Against the Grain: Bombthrowing in the Fine American Tradition of Political Cartooning

Editorial cartoonists are an endangered species, and even in their heyday they were rare birds—at the top ranks of print journalism, only a few hundred such jobs existed worldwide in the 20th century. Yet those who wielded the drawing pen had enormous influence and popularity as they caricatured news events and newsmakers into "ink-drenched bombshells" that often said more than the accompanying news stories. Bill Sanders, working in a liberal tradition that stretches back to Thomas Nast and in more recent times includes Herblock, Oliphant, Feiffer, and Trudeau, began his career in the Eisenhower era and is still drawing in the age of Trump. In Against the Grain, he shares the upbringing and experiences that prepared him to inflict his opinions on the readers of the three major newspapers he worked for, the 100-plus papers he was syndicated in, and now, an internet channel.

Sanders's memoir is both personal and political. He reveals his small-town Southern roots, his athletic exploits and military service, his courtship and enduring marriage, and his life-long passion for music. These threads are woven into his main narrative, explaining how a cartoonist works and why: "The cartoon should be a vehicle for opinion and it should be polemical in nature—otherwise, it is a waste of time."

Along the way he shares vignettes about people he encountered and events he witnessed, illustrated here with a few photos and scores of the cartoons he produced to meet daily newspaper deadlines. He notes that while a cartoon is a simple communication, it is based on reading and research, and only then comes the drawing. Finally, there is this:

"While there may be—to varying degrees—two sides to some issues, don't bother looking for that posture on the following pages."

While political cartoonist Bill Sanders’s book may be a memoir, it is primarily a chronicle of his brushes with history during the era that stretched from the presidency of John Kennedy to that of Barack Obama—and of his good fortune to have had personal contact with some of the major actors on the political and social stage.
After briefly telling of his roots in Tennessee, Florida, and Kentucky and how he became a cartoonist, Sanders leads the reader on a guided tour—illustrated with photos and his cartoons—through the headlines of the last half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

Following World War Two, the “between” generation entered the young adult world of the early 1950s. It was a time of panty raids, Levittown, Dixieland jazz, early rock and roll, and television’s coming of age. It was a time when “war” morphed into “conflicts” and Korea took some from this transitional generation to their graves, calling into question the United States’ role as a global power.

As the era unfolded, the cold war and civil rights challenged Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Meanwhile, extremism found regional traction in the John Birch Society, the Minute Men, the bombast of Southern demagogues, and Barry Goldwater’s campaign. LBJ redeemed the national pledge on civil rights but was diverted into the swamp of Vietnam’s civil war where his political career perished. Richard Nixon then rose like Lazarus and eventually truncated the Vietnam War, but his personal demons led to the corruption of Watergate.

Bookended by the Jimmy Carter and George Bush I interludes, the carefully constructed myth of Ronald Reagan closed the door to progressive taxation, caged the regulatory watchdogs, and flowed massive wealth to the 1%. Stained by Monicagate and hindered by the Blue Dogs, Bill Clinton did not reverse this course. Then came the age of preemptive war and torture after the Supreme Court elected George Bush II by a 5–4 vote. Dubya and his fellow neocon draft dodgers—aided by a new age of partisan TV pundits and internet bloggers and an arthritic print media—lied and deceived the American public into an unjustified war of aggression. On the other hand, a new era began with the election of Barack Obama, the hijacking of the Republican Party by a coalition of rich white men and Tea Party fanatics, and the Supreme Court’s awarding of “personhood.”
All in all, the era has been a cartoonist’s feast.