Oklahoma newspaper criticized for cartoon showing Sotomayor strung up

Women's groups and others are upset at an editorial cartoon that ran this week in The Oklahoman.

The cartoon (below) shows U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor hanging from a tree like a piñata. Nearby, President Barack Obama, in a sombrero, is handing out bats to elephants (Republican senators?), saying, "Now, who wants to be first?"

Jean Warner, who chairs the Oklahoma Women's Coalition, wrote that the cartoon is "stupid and damaging."

Sotomayor, she notes, graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School. "President George H.W. Bush nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York where she served with distinction ... She's served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit for 10 years, heard over 3,000 cases and written over 380 opinions... but she's of Puerto Rican descent -- ergo the piñata image..."

The cultural imagery, moreover, doesn't make any sense. Both the sombrero and the piñata are Mexican in origin. Mexicans are no more Puerto Rican than, well, Oklahomans are Texans.

According to The Huffington Post,the editor of The Oklahoman, "which is considered to have a conservative editorial viewpoint," did not return calls for comment.




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