Our stock in trade is words, but images can be more powerful.
Oddly enough, political cartoons that contain no words (and are not even funny) can be among the most powerful of all.
We loved the 1960s image (was it by Herblock?) of students protesting the Vietnam War outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Lincoln was sitting inside, his head buried in his hands.
We adored the image, after Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1991, of Magic going one-on-one to the hoop — with the Grim Reaper playing defense.
We’re adding to the list this image, by Jeff Darcy in yesterday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer, noting the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy.
(For those wondering about the title of today’s post, here’s the link explaining “wordless as the flight of birds.“)
In pace requiescat.
[Addendum: We just hate to add an addendum to a post that ends like that. But a reader just alerted us that the cartoon we described with Lincoln’s head in his hands did not involve the Vietnam War at all. The cartoon was drawn by Bill Maudlin after JFK’s assassination. Here’s the proof, in the form of a link.]