Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Eggplants, pigs and pallor.

"I am not a crook."

Ben Shahn's "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti"
Way back when I was a teenager we had a president and a vice-president (Richard Milhous Nixon and Spiro Theodore Agnew) who were every bit as corrupt, venal, spiteful and yes, out-of-control as our current administration.

Milton Glaser, er, the great Milton Glaser, was working at New York Magazine at the time, and capturing the spirit of the times and the sump of Richard Nixon, they ran the page above.

The eggplant with its hook nose and sagging jowls seemed to, somehow, capture the Ben Shahn-ish-looking Nixon--his dour mien, his ever-present scowl, his ghostly, ghastly pallor. 

I've never been a big fan of New York Magazine. It was always too slight and gossipy for me. I was, and am, a New Yorker man. Maybe that's the prep-school, Ivy League in me.

That aside, at New York Magazine they do some really nice satire, and their journalism in the age of Trump, is muckracking and good.

I love the art below.

Not as much as the eggplant shaped like Nixon. But that might just be a parmagiana thing.


(BTW, Frank Bruni in today's Times had this to say about the New York Magazine cover: "The cover imagines the president with a snout instead of a nose. How apt. He presides over an administration of piggies gorging at the federal trough. Michael Flynn’s consulting deals. Tom Price’s private flights. Steve Mnuchin’s romantic eclipse viewing. David Shulkin’s grand European adventure. Ben Carson’s dining set. Scott Pruitt’s bargain condo.")

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