"Some days you feel like this is really going well. You can tell. Other days, you're just drawing like a farmer and you don't know why." -- Pat Oliphant
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant (b. July 24, 1935 in Adelaide, Australia) is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world, described by the New York Times as "the most influential cartoonist now working". His trademark is a small penguin character named Punk, who is often seen making a sarcastic comment about the subject of the panel.
Oliphant's career, which spans over fifty years, began in 1952 as a copyboy with the Adelaide News. He continued in the newspaper business in Australia until he emigrated to the United States in 1964.
Once in the U.S., he first worked at The Denver Post. His strip was nationally syndicated and internationally syndicated in 1965. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1967 for his February 1, 1966 cartoon They Won't Get Us To The Conference Table ... Will They?. Oliphant moved to the now defunct Washington Star for six years, until the paper folded in 1981.
Oliphant's work has appeared in several exhibitions, most notably at the National Portrait Gallery. He has also crafted a series of small sculptures based on his caricatures of various political figures, which have been displayed alongside his drawings in some exhibitions.
In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Oliphant won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award seven times in 1971, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1989, 1990, and 1991, the Reuben Award twice in 1968 and 1972 and the Thomas Nast Prize.
Oliphant is the nephew of Sir Mark Oliphant, the Australian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and later became Governor of South Australia.
"An outsider's point of view is always handy.""Even if you go to Australia today, it's very much like visiting a state you haven't been to.""I can always see what I've done wrong. I'm always learning. I'm the perennial student.""I don't think there's more than half-a-dozen cartoons that I've been really truly happy with in all the time I've been doing it.""I hate changes of administrations, because I have all my villains in place and they are all taken away and replaced with faceless wonders nobody knows.""I see myself as an artist who happens to do cartoons.""I've always looked upon politics as a very boring thing. Politics never interested me as much as the people involved in it.""I've been in Washington ever since 1981, trying to get out!""If it were not for the fact that editors have become so timorous in these politically correct times, I would probably have a greater readership than I have.""Journalism was looked upon as a more noble thing than it is now. I don't know if it carries the same cachet that it did then.""One-newspaper towns are not good because all the surviving newspaper does is print money. They make 25 percent on their money every year, and if they go down to 22 percent, they start laying people off.""So many cartoonists draw the same year after year. When they find a style, they stick with it. They don't mess with innovation, and they become boring.""The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is.""There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population.""There were dragons to slay in the old days. Nixon was a good dragon.""We're all idealistic when young."
Oliphant's work, which from time to time employs ethnic caricatures, has occasionally been criticized. In 2001, the Asian American Journalists Association accused Oliphant of "cross[ing] the line from acerbic depiction to racial caricature". In 2005, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee expressed concern that some of Oliphant's caricatures were racist and misleading. In 2007, two Oliphant cartoons produced a similar response.
A cartoon about Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza sparked criticism amongst some American Jews. Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement: "Pat Oliphant's outlandish and offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery is hideously anti-Semitic. It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition. The implication is of an Israeli policy without a head or a heart. Israel's defensive military operation to protect the lives of its men, women and children who are being continuously bombarded by Hamas rocket attacks has been turned on its head to show the victims as heartless, headless aggressors". The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group with more than 400,000 members in the United States, said the cartoon denigrates and demonizes Israel and mimics the Nazi propaganda. It called on The New York Times and other media groups to remove the cartoon from their Web sites.