Politico interviewed Matt Wuerker about the Bill Bramhall cartoon commotion.
Suggesting that people are overreacting to the cartoon and taking it out of context (it’s about being a New Yorker, not an Asian), Matt Wuerker discusses the undeniable racism in the history of political cartoons but sees the Bramhall cartoon as being misinterpreted.
“The cartoon is totally within bounds,” Wuerker told Nightly today.
Wuerker concedes that his professional forebears were often guilty of shockingly racist work, ridiculous caricatures of Asian Americans, Black people, Latinos and others. “For people who want to question whether America has a racist history, just go back and look at the political cartoons,” Wuerker said. “The history is horrible.”
But, Wuerker said, cartoonists, along with the rest of the nation, are evolving. He and his peers may not have always gotten it right in recent years … but on the whole, editorial cartoonists have become more sensitive to race.
Watch the five minute interview.
Wuerker as cartoonist: “We like to tweak people and sometimes we step on a mine.”