Je Suis Ann Telnaes?
by digby
Police in Texas removed an anti-Republican political sign from a woman’s yard Tuesday night last week, amid nationwide rancor over the Senate’s vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
The poster, made by Marion Stanford of Hamilton, Texas, and placed in her yard, shows an elephant painted in red, white, and blue with stars, a well-known symbol of the Republican Party. The elephant is sticking its trunk up the skirt of a young blonde girl with pigtails crying for help. Beside the image is the slogan “Your vote matters.”
Stanford told the Washington Post that she painted the sign in response to the testimony of Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused the judge of attempting to rape her when the two were in high school, reported. Kavanaugh was sworn in as the newest Supreme Court justice Saturday afternoon after a tight vote that drew major protests in Washington, DC, and other cities around the country.
The Texas agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, wrote a Facebook post expressing disapproval of the sign Tuesday.
“This is in Hamilton, Texas and is supposed to be Judge Kavanaugh’s young daughter,” he wrote. “Notice my opponent’s sign in the background. The Democrat sleaze knows NO bounds!”
Miller’s Democratic opponent, Kim Olson, also condemned the sign in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.
Stanford told the Morning News that police visited her house Tuesday night, asked her about the sign, and then confiscated it.
“Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,” Stanford said. “So I let them take the sign.”
The city manager of Hamilton has denied that the police seized the sign, telling the newspaper that Stanford gave it away.
“A police member visited the owner’s home, and the owner asked the officer to take the sign,” he said.
The sign remains at the police station, according to the Morning News.
Stanford said it was not, in fact, Kavanaugh’s daughter depicted on the poster but a version of a Washington Post editorial cartoon. She added that she believed Miller’s comments about the sign did not befit a politician of his stature.
“This is not something a reputable, respected politician would do. There’s nothing in my sign that remotely suggests it’s Kavanaugh’s daughter,” she said.
Ann Telnaes, the Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist behind the original image, responded to the controversy on Twitter: “Good thing I’m not cartooning in Texas.” She originally drew the cartoon in response to the Republican Party’s support of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of making sexual advances toward underage girls.
Here’s her original cartoon:
I’m so old I remember when right wingers all over the country were big free speech advocates standing in solidarity with cartoonists all over the world who made fun of the Prophet Mohammed. In fact, some of the most vociferous among them held a big “exhibit” right there in Texas not long ago:
[A]s the mosque controversy receded in memory, so did Pamela Geller. Then in January came the assault by Muslim gunmen on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper, which claimed a dozen lives. Geller was back in the public eye.
In response, she decided to organize Sunday’s “Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest,” which would award a $10,000 prize to the “winning cartoon” depicting the prophet Muhammad.
“We decided to have a cartoon contest to show we would not kowtow to violent intimidation and allow the freedom of speech to be overwhelmed by thugs and bullies,” she told The Washington Post in an e-mail.
I’m not trying to call them out for hypocrisy. That’s a waste of time. I am just saying that anyone counting on these right-wing fascists to be consistent in their support for the Bill of Rights is dumber than dirt.
Update: Oh, and the Agriculture Commissioner who clutched his pearls over the sign? Yuuuuge Trump supporter, often called out in the crowd by the man himself. He was considered for the job of Secretary of Agriculture.
You remember this guy:
.