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Patrick "Pat" Oliphant (b. July 24, 1935 in Adelaide, Australia) is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world, described by the New York Times as "the most influential cartoonist now working". His trademark is a small penguin character named Punk, who is often seen making a sarcastic comment about the subject of the panel. Oliphant's career, which spans over fifty years, began in 1952 as a copyboy with the Adelaide News. He continued in the newspaper business in Australia until he emigrated to the United States in 1964. Once in the US, he first worked at The Denver Post . His strip was nationally syndicated and internationally syndicated in 1965. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1967 for his February 1, 1966 cartoon They Won't Get Us To The Conference Table . . . Will They?. Oliphant moved to the now defunct Washington Star for six years, until the paper folded in 1981. Oliphant's work, which from time to time employs ethnic caricatures, has occasionally been criticized. In 2001, the Asian American Journalists Association accused Oliphant of "cross[ing] the line from acerbic depiction to racial caricature" [1]. In 2005, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee expressed concern that some of Oliphant's caricatures were racist and misleading [2]. In 2007, two Oliphant cartoons produced a similar response [3]. Oliphant's work has appeared in several exhibitions, most notably at the National Portrait Gallery. He has also crafted a series of small sculptures based on his caricatures of various political figures, which have been displayed alongside his drawings in some exhibitions. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Oliphant won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award seven times in 1971, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1989, 1990, and 1991, the Reuben Award twice in 1968 and 1972 and the Thomas Nast Prize. Oliphant is the nephew of Sir Mark Oliphant, the Australian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII, and later became Governor of South Australia.
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