It's commonly known that Mayor Paul Dyster is a great whitetail deer hunter because he's written about his hunting exploits on Facebook. What many are unaware of but what political cartoon genius Gerald Skrlin most assuredly knows is that the mayor is a fishing aficionado who regularly wets his line in local waters. In this cartoon the city's top politician has reeled in not a fish but a...cat. Several years ago the mayor participated in a LaSalle neighborhood cleanup "blitz." The mayor discovered a dead cat at one of the city's many dilapidated houses and he curiously raced to his car to retrieve, of all things, a plastic trash bag and shovel. The mayor put the cat in the bag - as opposed to letting the cat out of the bag - and the cleanup blitz went forward.
As the artist often does, Skrlin tosses in a conundrum. In a obtuse reference he alluded to a property used to improperly house an unseemly gaggle of J-1 work travel students - owned by a millionaire whom Dyster has favored with largess - more than a million in NFC taxpayer money - for various taxpayer subsidized projects in this city and whose property recently caught the eye of the inspections department.
This cartoon pays tribute to the cat bagging mayor while cleverly playing off the old expression that someone let the cat out of the bag and again of Mr. Dyster's unparalleled ability at "angling" in the world of Niagara Falls politics. One thing is certain, Dyster may be a fisherman but it's the taxpayer that remains on the hook as long as he's in office.
Stanford J. Lipscomb
Art Critic