Editorial cartoonist David Horsey

DATE April 11, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: David Horsey discusses his career as an editorial
cartoonist
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, sitting in for Terry Gross.

David Horsey, the editorial cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, won
his first Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for the way he treated such topics as the
Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Republican attack on Bill Clinton and a scandal
involving Washington state's Child Protection Services. He just won his
second Pulitzer, a rarity, for cartoons covering such topics as the Middle
East, the economy, proposed tax cuts, homeland security and the buildup to the
war on Iraq.

Horsey definitely is a cartoonist with an edge. Sometimes he dispenses with
humor altogether and merely records his take on current events. Today's
cartoon in the PI, for example, shows a ripped poster of Saddam Hussein on the
ground and a smiling Iraqi standing on top of it, his fists raised high in the
air. Horsey's simple caption reads: `A chance at least to be free.'

Terry talked with David Horsey earlier this week.

TERRY GROSS, host:

David Horsey, welcome to FRESH AIR. And congratulations on your Pulitzer.

Mr. DAVID HORSEY (Editorial Cartoonist, Seattle Post-Intelligencer): Thank
you very much, Terry.

GROSS: I'd like to start by asking you to read a few of your Pulitzer
Prize-winning editorial cartoons. Let's start with one that's based on an
Aesop fable.

Mr. HORSEY: All right. This is a cartoon that--it's a multipanel, and it is
the fable of the "Ant and Grasshopper," which, at least in the old days, was
familiar to everyone. In the first panel, there's this ant in his bow tie and
white shirt sitting in his cubicle at work. And the caption says: `In the
spring, the sensible, industrious ant put all of his savings into a 401(k)
plan.'

Then the next panel shows the grasshopper with some bug friend of his at a
beach somewhere, a tropical scene and with some pretty voluptuous girl bugs
walking by. And it says: `Meanwhile, the fun-loving but irresponsible
grasshopper spent his money on parties, fast cars and trips to exotic
locales.' And the grasshopper is eyeing this young female bug in her bikini
and saying, `Dude, check out the thorax on her.' Anyway.

Then we go to the next panel, and the ant is receiving a postcard from the
grasshopper. `Ant toiled on and his 401(k) got bigger and bigger. When the
grasshopper sent him postcards from his travels, the ant thought to himself,
"Grasshopper is so foolish. He'll have nothing stored up when winter comes."'

`Well, when winter did come, the Nasdaq sank, Wall Street tanked and greedy
corporate officers bailed out with millions while loyal workers like the ant
were left with empty retirement plans.'

So then we see the grasshopper and ant together looking at the grasshopper's
holiday pictures, and the ant's pretty dejected. `In other words, the ant and
the grasshopper were in pretty much the same fix, except the grasshopper had
cool vacation pictures.

Grasshopper says, "Oh, and here's a honeybee I hit on in Hyde Park. She told
me to bug off."'

Now that's...

GROSS: That was great. How did you get the idea for making the story of
diminishing funds and retirement plans--for turning that into a fable?

Mr. HORSEY: That's a good question. I don't know exactly how these
connections come to me. I mean, it's why I'm a cartoonist is because I do
think that way. But I was just--part of it was personal experience, I guess.
A few years ago I was really upset that I was wasting all my money on trips to
Europe and other friends I knew were--you know, I didn't invest it in
Microsoft and everything else and they were doing great, and then suddenly we
were in the same place. I was the grasshopper. And so for some reason the
old story just came to me, and I thought that was a perfect analogy.

GROSS: I'm going to ask you to read another one from your Pulitzer
Prize-winning editorial cartoons. And this one is called "Tax Cuts for the
Wealthy."

Mr. HORSEY: Oh, yes. This one is pretty popular. It got reprinted in a lot
of places. And it's a multipanel one. I guess these work better on radio,
don't they?

GROSS: They work good on radio.

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah. Yeah. The wordless ones would be a problem.

So this is six panels. And it's the president at a press conference, and he's
taking questions. And the first question in the first panel is: `Mr.
President, what should be done with any budget surplus?' And he says, `Tax
cuts for the wealthy.'

Next panel, next question: `Mr. President, what if the surplus is gone?'
`Tax cuts for the wealthy' is the answer. `Mr. President, how do we stimulate
the economy?' `Tax cuts for the wealthy.'

And another panel, `Mr. President, how can we deal with job losses?' `Tax
cuts for the wealthy.'

Then the next question: `Mr. President, what if the fan belt goes out on my
'95 Toyota?' `Tax cuts for the--OK, who's the wise guy?'

GROSS: That's very good.

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah.

GROSS: Can you talk a little bit about coming up with that one?

Mr. HORSEY: Well, this is almost literal, just observing the news. You know,
through the first year--or actually continuing into--all the years of the Bush
administration, the answer to any economic situation seems to be tax cuts, and
which of course, go to the richest Americans. And it seemed a little goofy to
me, to put it simply. And so I just had to figure out a venue to somehow get
this across, you know, no matter what the situation is, the economy or the
surplus or the lack of surplus or with jobs. There's one answer; one size
fits all.

GROSS: Is it particularly difficult to come up with funny editorial cartoons
about the economy? The economy could be a lot of facts and figures that are
boring and hard to grasp and abstract.

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah. It is tough; in fact, it's very tough. And it seems like
a few years ago economic issues weren't as predominant in the news or in
politics, and I shied away from them because they are tough. And a cartoonist
trying to whittle down complex issues into, you know, a bite-sized chunk, but
the more I've done it--and I think part of it is I depend on what my readers
know. And as people have gotten more involved with the stock market and
401(k)s, I think Americans in general are more attuned to economic issues, so
that makes it easier, 'cause they become real gut issues for a lot of people.
So it's not as tough as it used to be.

GROSS: Well, I want you to read some of the editorial cartoons that you've
been doing about the war. Let's start with an early one from September 29th
of 2002. And this one is called "The Atlantic Alliance: An Update." Would
you describe it for us?

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah. It's a scene in a football game, and we're down on the
bench with the team. And, yeah, "The Atlantic Alliance: An Update" is what
it is. And on the team the quarterback is George Bush, and we've got Blair,
we've got Schroeder from Germany and Chirac from France; over in the corner is
Putin and the water boy. He has no lines, but everyone else does.

And so the quarterback, Bush, saying, `What are we waiting for? Let's slam
Saddam!' And he's trying to get 'em out in the field. Blair is at his side
pleading and saying, `Oh, jolly good. May I carry the ball just once? May I?
May I?' And meanwhile, Schroeder likes it on the bench. He's got a member of
the Green Party sitting on his lap. And he's saying, `I'm perfectly happy
right here on the bench.' And over in the corner Chirac is drinking some wine
and having lunch, and he's saying, `Must we? (Sighs) Perhaps if we take time
for lunch, Iraq will simply forfeit the game.'

GROSS: And I wonder what kind of reaction you got to that one, and if people
could even figure out which side you were on.

Mr. HORSEY: Well, it wasn't entirely clear. This is a cartoon that's more
descriptive, I think, than taking, you know, a hard stand one way or another.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. HORSEY: For whatever reason, I've followed European politics and
US-European politics for quite a while. And this is actually kind of an
update of other cartoons I'd done on this subject. And I've always found that
Americans don't pay enough attention to international affairs and our
relations with Europe, in particular. And so when I do deal with the subject,
I guess I make them more explanatory in a way, you know, trying to fill it
out, you know, who these guys are and what their positions are. And just the
contrast of attitudes is what I was trying to get at with this cartoon.

GROSS: You know, when you're cartooning about war, cartoons are often funny;
they're supposed to be funny. But, you know, a part of war, even a part of a
very short war is death, and that's something that you've confronted in your
editorial cartoons. And I'm going to ask you to read a very recent one from
Wednesday, April 9th. And it's called "The Cost of War." Would you describe
it?

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah. Unlike some of the other cartoons we've talked about, it's
very simple. It has no words other than that caption, "The Cost of War." And
I actually looked at pictures of Michelangelo's "Pieta" for inspiration for
this cartoon.

On one side, I have a mother holding her dying son, an American soldier, and
she's looking sadly across at a little Iraqi boy holding his dying mother,
staring back at her, and both of them with looks of grief on their face. And
I think with this one, too, it'd be very easy to do just, you know, a `no war
for oil' cartoon or something sort of simplistic. This I was just trying to
capture the tragedy of all of this for everybody on both sides.

GROSS: How long did it take you to come up with this? Were there a lot of
ideas or sketches that you did before crystalizing it in this particular
frame?

Mr. HORSEY: This one I came to fairly quickly. The news story that inspired
it more than any other was there was a story about American soldiers who had
tried to stop a van filled with an Iraqi family, stop them at a checkpoint,
and they failed to stop, so they shot them. And then the reporter described
the scene of a little boy sobbing on the sidewalk and his mother and father
were dead. And the Marines were trying to help the members of the family who
were still alive. And one of the American Marines just broke down crying
because he was overcome by the awfulness of what they'd done.

And I thought, `That captures what this war is more than anything I've read,'
and I wanted to somehow express that in the cartoon. And then I, for whatever
reason, one of those connections, and I can't quite explain it, I thought of
the "Pieta," Michelangelo's sculpture of Mary and the dead Jesus. And I
thought, `OK, I want to show both sides of this, that there's enough tragedy
to go around.' And so that's how I came up with the image.

GROSS: Do you feel your thoughts about the war changing at all as we're
seeing more pictures of cheering Iraqis and Iraqis toppling Saddam Hussein's
statues?

Mr. HORSEY: I find my feelings change every day in a little way. I knew war
was going to be awful. It always is, whatever it's for, whoever does it,
wherever. My biggest concern prior to the beginning of the war was that this
was going to lead the United States down a path we shouldn't go, a path of
empire, a path that would make us an even bigger target and a more hated
nation around the world, and that even if there's this benefit of providing
the Iraqis with a chance for a better government, that it was a pretty big
price to pay and that there probably was a better way to go about it. That's
maybe a little more complex analysis of the war than, you know, either pro or
anti, and so I've tried to reflect that in my cartoons. Nothing's utterly
simple.

And so what I've done day by day is to pick out pieces of this war. I've done
cartoons that were critical of what is essentially the Iraqi gestapo. I got
letters from readers on the left who thought, you know, I shouldn't waste my
time, you know, stating the obvious that those are bad guys. And then I got
letters from people on the right who were angry at me for criticizing the
president in wartime. But I think the process I use, which is really trying
to reflect a lot more than just a simple opinion over time in my cartoons, is
what has worked for me. I think that's why I've won two Pulitzers and why I
still have a job.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Horsey, and he just won a
Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons. He does cartoons for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. The cartoons are also syndicated to hundreds of
newspapers.

Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is David Horsey, and he just won a Pulitzer Prize for his
editorial cartoons. He cartoons for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, but his
cartoons are also carried in hundreds of newspapers around the country.

This was your second Pulitzer Prize. Your first was in 1999, and so that
prize covered a lot of the impeachment era, so I imagine you did a lot of Bill
Clinton/Monica Lewinsky kind of cartoons. And I was thinking about how
different the main story that you covered then compares to the main story that
you're covering now, which is the war.

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah. It's an amazing contrast, which just echoes the amazing
contrast for all of us between those days and these days. We've come a long
way.

But, yeah, the '99 Pulitzer was for what I call the `Year of Monica.' It was
sort of the height of the scandal and actually was before impeachment really
got into full swing. So that was a year when, you know, every cartoonist was
obsessed with Clinton. In fact, I remember there was a comment from someone
on the Pulitzer committee saying they were just sick of seeing all these
cartoons about Clinton, but apparently they were less sick of mine.

I also that year, though, included some cartoons about a local scandal in
Washington state, and they gave me credit for, you know, actually paying
attention to some regional issues. So that might have been what made me stand
out from the crowd.

GROSS: Is there a favorite impeachment-era cartoon that you could describe
for us?

Mr. HORSEY: One of my favorites that was among the winning cartoons for the
Pulitzer was a Peter Pan scene, and this was right after the congressional
elections of '98. You know, all summer impeachment had been brewing. There
had been all these revelations through Ken Starr about the seamy things going
on in the White House. And under Newt Gingrich, the Republicans expected to
have great gains; instead, they actually lost seats in Congress.

And so I, again, was looking for a visual analogy to capture that. And so the
picture was--first, we have this crocodile, which represented the elections.
And Newt Gingrich was Captain Hook, and he was about to fall into the jaws of
the crocodile. And he was saying, `Curse you, Peter Pan.' Peter Pan, of
course, was Bill Clinton. He was flying circles around Newt. And he was
saying, `Golly, maybe I don't have to ever grow up.'

And also the other little detail was: Tinkerbell, of course, was Monica.

GROSS: Well, was it a difficult story to do cartoons about? 'Cause, you
know, it's a story that had a lot to do with sex, and there's a limit to where
you can go with that in a newspaper.

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah, although there are lots of ways to get around the obvious,
which is, actually, I think, a good challenge. I mean, if I could draw
absolutely anything I wanted I would be too obvious and lacking in subtlety.
But, yeah, especially contrast with the issues now. I guess what struck me
about that period was that, you know, it was great fun. You know, it was
great fodder for all the comedians in the country, and it was easy, in some
ways, to do cartoons. But they really didn't always amount to much. It
didn't mean all that much.

The whole thing seemed to be a charade on both sides, as opposed to now, when
the issues cartoonists are dealing with--war and a dramatic challenge to the
way the American government is run and a whole shift in how America is acting
in the world--those are serious issues, I mean, especially since September
11th. And so even what political cartoonists do is largely satire, and humor
is a tool we use, when things are serious it's the best time for us 'cause our
purpose is serious.

GROSS: After September 11th, when the world changed for so many people, your
job was to think of a cartoon for the next day.

Mr. HORSEY: Right.

GROSS: So where did you go with that?

Mr. HORSEY: Well, my strong point is not the next-day cartoon, or the single
big event cartoon. I kind of went where 99 percent of the cartoonists in the
country went. Everybody, the day after September 11th, drew one of two
cartoons. They either drew the Statue of Liberty crying or covered in smoke
or doing something, or you drew the twin towers in some form on fire. And I
opted for the twin towers and made a comparison between December 7th, 1941,
the Day of Infamy, and September 11th. I was not real happy with the cartoon,
and there were much better cartoons done that day.

The cartoon from those days that I liked best was one I did about two days
later, after I'd had time to think about it. And I was actually looking at a
map of the Middle East and noticed sort of the outline of the Mediterranean
around North Africa and Lebanon and Syria. And if you look real hard, if
you're a cartoonist, there's kind of an outline of the southern portion of the
US there. So I ended up drawing a map in which the United States was lodged
perfectly up against Libya and Syria and this whole map of the Middle East.
And the caption was `Welcome to the neighborhood.' And I thought it caught
the new reality, that we were no longer far, far away from the troubles of the
Mideast. We were now no longer protected by oceans. We may as well be next
door. So that was my take on the new reality.

BIANCULLI: David Horsey just won his second Pulitzer Prize for his editorial
cartooning in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He'll be back in the second
half of the show. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Coming up, when readers don't get the joke. We continue our
conversation with editorial cartoonist David Horsey of the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. He just received his second Pulitzer Prize. And Ed Ward
remembers the band Moby Grape.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry
Gross. Let's continue with more of Terry's interview with David Horsey, who
just won a second Pulitzer Prize for his edgy original editorial cartoons in
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

(Soundbite of interview)

GROSS: What kind of art did you do before drawing editorial cartoons?

Mr. HORSEY: I almost--well...

GROSS: Do I hear a `none' coming up?

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah. Virtually none. I mean, I started drawing when I was a
little kid. My mom sat me down with--she says on a phone book. I'd sit on
the phone book with a stack of paper and I'd draw with a pencil or crayons
and--you know, at four or five years old. And so I did kid drawings, which
are basically cartoons. And then the very first editorial cartoon I ever drew
was in seventh grade. Actually, it was a class project. And then I worked on
my high school newspaper and I worked on my college paper. And I did some
other art work, and for a little while I tried to be an art student, but I'm
really not good at painting or sculpture or anything else. I've always just
described myself as a journalist who draws, and that's really how my mind
works much more than, you know--I don't--if I wasn't doing this, I wouldn't be
painting or sketching life drawings; I'd be a reporter.

GROSS: Now I'm going to ask you about a cartoon that I haven't seen, I've
only read about it because I think it's probably like the most controversial
cartoon you've ever done, and it had to do with race and ethnicity. Do you
know the one I'm talking about? There's an African-American...

Mr. HORSEY: I think so, yeah.

GROSS: ...and a skinhead talking together.

Mr. HORSEY: Mm-hmm, right.

GROSS: Do you remember what they say to each other?

Mr. HORSEY: I don't remember the precise words, but it's a multipanel
cartoon. Yeah, the skinhead and the--I think it's sort of a black gangsta
rapper, and they're talking about how they hated each other and they kind of
described why. But then they discover that there are things they have in
common, there are things they share. And then they say, `We've found that we
both hate Japanese and Koreans,' or something like that. And...

GROSS: So that's their bond, yeah.

Mr. HORSEY: Yeah, that's their bond, is hating somebody else. And actually,
now thinking about it, I really like that cartoon. But at the time, it
stirred up a lot of trouble, and part of it, the unfortunate part--and this is
where sometimes I can get in trouble without meaning to--was, you know, in
Seattle, we have a very large Asian population, a lot of immigrants, and in
the Korean community, a lot of people who don't speak English all that well
and certainly don't understand the ironic form of American editorial cartoons,
took it way too literally, as if I was saying that this is what people needed
to do, that blacks and whites needed to just hate Asians and then everything
would be OK. So there was a strong reaction.

And then the state has a couple of Minority Affairs Commissions and they took
it on, decided to make this a little crusade and complained to the newspaper.
And in the middle of this whole little controversy, I suddenly realized it
wasn't about me or my cartoon, it was about people enjoying putting some
pressure on a newspaper and trying to make them toe the line. In fact, the
head of the African-American Affairs Commission, or whatever it's called in
the state, called me and said, `I love your cartoons, man,' you know. And,
you know, `This isn't about you, don't worry,' you know. I thought, `Well, it
sure feels like it's about me.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So what was the outcome? Did you have to do a letter-writing campaign
back to all the people who had written you? Did you have a sit-down meeting
with the people who were objecting?

Mr. HORSEY: Well, actually, one thing I did--yeah.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. HORSEY: In the newspaper, I wrote a column explaining the cartoon. I
really didn't apologize, but I explained, and we ran that, and we ran a
statement from the people who were objecting, and it all blew over. But the
one thing I did do--because the folks I was concerned about weren't the
official spokesmen for anybody; it was that immigrant community, the Korean
community where clearly people had been hurt and, you know, I didn't intend to
pick on them. And so I actually wrote letters to--there are a couple of
Korean-language dailies in Seattle, and so I wrote letters to them trying to
explain what I was trying to say and, indeed, apologized, in a way, to them,
and that seemed to help a lot.

GROSS: Do you think that political correctness has changed the kind of
reactions that you get to cartoons?

Mr. HORSEY: Oh, definitely, and in some ways, it's not all bad. Cartoonists
used to get away with some pretty incredible stereotypes and you don't see
that very much anymore. We're forced to actually be a little more subtle and
exact. But still, it's changed things because there are some folks who are
just intent on misreading a cartoon if it involves their particular group, and
so I try to make sure, you know, if I'm criticizing Jesse Jackson, for
instance, that it's clearly Jesse Jackson; it's about Jesse Jackson and not
anybody else. It's not about African-Americans, it's not about other
African-American leaders, it's about this person and what he says. So it's
just--usually I take an extra step because I don't want people mad at me just
for general reasons because they got a cause that they want to forward by
getting mad, and I don't want people mad at me inadvertently, like these
Korean immigrants, people I didn't mean to make mad. I want to make mad the
people I mean to make mad.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HORSEY: So I really, most of the time, I try to think through the
cartoon because cartoons are--even though--the simplicity actually makes them
ambiguous in a way. They're symbolic things that people can read in different
things to symbolic images, things that are not intended by the cartoonist.
So, you know, when I'm doing it, I try to think, `OK, is there anything here
that can be read a whole different way?' And I've gotten pretty good at that.
I don't get a whole lot of nasty letters about things I didn't mean to say
anymore.

GROSS: Are there any words or phrases or images that you feel you can't use
anymore that you used to use that felt OK, but now it just seems
inappropriate, you've gotten criticized, people have been offended and you
don't do it anymore?

Mr. HORSEY: Luckily, I'm a pretty sensitive guy, so I never did a whole lot
of stereotypical stuff. Probably the one group of people that I deal with
differently is Arabs. Like everybody else, you know, 10, 15 years ago, every
time I drew Arabs, they were Saudi Arabians. They were in, you know, their
robes and had sunglasses and goatees, and I got complaints about that and I
realized, well, that's exactly right. And it's right not just because of
insensitivity, it's because it's inaccurate. The Arab world is pretty
diverse, and if I'm drawing Iraqis--you know, most people dress like
Westerners these days, and so I've shifted that. I mean, what that does is
take away a little bit of shorthand from a cartoonist, but that's OK. We
should be a little more creative and find new ways to get across visually what
we're trying to say.

GROSS: David Horsey is my guest, editorial cartoonist for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. He's carried in hundreds of newspapers around the
country, and he just won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons. Let's
take a short break here and then we'll talk some more.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is David Horsey. He's the editorial cartoonist for the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His cartoons are carried in hundreds of
newspapers around the country. He just won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial
cartoons.

When you draw President Bush in an editorial cartoon, what features are you
bringing to the forefront? What's your approach to caricaturing him?

Mr. HORSEY: Well, first of all, my approach to caricaturing anyone is--there
are two aspects to a caricature. One is the physical look. You want to pick
out those things that are distinctive about a person's face, that make them
who they are, and through the magic of caricature, if you exaggerate those
elements, whether it's the nose or ears or eyes, whatever--if you exaggerate
those things and really distort the face, it still looks like them. That's
what a caricature is. With Bush, it's probably his eyes more than anything,
those beady little eyes that kind of close-fit together. I concentrate on
those; sort of the sharp nose; his mouth that has that sort of funny little
crooked line. I started playing down the ears. Everyone seems to draw his
ears huge, and he does have kind of prominent ears, but, really, that's not
the big thing with him.

But the second part of caricature is not just the look; it's somehow capturing
an attitude visually, and early on, I think my caricatures of Bush tended to
be portraying him as this not really qualified but basically benign goofball
who'd wandered into the White House somehow. But I think I was wrong all
along. The more I observed him, the more I've read about him and seen of him,
I think he's not a dummy. He's a smart guy who has chosen to be ignorant
about a lot of things, and he's tough and he's a little mean, and so my
caricature of him has gotten a little meaner.

What's interesting is that it's so at odds with what many, many people in the
country think about him that I get a lot of letters about it, people who just
believe he is one of the greatest presidents we've ever had and is doing
monumental good things for the country and the world. And it's not a vision I
share, so I'm a little at odds with some of my readers.

GROSS: You know, we were talking earlier about the differences between doing
editorial cartoons now in the war-in-Iraq era and doing them in 1999--1998.
You won your first Pulitzer in 1999, and that was for...

Mr. HORSEY: Right.

GROSS: ...your cartoons of the impeachment era. One thing that holds those
two eras in common is how divided the country has been over those issues, over
the war, over impeachment.

Mr. HORSEY: That's true. I mean, the split in this country is pretty
remarkable and was so obvious in the last presidential election where it was a
perfect split. But, yeah, the passions in the Clinton era were just as
strong, but, you know, they were sort of reversed and people who disliked
Clinton disliked him with amazing intensity, and it's in a similar intensity
among liberals these days as regarding George W. Bush, and there's not a
whole lot of middle ground, it seems, for most people.

GROSS: Have you been able to directly address in any cartoons how divided the
country is over certain issues?

Mr. HORSEY: Well, I think I've done that a lot. In fact, one of the
cartoons I entered in the Pulitzer competition this last year that was among
the winners was an extended cartoon I did that was actually a full page in the
newspaper, in color, and it was a guide to Red-and-Blue America. And it was
just a number of panels.

GROSS: This is the red and the blue of the voting map...

Mr. HORSEY: Exactly.

GROSS: ...of how the different states...

Mr. HORSEY: The red being the...

GROSS: ...divided during the 2000 election.

Mr. HORSEY: ...you know--the blue being the, you know, East and West Coast
and Gore voters, and the red being the heartland and the more conservative
voters. So this is sort of my sociological view of that divide. For
instance, I had--one was Kids Sports in red America, and it was these kids in
red uniforms rushing onto the football field, and the coach is saying, `Kill,
kill, kill!' And in blue America, it was a mom coaching girls' soccer and the
goalie is crying, because one of the other girls has just scored, and the mom
is saying, `Well, maybe we should give Wendy a point, too, because we have to
affirm her part in this,' you know. And another two panels was Blue Vacation,
Red Vacation, blue as ecotouring. Had a woman in the water kissing a dolphin,
and the other one, in red America it was a guy on the back of a snowmobile
shooting sheep--not--shooting deer.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HORSEY: I had some snowmobilers who didn't like that one. And the final
panel, if I remember it right, was someone in Blue America going to sleep
blissfully knowing that a thousand miles away a national forest was being
protected, and in Red America, a guy was lying there awake and angry because a
national forest five miles away was being protected. So anyway, I had a lot
of fun with the issue in that extended form.

GROSS: Do you think of yourself as fitting into Red or Blue America?

Mr. HORSEY: Well, I'm pretty blue. I mean, I do live in Seattle, after all.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HORSEY: And, you know, I'm very pro-environment, and I hate getting
labeled, though. I've always tried to avoid it. But I guess if you looked at
my cartoons a lot, you'd have to say I tend to be on the blue side. But
because of that, because I don't want to be predictable and because I think
there are lunatics and fools on all sides, I try to step away from it once in
a while when it's justified and take a shot at my own side.

GROSS: And finally, I have to ask you about your signature, and the signature
is so important for an editorial cartoonist. Some people have this kind of
scrawl and you can't really read what their name is, but you have this very
clearly lettered signature, Horsey, H-O-R-S-E-Y. Can't confuse that with
anything else.

Mr. HORSEY: That's right. Well, I don't know, I guess I'm just a
straightforward guy. I've used that signature--it hasn't changed much--for a
couple of decades. And, yeah, I'm always surprised when a cartoonist sort of
scribbles something in the corner that no one can read. I want credit. I
want people to know this is mine, and please, please, give me a Pulitzer.

GROSS: Yeah, well, congratulations on the credit you just got, which is the
Pulitzer, your second. And, David Horsey, thank you so much for talking with
us.

Mr. HORSEY: Thank you. It was great.

BIANCULLI: David Horsey speaking with Terry Gross earlier this week. He just
won his second Pulitzer Prize as editorial cartoonist for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer.

Coming up, Ed Ward on a rock group you probably haven't thought about, much
less heard, in quite a while: Moby Grape. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: California band of the mid-'60s, Moby Grape, ended up
achieving less than they might have
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Fans of San Francisco rock posters from the golden era of 1966 and '67 are no
doubt familiar with the name Moby Grape, but today few people have ever heard
them. This was a band capable of beautiful country harmonies and driving
guitar solos, as well as self-sabotage and attracting disaster. Rock
historian Ed Ward has their story.

(Soundbite of music)

MOBY GRAPE: (Singing) Ain't no use in saying that I love you. Ain't no use
in saying that I do. Ain't no use in saying that I love you, 'cause you know
that I know that it's true. Ain't no use in saying...

ED WARD (Rock Historian):

Moby Grape should have been the biggest band to come out of San Francisco in
the summer-of-love-induced rush to sign anything that could hoist a guitar,
but, well, they weren't. You had five good-looking guys, all of whom wrote
material. You had three guitarists with five singers. You had a major label
putting a lot of money behind them, and most importantly, you had a band that
played the circuit and had fans. So what went wrong? Some of the answer lies
in the band's beginnings, as four guys hired by impresario and manager Matthew
Katz to back one of his clients, Alexander "Skip" Spence, who had just retired
as the singing drummer of the Jefferson Airplane.

As guitarist Peter Lewis, son of actress Loretta Young, said, `Six months
after we met each other, we were rock stars.' Of course, once they headed to
their rehearsal room, the houseboat-based nightclub in Sausalito, called The
Ark, they adjusted just fine.

(Soundbite of music)

MOBY GRAPE: (Singing) What a difference a day has made. What a difference a
day has made. What a difference and more of the same. What's that song
you're singing? Just a bell ringing in my mind. What's that tune you're
bringing? Just part of what there is to find.

WARD: The sounds coming out of The Ark attracted record company guys like
flies. Columbia Records fought a hard battle with Elektra for the band and
won. Columbia assigned their boy-wonder staff producer David Rubinson to the
band, and he managed to bring in their first album for a whopping $1,000 in
recording costs, stunningly cheap even back then, but it doesn't sound like
it.

(Soundbite of music)

MOBY GRAPE: (Singing) Yes, I know it's fallin'. Did you ever get the feeling
that your baby's gonna set you free? Yes, I know it's fallin'. Won't she
tell you why it's over? Do you sit and wonder, `Was it me?' You try and tell
her she'll be sorry, it'll happen with somebody new, yeah. But all the time
you're worried 'bout the pain that's gonna fall on you.

WARD: Columbia was elated, and that's where the trouble started. Never
before had a band's debut album been hyped so incompetently. First they
released five singles at once, the entire album, thereby confusing radio
stations. Second, the release party in San Francisco in June 1967 was so
lavish that it alienated their hippie fan base. It was also notable because
the company had bought 700 bottles of wine for the occasion but hadn't
provided corkscrews. Third, it was discovered after the album had been
distributed that bassist Bob Mosley was making an obscene gesture in the cover
picture and the free poster inside, so the albums had to be recalled and
reprinted, not to mention the fact that in the wee hours after the debut
party, the band's three guitarists were caught with underage girls and
marijuana at a party in Marin County. Still, one of the album's songs managed
a slight showing on the charts.

(Soundbite of music)

MOBY GRAPE: (Singing) Listen, my friends. Listen, my friends. Listen, my
friends. Listen, my friends. Listen, my friends, you thought never, but
listen, my friends, I'm yours forever. Listen, my friends, won't leave you
ever. Now my friends...

WARD: But that's another typical Moby Grape screw-up. What do you think that
song's called? The band called it "Listen, My Friends" when they rehearsed
it. But when Skip Spence, who wrote it, was asked, he said it was called
"Omaha." The band went on tour, dodging the law, getting thrown out of hotels
and receiving angry threats from the president of Columbia Records.
Undaunted, six months after their first album, they went back into the studio.
Called "Wow," the album was a mess. It had a track that had to be played at
78 rpm. It had a whole extra disc called "Grape Jam," featuring the band
jamming with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield and--oh, yes, it also had some
great songs on it.

(Soundbite of music)

MOBY GRAPE: (Singing) He said he found himself and gave away the things he
called his own. He awoke and told his friends the things he'd seen and heard
and could not comprehend, so taken back by what he had just said
(unintelligible)...

WARD: "He" could have been written about Skip Spence, though, since he was
clearly experiencing reality quite differently than his bandmates. In fact,
after the "Wow" sessions, he left, went to Nashville, recorded a famously
difficult album called "Oar," and disappeared. The rest of the band soldiered
on. "Wow" did OK on the charts, and another album was recorded. "Moby Grape
'69" showed that they still had it.

(Soundbite of applause)

MOBY GRAPE: (Singing) ...(Unintelligble) a lifetime. The birds sing and days
begin. The heaven will shine from dawn to dusk with golden rays of sun.
People on their way beginning a brand-new day. Out of heaven, people say it's
a beautiful day today. People in...

WARD: The band went on tour but the end was nigh. After returning from
Europe, Bob Mosley quit the band and joined the Marines. Matthew Katz, now
their ex-manager, was suing them, claiming he owned the name and put another
band on the road using it. The remaining trio went to Nashville and cut one
more album, but it was just to fulfill their contract. And after that, Moby
Grape pretty much expired. Too bad. Few bands at the time had that elusive
mixture of pop and hard rock and with one break and maybe one or two parties
fewer, they wouldn't have ended as a footnote.

BIANCULLI: Ed Ward lives in Berlin.

We have a correction to make. Earlier this week, in an interview with
psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton in a question which meant to explore the
torture and persecution of Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, we referred to an
Iraqi warehouse containing hundreds of coffins and sets of humans remains.
However, recent investigations by the American Army revealed that these bodies
appeared to be those of Iranian soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq war and
that the conditions of the remains seemed to be consistent with combat deaths,
not war crimes. We were not up to date on these findings when we broadcast
our interview with Dr. Lifton and regret the error in this reference.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.