Word: pogo
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Like masters of more exalted arts, Cartoonist Walt Kelly succeeded in turning an imaginary landscape into a public preserve. With pen and wit he put together the world of Pogo, an inspired amalgam of bogs, hollow stumps, hog-jowl dialect and cheery absurdity. There, over 150 anthropomorphic critters gnawed away at the English language, baring kernels of political meaning, and carried on not-so-innocent satires of human pomposity. Phineas T. Bridgeport, the Barnum of bears, orated in billboard letters that burlesqued hucksterism everywhere. "Nuclear physics ain't so new and it ain't so clear," declared Rowland...
...presiding genius was winsome Pogo Possum, once described by his creator as "the reasonably patient, softhearted, naive, friendly little person we all think we are." Kelly himself claimed kinship with his gruff alligator; to the politicians and fat cats Kelly caricatured, the resemblance was clear. But to those who saw him away from his drawing board, joyously discussing his creatures as if they were real, Kelly displayed all the gentler traits of the possum...
...Pogo. Pogo began taking shape during World War II. Kelly served as a civilian with the Army's foreign-language unit, where he picked up a special affection for the Southern dialect that was to become the patois of Pogo. (Though Kelly began using the Okefenokee setting in cartoons in 1942, he did not visit the swamp until 1955.) In 1948 he joined the short-lived New York Star as art director, editorial adviser and political cartoonist; he also donated Pogo strips to the impoverished paper. The Star folded the following year, but Pogo survived in the New York...
Editors were skeptical about a whimsical, literate strip full of talking animals; comic pages then belonged to the likes of Dick Tracy and Mary Worth. But Pogo was a smash. At its peak, the strip appeared in nearly 500 papers. The self-effacing possum made a major splash on the national scene in 1952, when college students parodied the Republicans' "I Like Ike" slogan by chanting "I Go Pogo." After a national write-in campaign, Pogo gracefully conceded the election to Eisenhower. Kelly introduced an unshaven wildcat named Simple J. Malarkey, who resembled the then-rampant Joe McCarthy...
...adolescent of any age who has everything, there is a gasoline-powered pogo stick. For one who worries about the air around him, there is a stainless-steel belt that monitors pollution. For the woman who likes jewelry and is uncertain where she will be sleeping next, there is the "wild oats sowing kit"-a silver and brass pendant containing a Dialpak of contraceptive pills. For those bothered by walking in cold places, there are woolen socks heated by a battery...