Pete Wagner

Quick Facts

Full Name	Pete Wagner
Date Of Birth	Jan 26, 1955(1955-01-26)
Age	69
Birthplace	Milwaukee
Country	United States
Horoscope	Capricorn

Pete Wagner Biography

Pete Wagner is one of the most popular and richest Cartoonist who was born on January 26, 1955 in Milwaukee, United States. Pete Wagner (born January 26 1955) is an American political cartoonist writer, activist scholar, and caricature artist His work has appeared in more than 300 newspapers and other periodicals. His cartoons and theatrics of activists have drawn public debate and often received media interest.

Wagner identified his self in the 70s and the 1980s by describing himself as “an activist who also happens to be a cartoonist,” a “professional radical”and a “cultural revolutionary.” Wagner often employed guerrilla theatre as a means of responding to criticisms and controversies about his cartoons, and independently, in addition to cartooning, as part that of an activist as well as an organizer, protesting against events that were staged at Minneapolis in the name of The New Right, specifically appearances by Anita Bryant in 1978, president Ronald Reagan in 1981, and Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1982, as well as other. He was mentored from Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman who were the co- founders of the Yippies or Youth International Party, Wagner employed a variety of creative, nonviolent and humorous costumes, narratives memes, and other surprising tactics to make statements that drew media attention. For example, following his having been elected as student Senator from 1972 in the UW-Milwaukee campus Wagner mocked the powerlessness of the student-run universities by running for the position of student vice-president in the year 1973 and in 1976 was elected student president of the University of Minnesota on the “Tupperware Party” ticket, in both instances declaring that he would leave the city should he be elected and in both instances following the promise with a departure of town. The humorous use to”Tupperware Party “Tupperware Party” name to the student-run political party was the idea from UWM student James Rubin and Donnie Goetz. Wagner won the primary election at the University of Minnesota in 1976 over all other candidates and his campaign attracted the attention of the national news media , including United Press International and NBC News. In 1982, tired of trying to convince left-wing steering committees that he thought were uninspiring, boring and not politically correct to include more humor and theater in the protests they were putting on within Minneapolis, Wagner conceived, created and arranged a demonstration where the people were encouraged to show their support “for or against anything you want.” This demonstration, known as the “All-Purpose (Generic) Demonstration” took advantage of the new cultural and marketing trend of brand packaging that was generic and attracted over five thousand people. It was also copied by students from a college in Denver and was greeted with a flurry of press coverage, including a front page story and photo in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch and a report on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” This Generic Demonstration was the final stage of which Wagner’s “street theater gang” organized by Wagner in 1981, later known as the 1984 Brain Trust, was involved. It was the brain trust. Brain Trust was a collective comprised of mainly University of Minnesota students who created a cult-like organization together with Wagner that performed and created various myth-making activities and publications from May 1981 until June 1982. It was said that the Brain Trust resembled a highly politically polarized model of Warhol’s “The Factory” in its connection to Wagner and also collaborated in conjunction with The Church of the Subgenius in publishing its first works. The history of the group is described in Wagner’s next book “Buy This Too”. The Brain Trust’s initial members or initiators (the group claimed to not have “members,” declaring “We have no members, only leaders”) included Tom Pettersen, who became a well-known blues artist throughout Germany, Jim Hobson, his environmental art and performance has been featured at many Burning Man events, Aaron Helfman, a well-known Chicago businessman and designer, Theresa Blanchard, who later collaborated with several theaters in Minneapolis and other cities. Wagner first met Pettersen and Helfman as they sold the book “Buy This Book” at an outlet in Dinkytown the business district adjacent to that of the University of Minnesota campus, in the spring of 1981. In the course of arranging and performing theatrics which launched the Brain Trust in response to the annual visit to campus by Brother Jed and his traveling group, “the Destroyers,” Wagner was introduced to Hobson and his housemates from Hobson’s residence at University of Minnesota Student Co-op who came up with and were a part of the “God Squad” and “C.R.A.P.” (Christians to promote The Revival of Ancient Precepts) together with The Brain Trust.

Wagner made efforts to adapt political cartooning to television beginning as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Mass Communication and Journalism in 1977, as a regular on Laird Brooks Schmidt’s late-night television show on KSTP-TV in 1978–79 and in new media throughout the 1990s. He produced Public-access television cable TV shows at the Minneapolis Television Network in the early to mid-1990s with Schmidt, worked on ways to use digital media to draw political cartoons using Amiga computers from the late 1980s to late 1990s, and drew live political cartoons on KMSP- TV, Channel 9, the FOX affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, on its morning news program on a weekly basis in 2004. Some of his new media cartooning efforts are posted on Wagner’s [1] website of political cartoons, most of which were drawn between 1997 and 2002 for the Minnesota Daily.

Wagner was influenced by Sanders to work in an acerbic “sledgehammer” style of political cartooning, which was considered “too in-your-face” by most commercial, corporate daily newspapers (to quote an editor at one suburban Chicago paper). Determined to remain true to what Wagner considered the highest and best practice of the art form, rather than “selling out” by watering down his satire or drawing style, Wagner, inspired by the examples of Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau and I.F. Stone, forsook a career which by the time he was 20 years old held significant promise of wealth and fame to instead work for smaller but more journalistically feisty or risque alternative and college papers and magazines and to engage in radical political and cultural activism. Characterized by Isthmus as a “punk cartoonist” in a cover story about Wagner published in March 1978, Wagner’s political cartoons were syndicated by the College Press Service from 1973 to 1976, and reprinted in over 300 periodicals, including Time magazine, the Washington Post, The Progressive, In These Times, High Times and others. In 1977, Wagner was recruited by Larry Flynt to draw political cartoons on a regular basis for Hustler magazine, under the banner “Drawing Fire, by Pete Wagner.” Wagner quit less than a year later when Flynt announced that Hustler would be transformed from a pornographic magazine into a Christian publication, explaining that he did not want to “ruin my reputation by being associated with a religious magazine.” Wagner’s cartoons won a national Society of Professional Journalists award in 1976 for a cartoon drawn while at the Minnesota Daily, six more SPJ awards between 1985 and 1991 for cartoons drawn while at City Pages, an honorable mention in the John Fischetti competition and several Minnesota Newspaper Association awards, also while at City Pages. One of his cartoons was shown in an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York.

Wagner’s political activism has been manifested in the form of composing and performing multi-media performances of political humor (“Pete Wagner! Pete Wagner”The Un-American Boy!” performed at 33 colleges throughout the late 1970s and the early 1980s) in addition to writing and publishing books, such as “Buy This Book” (1980) and “Buy This Too” (1987) and writing for, editing , and publishing a mass-circulation predecessor to The Onion, probably the first tabloid publication that was free that was published in The U.S., “Minne HA! HA! “The Twin Cities’ Sorely Needed Humor Magazine” (published occasionally in one to fifteen issues from 1978 to 1993). Minne HA! HA! Its satire was best illustrated in issues such as “The lighter side of total Global Nuclear Disaster.” Wagner’s book design was innovative in their day, and influenced by the style of the Marshal McLuhan books written with Quentin Fiore, and likened to MAD Magazine by WCCO-TV’s Marcia Fleur during an interview interview Wagner during the show “Newsday” in November 1987. Wagner also presented stand-up political satire and political comedy on the Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop Theater in the 1970s, and in Scott Hansen’s Comedy Gallery on a regular schedule in the 1990s. Alongside comedy and writing for humor, Wagner has written numerous opinions and editorials for various newspapers, among them The Milwaukee Journal. Milwaukee Journal.

Pete Wagner Net Worth

Pete Wagner is one of the richest Cartoonist from United States. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Pete Wagner 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

Wagner employed traditional ways of activism in the early years of his career, such as when he formed ECO which stands for the Environmental Cleanup Organization, as an undergraduate student at Bay View High School in 1969. ECO established recycling programs, carried out roadside litter cleanups and opposed the testing-marketing of a non-biodegradable plastic container manufactured by Morton Salt. Morton Salt company through the Milwaukee City Council between 1969 between 1969 and 1972. Wagner continued to be an environmentalist at the UW-Milwaukee campus and worked together with Mike Walker to oppose energy waste. Wagner was an advocate in support of Zero Population Growth, Inc. from 1973 to the year 1975, in Milwaukee as well as Minneapolis. Wagner was the co-chairman for the Benjamin Spock for President campaign in 1972, as Benjamin Spock, a famous doctor and politician was a candidate in the race for U.S. president on a social-democratic platform, which advocated for socialized medicine as well as an annual limit on personal earning of $50,000. Wagner was elected president in 1974. Wagner became the chairman of University of Minnesota Irish Northern Aid chapter. He then was a frequent contributor to cartoons and articles against British imperialism to his newspaper, the Republican News in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the past, Wagner has worked with Minneapolis environmentalist Leslie Davis, joining Davis as his running co-host in Davis running to become the governor of Minnesota in 2002.

A native of a working-class area Bay View, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Wagner also resided and worked at Madison, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Wagner is most likely most well-known as a political cartoonist. He was the editor of his high school’s paper The Bay View Oracle, Bay View Oracle, in 1969 to 1972, and also a host of alternative media such as neighborhood, college and special interest papers and magazines that began in 1972, such as UWM Post (1972-74), UWM Post (1972-74 and 1976) as well as The Marquette Tribune (1973-75) Minnesota Daily (1974-76 and 1997-2002), MPIRG Statewatch (1979-1987), Republican News (1974-75), Hustler magazine (1977-78), Minnesota Tenants Union newspaper (1979-82), Elliot Park, Minneapolis Surveyor (1981-84), Gay-Lesbian Community Voice (1979-93), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1985-87), City Pages (1982-92), Madison Press Connection (1978) and many more. Wagner’s mentors included Bill Sanders of the Milwaukee Journal, Herb Block of the Washington Post, and Ross Lewis who was a retired Milwaukee Journal cartoonist.

Despite the intensity and offensiveness of some of his work, Wagner developed a history of charming or winning over as friends many political enemies and targets of his attacks, something like the French philosopher, Voltaire. Bernard Casserly, editor of the Catholic Bulletin based in St. Paul, MN, wrote a scathing editorial in 1975 against Wagner in response to a cartoon about the Kenneth Edelin trial in Boston, condemning Wagner as “vicious,” “poisonous,” “malicious” and “sophomoric.” Yet Casserly wrote the glowing foreword 12 years later to Wagner’s second book, “Buy This Too,” after the two became friends. Minneapolis Daily American editor Francis R. McGovern, an extreme right-wing conservative who would have fit into today’s Tea Party movement, at first lambasted Wagner but later praised his use of humor to engage students to participate in political activism, and also stated that he was “honored” to call Wagner a “great friend” and “a damn good clown.” Rev. Joseph Head, an outspoken conservative activist who wrote a four-page, single-spaced, typewritten letter calling Wagner “A DANGEROUS ENEMY OF OUR COUNTRY!” in 1975, was a major participant in Wagner’s “Generic Demonstration” at the University of Minnesota in 1982, and local news coverage by KSTP-TV broadcast the image of the 80+ year-old Head, in his three-cornered American Revolutionary hat and in front of his giant replica of the Liberty Bell, grinning happily with his arm around his former “foe,” Wagner. Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee J. Martin Klotsche and one mayor of Madison, Wisconsin were among those fans of Wagner who requested and in some cases paid for original cartoons that had criticized them,. United States Senator Paul Wellstone, who was criticized by Wagner for his positions on regulating nutritional supplements, hosted exhibits of Wagner’s cartoons in his offices.

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

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Who is Pete Wagner Dating?

According to our records, Pete Wagner is possibily single & has not been previously engaged. As of December 1, 2023, Pete Wagner’s is not dating anyone.

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Facts & Trivia

Pete Ranked on the list of most popular Cartoonist. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in United States. Pete Wagner celebrates birthday on January 26 of every year.