Cartoonists treading lightly when drawing Obama

sfgate ^ | Friday, February 20, 2009 | By JESSE WASHINGTON

[JoeProBono]

Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz was in front of a classroom full of black and Latino kids, drawing presidents. He sketched Bush, then Clinton. Next came his favorite, the man he voted for: Obama."Hey, those lips are big," Alcaraz heard a black girl say from the back of the room. Alcaraz was disturbed. "I try to bend over backwards not to make him look like a cartoon stereotype," and certainly not a racial stereotype, he said. Editorial cartoonists are bending over backwards a lot these days, as they try to satirize the nation's first black president. And when they don't, the result is the kind of outcry that erupted this week after a New York Post cartoon featured a bloody chimpanzee — intentionally or unintentionally evoking racist images of the past.

[JoeProBono]

This illustration shows a political cartoon by Mike Lester depicting President Barack Obama, right, and Michelle Obama.

[Prole]

The cartoon would be more appropriate with a picture of Malcolm X or Josef Stalin in the background.

Those are the only ones that really compare to Obama.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

And those AWFUL cartoons of Condi Rice as President Bush’s “Mammy” got a PASS?