Washington Post Removes Hamas Cartoon After Backlash From Staff and Readers

From The Wall Street Journal:

WSJ News Exclusive | Washington Post Removes Hamas Cartoon After Backlash From Staff and Readers

 

The cartoon ...

 

Can't be a good liberal or journalist these days if you're not offended by people being mean to terrorists.

 

Phenomenal cartoon and reminds me of something I saw in recent days.

 

Between layoffs and thin skinned newspaper editors, there won’t be any political cartoons in five years.

 

The Post's editorial editor, David Shipley, missed nothing.

There's nothing racist about that cartoon. It's a depiction of facts -- of what happened, frankly, with the "editorial" part being the sarcasm included in the bubbled commentary, "How dare Israel attack civilians."

It's a perfectly legitimate part of a newspaper's editorial/opinion page.

The newspaper gave in because people complained enough -- and that's relative, as I guess it doesn't take much these days -- not because their complaint was actually correct, or legitimate.

To me this is the paper just trying to do what it thinks is politically correct, and is the equivalent of giving naysayers their way like Walmart does with a complaining customer just to make them shut up, and/or to make a problem go away.

 

I'll take the contra here.

Even if you recognize the individual Hamas spokesman being caricatured - and I'd guess most readers don't - the comic trades on some pretty racist stereotypes.

And the panel would work just as well without the caricature.

 

So, who is it, and why does it matter? The cartoon is an accurate depiction of the behavior that started the war and raised Israel's ire.

 

You're sort of making my point for me.

Even if you know the specific Hamas spokesman being mocked here, the comic depends too much on racist stereotypes.

Again, the comic works fine as a commentary on Hamas and human shields without the default to glowering, big-nosed Arab villains.

In fact, it probably works better.

Worth asking if the editorial cartoonist would ever think to do the same to the politicians of Israel and the leaders of the IDF.

 

I suppose a caricature along these lines ...

... would have been the only thing that wouldn't trigger those who complained. But maybe that eyebrow is too stereotypically heavy?

 

Not all unibrows . . .

 

WaPo Took Down Hamas Cartoon Amid Staffers' 'Deep Concerns,' Internal Memo Indicates (freebeacon.com)