A Canadian newspaper fired a freelance cartoonist for a political cartoon depicting Donald Trump tastelessly.
As Vulgar As It Gets
The cartoon, shown below, depicts a careless President Trump standing over the body of two illegal immigrants. The bodies are intended to directly link to the searing image of dead illegal immigrants Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his two-year-old daughter.
Cartoon for June 26, 2019 on #trump #BorderCrisis #BORDER #TrumpCamps #TrumpConcentrationCamps pic.twitter.com/Gui8DHsebl
— Michael de Adder (@deAdder) June 26, 2019
However, Brunswick News Inc. denies the termination was due to the cartoon, claiming:
“This is a false narrative which has emerged carelessly and recklessly on social media. In fact, BNI was not even offered this cartoon by Mr. de Adder. The decision to bring back reader favourite Greg Perry was made long before this cartoon, and negotiations had been ongoing for weeks.”
It’s a bizarre claim, considering the termination occurred almost immediately after the cartoon appeared, but did not actually appear in the newspaper itself.
Typical Trump Bashing
The cartoon itself is typical of those who hate President Donald Trump.
President Trump had nothing to do with their deaths. He’s told immigrants not to come here illegally, and so has President Obama. Donald Trump wants to build a wall to discourage people from trying to come here illegally and save themselves a dangerous trip.
So to place him in the cartoon at all has no legitimate narrative purpose. It is merely political.
Cartoonist Replies Without Cartoon
The cartoonist, Michael de Adder, tweeted his response to the matter:
“The Premier of New Brunswick Blaine Higgs is a former Irving Oil executive and any cartoon I drew that was slightly critical of him was systematically axed. You want to know why I was let go? I wanted to do my job as an editorial cartoonist, and they wanted me to do their job… Does it matter if I was fired over one Donald Trump cartoon when every Donald Trump cartoon I submitted in the past year was axed?… It got to the point where I didn’t submit any Donald Trump cartoons for fear that I might be fired.”
It does sound as though the newspaper was looking for an excuse to get rid of de Adder.
Political cartoons can be a dicey minefield. On the one hand, most people champion free speech. While a political cartoon may occasionally go too far, it brings up a question as to what constitutes a firing offense?
The New York Times published a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon earlier this year and subsequently apologized. Yet the Times then took the extraordinary step of self-censorship by announcing it would no longer print any political cartoons.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.
