The Gamble cartoon in The Tribune of Dec. 6 portrays President Reagan opening the White House basement door, turning on the light, and saying ”Hey . . . would someone mind telling me what`s going on down here?” A number of figures are shown scurrying about.
Cartoonists generally have a great deal of leeway–but it is disturbing to note that the figure apparently meant to represent Israel was obviously inspired less by the way contemporary Israelis look than by the way that people like Hitler`s propagandists protrayed Jews. Wearing a black coat, bearded, with an enormous hook nose, and with a Star of David on his hat in case anybody missed the point, this is a figure which could have been lifted right out of Nazi publications like ”Der Sturmer.”
This thoughtless dip into the iconography of hostile images deserves to be condemned. At a time when Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel is reminding the world about the horrors of the Holocaust, the cartoon which The Tribune chose to publish reminds us that lessons indeed remain to be learned –lessons such as the danger of demonic stereotyping.
