You can’t say,
or draw, that hereSometimes in the heat of a quarrel we forget what we are fighting about.
One example concerns the controversy about an editorial cartoon that appeared in Ka Leo, the University of Hawaii's student newspaper. Students who are mad about the drawing demand that the Ka Leo editors apologize and resign. The Star-Bulletin printed a story about the disagreement in Thursday's edition.
The cartoon showed a black student being intimidated by a bunch of thugs dressed in Ku Klux Klan-like robes who are labeled "Alliance of Assailants of Colored People." Instead of "mocking the NAACP," as critics claim, the cartoon actually is decrying such racism on campus.
So what should the cartoonist and the editors of Ka Leo apologize for? The cartoon's theme? The theme is a strike against bigotry and racism. The visual use of the KKK robes? Nothing personifies racial hatred more than those white robes and pointy hoods. The "stereotyping" of a black student? One doesn't even realize the student pictured is black until one reads the whole cartoon.
A second cartoon, about Hitler, is tasteless and without redeeming value, but it was published a year ago. Odd that it's being used for protest now. But it's still the cartoonist's opinion.
There will always be cartoons and opinions we don't like, but censorship and punishment are not the cure. America is fast becoming as intolerant to free expression as Afghanistan under the Taliban or China under the communist regime -- a place where there is freedom of speech only for speech we like to hear.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
