
          Cartoonist Jumps Ship in Atlanta
          By HRWHRW
          Vol. 11, No. 2, 1989, p. 6
          
          Doug Marlette, the Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist lured from
the Charlotte Observer when Bill Kovach became editor
of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has become the
latest big name to leave the papers in the wake of Kovach's
resignation [see Southern_Changes, December 1988].
          Marlette, who joined Newsday in New_York, said that under Kovach's
leadership the Atlanta papers had enjoyed "shimmering integrity and
quality" and "rose to finally claim their rightful place."
          In his resignation letter, Marlette thanked the Constitution for
"giving me such a great opportunity" and said he had tried
"to find a way to stay here." Instead, he wrote, "Like many
Southerners before me, I head north with a sense of sadness and
longing for what might have been."
          Elaborating on his leavetaking in an essay he published in Newsday
and in the Charlotte Observer, Marlette said he wasn't
sure how the move "will affect my work and the way I see things,
but I'm sure they will be affected. Artists are emotional teabags. We
have a semi-permeable membrane for skin. Everything gets under our
skin and eventually finds its way into our work."
          On the bright side, Marlette said he expected to find~ plenty of
familiar themes in New_York:
          "I have long suspected that Malcolm X was right: The South is
south of the Canadian border. The problems of my native region--the
racism depicted by the jarring 'white' and 'colored' signs on the
water fountains of my youth, the poverty and ignorance that crippled
the spirit of the region--were just vivid symptoms of a disease that
afflicts the nation as a whole. It's not very far, it turns out, from
Forsyth County, Georgia, to Howard Beach.
          "Growing up in the South in the Sixties, we were the nation's
scapegoat and whipping boy--we wore our private demons and public
neuroses on our sleeves--and the world had something to point
at. However, I have noticed over the last few years that the South, as
it homogenizes itself into the Sunbelt, has slowly relinquished its
title, giving up its role as America's designated punching bag.
          "New_York City, Bonfire of the Vanities, has claimed that
position in the demonology of America's collective unconscious. New
York-bashing is a national sport now. New_York is the new
Mississippi--New_York Burning.
          "For all its glitz and glamour, and opportunity, the problems of
modern life in the city have grown to such a scale and
magnitude--drugs, homelessness, greed, corruption--that New_York has
become what Mississippi was in the Sixties--America's problem child,
the scapegoat, a mess.
          "The issues loom large in this urban crucible. The problems are
clear and easy to see. Like the setting of my Southern childhood, the
contradictions and ironies and hypocrisies are vivid. It's all a
caricature--a cartoon, really. New_York City is Toontown. This
Southerner should feel right at home."
        
