A week after Michael Cavna’s Washington Post article advocating more diversity among editorial cartoonists, conservative outlets are not letting go. The main complaint seems to be that we have too much to be concerned about without adding more.
From The Federalist:
One would think in an America still suffering the social and economic devastation stemming from a global pandemic, we wouldn’t need to manufacture new crises. The deaths, lost jobs, school closures, and ugly political gamesmanship — among other things — have been quite enough, thank you very much.
But set aside your mourning, depression, and fatigue, for the Washington Post has manufactured another utterly artificial injustice supposedly worthy of our outrage and protest: the lack of women and minority political cartoonists.
© Mike Luckovich
In a “physician heal thyself” comment the article list examples of The Washington Post’s lack of diversity and warns of the cancel culture:
Who is safe from this?
I’ll tell you who shouldn’t be: the editorial board of the Washington Post, whose composition is predominantly white. Perhaps the more our media elites get a taste of their own medicine, the more likely they will realize that their self-serving attempts to present themselves as righteous, woke torchbearers are also self-destructive.
The Casey Chalk opinion/ad hominem piece can be read here.
© Sam Day
Elsewhere “recovering liberal” Kerry Dougherty agrees that the diversity issue is small potatoes:
With newspapers from coast to coast on life support, what is the woke crowd fretting about now?
Lack of diversity among political cartoonists.
Hilarious.
But her main point is that it’s a dying profession so why bother?
Even the mighty Joe Biden can’t save this endangered profession. Cartoonists are the spotted owls of journalism.
In fact, given the rate that newspapers are hemorrhaging money, it’s hard to believe that any daily papers waste resources on cartoons.
© Keith Knight
Her bona fides for commenting on the subject? “Heck, I don’t like cartoons. Never even glance at them.”
Read Kerry’s eulogistic post at her blog.
When I worked in government, the cafeteria in our building, which had once been the “water cooler” of our marble clad eco-system, closed. It closed because there was a new push across the federal utopia, for governments to pave the way for minority-women owned businesses. The existing outfit, which employed disabled veterans, which a few years earlier, had also been a push across the federal utopia, did not have it’s lease renewed and was unceremoniously showed aside. Into oblivion. Coming behind them to fill the void? No one. For years afterward, the cafeteria remained closed, because there weren’t any minority women owned businesses available to move in. Also the government who brought the law, was not in the business of advertising, much less to anyone in the community who may have, against all odds, been sitting on the idea to open a lunch counter in the federal building, for a few years.
I think it might be the same with minority political cartoonists too. Maybe there just aren’t that many waiting in the wings. Besides, if coin-bleeding newspapers “waste resources” on editorial and/or other cartoons, what difference does it make what the ethnicity is of those who want to draw them? Aren’t the feckless perennial naysayers just tired of getting lampooned by them?
We all miss the mark, where we feel we have to make way for the minority, by suspending, altering, ceasing or vilifying the work of the majority in any particular area. I don’t gulp down the lie that the majority always guards against the intrusion of the minority. But government will always create crises, to pit one people group against another, so the politicians can swoop in to manufacture balance with their disingenuous heroics.
None of us chose our skin color, but all of us can choose to be the captain of our own ship. If you’re interested in something, pursue it and go after it with all you’ve got.