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The World According to Ronald Reagan.
Seattle, Washington: AA Graphics, Inc., 1200 N. 96th Street; [Seattle Post Intelligencer?], 1987. Lithograph printed in brown and black, 21.35” x 33.5” plus margins. Text in lower-left margin, “PC0288 Reagan’s World II.” CONDITION: Good, tape stains and tack holes in corners. A pictorial map satirizing President Ronald Reagan’s polarized views, both foreign and domestic. This is the third of three Reagan world maps created by David Horsey, the first two having been published in 1982 (by the Seattle Post Intelligencer) and ca. 1984 (by World Peace Council). Depicting a simplistically conceived U. S. and world, the map presents both America and the Soviet Union (“the Evil Empire”) as disproportionately large. Dressed as a cowboy, Reagan is shown standing in an outsized California about to draw his pistols, while Gorbachev in the USSR, wearing a bear skin, appears about to draw his as well, the two heads of state anxiously eyeing each other. A compass rose, picturing a grandma holding an apple pie and set against an American flag backdrop, appears in the Indian Ocean and reflects the contemporary “us” (the West) versus “them” (the East) attitude. Nuclear weapons are strewn across Europe, identified as either those of the U.S. (“our missiles”) or the USSR (“their missiles”). The United Nations in New York is characterized as nothing more than a gathering of “Soviet spies.” Also included here are caricatures of Margaret Thatcher, Muammar Gaddafi, and Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua. Other countries and regions are parodied as follows: Mexico and South America are made up of “illegal aliens” and “drug pushers”; Western Europeans are “Socialists and Pacifist Wimps”; “Muslim Maniacs” comprise the bulk of the Middle East; Japan is in the shape of an automobile and is labeled “Japan Inc.”; the Chinese are “Good Commies”; and North Africans are “Libyan Terrorists.” Israel is shown as having annexed Beirut, and a tiny island in the South Pacific is identified as a proposed “Palestinian homeland.” Characterizations of segments of the U.S. include “Democrats and Welfare Bums” (the Northeast); “Ecotopia, backpackers, environmental freaks and quiche eaters” (the Pacific Northwest); “Republicans and real Americans” (the Midwest and the South); and “Homos” (San Francisco). Born in Indiana, illustrator David Horsey (1951–) is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He worked for three decades as a cartoonist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer until 2009, and was subsequently employed at the Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times. OCLC records five copies, at University of Illinois, University of Florida, Harvard, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Syracuse University. An entertaining world map parodying President Reagan’s views, published just prior to the dissolution of the USSR. REFERENCES: Lindholdt, Paul, “Horsey, David (b. 1951)” (2019) at History Link online; Rumsey 11493.
Item #9408
Price: $1,250.00
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