Yesterday I sent the following letter to the editors of the Times Picayune, in response to this cartoon from Mike Martinez which they published on Saturday's op-ed page:
As a Southern newspaper well-versed in our troubled racial history, the Times Picayune should recognize racial "dogwhistles" when they are being blown. Saturday's political cartoon from Mike Ramirez was an example of just such a dogwhistle, and you chose to dignify it with publication.
Ever since Ronald Reagan's 1980 speeches about "strapping young bucks" driving Cadillacs and "welfare queens" buying steaks with food stamps, the conflation of food stamps and other types of welfare with the African-American community has been a staple of GOP rhetoric, particularly here in the South. The fact that it is based upon an absolute lie never seems to stop anyone from repeating it. After all, the vast majority of recipients of governmental aid are not African-American, they are white. But the lie helps to feed into white resentment, so it is useful to the GOP (which cheerfully absorbed all of the former Dixiecrats like Thurmond and Helms into its ranks). Referring to President Obama as the "food stamp president" is obviously an extension of this tired, racist trope.
The Martinez cartoon, showing a "food stamp" with Obama's face on it in the upper-right corner of a "Letter of Intent" from the "Nation of Achievement" at 100 Main Street, America, USA to the "Nation of Entitlement" at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is part of that same sad tradition. Ignoring the fact that President Obama is himself a strong example of personal effort and achievement, having woken up at four a.m. each morning as a child to do his school work and then worked his way into Columbia and Harvard Law School, followed by the U.S. Senate and ultimately the White House, Martinez claims that Mr. Obama represents the "Nation of Entitlement", not achievement. Further, Martinez ignores the fact that discretionary entitlement spending has not been increased under President Obama, certainly not to nearly the extent it was increased under his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, who signed into law Medicare Part D, the largest expansion of federal benefits since LBJ. He ignores the billions of dollars in entitlement spending cuts that President Obama has proposed. No, for Martinez and his rightwing cohorts, Obama = black = food stamps.
The question I must ask of you, as the daily newspaper that serves a majority-black city, is why are you willing to help spread such a false and malicious message? As a native of New Orleans, I understand full well that we are surrounded by communities that are considerably more conservative (and, yes, more white) than our own, and you have papers to sell in those parishes. But surely in your ongoing quest to appeal to the hinterlands you have some standards that you seek to uphold? Surely a bare modicum of factual basis should be demanded of the opinions you publish? Or has the Times Picayune decided to simply become part of the rightwing echo chamber? If that's the case, go ahead and fire your reporters and opinion writers. It will be cheaper to simply run bylines from Newsmax and the Washington Times, and perhaps more agreeable for your non-New Orleans customer base.
Somehow, I rather doubt they'll be publishing it. Dailies like the Times Picayune show just how ridiculous the notion of the "Liberal Media" really is. Papers that serve conservative customer bases are going to willingly provide red-meat for their constituency, because that's where the money is. This is true regardless of whatever personal beliefs the editors of the paper may have.
