threat to all of us...
...his manliness, too agFrom "Feiffer: Jules Feiffer's America from Eisenhower to Reagan," edited by Steven Heller...
...That possibility is my muse...
...In his wrinkles you can chart the tracks of America's craggy appeal...
...He is how we might like to picture ourselves if we were packaged for a commercial: easy, manly, outrageous, gracious, humble, good-humored, patriotic...
...The cartoon keeps it in bounds, it continues the illusion of hope, it raises for me the distant possibility of actual solutions to some of our problems...
...this is not a country of one class or a world of one color, and it is more prudent—even more American—to embrace the fact than to arm against it...
...They teach what not to, where not to, and how not to...
...change, whether we like it or not, is out there and must be incorporated into the way we do things...
...It gets me out of bed in the morning, it makes me read the papers, it forces my mind off unpaid bills and the writing of plays, it humanizes me, it galvanizes me into combat...
...See me pick up my pen...
...Unlike Jimmy Carter, he is very much larger than life...
...In cartooning him, I sometimes scare myself...
...his grace, clunky...
...See me advance on the White House...
...Published with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc...
...See me sit down at my desk...
...They give negative lessons, fine for the uses of satire, which is essentially a negative form...
...He is the last flickering remains of the American Dream, its embodiment (rags to riches, small-town boy to President), one of the last to believe in its message...
...They are my teachers, however...
...Surviving our leaders is not just a struggle, it is a joy...
...See me attack my enemies: a cartoon of a happy man...
...In fact, he is a movie caricature of ourselves, our values, ambitions, grievances, madness...
...And for a while, at least, we will have learned his lesson: nostalgia is dangerous as a philosophy of government...
...his good humor, a denial of suffering...
...it is like dancing too close to the abyss...
...I suspect that we will survive him out of dumb luck...
...In the long and short run, I may not affect much but the state of my own sanity...
...that is the irony of the work I do...
...And my rationale...
...Copyright ©1982 by Jules Feiffer...
...But his ease appears foolish...
...gressive...
...his courage, mindless...
...Reagan and his kind, his predecessors and their kind, are not my kind...
...The more outraged I am as a citizen, the more fun I find as a cartoonist...
...his humility, tasteless under the circumstances...
Vol. 47 • January 1983 • No. 1
