An editorial cartoon that depicts Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a strung-up pinata that US President Barack Obama is inviting Republicans to whack has drawn criticism from Hispanics and women’s rights advocates.
The cartoon by Chip Bok of Creators Syndicate ran in the Oklahoman on Tuesday. It shows Obama wearing a sombrero and saying “Now, who wants to be first?” to a group of elephants in suits holding sticks.
The underline says: “Fiesta Time At The Confirmation Hearing.”
Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and the third woman.
Jean Warner, chair of the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, said there was nothing funny about the image.
“Here’s a woman wearing a judge’s robes and she’s about to get the crap beaten out of her because she has the audacity to think she can sit on the Supreme Court,” Warner said. “But most young girls who look at the cartoon, don’t even understand that. They just see guys with sticks about to hit a woman.”
Rossana Rosado, publisher and chief executive officer of El Diario La Prensa in New York, also said the cartoon was offensive.
“On first view you just see her hanging by a rope and that’s a very disturbing image,” she said. “It’s offensive mostly because it’s not funny. It’s supposed to be satirical and humorous and it simply isn’t funny.”
Bok said on Friday that his point was that Republicans will look bad if they are too rough on Sotomayor. He said editorial cartoons sometimes offend to make a point.
“A cartoon is disrespectful, it is insensitive,” Bok said. “That’s what we do. We’re not in the business of carrying out socially responsible dictates. That’s somebody else’s job. That’s not my job.”
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