He Wanted to Stir People Up, and He Did

A thousand words to explain a picture:

Times editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez came under heavy fire over a recent cartoon on President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays in the military. Two readers were so outraged they canceled their subscriptions; others threatened to do so.

The cartoon featured a military policeman approaching a jeep with a soldier behind the wheel, sitting next to a sheep. The MP is saying to himself, “Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t ask.”

But what exactly did Ramirez mean?

Many readers said the cartoon equated homosexuality with bestiality. That was my reaction. It drew angry responses from gays and non-gays. “Just because someone is gay or lesbian does not mean they practice or condone bestiality,” said one female reader. A gay reader said, “I am tired of seeing these people who hate gays so much they equate us with doing all kinds of despicable things.” Several cited the recent beating death of a gay soldier by another soldier and said they feared this cartoon encouraged such behavior.

Others wondered how the cartoon got published. “Imagine The Times printing it!” one said. “Don’t your editors have a right to turn down Ramirez, or are they afraid to do so?” Another commented: “I do not wish for you to become censors on what is newsworthy, but you can censor hateful cartoons that might promote hate crime.”

Ramirez is edited by Editorial Pages Editor Janet Clayton and Editor Michael Parks. They can--and have on rare occasions--rejected editorial cartoons. Both approved this cartoon. Clayton said there was more than one way to interpret it. “I had several people ask me why several gay colleagues and readers were upset” because these other people “had no link in their minds between gays and bestiality and had never heard of such a slur,” she said.

“A lot of those people saw the cartoon as an attack on the absurdity of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” she added.

Hogwash, many of you are ready to declare, insisting that the anti-gay bias of this conservative cartoonist was obvious. But here’s the zinger: Ramirez insists that his cartoon was not meant to oppose gays in the military.

“Basically I was saying the policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is ridiculous,” he said. “It’s ridiculous to delineate between sexual mores; what they [soldiers] do behind closed doors is up to them. Gays have been in the military for centuries, and that’s the way it will remain.”

Ramirez said the policy should not have become a presidential campaign issue. “I don’t want the federal government to decide what social morals and ethics and standards should be. I don’t want the military to be used as an exercise for social experimentation,” he said. “They [soldiers] should be left alone and be allowed to serve, they should follow the military code of conduct whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, and if they don’t, they should be dealt with in the same manner.” He believes the bestiality analogy is “an extreme interpretation” by people “with an agenda.” He said the sheep was “an extreme example to convey the point” of how ridiculous the policy is.

Since so many readers misunderstood, it can be argued that he failed to make his point. Ramirez rightly noted that editorial cartoons tend to be most effective when they’re provocative. The cartoonist’s goal is to grab the reader with an image. It’s an inherently different exercise than the reasoned textual analysis found elsewhere on the editorial and commentary pages. An editorial cartoon can carry a powerful message that is viewed as hateful by some, brilliant by others, especially with an issue like homosexuality, which remains controversial in our society. But in the end, the cartoonist must adhere to the same standards of taste and libel applied to the rest of the op-ed page.

In the case of this cartoon, almost all readers who wrote or called The Times--96 out of 100--felt Ramirez failed that test. (That number of readers, by the way, is about the same as those who comment on controversial election measures.) Ramirez said he got about another 50 “evenly split” responses.

As Ramirez sees it, his job is “to provide an impact, be a catalyst for thought and discussion. I try to draw the readers into the political debate. I don’t want to just get them to think, I want to get them to react, get involved in the process. If even picking up the phone to call me an idiot, that’s taking the first step.”

Mission accomplished.