Bill Sanders

Editor & Publisher magazine published a two-page feature under the headline, “Cartoonist Suffers Fringe Harassment.”[11] Saturday Review, in an article titled “When Extremists Attack the Press” said Sanders’ “editorial commentaries can make the opposition gag on its breakfast.”[12] Sanders added to the controversy surrounding him when he sued a local Catholic Church for disturbing the peace with its early morning bell ringing.

WITI-TV editorialized that this conflict “is doing serious disservice to the people.”[16] Sanders was suspended for two weeks after his drawing of a local judge as a pregnant girl scout[17] appeared in Kaleidoscope, a Milwaukee alternative newspaper.

[18] After the 1984 election campaigns, Wisconsin Governor Lee Dreyfus criticized The Milwaukee Journal for its political cartoonist “who plays the hillbilly kid while living in Elm Grove.”[19] His cartoons critical of the way Milwaukee police officers seemed to fade into anonymity after disputed arrest tactics resulted in the editor of the police newsletter coming into the Journal contact editor’s office calling Sanders “a dirty, filthy man,” and demanding to know why the Journal kept “pigs” on the paper.

[20] In a feature article on Sanders, Newsweek described him as the “Milwaukee Journal’s ornery and unorthodox house cartoonist,” whose “stinging bite rivals that of Herblock.” [21] In addition to national syndication, his cartoons were frequently reprinted in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The London Observer and Izvestia.

His cartoon originals have been collected and hung in the White House by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.