![]() In the glut of coverage, most news outlets didn’t bother mentioning or showing the part of the video where Cruz had his daughter read from his political attack ad’s script. (Ironically, months later that same person was trolled herself with sexist tweets from Trump supporters.) A member of the Cruz campaign communications team also trolled me, crowing that their “folks pushed back hard,” and “we won” after the cartoon was pulled. Add a news media that seems to value clickbait over presenting context about the editorial cartooning craft and often parrots the inaccurate characterizations the campaigns’ supporters spread, and you might as well paint a red bull’s eye on the cartoonist’s back.ĭuring my four-day marathon of emails and tweets, I was trolled by a well known conservative cable news commentator who characterized my cartoon as attacking children and tried to bait me with insulting tweets. The medium is lightning fast and provides the protection of anonymity. Through social media they can quickly mobilize their supporters and distribute misinformation, allowing mob mentalities to spread as soon as a cartoon is posted online. ![]() ![]() Pett’s experience, and mine, underscore how social media has changed the landscape for editorial cartooning-how it is being used as a tool of intimidation by interest groups and campaigns to try to silence criticism. Pett and his editor responded that the cartoon was not racist. For 36 hours, Pett and the Herald-Leader received phone calls, emails, and social media messages demanding apologies. An online right-wing group picked up the story and continued the misrepresentation of the cartoon’s intent. He called the cartoon racist because it mentioned his adopted children from Ethiopia, and he issued a statement condemning the newspaper for its racial intolerance and for attacking his kids. Matt Bevin for his opposition to the resettlement of Syrian refugees-Bevin had claimed there was a possibility of terrorists entering the state. My colleague Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader had a similar experience last year with a cartoon criticizing Kentucky Gov. The cartoon Ann Telnaes created in response to Ted Cruz’s ad. The Washington Post pulled the cartoon within hours and replaced it with a note from Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, saying, “It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it.” That was when the Cruz campaign reprinted the cartoon in an email asking for political donations to fight the “vicious personal attack on my daughters.” This important part of the cartoon was lost immediately in the social media outrage fueled by tweets and comments from the senator and his supporters that mischaracterized the cartoon as attacking his daughters. Because the point of my cartoon was to criticize Cruz’s decision to exploit his children for political gain, I drew him as a campaigning organ grinder with performing monkeys. The visual metaphor in this cartoon was an organ grinder, an early 20th century street musician who used leashed animals, usually monkeys, to collect coins from appreciative audiences. They are the language we use to convey our point of view. Visual metaphors are an important component of editorial cartooning. In addition to comments like the ones above, I was Twitter trolled, my archived cartoons doctored, and my photograph tweeted with the caption: “Makes fun of Ted Cruz’s children, aborted all of her own.” In my almost 25 years as an editorial cartoonist, I have never received the level or amount of misogynistic vitriol I did over that cartoon. Many of my colleagues have received death threats as well-but this was different. ![]() This has been especially true during the volatile 2016 presidential campaign.Įditorial cartoonists are a thick-skinned group we’re used to getting negative feedback from irate readers telling us we’re idiots and how terrible our cartoons are. Although passionate criticism over a provocative cartoon isn’t new, the introduction of social media into politics and election campaigning has dramatically increased the speed and intensity of those reactions, and the repercussions for the editorial cartooning profession. Since my cartoon ran in December, I’ve thought a great deal about the role of social media in stoking the resulting outrage.
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