A cartoon of Texas with the words "Loon Star State" inside its outline. The "L" in "Loon" is wearing a hat that's part cowboy and part dunce cap.

Loon Star State: Reports of Our Death …

The Texas Observer lives!

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Ben Sargent, a bald, older white man with a bushy white beard is dressed in a suit and red bowtie, with his artistic tools, including pens, in front of him.

A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue.

Ben Sargent for the Texas Observer

To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here.

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Read some of our award-winning articles from the past year:

  • The Texas Observer Lives! After nearly closing, the staff and readers of the publication raised over $350,000 to keep us in business.
  • Uvalde Vive: Senior Staff Writer Gus Bova uncovers the civil rights history of Uvalde, which echoes in the response to today’s tragedy. This article won the 2023 Edwin “Bud” Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction award from the Texas Institute of Letters.
  • The Battle of Beaumont: Staff Politics Writer Justin Miller’s report on the months-long battle between union workers and ExxonMobil. Winner of a 2023 First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists-Fort Worth.
  • Labeled ‘Hispanic’: Correspondent Dylan Baddour shares the lives of Lipan Apache in Texas, who are challenging the myth that they’ve been wiped out. Winner of a 2023 First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists-Fort Worth.
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is the Texas Observer's staff cartoonist. He launched his career drawing editorial cartoons for the Austin American-Statesman in 1974. He was born in Amarillo into a newspaper family and learned the printing trade from age 12 and started working for the local daily as a proof runner at 14. He attended Amarillo College and received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1970. Sargent won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1982. He has also received awards from Women in Communications, Inc., Common Cause of Texas, and Cox Newspapers. He is the author of Texas Statehouse Blues (1980) and Big Brother Blues (1984).

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