Gary Varvel will be on News Nation tonight at 7:30 pm EST

Editorial cartooning in a cancel culture

I am scheduled to be on News Nation tonight at 7:30pm EST to talk with host Leland Vittert about editorial cartooning and cancel culture.

I will be responding to this story below:

The Washington Post Opinion editor David Shipley deleted an editorial cartoon by Michael Ramirez because of allegedly hurt feelings of staffers and/or readers who declared that the cartoon was “racist.”

As you can see above that I drew a similar idea last month. It is well documented that Hamas hides behind women and children.

See Ramirez’s cartoon below.

Ramirez is a good friend and fellow conservative. He is the full-time editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review Journal. He has won all of the major journalism awards in our line of work including the Pulitzer Prize which he won twice. He told me that this cartoon (above) is still on the Review Journal’s website. They stand behind it.

But WAPO got weak in the knees because they got some complaints about Ramirez’s caricature of Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad. Check out his caricatures of the real people below. As you can see caricature exaggerates facial features. There is nothing racist about his work.

Now read what the opinion editor wrote after deleting Ramirez’s Hamas cartoon.

A cartoon we published by Michael Ramirez on the war in Gaza, a cartoon whose publication I approved, was seen by many readers as racist. This was not my intent. I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel.

However, the reaction to the image convinced me that I had missed something profound, and divisive, and I regret that. Our section is aimed at finding commonalities, understanding the bonds that hold us together, even in the darkest times.

In this spirit, we have taken down the drawing. We are also publishing a selection of responses to the caricature. And we will continue to make the section home to a range of views and perspectives, including ones that challenge readers. This is the spirit of opinion journalism, to move imperfectly toward a constructive exchange of ideas at all possible speed, listening and learning along the way. —David Shipley, Opinion Editor

You can read more about this at Scott Johnson at the Powerline Blog.

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My Essays: God’s 7000-year timeline

Part 1 — God’s 7000-year timeline: Mount Sinai, Transfiguration, Jericho and Sabbath Prophecies

Part 2 — The Rapture

Part 3 — God’s 7000-year timeline: Hosea and Woman at the Well Prophecy

Part 4 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Lazarus Prophecy

Part 5 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Job Prophecy

Part 6 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Jubilee Prophecy

Part 7 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Good Samaritan Prophecy

Part 8 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Creation Prophecy

Part 9 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Wedding in Cana Prophecy

Part 10 — God’s 7000-year timeline: The Esther Prophecy

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