Herhert Block
 

Herbert Block, a.k,a."Herblock" (1909-2001), is the most celebrated of
the Herbert Lehman cartoonists, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for edito¬
rial cartooning in 1942,1954, and 1979, and sharing the 1973 Pulitzer
for Meritorious Public Service with his colleagues at the Washington Post
for their investigative reporting of the Watergate scandal. After work¬
ing for the Chicago Daily News and the Newspaper Enterprise Alliance in
the 1930s and early 1940s, Block joined the Washington Post in 1946 and
remained there for the rest of his life. Like Lehman, Block was one of the
first and most fervent critics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, coining the term
"McCarthyism" in a 1950 carton showing a Republican elephant reluctant
to stand on an unsteady tower of tar barrels labeled "McCarthyism." Block's
cartoons have been featured in numerous books, including The Herhlock
Book (1952), Straight Herhlock (1964), Herhlock's State of the Union (1972),
Herblock Through the Looking Glass (1984), and Herhlock's History: Political
Cartoons From the Crash to the Millennium (2000), a catalogue accompany¬
ing an exhibit of his cartoons at the Library of Congress. In 1993, Block
pubhshed a memoir entitled Herblock: A Cartoonist's Life, and in 1994,
President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the
same honor that Herbert Lehman had been scheduled to receive at the time
of his death in 1963.
 

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