A weekly Kansas newspaper is in trouble after its editor, a county Republican Party chairman, posted a cartoon on the newspaper’s Facebook page that appeared to equate the Democratic governor’s mask order with the Holocaust.
The cartoon, released Friday on the Anderson County Review Facebook page, shows Governor Laura Kelly wearing a mask with a Jewish Star of David, along with a drawing of people being loaded onto train cars. Her legend is: “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask … and get on the cattle cart.”
The Facebook post coincided with the day Kelly’s order for masks went into effect, aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Since then, the post has garnered more than 3,000 comments and nearly 1,000 shares.
The Anderson County Review could not be reached for comment on Sunday. In an email to The Associated Press, Dane Hicks, the newspaper’s owner and editor, said he plans to publish the cartoon in the next issue of the newspaper on Tuesday.
Kelly, who is a Catholic, released a statement saying: “Mr. Hicks’ decision to post anti-Semitic images is deeply offensive and should be removed immediately.”
But Hicks said the political cartoons are “rude over-caricatures designed to provoke debate” and “fodder for the market for ideas.”
“The issue here is government overreach which has been the hallmark of Governor Kelly’s administration,” he said.
As for the cartoon’s reference to the Holocaust, Hicks noted that critics of President Trump have repeatedly compared him to Adolf Hitler, and, “I certainly have more evidence of that kind of totalitarianism in Kelly’s actions, in a kind editorial cartoon, which Trump’s critics do, but persist in it every day. “
The Hicks newspaper is located at Garnett’s Anderson County headquarters, about 65 miles southwest of Kansas City and has a circulation of approximately 2,100, according to the Kansas Press Association.
Hicks is also the chairman of the Anderson County Republican Party. Kansas Republican Party Chairman Michael Kuckelman said in a text that posting the cartoon is “inappropriate.”
But Kuckelman, also a lawyer, added, “it’s on the newspaper’s Facebook page and the media has a wide margin with (the) First Amendment (to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression and of the press. ) “.
Critics of the cartoon demanded that the Republican Party and Republican Party legislative leaders repudiate the cartoon and Hicks. Hicks has mocked some of these critics on social media as “liberal Marxist parasites,” adding: “As traditional Americans, they are my enemy.”
Kelly issued the order due to a resurgence in reported cases of coronavirus that raised the state total to nearly 16,000 as of Friday, when Kansas ended its worst two-week peak since the pandemic began. The state has reported 277 COVID-19 related deaths. The number of infections is believed to be much higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest that people can become infected with the virus without feeling sick.
The state health department has reported only four coronavirus cases for Anderson County, all of them since May 8. No deaths have been reported there.
Associated Press contributed to this report..
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