Earlier this month, a newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania an editorial cartoon likening the often uncomfortably close seating on airplanes to the appalling conditions Africans often faced when they were taken into servitude in the Americas. Following a firestorm of criticism, the paper’s president and executive editor apologized for running the cartoon.
Lancaster’s two newspapers, the Intelligencer Journal and Lancaster New Era, have been owned by the Steinman family since 1928. Despite the common ownership, they retained separate editorial stances. The “Intell” was reliably liberal, while the New Era was conservative. In 2009, the two papers merged into a single morning paper, branded with the somewhat cumbersome name of “Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era.” However, as a legacy of their long separate existence, the merged paper ran two editorial pages–one liberal, one conservative. On September 7, the New Era’s editorial page ran an editorial cartoon from Robert Arail of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal depicting a couple looking at a picture of a cross-section of a slave ship. It showed slaves packed in like sardines. The man mused, “Must be where the airlines got their idea for passenger seating.”
For those who don’t recall, slaves were often taken to the Americas in conditions that can charitably be described as degrading. Men were kept below decks, and were packed in so closely that they were stuck for weeks at a time in the same position. While women and children were kept in separate quarters from the men and allowed for greater freedom of movement, they were also at the mercy of the crew.
Following a week of well-deserved reaming, Lancaster Newspapers president John Kirkpatrick and executive editor Barb Roda issued an unreserved apology that ran in the Intelligencer Journal/New Era’s September 11 edition. Kirkpatrick and Roda said that even suggesting there was a parallel between air travel and slavery was “just plain wrong” and a gross insult to Lancaster’s black community. While they said that the cartoon was not drawn by someone on the Lancaster Newspapers staff, they took full responsibility for picking up the cartoon.? The paper picked up the cartoon from United Features Syndicate, which syndicates Arail’s work. In what looks to be an overreaction, however, Kirkpatrick and Roda also announced that the Intelligencer Journal/New Era would drop its separate liberal and conservative editorial pages along with most of its syndicated columnists. It’s too bad. Firing the person who made the decision to run this cartoon would have been more than enough.
When several readers saw the cartoon on Arail’s Website, they rightly condemned it as being in poor taste. After initially telling one of them to “get a sense of humor,” on September 11 Arail said he never intended for the cartoon to generate “this kind of reaction.” However, he issued what looks like a classic “nopology,” saying that he was sorry “to those who are upset by it.” He claimed he never intended to trivialize slavery, but simply wanted to compare airline seating with “the most extreme example I could think of.” He hasn’t made further comment on this since. Um, Robert? You could have made your point in a manner that wasn’t in such egregiously bad taste.
Thus far, neither the Herald Journal nor United Features have said anything about this either. If silence speaks volumes, their silence could write several books. If I were the Herald Journal’s editor, I’d have given Arail his walking papers, or at the very least given him a lengthy suspension.? And if I were at United Features, I’d have cut ties with Arail. This cartoon was wrong, period.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
