RARE "Pulitzer Prize for Cartooning" Steve Benson Signed Drawing For Sale

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for sale a RARE! "Pulitzer Prize for Cartooning" Steve Benson Hand Signed Drawing. 

ES-8093E

Stephen

Reed Benson (born

January 2, 1954, in Sacramento, California),

is a Pulitzer Benson, grandson of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and

former LDS Church president Ezra Taft

Benson, attended Brigham Young University, from which he

graduated cum laude, and became the cartoonist

for the Arizona Republic in 1980 He moved

to the Tacoma Morning News Tribune in 1990, but

then returned to the Arizona Republic in 1991, and

remained until laid off in January 2019. Benson is now the staff political

cartoonist for Arizona Mirror news and his work continues to be nationally

distributed by Creators Syndicate.[ Benson was

awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial

Cartooning, was a Pulitzer finalist in 1984, 1989, 1992, and 1994, and

has received a variety of other awards. He has served as president of the Association of American Editorial

Cartoonists. His cartoons have been collected in a number of books. In

the late 1980s he was at first a supporter, then a prominent critic, of Evan Mecham,

the first Mormon to

be elected governor of Arizona. Benson's criticism stirred

controversy among Arizona's Mormon population, leading some LDS Church

members to seek the intervention of Benson's grandfather in the matter. In

the midst of the scandal, Governor Mecham telephoned Benson and told him to

stop drawing critical cartoons about him, or his eternal soul would be in

jeopardy. Benson was later relieved of his position on a stake high council. In

1993 Benson faced further controversy within the LDS Church, when he stated

that his grandfather, then nearing his 94th birthday, was suffering from senility that

was being concealed by church leadership. Later that year, Benson publicly left

the church. He has since become a critic of religious belief, appearing

at Freedom From Religion Foundation's

annual conventions and stating in its paper Freethought Today, "If, as the

true believers claim, the word 'gospel' means good news, then the good news for

me is that there is no gospel, other than what I can define for myself, by

observation and conscience. As a freethinking human being, I have come not to

favor or fear religion, but to face and fight it as an impediment to civilized

advancement. In 1997, a Benson cartoon used the image of a firefighter carrying

a dead child to comment on the death sentence that had just been imposed

on Oklahoma City Benson forcefully defended his work against some readers'

contentions that the cartoon was insensitive.