Editorial cartoonists have all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Apply that incendiary touch to an issue as sensitive as religion and — kaboom!
An example appeared on Monday’s Opinion page. Several readers took offense at a syndicated cartoon by Don Wright of the Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla. They saw it as an uncalled-for attack on the Roman Catholic Church. “Vicious,” said more than one.
In the cartoon a woman ponders the church’s attitudes about sexuality:
“For women, sexual conduct is always closely monitored. The Catholic Church tells me what I can or cannot do with my body. Truly unforgiving. Absolutely no compromises. Unless, of course, you’re a pedophile.”
Taken literally, it was outrageous. But political cartooning isn’t meant to be taken literally. It’s a medium that compresses complex issues to their most simplistic form. Cartoonists have a few seconds to get a reader’s attention, convey a message and provoke a reaction.
Do such reactions, provoked that way, contribute anything meaningful to the public discourse? Now that’s a good question, worthy of deeper discussion. (Feel free to send me your thoughts, and I’ll return to the broader issue in a future column.) But Wright’s cartoon, harsh as it was, falls within the norms of political cartooning, which, by its nature, often is outrageous.
Consider the news background against which this one was produced. In Boston, former priest John J. Geoghan is accused of molesting some 130 children over the past 30 years while his superiors, aware of the wrongdoing, moved him from church to church. Geoghan already has been convicted of indecent assault in one criminal trial and the Archdiocese of Boston so far has settled more than 50 civil suits arising from his conduct.
That doesn’t mean the church takes pedophilia lightly, but the Geoghan case gave Pulitzer Prize winner Don Wright a context for satirizing what he portrayed as a double-standard in church thinking.
The cartoon did appear on the Opinion page where offended readers deserve ample opportunity to respond in letters to the editor.
On Sunday, Jan. 13, Bob Bartlett of Spokane was ready for some serious football watching.
One playoff game would begin at 9:30 a.m. on Channel 2, another at 1 p.m. on Channel 28. TV Week told him so. The weekly viewing guide inserted in that morning’s Spokesman-Review was wrong, however.
The Channel 2 game was actually at 1, the Channel 28 game at 9:30. Viewers who relied on TV Week for scheduling their viewing or programming their VCRs were in for a surprise. Unfortunately, this situation happens frequently.
I have no excuse, just an explanation. TV Week is produced under contract by Tribune Media Services, using information that must be submitted 10 days in advance. It comes back to Spokane, in electronic form, in time for local advertising to be put in place before the magazine goes to press on Thursday morning.
During that 10-day time frame, schedules sometimes change, leaving readers with outdated information. Most listings are accurate, but readers don’t know what’s trustworthy and what isn’t.
The best bet is to check with daily TV schedules, which appear Monday through Saturday in the In Life section — although only for late afternoon through midnight. Sports fans will be glad to know that the Sports page regularly publishes that day’s live athletic events as well as radio and television broadcasts.
On Sunday, Jan. 13, the sports page had accurate times for the games that interested reader Bartlett.
Wayne Lythgoe of Colbert challenges a Jan. 8 story using the term “assault rifle” to describe the weapon used by a gunman whom Spokane Police shot and wounded near the Intermodal Transportation Center.
To Lythgoe the term refers to a fully automatic weapon with a clip of 20 or more rounds and probably other features, such as a folding stock and all-metal construction.
Federal law, however, has a broader definition. A 1994 assault-weapon ban listed 19 specific firearms and all copycat weapons.
The latter were defined as semiautomatic rifles that could accept a detachable magazine and that had two or more features commonly identified with assault weapons. Such features included a folding or telescoping stock, pistol grip, bayonet mount, flash suppressor or threaded barrel to accommodate one, and grenade launcher.
The weapon involved in the Jan. 8 story was thought at first to be an SKS but turned out to be a MAK-90. A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said it is considered an assault rifle.
