In her column, Ashley Herzog writes: Shortly after Condoleezza Rice became the first black woman to serve as Secretary of State
cartoonist Pat Oliphant drew her as a parrot perched on President Bush's shoulder complete with buck teeth and exaggerated black lips. Not to be outdone Pulitzer Prize finalist Jeff Danziger depicted Rice as 'Prissy
' the slave character from Gone with the Wind. Danziger's cartoon Condi also had exaggerated African American features
as well as bare feet and a stereotypical black dialect: 'I knows all about aluminum tubes.' Cartoonist Ted Rall dropped the subtlety and referred to Rice as Bush's 'house nigga' and added
'You're not white
stupid.'
I have two objections to this passage: First, this entire paragraph is paraphrased so closely to a piece by the right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin as to nearly constitute plagiarism. It has circulated through the conservative blogosphere, but should still be attributed to its original source. Second, Herzog's (er, Malkin's) thesis is ridiculous. No one attributes a character in a novel's lines to its author. Similarly, when a character in a cartoon says something, it isn't the cartoonist saying it. When Lucy or Charlie Brown uttered a line in Peanuts, it wasn't a quote by Charles Schulz ' it was a line he wrote for them.
Neither Oliphant, nor Danziger, nor myself subscribe to the racist and sexist attitudes that are, to be honest, more common among conservatives than liberals (despite their opportunistic claims to the contrary). As progressive critics of the Bush Administration, cartoonists' depictions of Secretary Rice express dismay that a person of her talent and intelligence allowed herself to be used to sell policies with which she herself disagreed.
In short, writing about political cartoons makes about as much sense as writing about music. You have to see them to get them.
Ted Rall is a syndicated editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate and president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.
17
Archives
Letter to the Editor
