Michael Cavna sums up a rough fortnight for political cartoonists and newspaper editors, and asks an important question: What if publishers decide it’s too much trouble to do their damn job?
“In my mind, editorial cartoons are expendable. None of them are produced by our staff, and rarely do they depict a local issue” says THE ONE PERSON WHO COULD HIRE A CARTOONIST AND MAKE THAT HAPPEN. “If editorial cartoonists get in the habit of lifting people up instead of tearing people apart, then everyone will want them,” says @VoiceOfPeeDee Publisher Bailey Dabney.
“Opinion pages in a diverse country shouldn’t be safe spaces,” Matt Wuerker says. “I miss the ‘70s and ‘80s when opinion pages were exciting and full of raucous cartoons and caricatures.”
Jen Sorensen, creator of a weekly political strip, calls the use of cartoons employing racist tropes “editing failures,” urging papers to learn from controversy rather than “eliminate an entire genre that’s still appreciated by many.”
Keith Knight, author of “They Shoot Black People, Don’t They? 20 Years of Police Brutality Cartoons,” says rather than apologize, editors “should stand by” their cartoon selections and, if necessary, “go down with the ship.”
Well, we can always hope, can’t we?
