The Indianapolis Star on Saturday said it “erred” in publishing a cartoon that depicted undocumented immigrants crashing a white family’s Thanksgiving dinner.
The cartoon by Gary Varvel showed the white family’s patriarch holding a turkey at the head of the table and saying “Thanks to the President’s immigration order, we’ll be having extra guests this Thanksgiving.” A man in a mustache and two others are shown climbing into the family’s dining room through a window.
The cartoon was published Friday, the day after President Barack Obama announced executive actions to temporarily shield approximately 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
At one point on Saturday, the newspaper apparently edited out the “immigrant” man’s mustache:
So @indystar has made no comments about the @varvel comic but a mustache is now gone. Before and after. pic.twitter.com/8qz7n1izXP
— Margarita (@margarita) November 22, 2014
The newspaper later removed the cartoon altogether. Executive editor Jeff Taylor called the cartoon “inappropriate” in a column explaining its removal.
“Gary did not intend to be racially insensitive in his attempt to express his strong views about President Barack Obama’s decision to temporarily prevent the deportation of millions of immigrants living and working illegally in the United States,” Taylor wrote. “But we erred in publishing it.”
Taylor wrote that Gary instead meant to “illustrate the view of many conservatives and others that the president’s order will encourage more people to pour into the country illegally.” He added that removing the cartoon was not to be construed as a comment on Varvel’s particular take on the immigration debate.
“The depictions in this case were inappropriate; his point could have been expressed in other ways,” Taylor wrote.
View the cartoon below:
Screengrab via Margarita Noriega
Given the number of people who have to sign off on what goes in the paper, and the amount of time they have to set it up, and the number of looks that are taken at the page layout before it goes to pages, that’s an awful lot of “erring.”
Don’t even have the courage of their convictions.
Totally needs a large painting of Geronimo hanging on the wall behind ol’ dad there.
Obama’s executive action was about immigrants who are already here. The whole idea of being invaded is so unfounded its comical that people fear it.
So this is the spirit of Thanksgiving? Did the Native Americans treat the pilgrims this way?
Is there anything in our American traditions (and I only mean the good ones) that the right wing won’t pervert?