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The debate is raging over this week’s notorious New Yorker cover of Barack and Michelle Obama, but here in Chicago we’ve been there, done that. There’s a world of difference between Barry Blitt’s drawing of the up-and-comers in Islamic and revolutionary regalia and Mirth and Girth, David K. Nelson’s 1988 acrylic painting of Harold Washington in a woman’s undergarments: Blitt’s trying to ridicule Barack Obama’s more rabid opponents, while Nelson was trying to knock the recently deceased mayor’s more rabid glorifiers.
Mirth and Girth wasn’t the last time David K. Nelson stirred up trouble in Chicago. In 1991 he made a cartoon for the Reader‘s year-in-review issue that was pretty funny. It showed Alderman Dorothy Tillman as a paper doll in skivvies trying to decide what to wear, a “feminine yet subtly persuasive” outfit accessorized by a revolver or something a little more rugged accessorized by a submachine gun and matching ammo-clip bandolier. (Tillman had reportedly waved a gun at a community meeting.) “Help Dress Dorothy,” we called the cartoon.
