‘One of the great journalists’
The Blockettes tell tales of Herblock’s eccentricity a little reluctantly. They want him to be remembered for his works rather than his quirks. Rickard, now executive director of the Herb Block Foundation, declares that her boss was “one of the great journalists of the 20th century.” This is a biased observer if ever there was one, but the claim is entirely reasonable.
From 1929 to 2001, Herblock published 18,000 cartoons on every conceivable newsworthy topic, winning the Pulitzer in 1942, 1954 and 1979. In 1973, he shared in the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism that was awarded to The Post for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.
If there was a unifying theme in Herblock’s work, says Bob Woodward, it was hypocrisy. Roger Wilkins, an editorial writer at The Post during the Watergate years and now a history professor at George Mason University, puts it this way: “He loved America and he loved sticking it to people who were unkind to America.”
Chief among the people Block “stuck it to,” of course, was Nixon — although Woodward insists that the best word for Block’s treatment of Nixon was that he “exposed” him. Block began exposing Nixon in 1948, when the future president began making a name for himself as a Commie-hunting congressman. A 1954 cartoon shows then-Vice President Nixon arriving at a campaign rally — via the town sewer.
Perhaps Block’s best-known Nixon cartoon is the one published within a week of the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building in 1972, which shows footprints leading to the White House. As usual, says Graham, “Herb was miles ahead of everyone else.”
In his memoir, Block recalls bumping into Katharine Graham, Donald’s mother and predecessor as The Post’s publisher, on his way through the newsroom with the footprints cartoon. She laughed when he showed her his latest creation, then said, “But you’re not going to print that, are you?” He was, in fact, on his way to the engraver. Graham did not try to stop him. He had earned that degree of independence.
The other leading figure in Herblock’s rogues’ gallery was Sen. Joseph McCarthy. A 1950 cartoon shows a Republican elephant being pushed toward a rickety platform of tar buckets labeled “McCarthyism” — the first published use of that term. At a time when many public figures were afraid to challenge McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade lest they be tarred with the same brush, Herblock did what he always did: He got out his own brush.
But more striking than the cartoons that were pegged to a particular historical moment are the issue-oriented ones — on the environment, gun control, misplaced spending priorities, American dependence on foreign oil and the corrupting influence of money in politics — that would still be timely if they appeared in tomorrow’s newspaper.
‘Helped build the paper’
Herblock lived simply. He’d get the chicken tetrazzini at The Post cafeteria for lunch, refrigerate what he didn’t eat and have the rest for dinner. He didn’t own a car. He didn’t hobnob with Washington’s movers and shakers. He never had a family. And he died with $50 million — an astonishing sum for an ink-stained wretch.
You might say Herblock came to The Washington Post at the right time. He acquired stock in the company when it wasn’t worth much and reaped the benefits when the company prospered. But it wasn’t just luck. “Herb helped build the paper, and the paper helped build a fortune for him,” Donald Graham says.
When Herblock died, he distributed a chunk of that fortune to a host of charities and nonprofit organizations that he believed in.
The rest went to the founding of the Herb Block Foundation, which is dedicated to defending civil liberties, battling discrimination, helping the underprivileged get educations — and keeping alive the art of the editorial cartoon.
Accepting the annual Herblock Prize from the Herb Block Foundation in 2005, Tony Auth disputed the notion that Block had no children.
“That’s not quite right,” said Auth, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. “There is not a political cartoonist in America who has not been influenced by Herblock. We are all his children.”
Frank is associate professor of communications at Penn State University and consultant to the Library of Congress for its Herblock Oral History Project.
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