Cartoon exhibit on display at Firestone

In fact, he said, “political cartoons tend to be most effective when they are negative in portrayal.”

A historian and journalism professor at Rutgers, Greenberg demonstrated to an audience of community members in McCormick 101 on Sunday afternoon how political cartoons are a medium for rampant partisanship and controversy.

“It is meaningless to talk about them giving offense,” he said. “The whole idea is to spark controversy and make people think twice.”

Greenberg’s talk is the opening event for an exhibit featuring cartoons about presidential elections from 1828 to 1992. Titled “Sketching Their Characters: 150 Years of Political Cartoons From Andrew Jackson to George H.W. Bush,” it will be on display in Firestone’s Milberg Gallery until Jan. 4.

The ability of cartoons to stir controversy is what makes them unique as a political medium, Greenberg said, explaining that “cartoonists can comment on media’s role in a way the media cannot.”

To illustrate this, Greenberg showed cartoons that hinted at the role of media in fueling “Obama-mania” around Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) by portraying him with celestial images.

“The greatest cartoons are ones that need few, if any, words to explain them,” he added.

The slides that Greenberg flipped through consisted of political cartoons from the 1860s to the present. Political cartoons rose to prominence during the Civil War because the controversial nature of the war was conducive to this medium, he explained.

Examining old cartoons can help us understand the thematic ties between past elections and the present one, he noted. Greenberg highlighted the central role of woman voters both following passage of the 19th Amendment and in the current election, as the campaigns of both Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have focused on wooing the former supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).

“Some have said the 2008 election has been the dirtiest campaign in all of history,” Greenberg said. “Historians would call that notion ‘presentism.’ This has been historically tame.”

Greenberg showed more recent cartoons with contrasting images of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) as either bright and perky, or in a moose hunt with “her combination of high heels and snow shoes.”

A team of University curators that included Daniel Linke, Jennifer Cole and Daniel Santamaria put the exhibit together.

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“We really wanted people to come from the exhibits and not have a sense of presentism,” Linke said in an interview.

Set against newly painted red walls, the exhibit features newspaper exhibits and mostly black-and-white print cartoons. Cole, who was seeing the exhibit for the first time after Sunday’s lecture, said she thought the dark background was a good choice to bring out the cartoons.

In picking the pieces for the exhibit, Linke said that the three “tried to think about pieces that really tied into what was happening in the present election.”

Linke pointed to two exhibits from the 1904 election in which both major parties were pursuing independent voters, a strategy employed by Obama and McCain.

Greenberg is the author of several books, including “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image.” He has written for The New York Times and The New Republic and served as an assistant to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward.