The Race Card: Don't Leave Home Without It! (Daled Amos)

Last week, the Washington Post published Michael Ramirez's cartoon in its newspaper:

Ramirez succinctly captured the fact that Hamas exploits human shields, protecting terrorists and their weapons while putting Gazan civilians at risk. The cartoon was well done, but it did not reveal anything new to people paying attention to the news.

But the fact that Ramirez was accurate and on-target offended some people. A typical reaction from readers was:

The caricatures employ racial stereotypes that were offensive and disturbing. Depicting Arabs with exaggerated features and portraying women in derogatory, stereotypical roles perpetuates racism and gender bias, which is wholly unacceptable.

Racist? Was Ramirez's point to make fun of Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad's physical appearance?

In fact, Ramirez provided Fox News Digital with examples of other renderings he's done for his cartoons:

Is that reader unaware that a caricature's "exaggerated features" are a cartoonist's bread and butter? And what "stereotypical" and "derogatory" role is the reader accusing Ramirez of pigeonholing women into -- human shield? Seems Hamas beat him to it.

Another reader, a self-described scholar of religion and media, claimed to recognize "a deeply racist depiction of the ‘heathen’ and his barbarous cruelty toward women and children" in the cartoon. But that was the whole idea: to point out the barbarity and cruelty of Hamas. Is this reader denying that Hamas uses human shields or that it massacred over 1,400 men, women and children and took over 240 civilians as hostage?

In the rush to play the race card, basic logic and common sense were abandoned, all in defense of personal agendas.

In response, the Washington Post dutifully removed the cartoon -- even though the Washington Post opinion editor David Shipley himself handpicked it out of the multiple choices that Ramirez gave him. His cartoons are published simultaneously in the  Las Vegas Review-Journal, which kept the cartoon.

Ramirez was not pleased with Shipley's decision:

“He knew that I wasn’t happy with it [the cartoon being yanked]… And he begged me not to quit,” Ramirez said. “And honestly, I thought about the consequences of that. If I quit, then the cancel culture people win because they basically exorcise the Washington Post of my cartoon, and I didn’t want to give them that luxury.” [emphasis added]

He indicated that he would respond to the incident, and he did:

Ramirez added a note, "When the intellectually indolent cannot defend the indefensible they pull out the race card."

But this is not the first time a newspaper has bowed to external pressure. Three years ago, The New York Post reported: New York Times changes headline following pressure from Democrats. When then-President Trump said he was considering deploying the military to put an end to riots in response to the death of George Floyd, the story's headline was posted to Twitter: “As Chaos Spreads, Trump Vows to ‘End It Now.'” There was an uproar on Twitter because the headline was not negative. They preferred  the online version of the headline, "Police Clear Protesters With Tear Gas So Trump Can Pose by Church." When the late edition came out, it carried the headline, “Trump Threatens to Send Troops into States.” The mob dictated to the editor what kind of headline he could use.

These days, we are seeing another kind of disruption of speech. People are tearing down posters featuring the faces of the 240 Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas terrorists and dragged into Gaza. Some people find these posters offensive. They are "triggered" by them. When they were in college, they may have protested against speakers they did not like and tried to prevent them from speaking. Now, they tear down posters.

The "defense" offered by one such person below makes no more sense than the comments above by readers in defense of demanding the removal of a political cartoon that does not represent their opinion:

It is all about personal and group agendas and the need to disrupt the free speech of others with opposing views. After decades of seeing this on university campuses, we witness it now pouring out onto streets around the world.

But this is not based on logic or rights or free speech for all. It is all part of perpetuating one's own agenda. That explains the inconsistency we are seeing. As Jonah Goldberg puts it:

the idea that hurting someone’s feelings or not ratifying their grievances is a form of violence or bigotry. But now, according to their heads-we-win-tails-you-lose worldview, speech that they don’t like is literal violence, and literal violence that they do like is speech.

The rules of the game are not set in stone. They are being set by those who have the numbers online and in the streets. You do not necessarily have to be articulate. All you need is to repeat some chants and accuse anyone who stands in your way of being a racist. 

Vandalizing property and tearing down posters get you extra points.

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