Clemson University TigerPrints Monographs Clemson University Digital Press 2006 Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South: A Memoir and Cartoon Retrospective Kate Salley Palmer Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cudp_mono Recommended Citation Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South: A Memoir and Cartoon Retrospective, by Kate Salley Palmer (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2006), x+188 pp. Paper. ISBN 0-977-1263-4-x This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Clemson University Digital Press at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in Monographs by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Growing Up Cartoonist in the BABY-BOOM SOUTH For JIM MCKINNEY and AUBREY BOWIE, who weren’t afraid to take a chance or to take the heat for my work. Their lives would have been less complicated without me, but I’d never have developed as a cartoonist without them. I hope they know how much I miss them. Growing Up Cartoonist in the BABY-BOOM SOUTH A MEMOIR AND CARTOON RETROSPECTIVE by Foreword by Richard W. Riley CLEMSON UNIVERSITY DIGITAL PRESS 2006 A full-text digital version of this book is available on the Internet, in addition to other works of the press and the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, including The South Carolina Review and The Upstart Crow:A Shakespeare Journal. See our Web site at http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp, or call the director at 864-656-5399 for information. Publication of Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South was aided by a grant from The Caroline McKissick Dial Publication Fund, South Caroliniana Library, The University of South Carolina. Copyright 2006 by Clemson University ISBN 0-9771263-4-x Published by Clemson University Digital Press at the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Produced at the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing using Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, Quark XPress 6.5, and Microsoft Word 2000. This book is set in Garamond and was printed by University Printing Services, Office of Publications and Promotional Services, Clemson University. Editing and layout at the press by Charis Chapman. To order copies, contact the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Strode Tower, Box 340522, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0522. An order form is available at the digital press Web site (see above) under “Publications” and linked to the online edition of the book. CLEMSON UNIVERSITY DIGITAL PRESS iv Table of Contents Foreword . .xi Acknowledgments . .xiii Part One What Are Little Cartoonists Made of? Introduction . .1 One: Rivelon and Stalin’s Dead . .7 Two: Daydreaming and Piddling . .17 Three: The Pitfalls of Potential . .21 Four: Strom and Frankfurters . .29 Five: Terrible Tom and the Boys . .35 Six: Kickoff . .41 Part Two Adventures in Political Cartooning: The Greenville news (and beyond) Seven: First and Ten—The Greenville News 1975-1980 . .49 Eight: Cartoonist’s Conventions . .61 Nine: What Kind of Pen Do You Use? . .71 Ten: THE CARTOONS . .77 National . .81 State . .133 Eleven: No, I’m on the Editorial Page . .165 Twelve: Resigning for “Health Reasons” . .171 Thirteen: Fourth and Long—Time to Punt . .177 Fourteen: Postscript—Campaign News You Didn’t Hear . .185 v Foreword by Richard W. Riley Governor Riley’s 1983 “State of the State” address. ate Palmer’s political cartoons are great—that is, if they are about someone else. At any rate, they justify a look into her life. Where did this free and caring and funny spirit come K from? What was her family like? Were they also contrarians? Kate Palmer’s career at The Greenville News coincided with mine as governor of South Carolina. During that time, she drew many unflattering pictures of me and my political colleagues. Why, then, should I write a positive foreword to her book? Well, I probably shouldn’t. But I find all good political cartoonists to be interesting and, whether you agree with her or not, Kate Palmer is interesting. She is what we in the South call “a character.” Thus, she enjoys exposing to the world her cartoon characters in their most vulnera- ble light. And she makes a clear and biting comment in the process. She calls herself a satirist, which she defines as a “professional smartass.” Most of her subject characters would agree with that definition. To tell the truth, I couldn’t turn Kate down when I read in the draft of this book that she had written in such endearing terms about two of my wonderful friends of times gone by. Jim McKinney, former editor-in-chief of The Greenville News, and Aubrey Bowie, former assistant edi- tor, are deceased now. But they were editorial writers of the highest caliber. They had to be near-saints to put up with Kate and her “take-it-to-the-edge” cartoons. Kate dedicates her book to them, and for that I am grateful. vii Also, Kate, in all of her challenge to the status quo, makes a pictorial comment that is humor- ous and serious at the same time. One can disagree totally with her editorial comment but still understand clearly, and in an instant, what she is saying—and then the reader quietly chuckles. As Kate indicates, she wanted to be a teacher and she surely would have been a very inter- esting one. But she says she flunked the admittance test to the School of Education. (I doubt that.) At any rate, had she become a teacher, she probably would have passed any contrarian stu- dent with flying colors. After you read this book and chuckle at some of the outrageous political cartoons, I hope you will take from Kate Palmer, the person, a belief in the power of a free society where editori- al expression is brutally honest. viii Acknowledgments t took me twenty years to write this book. Most of the chapters had already been written when, five or six years ago, a doctor told me that I had attention deficit disorder and offered I me medication. I did have a hard time working, but I ignored it until early 2005, when I read the book Driven to Distraction—about ADD in adults. The case studies in that book floored me. “Whoa,” I thought—“I just wrote a book like this!” So I went back to the doctor to report that I had ADD, and he reminded me that he had already said that—and again offered medication. So— I would like to thank the makers of Ritalin, without which this book would never have been fin- ished. It was then too late for me to go back through the whole book to include my newfound enlightenment, so I left it the way it was—it’s probably more interesting that way, anyway. My heartfelt gratitude goes to the young, brilliant, and patient Charis Chapman, my editor at the Clemson University Digital Press. She does exactly what a good editor is supposed to do: she figures out what you are trying to say, and helps you say it more coherently. Everything good about this book is because of her. Oh—and thanks to Charis’s dad, Wayne Chapman, who heads up the Clemson University Digital Press—he saw potential in this cartoon retrospective, and I’m grateful to him for taking it on. I thank my parents for reading tirelessly to me and to my siblings, and for keeping a weird assortment of books in our home. We had Anna Karenina, lots of Mark Twain, Helen’s Babies, Experiment Perilous, Little Women, and tons of Agatha Christie mysteries. We also had a two-volume set of 1906 encyclopedias that asserted (among other things) that “the atom is the smallest parti- cle of matter and cannot be split.” My favorite book was a 1933 edition of Don Marquis’s The Life and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, illustrated by the great cartoonist George Herriman. I love its dedication page: dedicated to babs with babs knows what and babs knows why Thanks to Dot Yandle, former editor of Clemson’s The Messenger, who first hired me as an editorial cartoonist in 1972 (I got fired after she left), and who read the initial concept of this col- lection in 1986. That version, written while I was still grieving for my Greenville News job, came off as more than a bit whiney. Dot criticized it brutally—and she was right. I think one of her sug- gestions was: “Get over it.” I thank her for her honesty. Dot’s daughter, Kathryn Smith, former editor of The Anderson Independent-Mail, ran my cartoons for a while during the late 1980s and later suggested that I try a humorous political column (like “South Carolina’s Molly Ivins”) for that paper. The assignment resulted in my 1994 election night essay, “We Held a Gubernatorial Election and Elected a Goober.” That one essay proved to be the first and last in the planned “series”—at the request of the paper—but I thank Kathryn for her support all the way. I must also express my gratitude to Neil Calkin for his careful reading of the first draft of Growing Up Cartoonist and for his suggestions and encouragement. Thanks go also to Lucy Rollin, Ross Cornwell, and Don McKale—good friends and respected writers who were kind enough to read early versions of this manuscript and make helpful comments. I am deeply grateful to George Booth, one of my favorite cartoonists, who allowed me to use a cartoon of his in this book, even after I confessed to him that I try to copy his style all the ix time.