A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 14 September 1957. A figure labelled Nasser, holding a "Down with the West" sign, sits like a ventriloquist's dummy on the knee of a figure with a hammer-and-sickle armband, while a bearded "Syria" waves "I hate the U.S.A." and "Me too!" (NAID 5743249).
What the cartoon shows
Three figures, two of them labelled. One marked NASSER, in a military tunic, holds a sign and sits on the knee of a larger figure whose armband bears a hammer and sickle, posed like a ventriloquist's dummy. Beside them a bearded figure labelled SYRIA holds a flag and a banner. Every printed word on the drawing is a label or a slogan.
DOWN WITH THE WEST
I HATE THE U.S.A.
NASSER
ME TOO!
SYRIA
JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR
Who drew it and where it is kept
Berryman signed it for the Washington Evening Star. Senate records at the National Archives hold the original, item NAID 5743249 in the Jim Berryman political cartoons series; the archive's rights line says public domain. FRAME classes the source as openly identified and the audience as the domestic public, with the themes war and the military and empire and colonialism.
How to read it
FRAME's reading is that the cartoon argues Egypt and Syria are speaking Soviet lines, and it tags the technique name-calling, with hostile slogans attributed to the figures. The ventriloquist's pose is the whole argument. A dummy has no voice of its own, so whatever it says belongs to the one whose hand is behind it.
That is a strong claim to make about a foreign leader, and the drawing makes it without evidence, because a drawing cannot carry any. The slogans are Berryman's words put in other men's mouths. They may sum up what he believed those governments were saying, but the record does not show that Nasser or any Syrian leader said these words, and the cartoon does not claim to quote them.
The fair test for a cartoon like this is the one a reader would apply to an editorial: who is the source, and what is the evidence? Here the source is plain, a named cartoonist in a named paper, and the evidence is left to the reader to find. For other Berryman cartoons about foreign leaders on this site, see In English or Spanish, on Castro, and Soviet Scales of Justice.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Dummy, Dummy...Who's Got the Dummy? (Nasser and Syria), 14 September 1957. Washington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman).
- U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743249, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain.
