Scenes at the Gridiron Club Annual Dinner

In the upper left hand corner, a man measures the door of the White House at five feet while Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks stands at six feet, four inches. In the upper right hand corner, Samuel G. Blythe, president of the Gridiron Club, stands as President Roosevelt and Vice President Fairbanks remain seated. In the lower left hand corner is a man dressed up as “Cuba,” and in the lower right hand corner Clifford Kennedy Berryman gives a chalk talk about the teddy bear with the caption, “Initiation Act.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The exigencies of newspaper publication deadlines seem evident in this cartoon. One of the most famous altercations of the American presidency — certainly the most contentious of a Washington D.C., institution, the annual Gridiron Club dinner — was depicted by an artist of the morning Washington Herald on the published date of the dinner. The anomaly is that the cartoon’s vignettes are presented as a round-up, but a cartoon drawn actually after the fact could not have avoided the tense confrontations at the dinner.

The Gridiron mostly comprised of journalists. its annual dinners were what later generations would call “roasts,” and the humor and even insults, usually good-natured, were considered strictly off the record.

In 1907, however, President Roosevelt’s speech strayed from tradition in its tone, and he attacked another guest, Ohio Senator Joseph Benson Foraker, for the latter’s determined criticisms of the president’s handling of the Brownsville Affair, in which an entire regiment of black soldiers were dishonorably cashiered after a murder and wounding of civilians near their barracks in Texas. Foraker, breaking tradition, spoke after the president and “gave in kind.” It was an ugly evening, and news of its fireworks leaked out.

None of the headline-grabbing exchanges are hinted at in the drawing, only a jab at Vice-President Fairbanks’s frustrated presidential ambitions and a hint of the evening’s entertainment (including a chalk-talk by cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman, cartooning creator of the Teddy Bear). It was presented to readers as a summary of the evening — and for what it did not depict, stands as one of American journalism’s great faux pas moments.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-27

Creator(s)

Cunningham, Joseph Harry, 1865-1946

Language

English

Period

U.S. President – 2nd Term (March 1905-February 1909)

Page Count

1

Production Method

Printed

Record Type

Image

Resource Type

Cartoon

Rights

These images are presented through a cooperative effort between the Library of Congress and Dickinson State University. No known restrictions on publication.

Citation