Biting the bullet

When words alone weren't enough to drive home his point, Ben Franklin grabbed for the inkpot and sketch pad. He drew a snake severed into eight pieces. "Join or die," said the caption, a play on the superstition that a snake would survive if its pieces were put together before sundown. Franklin labeled the sections of the creature as states; -- the drawing was an argument for a union of states.

Published on May 9, 1754, in the Philadelphia Gazette, this is believed to be the first political cartoon in an American newspaper.

In the 250 years since, of course, Franklin's united states prospered. So did the single-panel editorial cartoon as a fixture of American newspapers, but no longer. The new millennium has brought a decline in grand tradition of punctuating our civic debates with a splash of ink in the face.

The number of cartoonists employed full time at newspapers is shrinking. Simultaneously, what some see as the inconsequential "joke" cartoon threatens to supplant the bared fangs of the Franklin-style "argument" cartoon.

Although casual newspaper readers may hardly notice the trend amid the larger whirlwinds of the media revolution, those who study and practice the art of editorial cartooning ask themselves whether this is one of those emerging signposts of the times worthy of pause and reflection. Just what might we be losing, anyway?

"When I go to a gathering of editorial cartoonists, I feel like I'm at a convention of buggy-whip makers in the 1920s," said Stephen Hess, senior fellow emeritus of the Brookings Institution and coauthor of "Drawn & Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons," a 1996 book from which the Franklin anecdote was taken.

Like others who relish the political sass of editorial cartoons, Hess described himself as "damned mad" at the turn of events in contemporary newspapers. At the same time, though, he remained vaguely hopeful that the Internet will manage, somehow, someday, some way, to salvage the art.

After all, he noted, those who are really hungry for cartoons can feast on them for hours a day, thanks to the Web. For instance, a tour through Daryl Cagle's website at Slate magazine, http://cagle.slate.msn.com, brings the world's cartoonists online, by topic or by artist -- collections that are variously moving, zany, incendiary, celebratory and hilarious. Assembled like this, cartoons have a punchy, cartoon-like way of making the argument for their own value in America's civic conversation.