Herald oped editor explains, apologizes for that cartooon

Do you seriously have the crust to accuse others of trolling after writing a piece of drama like that? Really?

Is there some sort of historical correlation that I'm missing here? Did minstrel performers eat watermelon as part of the act or something?

lmgtfy

But come on, you must have met at least one Black person before leaving Vermont.

Holbert and Cohen both see and admit that the cartoon was a bit ignorant, though they both claim that no ill intent was meant. Just leave well enough alone.

http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/3-coon/5-chickwatermel...

If a stupid white guy from Vermont can't understand why the stereotype isn't offensive, then it isn't offensive. Q.E. Fucking D.

Illegals, EBT Deval, EBT, Illegals, Marsha. You can actually print a whole newspaper with just 5 words.

You must have been deeply offended when the Wayans brothers released a major motion picture called "White Chicks".

What the hell is this rambling monologue supposed to tell me? The only relevant sentence in the entire thing is:

On the night in question — the night the cartoon appeared on a page proof, the proof was not left in the proper bin. No senior news editor ever saw it.

Somebody was asleep at the wheel. No word on whether they've fixed whatever process failure led to them publishing something without the editors being involved at all. I mean, what's the point of editors and a newspaper if anyone can submit things and have them published without the newspaper looking them over first? The first time an editor sees it is in a physical page proof? What kind of publishing house is this? It's not 1953 any more.

Of course, there's nothing in there to say that had someone been doing their job it would have been blocked. There's no apology for leaving the original version on their website after the story had become huge and the syndicate had already made the cartoonist provide a revised version through their own editorial discretion. There's no discussion of how she has spoken to the cartoonist about why he didn't contact the Herald when he knew the syndicate had a problem with the original but he left the Herald out to dry on this. I mean, she defends him, but really, he had an opportunity to save the Herald some pain by letting them know the syndicate changed it before publishing for obvious reasons (that he claims STILL weren't obvious to him after they asked for raspberry instead of watermelon).

Finally, this bullshit notion that "news" and "opinion" are separate at the Herald is so far fetched. For the past umpteen years, "News&Opinion" has been their moniker and claim to fame. They let their news writers get away with murder in their articles and their opinion writers write about news the way O'Reilly does and Glenn Beck used to at Fox News. They do a "news show" on a "news station" but call it their "opinion schedule" and expect everyone to lose sight of the difference allowing conjecture to become news. The Herald is cut from this same cloth and intentionally blurs the line she supposedly sees so clearly because she has to go downstairs to see the news room.

I've heard that from a few sources (or maybe it's a few people repeating the same sources). But how is that even possible? It would require ignorance of several things that any editorial cartoonist would reasonably be expected to know -- particularly one working for that particular fishwrap, and professing to have the (non-racist) views that he claims.

People absent-mindedly leave their kids in hot cars to die. I'm able to more swallow the idea that he really did see his kid's toothpaste and ran with it without even giving it a second consideration. Let's give him that pass this time. It's not like he has a history of bigotry in his comics.

I do still hold him accountable for not contacting the Herald when his syndicate made him go through a re-write. I mean, come on, guy. The syndicate made you fix something and you didn't think the Herald might want to know about it too? If it was a misspelling where you wrote Obuma accidentally, would you have forgotten to tell the Herald?

However, this is the editor apologizing for not being an editor. And doing a piss-poor job of an apology (although a far sight better than anyone who gives an "I'm sorry YOU can't interpret me correctly" type of apology...so to her credit with that in this times we live in where non-apologies happen where apologies should).

She explained how text gets an eagle eye, while images tend not to get the scrunity.

She also explained how Holbert got death threats for doing cartoons in favor of ending the segregation of public housing in Boston.

It was a good piece, and note that she penned it weeks after the incident. She nutted up and explained how she failed. That's how good apologies work. Or does one need the IQ of me, a Herald reader, to know that?

As a semi-regular writer for this paper some here continually disparage, I've actually had opportunity to meet Rachelle Cohen, dine with her, see what she's like as a person. She is sharp and she is also as straightforward as her apology. She is also - despite the sexist way of putting it - what we used to call in Dorchester "a stand up guy". That's obvious from the way she didn't lay it on anyone else.

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans were routinely depicted as eating those traditional foods in a stereotypical way that disparaged them as simple-minded, child-like, ignorant rustics, the way African-Americans eating watermelon were.

The slur dates back to the days of slavery and is a stubborn one: there are emails widely circulated among racist right-wingers that depict the President gleefully eating watermelon, and signs at Teabagger rallies doing the same.

Nice try at excusing the Herald's sorry-not-sorry racism, though.

And the whole thing was swept under the carpet.