OPINION:
What the heck is going on at The New York Times? That’s certainly a question worthy of answering. Anti-Semitism much?
After publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon, then apologizing and removing it due to outcry — but only after a few days — the crackerjack editors of the Times replaced it with yet another anti-Semitic cartoon.
We’re well past the stage of “oops, my bad” and smack dab into “holy cow, these people hate the Jews” land.
The first cartoon showed a blind and bloated President Donald Trump being led by a guide dog with the face of Benjamin Netanyahu — akin, as angry social media posters noted, to Nazi-era propaganda.
“Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Sturmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American,” one opinion writer wrote in a Times piece titled “A Despicable Cartoon in The Times.”
So after a coupla-few days went by, The Times removed the cartoon and explained that a wayward low-level editor had mistakenly posted it. Sure. It happens.
But then came this, from the international pages of The Times — a cartoon of a blind Netanyahu wearing a robe and holding in one hand a tablet with the Star of David and in another, a selfie stick.
Jonathan Greenblatt with the Anti-Defamation League said of the image in a tweet: “This is insensitive, inappropriate and offensive. It shows once again that the @NYTimes needs to educate its staff about #antiSemitism. We call on them to take immediate action.”
Just stop publishing cartoons that contain any images of Jews, of Israel, of Jewish leaders, for goodness sake, New York Times. And guess what?
“New York Times Suspends All Future Syndicated Cartoons Amid Antisemitism Crisis Inside Newspaper,” Breitbart ran in a headline.
Yes, that seems best. The Gray Lady obviously has a serious problem — and honestly, it’s starting to seem less like a problem with insensitivity and ignorance and more like a problem with the Jewish people themselves.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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