Posted on 07/22/2003 6:45:41 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON - The Secret Service (news - web sites) used "profoundly bad judgment" in seeking to question a Los Angeles Times cartoonist over a political cartoon depicting a man pointing a gun at President Bush (news - web sites), a senior House Republican said Tuesday.
Rep. Christopher Cox (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Secret Service owed Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez an apology "and the public is owed an explanation both of how this happened and why it will not happen again."
The use of "federal power to attempt to influence the work of an editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times," Cox said in a letter to U.S. Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, "reflects profoundly bad judgment."
The Times, in an article in its Tuesday edition, said a Secret Service agent visited the paper's Los Angeles office for what he said was a routine inquiry following the publication on Sunday of Ramirez' cartoon. The agent talked to a Times attorney but was told he could not speak to Ramirez.
The Secret Service is responsible for looking into any perceived threats against the president.
The cartoon is a takeoff of a chilling 1968 photograph from the Vietnam War showing Vietnamese police Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a man he said was a Viet Cong in the right temple on a Saigon street.
In the cartoon, the man pointing the gun at a caricature of the president has "politics" written across his back, and there's a sign on the street scene in the back reading "Iraq (news - web sites)."
The Times quoted Ramirez as saying he was not advocating violence against Bush but trying to show that the president is the target of political assassination because of his State of the Union address when he used faulty intelligence to back up claims of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
"The published work on its face was well within the ample bounds of any federal law which the Secret Service is charged with enforcing," Cox said.
Secret Service spokesman John Gill said the service "is responsive to requests from members of Congress, and we will be responsive to Chairman Cox's request."
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Cox, IMO, is also irresponsible. The Secret Service has to investigate any "perceived" threat.
This was definitely a "perceived" threat, no matter the political sympathies of the cartoonist.
Ditto.
The cartoon is a takeoff of a chilling 1968 photograph from the Vietnam War showing Vietnamese police Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a man he said was a Viet Cong in the right temple on a Saigon street.
In the cartoon, the man pointing the gun at a caricature of the president has "politics" written across his back, and there's a sign on the street scene in the back reading "Iraq (news - web sites)."
The Times quoted Ramirez as saying he was not advocating violence against Bush but trying to show that the president is the target of political assassination because of his State of the Union address when he used faulty intelligence to back up claims of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
When put in this context, the cartoon was spot-on. Most people, however, are bilssfully ignorant of the context
Well, I tended to side with Ramirez when I first saw the thread on FR, swimming against the current, so to speak.
But the longer I thought about it, the less appropriate it became, because in the original photograph, the man being executed had perpetrated terrorist random murder against Vietnamese civilians.
Hardly a parallel worth developing.
When you have to explain them, or "put them in context," they're first-class duds.
As, apparently, are you.
As I explain in post #8.
The Op-Ed editior should have never allowed such a rash, ill-considered, and easily misconstrued cartoon to be published. That he gave it the green light suggests that he intended to cheer the liberal readership of the LA Times, dismay the Republicans, and embarrass conservative cartoonist Ramirez.
Although I agree fundamentally with you about this particular example, I must disagree here.
Political cartoons are more wit than humor, and totally different rules apply.
Here, active mental engagement is essential, and if you're not equipped to play in that sandbox stick to the regular comics.
And no retractions or explanations from the Op-Ed editor, either, I'll bet.
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