It is funny how mad people get when a comic strip says in pictures the very same things other people say in words.
By Sue O'Brien
Denver Post Editorial Page Editor
Sunday, June 02, 2002 -
"Mean-spirited."
The word was used repeatedly last week by readers angered by Mike Keefe's May 17 cartoon.
It's also been used repeatedly over the years to describe Bruce Tinsley's daily "Mallard Fillmore" cartoons.
Mike's cartoon, as everyone in town surely knows by now, parodied what President Bush might have been saying in the Sept. 11 Air Force One photo that has subsequently been used in a GOP fund-raising campaign.
If there's one thing I've learned in my six years working on these pages, it's that one man's satire is another man's outrage.
Readers taught me that in 1996 when, inspired by a rash of equally indignant letters deploring Mallard's depredations, I tried to cancel the "Fillmore" strip. I was wrong, and to the tune of cacophonous reader anger, we reversed the decision. But the lesson was clear: Both ends of the political spectrum deserve their place here. Unfortunately, what's seen as appropriate commentary by one side is sacrilege and slander to the other. Our taste for irony is clearly linked to our political appetites.
It all depends, as the poet said, on whose ox is being gored.
For the record, although letter writers persist in referring to Mike as "O'Keefe," we aren't political clones. I don't share his annoyance at the Bush campaign's fund-raising use of the Air Force One photo. Had the Kennedys been as inventive as the Bushes, I'm sure we'd have seen similar use of the marvelous photo of Jack and Bobby anguishing during the Cuban missile crisis. Such exploitative campaigning may be in questionable taste, but it doesn't send me into moral paroxysms.
I let the cartoon run because, once the Air Force One photo was used to troll for campaign contributions, it forfeited the iconic status of those few national symbols we protect from parody. The White House let that cat out of the bag. Keefe just caught it.
Perversely, the same concerns that had led me to try to dump the duck figured in the Keefe controversy. Writers during Bill Clinton's administration were saying something fundamentally wrong was going on in Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" strip. They used words like "twisted reasoning," "denigration of our elected leaders" and "encouraging a lack of respect for our government."
In the current dispute, Bush loyalists worry that the authority of the presidency is being undermined: "We are at war," wrote William D. Porter of Parker. "The politically motivated hate and hubris in which you wallow is not only unseemly, but downright detrimental to our war effort and the much-needed unity of the American people."
As I said, I've learned a lot from readers since the Mallard controversy of 1996. The best delineation of our marching orders came in May 1998 from Jeff O'Reilly of Denver, responding to another writer's claim that The Post had been "bigoted" in an editorial on affirmative action:
"I have felt much the same. It got so bad, I almost canceled my subscription. The reason I didn't was it was hard to figure out which way The Post was bigoted. Were they for whites, blacks, reds, yellows, purples? Were they left or right?
"... I came to the conclusion that The Post is everything. ... You will read it all in The Post. You'll get every view, in all their opposing biases. I guess that's why I haven't canceled my subscription. See, I get The Post so I'll be informed. Not just about regular news, but about what our society is. What better way than to print every view and let the readers decide?
" ... It's like straddling a barbed-wire fence. Better them than me. I'm just glad I can get society delivered to my doorstep in harmless printed paper form, instead of the actual people and events."
Speaking of letters to the editor, we've been asked several times why we haven't run more e-mails from readers on Chuck Green's resignation from The Post. We've printed a few, but most of the others came as one-liners without the address and phone number we need to verify authorship.
It's too bad, because no one deserved a fond farewell from readers more than Green, who I count as a long-time colleague and longer-time friend. For many years, he's been the person people around the state first think of when they think of The Post. In addition to his six-year gig as a metro-front columnist, he served as copy boy, reporter, city editor, editorial page editor and editor.
No one has contributed more to The Post than Chuck. We'll miss him.
Sue O'Brien (sobrien@denverpost.com) ) is editor of The Denver Post editorial pages.