Chris Britt: *Big Name* Criticism, Death Threats
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Chris Britt‘s former newspaper, the Springfield (Illinois) State Journal-Register, reports that the editorial cartoonist…
has received multiple death threats in connection with his recent cartoon depicting the praying 10-year-old daughter of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In an interview Chris told the State Journal-Register:
“The reaction is unbelievable,” Chris Britt told the SJ-R in a phone interview Tuesday. “The vitriol has been poisonous. It’s like a forest fire, and it’s out of control.”
“It’s a perfectly defendable cartoon.”
The drawing was designed to “turn the tables” on a comment made by Kavanaugh on Thursday in front of the Senate Judicial Committee.
The Illinois Times, a Springfield alternative newspaper, became involved as Chris had include their name below his signature.
Illinois Times hadn’t published the cartoon online or in print and hadn’t even considered whether to use it, said IT editor Fletcher Farrar.
But that didn’t stop thousands of people from criticizing the paper…
Many of the comments directed at Illinois Times contained vulgarities and threats, Ownbey said.
“One said my entire staff should be lined up and shot,” she said.
Some comments referenced the June shooting deaths of five staff members at the Capitol Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, Ownbey said.
Read the full State Register-Journal story.
The cartoon has attracted widespread attention in the conservative press, and among some well-known personalities.
Among those with religious objections to the cartoon is Franklin Graham.
[W]ouldn’t you know that the God-haters would use this girl’s prayers to mock her, her faith, and her father.
“I believe in the power of prayer. I would encourage everyone to continue to pray for this confirmation. Our nation is in trouble – and the battle for the Supreme Court is being fought in full view of all Americans. Pray that God’s will be done,” he wrote.
Michelle Malkin, who knew Chris back when, via Faith Wire:
“He was a genuinely nice guy. I don’t know what happened to him.”
Politician Ted Cruz in a story from CBS Dallas/Fort Worth said,
“I saw that cartoon. I thought it was truly repulsive.”
Ted Cruz remembers bringing his children into his Presidential campaign:
“During the presidential campaign, an editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post drew a cartoon of me with my two little girls making fun of them and portraying them as dancing monkeys,” Said Cruz. “It was repulsive when they did it there, and it’s repulsive when they did it now.”
In an all-about-me moment Rush Limbaugh recalls a Chris Britt cartoon from 1995 about the Oklahoma City bombing and Right-Wing Radio:
There was actually a cover of TIME magazine. This picture of a fireman carrying a dead baby from the rubble was a cover on TIME magazine. This artist did his cartoonish interpretation of it, and the fireman is thinking as he’s carrying the dead baby, “Damn right-wing radio.”
There was only one voice on the right. In 1995, I was it. There were some local talk shows, but CNN’s the only cable out there. There’s no Fox News. There’s no blogosphere. There’s no alternative media. There aren’t really any conservative websites.
Rush on Chris’ current cartoon says,
It’s the same cartoonist, 1995 to today. It’s just vile. It’s filthy. It’s dirty. It’s disgusting. It’s despicable. And it’s sick.
Presidential daughter Chelsea Clinton tweeted:
“Please leave Judge Kavanaugh’s daughters alone,” she tweeted Wednesday. “They do not belong in your cartoons, ‘jokes’, or skits. If you can’t make your point about Judge Kavanaugh, whatever it may be, without bullying his kids, it’s not worth making.”
That story is via MSN’s The Wrap.
Conservative editorial cartoonist A. F. Branco has responded with his own praying child.
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