You’d think we would get tired of tossing the First Amendment’s old shoe at you, but we don’t. There are just too many clauses in the wonderful doctrine to slam the gate at the Fourth Estate.
The latest offensive challenge to free speech, freedom of the press — and all other independent expression for the masses — is one of those nasty little things from the print newspaper world.
Just when we think we’ve made your eyes bleed from reading about school newspaper advisers being protected, the Patriot Act cousins, or a college student’s right to spew dogmatic religious/same-sex marriage rhetoric, we circle the wagons on good ol’ “Amendment One” to focus on another threat to national security — cartoons.
This time, the “criminal act” of satirical political fair comment comes from a cartoonist at the New York Post, as has been extensively reported in the national media and the Daily Forty-Niner during the past week.
To rehash for readers who might have napped through the controversy, New York Post cartoonist Sean Delonas drew political satire depicting a chimpanzee shot to death by a couple of cops. Reactionaries were quick to accuse the cartoonist and his employer of promoting racism. Some even called for tighter government regulation over — cartoonists? That’s absurd.
Delonas’ comic prompted protests and demands for apologies from sea to shining sea. His bosses went as far as actually delivering a sort of backdoor, quasi-mumbled-under-their-breath “Sorry.”
There’s no doubt the cartoon was insensitive and in poor taste given the history of how blacks have been portrayed in media over the centuries. There’s also no doubt that a lot of heated discussion went on at the New York Post‘s editorial meeting before they whispered their mea culpa.
To make public demands that the cartoonist be fired for his commentary sends a bad message, though. It tells us that only the satire we can all agree on is acceptable. The publication’s editors taking their readership into consideration should decide that. Their consumers are the ones whose backlash at the cash register determines their survival or demise.
If you are offended by the graphic sexual content of Hustler magazine, ignore it on the rack. That’s your choice; the flipside of First Amendment rights. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. But when you openly try to shackle the artist because you’re offended, you’re infringing upon somebody else’s rights; the ones who want to view that type of content.
Political cartoons, like any other art form, are subjective. They typically serve to highlight or scrutinize policies and actions that affect segments of public life like politics, religion, entertainment and social justice.
There also is a journalistic responsibility in having free press rights. During World War II the media fed the military’s propaganda machine. Political satirists drew cartoons of Japanese soldiers with faces like rats, which transferred racial hostility against innocent Japanese Americans.
It wasn’t the cartoonists who were responsible for offensive products hitting the newsstands. That ignorance fell on the publishers and the government.
There have been many great political cartoonists who have won Pulitzer Prizes for their work. Barring them from their right to practice their particular brand of journalism is an attack on all of our rights. It’s the first step in fulfilling Orwellian prophecy; it’s burning “Huck Finn” because of the “N-word.”
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Paul Conrad demands of any publication he produces for that nobody tells him “what to draw or how to draw it.” Printing his cartoons is a completely different decision, though. That’s a company choice they have to live or die with.
Former President Richard Nixon despised Conrad’s political jabs so much he put him on his “enemies list,” which is not a bad place for a satirist to be if they’re doing their job. Nixon undoubtedly would have loved to kick Conrad off the planet, or at least to suppress his artwork. Government censorship, however, strips the shelves in the marketplace of ideas bare.
The only way to guarantee that the entire Constitution is protected from manipulation is to ensure that the First Amendment is our national pride.
We in the media don’t always want to bust the stuffing out of the piñata, but we do need to know we can take our swings when we are so inclined. After all, when what’s right for you is right for us — it’s right for all of us.
