When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Up
for sale a RARE! "Pulitzer Prize for Cartooning" Steve Benson Hand Signed Drawing.
ES-8093E
Stephen
Reed Benson (born
January 2, 1954, in Sacramento, California),
is a Pulitzer Benson, grandson of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and
former LDS Church president Ezra Taft
Benson, attended Brigham Young University, from which he
graduated cum laude, and became the cartoonist
for the Arizona Republic in 1980 He moved
to the Tacoma Morning News Tribune in 1990, but
then returned to the Arizona Republic in 1991, and
remained until laid off in January 2019. Benson is now the staff political
cartoonist for Arizona Mirror news and his work continues to be nationally
distributed by Creators Syndicate.[ Benson was
awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial
Cartooning, was a Pulitzer finalist in 1984, 1989, 1992, and 1994, and
has received a variety of other awards. He has served as president of the Association of American Editorial
Cartoonists. His cartoons have been collected in a number of books. In
the late 1980s he was at first a supporter, then a prominent critic, of Evan Mecham,
the first Mormon to
be elected governor of Arizona. Benson's criticism stirred
controversy among Arizona's Mormon population, leading some LDS Church
members to seek the intervention of Benson's grandfather in the matter. In
the midst of the scandal, Governor Mecham telephoned Benson and told him to
stop drawing critical cartoons about him, or his eternal soul would be in
jeopardy. Benson was later relieved of his position on a stake high council. In
1993 Benson faced further controversy within the LDS Church, when he stated
that his grandfather, then nearing his 94th birthday, was suffering from senility that
was being concealed by church leadership. Later that year, Benson publicly left
the church. He has since become a critic of religious belief, appearing
at Freedom From Religion Foundation's
annual conventions and stating in its paper Freethought Today, "If, as the
true believers claim, the word 'gospel' means good news, then the good news for
me is that there is no gospel, other than what I can define for myself, by
observation and conscience. As a freethinking human being, I have come not to
favor or fear religion, but to face and fight it as an impediment to civilized
advancement. In 1997, a Benson cartoon used the image of a firefighter carrying
a dead child to comment on the death sentence that had just been imposed
on Oklahoma City Benson forcefully defended his work against some readers'
contentions that the cartoon was insensitive.