Background about Kirk Anderson
Kirk
Anderson's
award-winning cartoons have appeared in the New
York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, USA
Today , and hundreds of other newspapers and magazines
throughout the U.S., Britain, Canada, and other countries.
They
have prompted stockholder protest of corporate policy,
have been debated on talk radio and in newspaper columns,
orchestrated into classroom lessons and Congressional
presentations, collected in over 150 books, appeared
on ABC’s Nightline, and been chosen for national
exhibitions, at the Warhol Museum and other venues.
As
the staff cartoonist for the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN),
Kirk afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted from
1995 to 2003. He currently free-lances.
Kirk’s cartoons have been publicly denounced by a governor,
officially condemned by a state university, personally
admonished by a U.S. Senator, reviled in print by an archbishop,
and vilified by police, business leaders, talk
radio, the NRA and others.
BIO
(or “Personal Journey: An Inspirational Coming Of Age Story
For Troubled Youth”)
Kirk Anderson grew up in a loving, stable, small-town Midwestern
middle-class family, a difficult start for a professional cynic.
Over time and with great determination, he was able to nurture
his underdeveloped angst and rage through his parents’ controlled
exposure of him to the real world. From these unlikely beginnings,
Kirk turned himself around and flowered into the fully maladjusted,
paranoid professional pessimist that he is today.
His political and philosophical development began with the Domestic
Stalinism of his early childhood days. His mother and father seemed
all-powerful, all-knowing; all aspects of life depended on them.
Candy and TV were strictly rationed. He was provided for and content,
and did not yet comprehend he had no real voting power. Still,
certain outbursts of free expression were met with solitary confinement
in a cold dark bedroom, and the young man yearned for a system
that offered greater freedom.
Kirk’s distrust of politicians began when he was offered
a candy bribe as a third-grade hall monitor. Suddenly realizing
the rank corruption that developed within a system that distributes
power unequally, he abolished the position of hall monitor altogether,
declaring that all 3rd-graders would monitor each other cooperatively.
Such anarchy soon led to chaos and three student hospitalizations,
leading to Kirk’s dalliance with fascism. More hospitalization.
More dissent. But the students got to class on time.
By middle school, Kirk had shed his idealism and embraced realpolitik.
The New Conformism was popular at the time, and everybody who
was anybody was an adherent. He ran for student council on a platform
of “Conformity Now!” and was shunned for sticking out.
In college, Kirk smoked but didn’t inhale, and read but didn’t
comprehend. During years of political and historical study he
pruned his philosophy down to two words: “Be nice.”
He tried to parlay them into a revolutionary counter-cultural
treatise, but felt that adding anything would simply water down
his message.
He currently lives in St. Paul with his wife Nancy
Brewster and two invisible friends, Winky and Mr. Tithers.
His work is distributed to newspapers by Artizans
syndicate. E-mail Kirk Anderson.
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