"Boss" Tweed, corrupt Tammany chief of the 1860s, raised little objection when muckraking reporters prowled city hall. What the papers wrote had no meaning, Tweed liked to boast; his constituency was illiterate. The only criticism that ever bothered or threatened him, the Boss confessed, was "them damn pictures."
Thomas Nast's editorial cartoons were worth fearing; the savage caricatures showed Tweed variously as a vulture, a bag of money and, when Nast had sufficiently aroused the civic conscience, a felon in prison stripes.
A century of history has brought little change. Corruption is still ubiquitousbut so, happily, is the editorial cartoon, grinning out from...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
