Dear Mr. Pride,I wonder how many emails Mr. Pride will continue to receive. I hope lots.Online yesterday, I came upon Mr. Marland's political cartoon. My immediate reaction was: disgust and anger. Today, those feelings have only intensified.
This morning, I came upon your statement/apology concerning the cartoon. My reaction: while the apology places blame upon your decision to allow the cartoon to run, there is an undertone of placing blame on the individual (whoever that may be) who posted the cartoon on the internet, thereby allowing the community at large to read/see what's being printed in the Concord Monitor's newspaper. ("Even though Marland's cartoon was copyrighted, it was on the Internet by midday Friday.") While I appreciate your public apology, I sense a certain amount of deflection and finger-pointing by the previous statement, thereby making the apology something less than a full apology.
The cartoon is offensive for several reasons, some you have mentioned. What I perceive to be the greater offense: depicting President Bush as callously using our national tragedy for his personal gain and personal agenda: an ad hominem attack. There are great similarities between Mike Marland's "Social Security" cartoon and one drawn by Gary Trudeau in a Doonesberry cartoon and printed a couple months ago. These kinds of attacks were absent from the cartoonists while Clinton, an man of ill-repute and questionable character, was in office, which makes the attacks against our current President more odious and disgusting.
President Bush is an honorable man, who seeks to do good for our country. We may not all agree with his every decision, but he is motivated by and seeks to do, what he believes is best for our country. Something his predecessor never did.