Daryl Cagle has a lengthy, I'd say sympathetic but not overly so post up here about the Hartford Courant suspending the cartoonist (and Cagle client) Bob Englehart for one week without pay for a cartoon and accompanying on-line commentary about a school tax issue that appeared on the newspaper's web site February 8. Englehart staked out territory in a frequently-made criticism that education reform isn't possible with more money if parents and families aren't on board with educational goals generally. In doing so, Englehart used the phrase "For the most part, losers raise losers." That line, more than anything else about the cartoon or blog post, seems to have opened up Englehart to charges of racism and a related lack of sympathy regarding perceived beneficiaries of the discussed initiative -- that line was singled out by New Haven's mayor, for example. Cagle also identifies a secondary issue in that Englehart's commentary was subsequently removed from the Courant site, which a writer cited by Cagle believes is a failure of the newspaper to fulfill its role in keeping the public record.
The original post is cached here. Englehart has apparently since apologized, although links provided to that apology seem to come up on Englehart's more general page at the Courant.
As mentioned above, targeting the families of those being educated is hardly an uncommon practice in discussion of those issues, and one for which a number of people find sympathy; Englehart's employment has not only resulted in some discussion of what the boundaries are for such commentary, but seems to have driven at least a bit of that conversation to the general issues involved -- or at least not capsized any hope for same. Englehart has made other recent cartoons/blog posts strongly critical of educational issues, like this broadside against teachers' unions and the notion of tenure.
The 66-year-old cartoonist has been with the paper since 1980, one year after being a Pulitzer finalist. He is also a widely-published magazine cartoonist.
The original post is cached here. Englehart has apparently since apologized, although links provided to that apology seem to come up on Englehart's more general page at the Courant.
As mentioned above, targeting the families of those being educated is hardly an uncommon practice in discussion of those issues, and one for which a number of people find sympathy; Englehart's employment has not only resulted in some discussion of what the boundaries are for such commentary, but seems to have driven at least a bit of that conversation to the general issues involved -- or at least not capsized any hope for same. Englehart has made other recent cartoons/blog posts strongly critical of educational issues, like this broadside against teachers' unions and the notion of tenure.
The 66-year-old cartoonist has been with the paper since 1980, one year after being a Pulitzer finalist. He is also a widely-published magazine cartoonist.