I've mentioned Paul Harris before here. Paul hosts a very fine radio interview show every weekday afternoon on KMOX in St. Louis and he has an amazing knack for, first of all, getting very interesting people to talk with him. He's also darned good at extracting interesting and informative answers from those interesting people.
This afternoon, he had on former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Of all the "talking heads" who've been out there telling us what's happening (and what will happen) in Iran and Iraq, Ritter may well have the best track record for getting it right. His chat with Paul ran a little less than a half hour but if you want to know more about weapons — and hear why the Iran situation may not be as ominous as it sounds from some reports — that could be time well spent. Here's the link.
Here's an important (I think) article by Glenn Greenwald and I'll try to summarize its thesis. It's that for years after 9/11, Bush's defenders met almost every criticism of the administration by charging that the critic hated America, was pro-terrorist, was giving aid and comfort to the enemy, etc. But now, a lot of those Bush defenders are looking to distance themselves from him and his actions and are engaging in the same kinds of comments they previously found so treasonous.
JEFF GRUBB: I think the characters come from the old Saturday Evening Post. They had a humor/cartoon page in the back, with these little guys in the title bar.
LES DANIELS: I can offer a tentative tip on that cartoon. When I was a kid in the 1950s, my parents had a sub to the Saturday Evening Post, which interested me mostly for the cartoons they ran. I recognize the style of "You want it when?" from the Post of a half a century ago or more. I'm sure this artist was a regular there, but I can't remember his name. I realize this is a pretty slim lead...
BEN HERNDON: Double check me, but I always had the impression these laughing characters were drawn/created by Stan and Jan Berenstain (of "Berenstain Bears" fame...)
RUSS MAHERAS: I'm almost positive that cartoon illustration was drawn by Orlando Busino, and I'm also pretty sure it originally appeared on the cartoon page of the Saturday Evening Post.
MIKE LYNCH: The "You want It When" guys are a question I've had too. I'm a magazine cartoonist, as well as an NCS member. I've always been interested in the magazine cartoonists. I've talked about that iconic image to a lot of the pros. The consensus is that it was drawn by Henry Syverson. There are some images here.
GALEN FOTT: Looking on Usenet, someone wondered this back in 1993, and they were referred to some books by Alan Dundes, titled with variations on Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire. So maybe you could find the answer there.
NATE BUTLER: I think it's from the Saturday Evening Post...from the top of that page (toward the back, as I dimly recall) that had all the jokes or gag panels or whatever. I think the "You Want It When?" wording got added later maybe. I don't remember the name of that cartoonist who always did those little big-nose characters on the top of that page of the Post, but I'm pretty sure this is where the mystery art came from originally.
BRAD CASLOR: I'm not sure if this was the first use, but weren't the laughing cartoon guys the recurring mascot on the "Post Script" humour page of the Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s, possibly drawn by one of the regular Post cartoonists like John Gallagher?
TIM (no last name): I absolutely don't know who drew it but the guys in the drawing are dead ringers for cartoon characters that were in the Saturday Evening Post when I was a kid (60s). In fact, I believe they were at the top of the page but I can't find an example anywhere yet (if I do I will send it). I think what you're talking about was created by ripping off these guys from the page and adding "you want it when" but that's just a theory.
JOHNNY LEE ACHZIGER: This won't help much, but I remember back in the early 1960's (when Xerox machines still required a couple trays of wet chemicals to make copies) watching my Dad make copies of the same sort of cartoons like this at his office. There were a bunch of different ones, but they were in the same style. So even way back when, they were around.
SCOTT SHAW!: That cartoon — or at least, the original version from which it was traced (over and over and over, etc.) — was drawn by magazine gag cartoonist Henry Syverson, who regularly did such silly drawings for Saturday Evening Post's page of cartoons. I think that the "You Want It When?" was added by someone else.
I think Scott and the others who've fingered Henry Syverson are right. The samples Mike Lynch pointed us to seem to confirm it. So for now, I'm willing to go with Syverson and what I'm wondering is if he or the Post ever marketed a poster or sign of the drawing or if its life in Xerox just began with someone blowing it up. For now, thanks to all who've sent in their thoughts.
For more than 35 years, I've seen this thing posted in offices, stores...pretty much any kind of establishment where someone has to produce something on some sort of schedule. I know it's been at least 35 years because that's how long ago it was that my mother brought a 99th generation Xerox of it home from a store where she was working and asked me to please trace a new, clean copy for her boss. Even by then, I'd seen it taped up on the walls of places of business, and what I saw was always a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a tracing of a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a tracing of a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a...well, you get the idea. This thing has been passed around more than the hooker at the 99-Cent Only store.
I remember once hearing a cartooning authority (there are such people) claim that the R. Crumb "Keep on Truckin'" poster and its various bootlegs was the most widely-distributed cartoon image of its day. When he said that, I thought, "Not even close." The "You Want It When?" cartoon has to have it and all others beaten. And I think it's kind of interesting that in all the times I've seen it, I've never seen any other caption put on it. You could apply all sorts of sayings to it but it's always "You Want It When?"
So where did it start? All those Xeroxes of tracings of Xeroxes had to begin with some artist sitting down and drawing the first one for some purpose. Was it a greeting card of some kind? A poster? A graphic in a magazine article? Maybe someone did draw it just to put up in one office and a co-worker who liked it made a copy and sent it to someone else. And then that person copied it and sent it to someone else who copied it...
I'll be surprised if anyone has an answer but I have to ask, just in case. Who drew it in the first place? And for what purpose?
Why is it that we never get upset at our presidents for not knowing things? "My staff got overzealous and did it without telling me" seems to always be a perfectly acceptable excuse. Or just "No one told me" or "I was given faulty intelligence." Shouldn't the first responsibility of any president of the U.S. be to know what's going on in his administration? And to fire those who supply him with faulty intelligence?
So now we have yet another case where something in a George W. Bush speech was not merely untrue but there was solid evidence at the time he said it that it was not true. On May 29, 2003, Bush announced that two trailers seized by U.S. and Kurdish troops were mobile biological laboratories. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction," he declared. Now it turns out that in a report filed two days earlier, the crew of the Pentagon-sponsored research mission had unanimously concluded the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons.
Bush's foes will charge that it's Bush caught in a lie. Bush's defenders will say "It's not a lie. He didn't know." I'm inclined to side with the latter but to suggest that this is nowhere near an acceptable excuse. It bothers me that a man who at any moment may make a decision that will get people killed is not operating with — and apparently not even insisting on — the latest, most accurate information available. That should bother the people who think Bush is a brilliant leader. Even a brilliant leader can make the wrong call based on bad data.
April 13, 2006
