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• Monday, January 14, 2008 08:43 AM

  Oliphant Cartoon Misinterpreted

  I want to comment about the brouhaha over the Oliphant cartoon about Hillary and the Bad Guys.In my high school NY Regents exams, we were always asked to interpret historical editorial cartoons in light of what we had learned about that period of American history. This would be an excellent one to use. Initially, my disgust with the cartoon was balanced by hilarity at the cartoonist's delusion that 60-year old women suffers from PMS. One of the great things about being 62 is that both PMS and menopause symptoms are a distant memory. Hillary is an excellent exemplar of the postmenopausal zest of older women that the anthropologist Margaet Mead spoke about. Free from PMS and the Menopause, women Hillary's and my age might be the safest guardians of the nuclear button, provided the country summon up the courage to watch us age.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized the cartoon has been completely misinterpreted. According to Wikipedia, Oliphant's trademark is a small penguin character named Punk, who is often seen making a sarcastic comment about the cartoon. The PMS remark is an important clue. Hillary is depicted as an old women and people still rant about PMS.

  In 2005, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee expressed concern that some of Oliphant's caricatures were racist and misleading. That is important to know. Oliphant is criticizing sexist media attacks on Hillary by equating them to the rampant misogyny in some of the Arab world. After all, the world leaders repeating the US media attacks.

  The demand of some liberal bloggers for Oliphant's firing is far more offensive than the cartoon even it if was really as offensive as it had been misinterpreted. . Pat Oliphant, 72, has been described by the New York Times as the"most influential cartoonist now working." In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Oliphant won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award seven times in 1971, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1989, 1990, and 1991, the Reuben Award twice in 1968 and 1972 and the Thomas Nast Prize.

  The responsibility of political cartoonists is to offend us enough to shake up our knee-jerk assumptions and reactions. When a cartoonist with such a superb reputation produces something at first glance so offensive, we owe him the respect of thinking about it. My 31-year old daughter instantly "realized that it was completely tonguein-cheek and making fun of the idea that some people actually think this is what it would mean to have a woman president."

  —Redstocking Read Redstocking's other letters
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