Earlier this week, I questioned the convictions of syndicated editorial cartoonist Steve Kelley. He’d just ripped Hillary Clinton over the question of whether she’d been fed answers at last week’s “Commander-in-Chief Forum” on NBC.
But there’s a big difference between finding an accusation “believable” and actually believing it. The “I wouldn’t put it past her” standard is good enough for most people, but it takes more than that to make an accusation stick. And in Kelley’s cartoon, the earpiece accusation sticks. Clinton doesn’t even deny it. She replies with a dismissive allusion to her private e-mail server—and the point of Kelley’s cartoon is that ethical indifference.
I don’t know what you mean when you ask if I should have “made it clear” that I believed Hillary had an earpiece. Generally, I think readers assume that an opinion journalist believes what he or she writes. There’s no need to make it explicit.
Subsequent to sending out my cartoon, I read that the Clinton campaign was denying that Hillary used an earpiece during the forum. Here let’s pause and reflect on the Clinton campaign’s record of truthfulness and candor. That didn’t take long, did it?
Cartoonists and columnists often comment on reports of events and behavior even as evidence is still being gathered. How many cartoons called out President Obama and Hillary for dissembling about the Bengazi attack even in its immediate aftermath? For weeks after the attack, the White House and State Department were still pushing the canard that it all resulted from an Internet video. Years and multiple investigations and reports later, the entire matter is unresolved.
