Koterba’s disappearing cartoon
Jeff Koterba had a cartoon run in the Iowa edition of Tuesday’s Omaha World Herald that was changed before any of the Nebraska papers were printed. There’s no sign of it on Omaha.com either, but you can see the cartoon at cagle.com (for now, at least).
I emailed Koterba, asking if he could tell me anything about the disappearance.
“Concerns were raised as to how the cartoon might be interpreted so my editor pulled it,” he said.
I was a little puzzled about the skin tone of the characters Harry Reid is depicted as speaking to. In the version of the cartoon linked to above, the men appear to have light-colored skin that’s not much darker than cartoon Harry’s. This seems to be at odds with Reid’s words. I thought this might possibly be a play off his comments about Obama being sort of light-skinned (not having the exact wording in front of me, that’s my best attempt at a paraphrase), or it could just be something as simple as a technical ink-color reproduction issue.
“Gosh, I meant for them to be gangsta rappers,” he told me. “So yes, perhaps the version you’re looking at there is an issue with poor color reproduction.” While he didn’t specifically identify the race, I think the implication is that since they’re supposed to be “gangsta rappers,” they were intended to be black.
Mystery solved.
neal replied:
January 14th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I wonder if they thought using an outdated stereotype of African-Americans wasn’t the best way to mock someone for having an outdated view of African-Americans.
Van replied:
January 14th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Let’s hope it was that, and not the poor color reproduction.