Pat Oliphant on Berke Breathed winning the Pulitzer Prize for Bloom County

This year, as you're keenly aware, the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning was awarded to a highly derivative-shall I say sophomoric? —comic strip which as far as I know has never appeared on one editorial page in this country. The work makes no pretense of being an editorial cartoon. It's on the funny pages.

It does, however, make the pretense of passing off shrill potty jokes, crotch jokes, and grade school sight gags as social commentary. The Pulitzer Board was wrong, dead wrong, to overrule the nominating committee in selecting this year's winner. There were three legitimate editorial cartoonists placed in nomination, but the Board overruled them and selected the darling of the gift shop merchandisers and the readers of People magazine. This year Bloom County, next year Garfield! By their action the Pulitzer Board has completely debased the prestige of an award that has for years symbolized the best that graphic commentary, opinion, and political information have to offer. It was a slap in the face to the legacy of the dedicated opinion shapers that have previously won the award--Herblock, Conrad, Mauldin, MacNelly, Fischetti, Auth-—I could go on.

Gucci, it seems, is now being sold at K-Mart, and Laverne and Shirley has been awarded an Emmy for the best in television news. This is a pathetic situation.

...

For all the right reasons concerning our role in a free press, making clear and concise contributions to the debate and discussion on the issues of the day, I believe we cartoonists as a group have an obligation to make a tangible demonstration of disapproval of the Pulitzer Board. Let us review four options. First option, a collective boycott of the Pulitzer. I've done this personally for years [by not submitting cartoons for review], and I don't think it works. It would never work for a variety of reasons, not the least of them being that it would provoke the Board to can our whole category. In 1973, a year when any cartoonist you could name was doing great work on Watergate, the Pulitzer Board decided in its arrogance that the quality of the work was not up to their standards. They declined to bestow any award for editorial cartooning, a stunt they've pulled five times since the award was established.

[and it won't be the last time]

...

The third option, and maybe the best of all, is to recommend that the Pulitzer powers create a new category for the awards, that award being for comic strips, the Pulitzer empire having been built on comic strips anyway. The Board people will sniff and patiently explain that such a provision is not in their charter. Their charter indeed. May we remind them that the charter states that the award for cartoonist specifically be given for work that "embodies an idea...and shall be intended to be helpful to some commendable cause of public importance," a standard which Bloom County probably doesn't fulfill. And, by God, in 1976 the name of the category was changed with all due deliberation from cartoons to editorial cartoons. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a scam. The fourth option is to do nothing. If that be the case, ladies and gentlemen, nothing is precisely what our reward will be. Then we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves. Thank you very much.

Breathed's reply: A few weeks after Oliphant's speech, Breatheed sent him this note which was reprinted along with Oliphant's reply in Target: The Political Cartoon Quarterly #24: Poor Pat. Such an immense talent stuffed into such a little, little man. A chap with the dubious class to consistently deride the work of his colleagues... many of whom consider him to be the greatest political cartoonist alive.

At any rate, dear Patrick, I haven't the foggiest notion as to why you dislike me (and others) so terribly much, but I shall grant you the opportunity to punch me in the nose, as I shall be doing just that to you the next time we meet. Lord knows, it's high time somebody did.

I only wish that I had been there to witness what must have been the most magnificent display of sour grapes ever to be recorded within the known universe. Such moral outrage! Such righteous indignation! Led by the chief bull goose himself, puffing and blowing with disgust and insults. What I don't understand is how you all don't realize how frightfully funny this business is! Where's that resolution to urge the Pulitizer folks from straying over to the comic page again? I want to sign the damn thing!

Oliphant's response: Who called him a colleague? I think he should be sent to clean up his room.