Washington Post Cruzdaughtercartoongate

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Washington Post Pulls Cruz Daughters Cartoon

Candidates Consider Putting Their Families in Ads Hoping For Political Gain 

The NY Times reported today that the Washington Post pulled a cartoon from its site that depicted Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz's young daughters as monkeys. (Out of respect to the Cruz children, Around the Block will not post the cartoon in question). In a fit of pique Mr. Cruz denounced the cartoon in the strongest possible terms. And, in a fit of opportunism, he immediately launched a multi-million dollar email fund-raising campaign to take full advantage of the distasteful use of his children, saying "My daughters are not FAIR GAME", as he made fair game out of them.

The cartoon was penned by Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer-Prize winner who defended her work by saying, "When a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which is eldest daughter read (with her father's dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game." (Editor's note: we have now reached the limit of the use of the expression "fair game" in one post).

In defending his decision to pull the cartoon, Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt wrote, "It's generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it." Hiatt continued, "I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published", leaving most people wondering what exactly Hiatt does as editor of the Post's editorial page.

As the Cruzdaughtercartoongate controversy continued to unfold, other candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, envying Cruz's ability to take advantage of his daughters, were crying foul, looking for ways to have editorial cartoonists include their family members in tasteless cartoons so that they could mount their own mult-million dollar fund-raising campaigns on their backs.

Hillary Clinton immediately tweeted that while Chelsea and her daughter Charlotte are not Fair Ga... (oops)  are off limits, cartoonists (and anyone else for that matter) can do whatever they want with Bill.

Donald Trump, at a campaign rally in Des Moines, invoking his promise of using at least one Yiddish word in every statement, said he would not stand for any use of his kinder in anything, unless there was gelt to be made.

Senator Marco Rubio said he was still weighing whether his hijos could be used in tasteful and/or tasteless communication, waiting for some signal as to which would be more politically advantageous.

Senator Bernie Sanders angrily tweeted, "I'm so old, I don't remember if I have any children."

Not that it matters, but it is not clear if any of the other candidates have children.