bob grossman who did the baby lincoln cartoon was an old monocle cartoonists, starting out, his first job out of college was as an assistant to the new yorker cartoon editor and he would pick some of the cartoons and he told me he would never draw an african-american or black person because he didn't want to draw fat lips and stereotypes of black people and contributing to this problem. but he then came up with an idea for a comic strip about a black shoeshine boy who said magic word and turned into a non-violent superman and the magic word kept changing from booker t. washington to whatever you want to know. it is a very funny comic strip and he managed to draw black folks in a way that wasn't stereotypical. there are ways around it and it is there, it is a line that if one goes over at one's peril. >> obviously it is the mark of a engage in this kind of political cartooning and the idea is to provoke. cartoons and images can become very dangerous. we think about the cartoons, caricatures of jews for example during world war ii and how that insulated hatred and violence so i wonder i

well, the basic fact is that bob grossman who is a world-class cartoonist wrote the article that said this new book could come out. and this image in planted itself in his head. let me read you what he wrote about it and what he said to the people that were upset by him so, we heard from lots of people who was a regular contributor to the nation and a friend who says you just don't get it. that cartoon is something like out of a time warp. the long ago disproven notion that a man that was a man really wants to be a woman and is truly extraordinarily from another era and by letting grossman's reply stand as the only responsible magazine editor and they just don't get it. they think about grossman and the decision to run at it seems inarguable that the character was an image rather than words. how could it have been otherwise is what raised the temperature and here is what grossman road to. when i read the review in "the new york times" for abraham lincoln, the words lincoln ran through my mind rendering me helpless. and the impoverished mental landscape cartoonist is what passes for th