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Steve Brodner is no stranger to national political conventions. He has covered seven of them for Esquire, The Progressive, the Village Voice, and others. In the past he's been a regular contributor to Harper's, National Lampoon, Playboy, Spy, the Nation and New Yorker. Seriously, he's appeared in every major publication you can think of so we'll stop listing them. He's one of the premier political illustrators of his time (or ever) and he's got a thing or two to say about the current administration and media coverage of these events. We try to listen but, honestly, we're really tired of this politically-charged week.

1. You're one of the most regarded cartoonists in the business, your work graces the New Yorker regularly, and you've been in every major news publication at one point or another. All of this from a Brooklyn kid who went to Cooper Union. At what point in your life did these two passions, politics and cartoons, collide like a smash-up on Queens Boulevard?

Sort of. It was the smash-up in US politics in the 60's. It was a time of upheaval and, especially, in Brooklyn, great political displacement; there was the Vietnam War, the civil rights era, race riots, LBJ, RFK, Nixon and Sharpton. Yep, I went to school with him. He was a student activist in our school Tilden High and even helped shut the place down for a few days. I reminded him of this a few years ago and he remembered it fondly. Apparantly, he'd had a much better time in school than I had. Everybody was political. I went to the march in NY last Sunday and it was like old times. Today, anyone who isn't concerned abut what's happening in the county is either brain dead or paid off.

2. A 30-year retrospective of your work, Freedom Fries: The Politcal Art Of Steve Brodner, is coming out this month. In that time what was the high, low, and in-between for you?
The highest time, I think is now. This book, aside from being a wonderfully lucky thing that Fanta-graphics would pour so much energy and creativity into this project, it's great that I can make the statement that political art has place in journalism. If anybody takes anything away from reading this book, that is what I hope it will be.

The lowest time was after 9/11 when magazines felt that they couldn't use illustration to convey what was happening, when it would have helped everybody to process the moment, and move away from the brainless shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later mentality which only gets you in worse trouble later. Illustrators' job is to get people to think.

3. What are your thoughts on the RNC Circus? Did they create more crap than the elephants at the Bronx Zoo?

The crap is there along with the truth. The media can choose which to take a picture of. What do you think they'll do?

4. Let's be honest, are you doing all you can as a caricaturist to prevent Bush from being re-elected?

I say let's tell the truth and let people make up their own minds. Problem is the news doesn't get through. How about all these people who have felt that Saddam did 9/11? The breakdown in journalism, and education here is our most important issue. How can you vote if you've only been hearing lies about what's going on? My drawings only try to find succinct metaphors to help people think about issues. I'm not right all the time. But I never try to paint something other than the way I really see it. But... thousands are dead on a mistake, the treasury is empty and our homeland is not protected. You seriously want to reelect that?

5. New York question for a lifelong New Yorker: What era, day or event in New York's history would you like to relive?

The 1939 World's Fair. But that would mean we'd have to go through that damned holocaust again. Not worth it.

Steve Brodner s Top Five

Way, way too general. Okay. Not necessarily in this order:
Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, Buster Keaton, Sonny Rollins, Anton Chekov.

—Andrew Krucoff and Chris Gage conduct a daily interview series for Gawker.