Rob Tornoe’s politickernj.com cartoon depicts Rep. Steve Rothman, left; Sen. Frank Lautenberg, right; and a distressed Joe Ferriero. Courtesy politickernj.com
April 17, 2008
Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, wearing a yarmulke, holds down Bergen County Democratic Party Chairman Joe Ferriero, while Lautenberg’s congressional colleague, Rep. Steven Rothman, also in a yarmulke, aims a cleaver at Ferriero’s pixilated groin.
The headline of Rob Tornoe’s April 9 cartoon that appeared on the Web site politickernj.com was “Rothman the Mohel or Ferriero’s Bris.”
The cartoon poked fun at Rothman’s move to keep Ferriero from endorsing Rep. Rob Andrews in his bid for Lautenberg’s Senate seat. But did Tornoe go too far?
The Anti-Defamation League and a number of local politicians think so. They charge that the cartoon gratuitously ridiculed Rothman and Lautenberg as Jews, while mocking a sacred Jewish ceremony. Still others thought the cartoon, appearing in the weeks before Passover, smacked of the notorious “blood libel” linking Jews with ritual murder.
“It is shocking that PolitickerNJ.com allowed Rob Tornoe’s vile and outrageous political cartoon on its website,” wrote Etzion Neuer, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New Jersey region, in a comment he posted to politickernj.com.
“The cartoon turns the age-old and deeply sacred ritual into a barbaric and grotesque practice and, in assigning Jewish religious imagery to Senator Lautenberg and Congressman Rothman, also suggests that they are acting as part of a religious cabal,” added Neuer.
Neuer suggested an editor should have recognized the cartoon as “beyond legitimate political discourse and rejected it at once.”
Both Lautenberg and Rothman also expressed outrage.
“I respect the freedom of the press and recognize that Rob Tornoe’s work is meant to be provocative,” Rothman said in a statement to NJJN. “Still, I do not understand the relevance of a Jewish ritual to the admitted efforts of Senator Lautenberg and myself to persuade our friend, Chairman Joe Ferriero, to support the Senator’s re-election. The imagery used by Tornoe, unfortunately, plays into an age-old canard often used against Jews and is thus offensive and inappropriate.”
“Political cartoons are meant to push the envelope, but that one pushed it too far,” said Dan Katz, Lautenberg’s chief of staff.
Bob Sommer, president of the Observer Media Group, which owns politickernj.com, disagreed. He is Jewish, as is Jared Kushner, owner of Observer Media Group.
“The cartoon was about the use of power, and the senator and the congressman adeptly used their power to the senator’s benefit,” he told NJJN. “That’s what the cartoon is about and any adept reader would understand that.”
Asked why, then, the cartoon included elements of the politicians’ religion, Sommer said, “Both the senator and the congressman are proud of their religion, and it was a humorous use of how they use their power.”
Sommer denied that the cartoon was disrespectful in any way, or raised the specter of larger issues.
“Neither the congressman nor the senator were portrayed remotely disrespectfully. In fact I would argue quite the opposite: they were portrayed in a way that showed their power in a particular situation. Any sophisticated reader of the Web site would understand the cartoon for what it is,” said Sommer.
Tornoe, the cartoonist, did not respond to a request for comment.
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