---
title: A Presiding Officer who Plays No Favorites
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/presiding-officer-plays-no-favorites-berryman-1937/
description: An empty Senate chamber seen from the gallery, with the presiding officer's chair vacant while an enormous hooded.
section: Collection
---

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[![A Presiding Officer who Plays No Favorites, 1937 US cartoon: An empty Senate chamber seen from the gallery](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/presiding-officer-plays-no-favorites-berryman-1937.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/presiding-officer-plays-no-favorites-berryman-1937.jpg)

# A Presiding Officer who Plays No Favorites

An empty Senate chamber seen from the gallery, with the presiding officer's chair vacant while an enormous hooded, shrouded figure leans over the rostrum and strikes the gavel. The cartoon's title and image argue that the figure, rather than any person, now holds the chair; the technique fit is weak, a fear-appeal at most, resting on the shrouded figure as a symbol of mortality.

## Propaganda techniques used in this cartoon

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

[← La Vanguardia, front page (Barcelona, 11 July 1937): "Nuestro avance en los frentes del Centro"](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/la-vanguardia-brunete-avance-1937/) [Ausstellung »Der ewige Jude«: Eingang mit Besuchern (Munich) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ewige-jude-ausstellung-eingang-muenchen-1937/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)