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: Whacked

"A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."—Vito Corleone

by

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 November / December 2023 issue.

A cartoon depicts Ken Paxton watching The Godfather on TV, wearing a mafia-style ostentatious purple suit and fedora hat. On TV, Michael Corleone is saying, "Today, I settled all family business..." As Ken Paxton reacts with utter glee, "Yes! Oh YES!!" Caption: Ken Paxton's favorite! The line in "The Godfather" in which Michael Corleone announces he has just had all his enemies whacked ..."
Ben Sargent/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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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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