Ann Telnaes

Again: How Does One Ethically Respond When One’s Friends Are Slipping Into The Throes Of Madness?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Nah, the Trump Deranged aren’t losing their frickin’ minds…

That’s the most recent cartoon from Ann Telnaes, that witty, subtle, objective and non-partisan political cartoonist who quit the Washington Post who didn’t think her juvenile submission was worth publishing. So now she’s operates from her substack, issuing brilliant art like that. Incredibly, one of my oldest and most accomplished friends posted that crap—it’s the equivilent of a schoolboy drawing of the unpopular kid with blacked out teeth and horns—with approval on his Facebook page, where his decision was roundly praised as he revealed that he subscribed to her visual hate-fests. This is the equivalent of someone announcing that he has decided to subscribe to the “Turd of the Week” service. Another equally rational, intelligent Facebook friend until he went bonkers posted a long, irrelevant quote from the Nuremberg trials about the nature of fascism, and everyone metaphorically nodded and applauded as if it has anything to do with current events.

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Ethics Observations On The Washington Post’s “Ted Cruz’s Kids Are Monkeys” Cartoon Uproar

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

ted-cruz-monkey-cartoon

Here’s what you need to know: Ted Cruz launched a political ad  that features the Texas Republican reading parody Christmas fare to his two young daughters, Caroline and Catherine, stuff like “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails.”  Washington Post political cartoonist Ann Telnaes reacted with the drawing above, titled “Ted Cruz uses his kids as political props.” The children are portrayed as monkeys. Telnaes clearly knew she was on thin ice, and accompanied the cartoon with a justification (now pulled: if anyone has the whole text, I’d like to see it) saying in part,

“But when a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father’s dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game.”

Note: the daughters are 7 and 4.

Cruz cried foul in a tweet, and the news media and internet was beginning to tilt hard against the Post, when editor Fred Hiatt pulled the cartoon, writing,

“It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it. I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.”

And here we are.

Observations: Continue reading →