The Clinton White House’s Covert Cartoonist Revealed
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Clinton Library(WASHINGTON) — Turns out White House staffers aren’t always 100 percent on-task, even in the Roosevelt Room.
Clinton speechwriter Jeff Shesol, who has described himself as a “lapsed cartoonist,” doodled during policy meetings — a lot.
Documents released Friday by the Clinton presidential library reveal Shesol’s amateur artwork in the margins of notes taken during various White House meetings.
At an information technology policy meeting, Shesol scribbled an angry-looking businessman, a flower pot and a waving hand. He also drew a shark on a memo outlining Clinton’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology commencement address, a necktie on a draft of President Clinton’s Rose Garden remarks on handgun safety, and a bleary-eyed man on a draft of Clinton’s welfare-to-work initiative speech.
On another document — a list of proposed participants for the White House strategy session on Children, Violence and Responsibility on May 10, 1999 — Shesol’s pen once again did more than just take notes.
It’s not clear whether the doodles are people on the guest list or people (or things) in the room with Shesol.
Two swimming stingrays also floated across the Shesol’s handwritten memo on edits to Clinton’s farewell address in 2001.
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