Doug Marlette’s inflammatory cartoon on March 14 is an insult to the Chicago Fire Department and all its fine members. Based on an unfortunate, accidental racist radio transmission, Marlette likens the department to the Jim Crow days of the Birmingham Police Department under “Bull” Connor, complete with sinister expressions and snarling police dogs. He even hints that firefighters would willfully neglect a fire so they could turn the hose toward African-Americans, again in Birmingham style. This accusation, even in an editorial cartoon, is false and libelous.
Nobody denies that there are a few racists and some racial tensions in the Fire Department; we certainly have our flaws, and while we’re working to correct them, we have no simple answers. But Marlette chooses to paint the whole department with the same wide brush, ignoring the good work that department members do daily and the fact that many of the best and hardest-working units, including the much-maligned Tower Ladder 14, are based in largely African-American neighborhoods. His cartoon parrots the slanderous statements and accusations that Alds. Billy Ocasio and Ed Smith, among others, have charged in recent weeks. Fire Department members deserve better, and I would expect better from the Tribune.
Last year, after running a cartoon that depicted Ariel Sharon in a potentially anti-Semitic way, Public Editor Don Wycliff apologized and said, “[E]ven at its roughest and bluntest, there are lines that a cartoon should not cross.” This cartoon crossed that line. The Tribune and Marlette owe an apology to the Fire Department and all its hard-working members.
