Virtual Memories - season 3 episode 6 - Cartoon Character
"Political cartoonists have it easy: we turn on the TV or computer and Sarah Palin has said some inane thing . . . and the cartoons can write themselves. In the world of cartooning, we're the lazy bastards."
Matt Wuerker, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, joins The Virtual Memories Showto talk about his career (including his fascinating non-comics work and his prescient move to the online world with POLITICO), the experience of winning "the Academy Award for cartoonists", his artistic and political influences, what it takes to get on the NRA's Enemies List, the opportunities for editorial cartoonists in a post-print world, how his parents felt about his decision to become a cartoonist, whether he had it easier during the Bush/Cheney era or the Tea Party era, and why he thinks the golden age of cartooning is still ahead of us!
"One of the great cosmic quandaries for cartoonists is that what's bad for the world is great for cartooning."
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out our archives for more great talks!
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About our Guest
Matt Wuerker has been POLITICO's editorial cartoonist and illustrator since its launch in 2007. In 2012, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, POLITICO's first Pulitzer win. In 2009, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning. Over the past 25 years, his work has appeared in publications ranging from The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times to Smithsonian and the Nation, among many others. Along the way, he's also pursued other artistic tangents that have included claymation, outdoor murals, teaching cartooning in prison (as a visitor, not as an inmate), book illustration and animating music videos. Matt thinks Saul Steinberg is a cartoon god and the Peter Principle explains pretty much everything, and he also thinks the maxim "If you're not confused, you're just not thinking clearly" is one of the wisest things ever said. Matt lives in Washington, D.C., in close proximity to the National Zoo and the Swiss Embassy. Depending how bad things get, he hopes to find asylum in one or the other.
Credits: This episode’s music is Nobody's Home by Ulrich Schnauss. The conversation was recorded at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C., on a pair of AT2020 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. I recorded the other material on a Samson Meteor Mic USB Studio Microphone into Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memory Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and you are listening to a podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. Now, one of the great things about being me, or at least having the job that I have, which is editor of a pharmaceutical trade magazine, is that people like to take me places. In this case, early in March, a company decided to put me up in the Hay Adams Hotel, which is one of the ritziest hotels in Washington, D.C., for a day and a half press event. They wanted to give us a bunch of presentations, show us a facility they bought, and do some Q&A. Who am I to turn something like that down? Usually, whenever I have business travel, I try and leverage that into some sort of podcast opportunity. And as it turns out, I came up with two good interviews for the day and a half or two days that I was in Washington. So I feel pretty good about that. And you're gonna get to listen to one of them today. Sadly, it's not one that I was hoping to get going into this trip. Originally, I had planned to interview the cartoonist, Richard Thompson of, well, Coldusack is his comic strip, and he used to do poor Richard's almanac. And we were gonna talk about some of the health issues he's had, which he's talked about publicly, or written about publicly. But unfortunately, those weren't gonna permit him to actually sit down and speak for half hour to an hour with me. So I was a little disappointed when he had to cancel a week or so before this trip. But while I was writing down on the Asala, because the client figured I should get the nicest train ride possible down to D.C., Richard emailed to tell me that he thought maybe I'd be interested in interviewing his friend, the cartoonist Matt worker, who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2012, and seemed to have some time available Monday afternoon to record. So Richard being the nicest guy in the world, I took him up on his offer, emailed Matt, set up a session. And we met in the basement bar of the Hay Adams, which it really is a phenomenal, phenomenal hotel. I got to sit directly below one of Matt's cartoons on the wall at the bar, which was festooned with caricatures by Richard Thompson. Also, it turns out this is a cartoonist scam. You do caricatures and cartoons for the bar. They give you a tab. It all adds up to the stereotype of drunken cartoonists. Anyway, I got a great interview in with Matt, and only downside was that, basically, I had to head out to Fancy Pants dinner with the clients who were bringing me down to Washington, so we didn't have enough time to really get into all the conversational points that I thought of after we had split up and I headed off to dinner. According to his bio, Matt worker has been Politico's editorial cartoonist and illustrator since its launch, and in 2012, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, which was also Politico's first Pulitzer win. In 2009, he was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the same category. Over the past 25 years, his work has appeared in publications ranging from the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the New York Times, to Smithsonian and the Nation, among many others. Along the way, he's also pursued other artistic tangents that have included claymation, outdoor murals, teaching cartoon in prison as a visitor, and not as an inmate, he takes pains that we should know that, book illustration, and animating music videos. We hit it off pretty well, and like I said, I'm just disappointed we didn't have more time to talk. (upbeat music) - My guest today on the virtual memory show is Matt worker, the lead editorial cartoonist for Politico, Politico website. - We just call it Politico. - We're like Share, we're like Madonna, it's Politico. - And he is the third Pulitzer Prize winner who's appeared on the show. Congratulations on your Pulitzer and editorial cartoon. - Thank you, thank you very much. Actually, let's start with that. How did it feel to win a Pulitzer? - You know, it's an overused term, but it felt utterly surreal. It felt completely surreal to find yourself in that situation, especially for a cartoonist, 'cause it's sort of the, I guess it's the Academy Award of Cartooning. And I spent 25 years working as a freelancer before I ended up getting the job at Politico, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would even be a finalist or anything for something like the Pulitzer. - And tell me about how you got your start in cartooning. - I started cartooning way, way, way back when in the 1970s, and I grew up in Los Angeles and fell under the spell of Paul Conrad, who was one of the great titans of political cartooning. Conrad was drawing for the LA Times through the 60s and 70s, and he had the distinction of being the only cartoonist to make Nixon's enemies list. And it just so happens that my mom was in the League of Women Voters with Paul's wife, Kay. And I was a guy that liked to doodle and draw, and I started paying attention to what he was doing. And then when he got on Nixon's enemies list, I sort of sat up and went, "Wait, wait, wait. "This guy's sitting around, he's drawing cartoons, "and he gets the attention of the President of the United States, "who actually hates his guts and puts him on an enemies list. "How do you do that?" And then I started paying closer attention to the craft. - Did you get on anybody's good? - Enemy list? - No, in fact, it's terrible because just in the last month or so, the NRA divulged that they have an enemies list. And they put it actually on the NRA website. - Really? - Yeah, and it was writers, it was-- - Oh, so Tikrita ended up on that list, that's right. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was one of these deals where you sit there and I so wanted to be on that list. And they were like, I believe maybe 15, 18. I can't remember the total number of cartoonists who made the list. There was a good number of cartoonists, but I, alas, was not one. But I've seen the number of your Second Amendment comics. You would think you've earned that position. - I'm doubling down, I'm gonna make the next list. I really, really wanna make the next list. - And besides Paul Conrad, who do you consider your influences and your cartooning style? - In my style, I'm kind of odd in that my style is really anachronistic. I'm a throwback to the 19th century. I like people like A.B. Foster and T.S. Solomon, Thomas Nast, of course. In the 19th century crosshatching school, I just love the balloon head and the crazy exaggerated animals and all that kind of stuff. I really got into my skin in terms of the graphic quality of the way I draw. Politically, a guy named Cobb, who was drawing in the 60s for the alternative press, Ron Cobb, was also influential. Another guy who'd like to overwork with his crosshatching and all that stuff. And then humorously or politically, Pat Olafent, who's still doing great stuff and was doing great stuff back, starting in the 50s, was a big influence too. - Yeah, how difficult is it to sustain a career in editorial cartooning? Or is there always good material out there? - There's always good material. I mean, there's really always good material. I'm mystified by the cartoonists who do the dog and the cat comic strip stuff. Those guys are kind of amazing and gals. I mean, the idea that you get up week after week, month after month, year after year, and you figure out something to do with a dog and the cat. - And you'd never pitched a-- - I worked on a comic strip way back when. But political cartoonists, we have it easy because we just have to turn on the television or open the newspaper. And Sarah Palin has said some and ain't thing. Or Antonin Scalia has talked about racial entitlement. And the cartoons kind of write themselves. I mean, we're actually really, in the world of cartooning, we're the lazy bastards 'cause we just sit there and let other people come up with the ideas and we just sort of do them back 'cause cartoons. It's a fairly easy gig. - You mentioned being a heavy duty cross-hatcher. It does take up an awful lot of time. How do you balance that with the demands for actually getting a strip out or a panel out regularly? - You know, it's funny. I mean, another way I think I'm anachronistic is that I really think a lot of the cartooning, the power of a cartoon is the visual appeal of it, the graphic humor of it and stuff. And there was a period of time, maybe in the 80s and 90s when cartoonists were sort of going the other way and the cartooning became much more about just the joke and very sort of primitive lines. And I think in the age of the internet with iPads and iPhones and bright colors and retina displays and stuff like that, graphically really rich cartoons are coming back. So I invest a lot of time in the drawing. I'll spend maybe four hours drawing a cartoon and I use color when I'm doing this stuff for Politico. And so the watercolor and the cross-hatcher takes a lot of time and I just love it. And once I've got the, as a cartoonist, once you've got the concept and the idea worked out, it's mostly a visual activity. So I put on my headphones and I listen to podcasts and I listen to the radio. And it's a really pleasurable, or music, you know, it's a very pleasurable way to spend your time. - Now I was reading an interview with you earlier in the one day of preparation that I did. From what I gather, you're still a pen and ink guy. How has technology improved or changed, you know, anything about the way you've been doing your cartooning? - Photoshop is a wonderful thing for correcting things. I mean, graphically, if you make a mistake or you want to rework a part of an image, it's easy to go in digitally and fix it. But I'm a contrarian in that a lot of cartoonists are going purely digital. There's a lot of people who work on these. There's a way come tablet that a lot of people use. It's basically a high def iPad. And you draw up the stylus and you can work in layers and there's many undo buttons and all those things. And the power of the technology is astounding. But there's compromises that you make when you're working that way. And when you're working pen and ink on watercolor paper and you're using paints, you kind of have to just do it. And whatever happens happens. And sometimes the ink will run and sometimes the watercolor will bleed. And those are all sort of generally happy mistakes. And if they're really bad, then you start over. Or you correct them in Photoshop. But I think that there's a lot to be said for the painterly quality of it. And then at the end, the other advantage is that you end up with an artifact. I mean, you actually end up with a painting. And the digital people end up with little files on their MacBooks. Like all my little podcast files that I occasionally miss me. Those little blue squares. It's so much nicer to have a painting. Now you're not a complete Luddite, though. You did make a transition online of the decision to make that move pretty early compared to a lot of other cartoonists out there. Yeah, I was very fortunate that way. I mean, in terms of Politico being a website and everything. Yeah, no, I was very lucky that way. And it's a strange fix. I mean, I'm a square peg in a round hole in some ways. I have done a fair amount of work and animation over my career. I mean, surviving as a freelance cartoonist, you end up sort of having to take various gigs. I worked on music videos back in the '80s, and learned animation. Anything we'd-- I'm a big 1980s music geek, so-- The first one I worked on was a Paul Simon from Graceland video. I was a designer animator for "The Boy in the Bubble." Oh, wow. With my friends, Jim Blashfield did. That's a great one. It was great. Yeah. It was really, really great. And I had worked in "Climation" in Portland, Oregon, where I went to college. And the "Climation" studio, Will Vinton's studio, was in the same building as Jim Blashfield's studio. And then Jim started doing music videos for Talking Heads and other people. And he needed to corral a bunch of animators who would be willing to work 80 hours a week for a month or two to make these crazy MTV deadlines. And it was really fun. So we did Paul Simon. We did a Michael Jackson video. It was the last one I worked on was the "Leave Me Alone" video. It was the same sort of style that animation as I remember. That cutout, color, collage stuff. Insane. I mean, absolutely insane stuff. I mean, Jim created a system where you used dime store slide rules as registration devices on plywood animation stands. And we were animating with 35 millimeter Mitchell cameras. And so if you made mistakes, you just had to go back and you had to reanimate the whole thing. People have no idea in the digital age what old analog 35 millimeter animation meant. It was just hideous amount of work. Well, I consider it a plus. My day job, I don't have to do it anymore. I used to have to lay out the magazine myself also. We finally have an art department. But at least I came of age during quark. But you remember the pre-quark era? Luckily, I came in right after that. So you never held an exacto? You never got the hot wax burn on your fingers? Yeah, never had to do the cutting and the actual cutting and pasting. Slightly older than you, I go back to that. Yeah, I'm convinced I wouldn't have a job, basically. Because the magazine would look like it was made by a serial killer if I was trying desperately to get these lines right. So I think I'm quite aided by technology and find to have that crutch. Yeah, yeah. Boy, that quark. I guess that probably dates us. I wonder how many people even know what quark is. Oh, yeah, now they want to be in design. They have no idea what quark is. But everything is laid out by somebody else now, so I'm a much happier guy. Now, how does Politico compare to all the newspapers you've worked at as a working environment? What's it like or how's it different? Well, Politico's the first staff job I've ever had. And so I worked with lots of daily papers as a freelancer, which is a different thing. But the real beauty and wonderful for me at Politico is that I have fabulous editors who basically trust me and give me complete editorial freedom. So a lot of cartoonists who work for daily papers have to kind of broker the cartoon with their editors. And so they'll do three, four sketches. And the editor will sort of go, oh, I like that one better. But that's not there. Or none of those to try again, pal. And I don't get any of that at Politico. I write my bike into Politico. I have a couple of sketches. Maybe I'll show them to some people around the office. It's a great place to work. And it's a conventional newsroom. And I'm out in a cubicle sort of in the middle of the newsroom. And there's a lot of wonderful sort of serendipitous conversation that goes on around you. And you'll be looking at the television. And there'll be some news item breaking. And then some editors will walk by having a conversation about the thing that's breaking. And those two-- you connect those two dots. And you sort of go, oh, oh, there's a cartoon sort of thing. It's great, you know? How did moving to DC change your perspective on politics? You know, in lots of subtle ways and lots of sort of profound ways. I mean, I grew up on the West Coast. My wife and I moved here in 2000 for what we thought was going to just be a year or so. We were living in Portland at the time. And she does political work around Latin America. And it's actually much more serious about the political work than I am. And through Sarah's work, where she got to know members of Congress and was working on the Hill and doing things like that, you begin to meet some of the people who are sort of in the machinery of Washington. And it's a strange thing. I mean, I'd spent 25 years sort of thinking they're all a bunch of sellouts. They're all a bunch of idiots. And there are a lot of sellouts. And there are a lot of idiots. But there's also a lot of really good people who dedicate their lives to public service, who actually deserve a fair amount of respect. And there's a kind of-- I mean, for years, I'd done a lot of work for Lefty magazines and came out of the Chomsky School of the Whole Systems Broken. And there's no difference between Gore and Bush. And if only Ralph Nader was president. And then we discovered there were some differences. And then we discovered, yeah. And then there's some major, major differences and stuff. Yeah, exactly. And I think that the Left in America suffers a little bit from a standoffishness that is self-defeating. I mean, if you want to play politics, you got to get in the mock and you got to roll up your sleeves and maybe come to Washington and there's compromises and stuff. And sometimes those are bad, but a lot of the time they're necessary. And there's a lot of people in Washington, I really respect. Do you find yourself getting a little too even-handed, I guess, or a little-- Yeah, I got to dig this guy. No, no, I hope not. I hope not. But I think that there is probably that danger. I mean, being in Washington. It's not like I'm hanging out at the Cosmo Club or something like that and drinking drinks with Hanson and Scalia or something like that. That's not really going on. But you realize how hard these people work and also how hard it is to really affect change through the democratic system as compromised as it is. And the people that dedicate their lives to doing that deserve some respect. That's a terrible thing for a cartoonist to say. I know. That's what I'm saying. You might be too even-handed. I know, I know. This question should at least give you some ammunition. Was it easier? Cartooning during Bush Chaney or in the Tea Party era? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What gives you more material? Oh, man. Yeah, no, I don't. Well, one of the great cosmic quandaries for cartoonists is that what's bad for the world is great for cartooning. So I think that the Bush Chaney years were probably really the definition of Halcyon days for cartoonists, sort of in the same way probably the Nixon years were. When things are really, really going off the skids, the cartooning is rich and easy, and people are paying attention and are outraged. The Tea Party is problematic in some ways, because they kind of outstripped satire. I mean, a lot of satire relies on exaggeration. And with the Tea Party, you're just transcribing. What's the point of exaggeration? Or how do you caricature a Sarah Palin or whatever? That would be a good song, sort of like something from sound of music, how do you caricature a Sarah Palin? It's going to be the subject of yet another comic. Maybe, I don't know. There's something there. You mentioned your mother had a connection to Paul Conrad, at least. How did your parents feel about you becoming a cartoonist? My mom, I think, was always really supportive, and in some ways maybe nudged me in this direction, in an odd way. My father actually had a PhD in physics from Stanford, and I think that for most of my adult life, he was a little concerned about the son trying to, as he said, get by on his wits. Like, maybe you should go back and study something real, like the sciences or something like that. But eventually, he kind of came around and went, oh, you know? When I got the job at Politico, he actually said, well, you got a real job. That's good. But I'm sure that every freelancer in any field probably has to deal with that with their parents. I would figure. And did you have any affinity for the sciences at all? Or did you pretty much know the arts? I was always really fascinated by politics. I was really fascinated. I really like to draw. I like the arts and the logical singular intersection of the arts and politics is really political cartoony. Which of your peers do you, well, do you really respect or really appreciate it? No, none of them, none of them. We're a surly bunch. We all hate each other. Now, I'm actually the acting president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists. They're such a thing. And we're this weird conglomeration hodgepodge of cartoonists from all across the political spectrum. Some of us work for daily papers. Some of us work for websites. A lot of us are freelancers. Some of us are animators. Some are right. Some are left. Some are middle. Some are cross hatchers. And we all kind of get along. And it's a strange thing because you kind of-- I mean, there are people whose politics I just despise. But I really like them as individuals. And I also respect them as a cartoonist. I mean, as people who sort of have mastered this strange kind of craft, alchemy, whatever it is we do. So I don't know, to answer your question, Tom tomorrow, who's in charge of the cartoon stable at the Daily Coase, does just great work. And actually, all the people at the Daily Coase, Jen Sorensen, Matt Bors, Tom the Dancing Bug, great people who are kind of, I think, that particular group, I think, with the exception of myself, are really pushing the envelope and pushing cartooning into great new areas and playing with the form in great ways. How has the field changed, I guess, since you started? I mean, we talk about the internet transition, but-- The internet transition is probably the biggest. The other transition that's the biggest is that, once upon a time, sort of the obvious career path was, you go get a job at the LA Times or the Washington Post as a staff cartoonist and you get an office space and you do your five cartoons a week. And those jobs are going away as the newspaper industry contracts. And the biggest shift is everybody trying to figure out, OK, how do you do this freelance thing and how do you make a living selling individual cartoons to magazines or with web comics and things like that. And that transition, I think a lot of people, maybe five years ago, saw it coming and thought, well, this is going to happen over 20 years or something, as newspapers go away slowly. And newspapers aren't going away slowly, they're going away very quickly. And as their staffs contract, the bean counters are looking at the cartoonists and kind of going, well, we could save a lot of money by getting rid of that guy. And-- I just did it at the Bergen record by local paper. Yeah, yeah. So unfortunately, that part's going away. But we're a tenacious little species in the media landscape. And we're kind of an opportunistic parasite, as the metaphor that I like to use. And we're sort of like fleas or ticks or something. And for the last 200 years, we've had a really good ride on this really fat, juicy dog, the daily newspaper. But that dog is sort of old and sick and dying. And now, like any good opportunistic parasite, we have to find another host. And I think it's the internet. And I think that there's things on the internet. There are websites. I like to think that maybe Politico is a harbinger of things to come, in that there'll be political websites of all different stripes. They will see the value of having a staff cartoonist on it. And maybe that will become a rich-- even richer place for cartoonists to survive in the future. You never know. The problem for all journalists in every aspect of journalism, from writers to photojournalists and everybody, is trying to figure out how you monetize this content production activity. You're speaking in bullshit bingo terms. Yeah. And then we're going back to the .com era. That's what we had all of our monetizing unique content. Exactly, right. But what sort of advice, essentially, would you consider for a young cartoonist? Or would you basically tell them just stay out of this field? No, no, I think that-- I think the golden age of cartooning is still ahead of us. I think that the internet, as a platform, is completely unmatched by anything ever in the history of media and cartooning. And once we figure out this monetizing dilemma, there's nothing-- you can't beat it. The idea that people carry this device around in their pocket where I see a cartoon that I really, really like. And I want to share it with people. Once upon a time, that meant cutting it out of the paper and sticking it with a magnet on your refrigerator door and whoever went through your kitchen got to see it. Now, you've got this thing in your pocket. And you go, shit, that's great. That's dead on. That's exactly what I wanted. Was thinking about Antonin Scalia, whoever it is. And being you send it off to your Facebook friends, then they send it their Facebook friends. And the number of eyeballs has never been matched. The trick is getting paid for the eyeballs that enjoy your work. And then on top of that, there's a million different ways you can create a cartoon. I mean, you can create a static cartoon. You can do it in black and white. You can do it in color. You can do animation. We played around the beginning of Politico with some interactive cartoons that were little games. They were basically a political cartoon that you could play, like I did a duck hunting game with Sarah Palin guarding the northern frontier. And she was standing on a beach in Alaska looking across at Russia. And as the missiles came over, you could shoot the Russian missiles out. But it was a little Sarah Palin with a shotgun. And you played it. And you could keep score. So again, I mean, the internet, the possibilities are kind of endless. And do you have a what's next? I mean, the Pulitzer is kind of a good peak to have there. No, no, it's a really good peak. I'm trying to sort of focus on what I've got, which is a really great venue of Politico. It's interesting, after a couple years of doing animation and these games and stuff, I'm circling back, I think, to the simple elegance of a static single-panel cartoon. And one of the arguments that we have in the cartoon tribe when we get together is there's people who think, oh, you know, cartoons where you have eight panels and lots of words are superior because you can make a better argument and all that kind of thing. There's a case to be made for that. And some of those cartoons are really, really brilliant. But there's something uniquely magical and powerful about a great single-panel image that's a combination of exaggeration and color and humor with a pithy political point. And it can be conveyed or received by the audience in maybe three seconds. And I think it's something that's unique to the cartoon. This is where the old saw about a picture's worth 1,000 words really comes through. And it's not just 1,000 words, it's also worth maybe 10 minutes of reading. So in our sort of attention deficit disorder age, that three-second nugget of political thought is a really valuable little trick. And I'm still working on it. I think you're doing a great job. And I hope you keep up the great work. Thanks. Thanks very much. Thanks so much for coming on The Virtual Memory Show. I appreciate your time. No, I appreciate it. [MUSIC PLAYING] And that was Matt Worker. You can find his cartoons regularly on politico.com. This has been The Virtual Memory Show. You can find past episodes on iTunes or in our archives at chimeraobscura.com, as well as virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
