Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 125

P o g o and Liberal Satire
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were all in a “comical strip.” Pogo then went on to explain that “in this line we
larfs at bad jokes, make faces, chase each other with guns—an’ we wink and
giggle.” Johnson responded wistfully that it “sound like home.”20
The bulk of the Johnson sequences dealt with a number of “sight” gaps
surrounding the steer’s eye test. Punchlines had to be read off of a typical
reverse pyramid-shaped eye chart. One chart, for instance, said: “I did not
expect to be elected President to preside over the dissolution of Her Majesty’s
Empire.” The steer could not, or would not, read that line. Another, with a bit
more of a satirical bite, read: “How beautiful for space or skies and ample wanes
of graves.” Johnson’s response to all this was to claim that “our people will
never, whether in advance or retreat be deterred. My vision is to fight the
credible dream.” This led one character to observe that there was a “visibility
gap” there.21 Following this eye chart business, Johnson’s longhorn steer
personification disappeared from the strip and the other wind-up toy candidates-
for-president took over.
On the basis of Johnson’s treatment in Pogo it might be fair to say that
Kelly’s satirical criticism of the President, while apparent, was hardly vigorous.
In fact, Pogo managed to deal with Johnson with minimal references to either
war or anti-war issues. Kelly could not be listed as one of Johnson’s serious
critics even in 1968 when LBJ was under fire from all quarters and could not
safely or easily appear in public for fear of angry demonstrations. There was no
hint of Johnson the daily “baby killer” in the Okefenokee swamp world. Also
the strip never alluded to Johnson’s problems in the New Hampshire primary or
to his March 31, 1968, television speech that ended with the announcement of
his withdrawal from the presidential race. “I will not seek and I will not accept
the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”22 This was a
Sherman-like declaration that, as has been seen, Kelly liked to use in the strip.
This time he passed the chance to make any satirical reference to it.
Interestingly enough, after the election was over, the strip’s characters
mistakenly think that they “have seen a ghost”—a distant silhouette of the old
longhorn steer. They decide to “run up an see the old fella.” And Pogo claimed
that “I alius had a soft spot in my heart for him.” As it turned out, what they had
seen was a cut out wooden sign in the shape of a steer advertising a brand of
chewing tobacco. If the Pogo character represented Kelly’s views (and he
normally did), the “soft spot” comment can be perceived as a defining
statement.23 For Pogo, and for Kelly, Lyndon Johnson was no Joe McCarthy and
the strip was not going to treat in him in the same rough manner.
By this point in his life, Kelly had become a 1950s, middle-of-the-road
liberal with a sense of nostalgic loss. In an increasingly polarized political
milieu involving, among other things, war, counterculture, and violence, the
sequences of Pogo that dealt with the Vietnam experience pointed to the strip’s
irrelevancy as serious political satire. In the early 1950s, college youth had read
Pogo avidly and had been “suppo