Jack Ohman

To appreciate Portlandia, you have to leave Portland. Take that from Jack Ohman.

For 30 years, Ohman was The Oregonian's editorial cartoonist and one of the city's foremost satirists. But he didn't chuckle at Fred and Carrie until he moved to Sacramento, where he's now an associate editor, cartoonist and columnist for The Bee.

"When I lived in Portland and I watched Portlandia, I thought it was stupid," Ohman says. "It made no sense to me whatsoever. It didn't seem relevant, it seemed completely over-the-top. And a year later, I've watched every single Portlandia multiple times and it's dead-on to me now."

Ohman makes his first return public appearance in Portland this week to discuss the impact of political cartooning. Expect him to be very candid about some things—like Portlandia ("Bud Clark was the first Portlandian, and Bud changed everything"). But not so much about his time at The Oregonian, which he says he cannot discuss under the terms of his buyout.

Two years after making the move, Ohman has adjusted to some things about Sacramento. He likes the palm trees, golf course and getting lunch at the Subway near his office, though most of his friends, not to mention his kids, are still back in Portland.

"It's hard to start over again when you're 53 years old," he says.

For politically interested Portlanders, his talk offers the rare chance to hear the perspective of someone who was deeply involved in the city's civic life for a quarter-century and now has some distance from fights over the street fee and tiny-house zoning regulations. Ohman says the move hasn't changed his center-left politics, though he's also very aware of the dangers of single-party Democratic rule from his time in Oregon.

"California has a way of turning liberal Democrats from other states into, like, weird nihilists, because they see where it's all going 50 years from now," he says. "I say that lightheartedly, but I don't think it's enormously useful to have one party ruling everything."

Ohman wasn't replaced at The O, and his cartoons still regularly appear on the paper's editorial page. And his illustrations of various staffers still run, including the caricature of semi-anonymous O food critic Michael Russell, scruffy and bibbed, like a hobo waiting for a pot of possum stew.

"Well, that's what he looks like," Ohman says. "My conscience is clear."

GO: Jack Ohman speaks at Line of Fire: Cartooning's Political Impact on Monday, Sept. 29, at the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave. 6:30 pm. Free with registration at waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu. Sold out.

WWeek 2015