From yesterday’s Lexington Herald-Leader:
Sen. Jim Bunning made newspapers across the United States again yesterday — this time in the funny pages.
A national cartoonist with a reputation for wry political humor took a swing at Kentucky’s Hall of Famer after Bunning called for The New York Times to be charged with treason.
Candorville, which runs in about 50 papers across the nation as well as another in Ecuador and the Pacific Stars & Stripes, featured a faux political commercial yesterday from “Senator Bunting.” However, the face on the TV is that of Bunning, a Republican in his second term in the Senate and a pitcher in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The strip’s main character, Lemont Brown, hears the ad apparently from the bathroom — the third panel features a flush as “Bunting” denies that his attack on the “Candorville Chronicle” is politically motivated.
Cartoonist Darrin Bell said Bunning caught his eye last month after condemning the Times’ report on the Bush administration’s not-so-secret surveillance of international banking transactions.
“Senator Bunning at the time seemed to be the GOP’s point man for the treason charge against The New York Times, so he was the logical one to use as a representative for the whole party,” Bell said yesterday. The flush was “the most appropriate” activity that came to mind, he said.
He had not gotten any feedback yesterday from Bunning’s office on Capitol Hill. “I don’t really expect to. Somehow, I really doubt they read Candorville,” he said.
Bunning’s office did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment for this story.
Bell said he doesn’t see his work as falling into either the Democrat or Republican camp. In the 1990s, he was called a fascist for picking on President Clinton.
“I just go after whoever’s in charge,” Bell said.
As for Senator Bunting, he could make a return appearance, but that depends on Bunning.
“He’s got my attention,” Bell said. “The next time he gives me material, I’m going to use it.”
Apparently, one reader was not amused:
I have always thought political cartoons to be inherently anti-Republican, and this has gotten to be even worse with all the nationwide progress witnessed in the last 5 years. It’s even possible that this drawn criticism has in fact lent itself to limiting the progress we have had…because it’s so treasonous and traitorlike.
Posted by: Bill
This was one of the comments below the article (comments have since been removed, possibly because the argument got sort of heated. People stopped just short of burning each other in effigy. Barely.
The “treasonous and traitorlike” comment doesn’t interest me as much as “limiting the progress we have had…” in the last five years. What progress is that, again? And if there is any progress, how can it be undone by a comic strip? If only Bill would have explained himself further. It would have been fascinating.
