About 10 days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Joel Pett, an editorial page cartoonist for the Lexington Herald Leader in Kentucky, drew President Bush – depicted as under the feet of Vice President Dick Cheney – telling Americans to get back to normal.
The day the cartoon ran, “People went berserk,” said Pett, who won the Pulitzer Prize last year.
“It expressed exactly what I wanted to say, that I had a lot more confidence in the people around him than in Bush. But clearly there is a segment of the population that is loath to see criticism of the commander-in-chief because they see it as unpatriotic.”
The reaction to Pett’s work shows the difficulty editorial cartoonists have faced the past two months as they have holstered their sharp-tipped pens while searching for the right approach to comment on these dangerous times.
Harsh criticism of senior administration officials is out – at least for now – and has been replaced with a more sensitized satire. That’s a drastic change from a group who often likes to take no prisoners.
“We’re really in uncharted waters here. My generation has never faced a war like this where it seems so clear cut,” said Scott Stantis, editorial page cartoonist for the Birmingham News in Alabama and president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.
Many cartoonists, himself included, have not found themselves at odds with the White House’s terrorism fight, he said.
Nowhere is that feeling more evident than in drawing President Bush, who had been a favorite target before the attack. However, the high stakes in the terrorism war has placed him off limits.
“I don’t think anybody is hacking on Dubya much. I haven’t seen it at all,” said Jeff Parker, editorial page cartoonist for Florida Today. “Before Sept. 11, here’s a guy who didn’t have command of the English language, and now he has command of this vast army.”
Said Pett: “I’m cutting him a lot more slack than I normally would.”
In the early days after Sept. 11, patriotic themes were an easy choice for cartoonists at newspapers across the nation.
Pett said he used Uncle Sam rather than Bush as a symbol of American resolve because he feels it more fully represents “all of us.” Parker drew a weeping Statue of Liberty, and later an American eagle attacking a vulture symbolizing terrorism.
Osama bin Laden also became a steady foil for Parker because “you can hammer him all you want. People like (going after) bad guys.”
However, Parker had a cartoon that dealt with anthrax pulled by editors before its publication.
It showed Gov. Jeb Bush hiding under his desk while state Senate President John McKay held a suspicious package marked “budget.” The cartoon was about Bush’s troubles with the Legislature, but was to have run shortly after Bush’s office had an anthrax scare.
Editors felt it was insensitive, and kept it out of the paper.
Another idea Parker had for an anthrax cartoon — a mailbox with the words “weapon of mass destruction” on it — was shot down during a discussion with editorial page editor Audie Murphy out of concern it could have stoked unnecessary fear.
“Editors have to make calls like that, and I have to be somewhat self-censoring. But it’s pretty clear that suspicious packages aren’t funny, period,” Parker said.
Lately, Pett and Parker have taken on a range of issues.
Pett has gone after weak airport security, nuclear weapons and Congress bailing out corporations at the expense of the poor and laid-off workers. There is plenty of fodder out there, Pett said, to make his points.
Parker has turned to local subjects, such as last week’s elections, the special legislative session in Tallahassee, and terrorism-stressed Americans. Both are still shying away from Bush, although Stantis says that may be starting to slowly change.
“As we come out of the fog, people are reassessing things. That’s the nature of commentary,” Stantis said.
Parker, uneasy with the leave-Bush-alone philosophy, looks at it this way: “It seems like skepticism is out the window, and that’s scary and dangerous. But we have to temper ourselves right now until things calm down.”
