Pete Wagner - Cultural Impact

Cultural Impact

Despite the intensity and offensiveness of some of his work, Wagner developed a history of charming or winning over as friends many political enemies and targets of his attacks, something like the French philosopher, Voltaire. Bernard Casserly, editor of the Catholic Bulletin based in St. Paul, MN, wrote a scathing editorial in 1975 against Wagner in response to a cartoon about the Kenneth Edelin trial in Boston, condemning Wagner as "vicious," "poisonous," "malicious" and "sophomoric." Yet Casserly wrote the glowing foreword 12 years later to Wagner's second book, "Buy This Too," after the two became friends. Minneapolis Daily American editor Francis R. McGovern, an extreme right-wing conservative who would have fit into today's Tea Party movement, at first lambasted Wagner but later praised his use of humor to engage students to participate in political activism, and also stated that he was "honored" to call Wagner a "great friend" and "a damn good clown." Rev. Joseph Head, an outspoken conservative activist who wrote a four-page, single-spaced, typewritten letter calling Wagner "A DANGEROUS ENEMY OF OUR COUNTRY!" in 1975, was a major participant in Wagner's "Generic Demonstration" at the University of Minnesota in 1982, and local news coverage by KSTP-TV broadcast the image of the 80+ year-old Head, in his three-cornered American Revolutionary hat and in front of his giant replica of the Liberty Bell, grinning happily with his arm around his former "foe," Wagner. Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee J. Martin Klotsche and one mayor of Madison, Wisconsin were among those fans of Wagner who requested and in some cases paid for original cartoons that had criticized them,. United States Senator Paul Wellstone, who was criticized by Wagner for his positions on regulating nutritional supplements, hosted exhibits of Wagner's cartoons in his offices.