A cartoon created by James Hudnall and Batton Lash that first appeared on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Web site is making waves for depicting First Lady Michelle Obama as overweight and craving hamburgers.
The cartoon, featured on the right, attempts to spoof the First Lady’s anti-obesity campaign by drawing her overweight and eating a plateful of hamburgers, even as she proudly proclaims her efforts in telling restaurants to lower portion sizes and fat content.
On his Tuesday night show, msnbc.com host Lawrence O’Donnell criticized the cartoon, showing only one panel and refusing to show the rest “because it is a racist obscenity.” O’Donnell’s issue came with the size and style the cartoonists drew Obama’s ears.
“The president is depicted in a half man, half animal form with ears that don’t exist on the homosapien species,” the talk show host opined.
“There is nothing racist about the cartoon,” Hudnall said of the controversy. “Batton Lash merely drew the first couple in caricature, which is what political cartoonists do.”
“Cartooning””specifically political cartooning”“ has always been about exaggeration, whether it was Nixon’s prominent jowls, Carter’s toothy smile, or Bush ll’s beady eyes,” wrote Lash. “If our current president is exempt because of the color of his skin, I think that would be racist. By the way, I didn’t depict the First Lady as fat””just a hearty eater!”
O’Donnell also mentioned that Michelle Obama is the “most famous African American woman in the world, and the most admired.”
Wonder what Oprah thinks of that…
Here is the segment from O’Donnell’s show:
So what do you think of the cartoon? Is it a “racist obscenity” as O’Donnell suggests, or valid criticism of our current president and his first lady?
