Post Cartoon Led To NAACP Turmoil?

Here's something I hadn't seen before, although I don't feel so bad about it as author Nat Hentoff says no one picked this up: apparently the reaction to the Sean Delonas dead-chimp-as-Obama cartoon led to turmoil within the NAACP. Apparently the educator Michael Meyers was silenced at a meeting when he objected to a planned boycott of Rupert Murdoch in response to the cartoon. I met Hentoff when I was a college student and even then he was kind of a clearinghouse for all close watching of major free speech-related events, so I'd trust his insight into and sources on such matters. The idea that we have to give wide leeway to speech involving powerful officials is an interesting one, although it's hard for me to apply it here: I never supported a reaction to that cartoon beyond pointing out at declaring "Wow, what an incredibly stupid and glibly insulting cartoon," and I think there's a history of tweaking offensive material there that provides some force to any criticism of that particular comic.
 
posted 7:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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