Politics & Power Quote by Pat Oliphant

Oliphant’s line is a neat little self-portrait drawn in the acidic ink he’s known for: the fearless truth-teller supposedly muzzled by a culture of flinching gatekeepers. The phrasing does a lot of work. “If it were not for the fact” mimics the fussy, legalistic throat-clearing of an editorial memo, then pivots into a complaint about “timorous” editors - not wrong, exactly, but strategically cast. The real target isn’t just censorship; it’s the anxiety economy of modern publishing, where one ugly headline can cost ad dollars, subscriptions, jobs.

The subtext is a double bluff. On one level, he’s defending satire’s old license: cartoonists must offend, because offense is often the shortest route to clarity. On another, he’s performing the classic contrarian move of turning reputational decline into proof of relevance. “Politically correct times” becomes an all-purpose alibi: if people aren’t reading, it’s not because the work misfired or tastes shifted; it’s because the referees changed the rules.

Context matters. Oliphant rose in an era when big newspapers were the mass distribution system for political cartoons, and editors were powerful curators. As that system fragmented - cable outrage, then social media pile-ons, then collapsing newsroom budgets - risk calculus got harsher and attention got scarcer. His complaint captures a real institutional skittishness, but it also reveals an older model of cultural authority: the belief that if the gate would just open, the crowd would return. Satire, in his telling, isn’t competing for attention; it’s being denied it. That’s the sting and the sales pitch, in one sentence.