WHY IMPEACHMENT? WHY NOT!!?
[ZEPHYRUS IMAGE, Edward DORN].
Three anti-President Nixon items, two calling for impeachment.
[San Francisco, c. 1972–1973].
Three single oblong sheets; linocut on white card, 145 x 380 mm; printed white card, 175 x 205 mm; printed brown card with screenprint, 140 x 145 mm all three bearing very minor marks; the large bumper sticker with pencil marks as guides for the printer, and some imperfect printing, else in excellent condition; the two smaller handbills almost impeccable.
A striking set of handbills urging the impeachment of President Nixon by the Zephyrus Image press.
The simplest and most cutting of the three is a petition entitled “Why impeachment? Why not!!?” and bearing the names of five ‘supporters’. At number 1 is Pat Nixon, the First Lady. The ‘large bumper sticker’ relies on the phonetic rebuses used by the press in several of their designs; here the message “impeach Nixon” is constructed using a peach, a profile of the President retching (‘ick’), and a menacing sun. This appears to be a proof copy, hence the pencil marks, which are not listed in Johnston (p. 206). The smallest handbill bears a red screenprint of Pat and the President cheering beneath an advert for the “Dick & Pat fly-swatter and fan”; dealer’s enquiries directed to Ray Frito’s Novelties in Beanville, Colorado. Tape reels incorporated into the typography possibly hint at the Watergate cover-up and the Saturday Night Massacre, hence the fly-swatter joke. This was a proof copy, of which there were several variants, for a label to accompany an actual novelty fly-swatter, just as the Im + peach design became a real bumper sticker, at one point applied to senators’ cars (see Johnston, p. 54). It is likely these were produced concurrently with the developing Watergate scandal and the re-election campaign of the President in 1972, as attempts at starting the impeachment process began several years before Nixon resigned in 1974.
Zephyrus Image began in the early 1970s as a collaboration between printer Holbrook Teter and engraver Michael Myers. Teter’s son Matt was apparently the brains behind the “Why impeachment” petition, and his name appears there with those of his friends. ZI drew in poets such as Edward Dorn for the creation of Bean News, for which J.H. Prynne was distributor #1 in England; beans and therefore ‘Beanville’ were a running joke. “The Dick & Pat fly-swatter and fan” was a collaboration with Dorn, who appears to have been fixated on the bean idea.
Alastair Johnston, Zephyrus Image: A Bibliography (Poltroon Press, 2003).
