Creator of Pogo Slams Extremism; Says LBJ, BMG' Claims Ridiculous

"Extremism has had its say," Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, told his Ford Hall Forum audience last night. "We need more self-examination, less accusation of the other fellow."

Kelly was worried, he said, after hearing Senator Barry Goldwater's speech accepting the Republican nomination for President, and wrote a series of vitriolic cartoons attacking Goldwater. But he threw them on, he explained since he was sure the voters reject Goldwater after hearing him speak.

Extremists, Kelly aserted, are people who are continuously, strongly critical of others. "Members of a good club, like Harvard, or people who join the Yankees--people who are doing important things do them quietly," he said.

"Only cartoonists," he claimed, "can keep on shooting their mouths off and get away with it. I did tell people that I would not be extreme in this campaign, but my worse nature ran away with me."

While critical of both Goldwater and President Johnson for some of their statements which he called extreme, he said he was in their debt as a cartoonist for "ridiculous material."

Kelly's recent cartoons have dealt with a political group called the "Jack Acid Society." Many people who have written him letters about the strip thought he was satirizing Goldwater, he said, but he explained that his primary target was extremist citizens' groups.

Some newspaper publishers have refused to print the regular Pogo cartoons during the election campaign. To these papers, Kelly sells a second series of cartoons, populated entirely with "bunny-rabbits."

Kelly was more strongly censored in this country when he satirized the late Senator Joseph McCarthy. Today's publishers, he said, hold more moderate political views than they did in McCarthy's day.