Article: Little murders: thirty years ago, editorial illustration in our mainstream media was provocative and smart, driving the words as often as following them. Today much of it is literal and safe, more decorative than idea-driven. How did this happen in an age where image is everything?(Cover Story)

When Howell Raines quit The New York Times, Jerelle Kraus publicly called him Caligula, because he chopped off people's heads before they got to speak. Now she is telling me how Raines saw penises everywhere, in the most innocent, ridiculous places, making her job as op-ed art director difficult. "Nobody else would see it, but he would see it," she tells me, "and then I'd have to change it." What she remembers is a pencil. A Janusz Kapusta illustration of a round-erasered pencil, signing a peace treaty, which she had to square off, in 1993, because of Caligula. "Get it?" she says. "A round-erasered pencil?" I got it.

It was hard enough defending imagery that ...

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