Pat Oliphant (July 24, 1935 – July 13, 2026)

Pat Oliphant, one of the greatest political cartoonists of his generation, has died. He skewered everybody including the rich and the famous. Presidents from Nixon to Reagan to the Bushes to Clinton and Obama saw themselves rendered as cartoon characters. Although he retired in 2015, he came out of retirement to draw two noncomplimentary cartoons of Trump. No one, it seemed, was safe from his pen — not even Margaret Thatcher. “You’re not doing your job if you’re not ticking people off,” he once said, and tick people off he did. He was fond of Ronald Reagan, yet that didn’t stop him from lampooning the president. 

Although Oliphant leaned left, he didn’t spare the left either — he depicted Obama as an Easter Island head worshipped by voters.

No kings? He drew Bill and Hillary Clinton as a king and a queen. He drew Bill Clinton saying he didn’t inhale and Hillary with a Pinocchio nose.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee branded two of his cartoons as racist. The Catholic League called him “one of the most viciously anti-Catholic editorial cartoonists ever to have disgraced the pages of American newspapers.” One particularly brutal cartoon, “Celebration of Spring at St. Pedophilia’s — the Annual Running of the Altar Boys,” drew condemnation from Catholics, and the New York Times, Washington Post, and other papers chose not to print it. Another cartoon depicted Michael Jackson wanting to join the priesthood.

Yes, his cartoons were sometimes met with hostility and dismay, but if he cared, he never showed it. Knoxville was fortunate to have Charlie Daniel as its resident cartoonist for many years and like Daniel there are plenty of editorial

cartoonists working today. But standing in the tradition of Oliphant and Herb Block before him is Michael Ramirez, who is every bit as fearless. Ramirez’s work sometimes goes unpublished by the mainstream media — I suspect because he’s an unapologetic conservative. He draws for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and can be found on the internet. The mainstream media and the left were especially incensed when he depicted Hamas using babies as human shields. And many refused to publish it. Ramirez calls it one of his best pieces of work.

Conservative though he is, Ramirez doesn’t spare his fellow conservatives either.

Cartoonists like Oliphant are rare. But Ramirez carries that mantle well.

https://michaelramirez.substack.com