Political cartoons date back to before the creation of the United States. Today, they remain an important part of American culture. They are protected as free speech, as part of a free press, under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Matt Wuerker is a long-time political cartoonist, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in 2012. His cartoons appear in Politico, a media company that reports on U.S. politics. He told VOA at his office, outside Washington, D.C., that he sees his job as quite unusual. “We’re a strange mix of things in that we are making serious commentary on serious topics, but we're doing it not so seriously.” Wuerker likes the fact that he can express opinions in the same way as television commentators and those who write opinion pieces for newspapers. The difference, he says, is that, as a cartoonist, he gets to create “silly pictures” to get his point across.