Cartoonists: Not Mad at Anybody

∙”We’re alone, dear,” says Lady Bird Johnson, seated at the breakfast table with her husband. “You can refer to him by name instead of ‘my opponent.’ ” ∙Gushes the sweet young thing to her studious male escort: “I guess I am to you what Cuba is to Russia—friendly, but expensive!” ∙To the police sergeant, the patrolman explains a fact of modern life: “You can tell the delinquents who come from affluent families—instead of razors they use electric carving knives!” These needle-sharp political gibes are the work of James O. Berry, 32, whose cartoon feature, Berry’s World, is syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a New York affiliate of Scripps-Howard newspapers. They go to 570 papers throughout the U.S., and since Berry’s cartoons come as part of a package, none of N.E.A.’s clients are under any obligation to run them. It is a considerable tribute to Jim Berry’s satire that more than 400 do.

More often than not, his cartoons appear on the editorial page, where they seem almost like modest postscripts to the regular editorial cartoon. A Berry panel never shouts. None of the characters are ever directly identified, and the point of the joke is sometimes kept as deliberately small as the cartoon itself, which runs two columns wide to the typical editorial cartoon’s three columns. “I find if I draw large, there’s a tendency to put in too much detail,” says Cartoonist Berry, himself a bulky and heavily detailed 210-pounder who stands 6 ft. 3 in.

Berry’s forte is good-natured whimsy and a talent for deft deflation that is particularly effective when he sights in on his folksy cartoon image of Lyndon Johnson. His approach contrasts sharply with the generally aggressive comment of his cartoonist colleagues. “We get enough of the angry stuff,” says Berry. He considers himself a “middle-of-the-roader” and prefers to keep his political preferences a secret for the ballot box. “I’m not really mad at anybody,” he says. “Satire comes naturally to me, and I prefer to take potshots at anybody and anything.”