Kurt Westergaard Announces Retirement

Various wire reports have noted the retirement of Kurt Westergaard, the best-known of the Danish Cartoons Controversy cartoonists, from the publication in which they appeared. Westergaard has been working at Jyllands-Posten for almost three decades.

Westergaard cites getting older as the reason for the retirement, and notes that he has been working full-time since he was 23. The cartoonist will turn 75 on July 13. There had been some rumbling a couple of months ago that Westergaard might be pushed in this direction against his will, so this official statement would seem to run counter to that.

Westergaard drew the bomb-in-turban cartoon for the 2005 effort, widely considered the most offensive of the individual drawings that, along with a few made-up cartoons that weren't part of the original enterprise, provided the fuel for agitation and eventually led to worldwide riots, outrage and economic reprisals, ripples of which are still being felt today. Westergaard has been the only one of the original group to frequently speak in public on the matter, and has been the target of at least two formal attempts to physically harm him, including an armed Somali man breaking into his home in January and forcing Westergaard into a panic room while a grandchild hid in another part of the house.

The cartoonist expressed hope that his retirement might make the newspaper that employed him less of a terrorism target. Last year it was revealed that a pair of Chicago residents were working on an international terrorism plot that included setting a bomb off in the vicinity of the publication's offices.
 
posted 9:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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