Short Shelf Life on Gingrich Caricatures?

 
Writing and illustrating stories about current events within the long leadtimes of a bimonthly magazine can be challenging, to say the least. Early in my career at Sierra, we had to do some emergency late editing to a story about the 1992 presidential candidates when Ross Perot unexpectedly took himself out of the race. More heroic was the effort by staff-favorite artist Victor Juhasz to edit Perot out of his hilarious illustration for the piece. (You'll have to look it up--it's pre-pixilization.)

That episode was brought to mind by today's news that Newt Gingrich's campaign staff had resigned en masse. ("Gingrich presidential campaign implodes," headlined the Washington Post.) I loved Victor's illustration to my story in the current issue about the climate denialsim rampant among the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls, but given Gingrich's, er, volatility, kept my fingers crossed that nothing would happen before the issue hit mailboxes. So what a relief, then, to hear that despite the exodus of his entire staff, Gingrich today declared his determination to run "the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring. The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.” 

Thanks Newt! Please hold on until our July/August issue mails next week!

--Paul Rauber

Illustration by Victor Juhasz