An Open Letter to the Insensitive Australian Cartoonist Jos Valdman

Jos Valdman, a cartoonist from the Adelaide Advertiser, published a cartoon called “Another Greek Tragedy” that appears to portray ancient Greeks collecting tears and putting out a fire.

The Australian newspaper is under the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, which includes numerous tabloids in the U.K. as well as the U.S. cable network Fox News.

See the cartoon below.

Gregory Pappas, publisher of The Pappas Post, has written the following open letter to the newspaper, as well as the cartoonist.

***
Dear Mr. Valdman,

85 people were burned to death, including a friend’s grandmother who was inside the comfort of her family’s home.

Of these 85, two dozen were found in a field hugging in groups, each with children as young as four years old in the center.

I wish you would have seen the news reports of the charred bodies and the pain from the survivors.

Perhaps your cartoon would have been different.

I wish you could see the regular reporting of devastated Greek families who are still searching — begging for information from strangers about missing loved ones.

Perhaps your cartoon would have taken a different twist.

I wish you could have seen dozens of people jumping off cliffs — some to their immediate death — into the ocean so they wouldn’t be burned alive.

Perhaps you wouldn’t have published a cartoon at all on this subject.

I wish you could have seen the TV report I just saw that showed a grandmother who lost all of her grandchildren in the fires.

Perhaps you could have shown some self-dignity and let the dead rest in peace.

I wish all of these things because sometimes crass and insensitivity needs to be checked with a dose of reality.

Perhaps there in far-away Adelaide, you’re not privy to the reports coming out of Greece and you haven’t experienced the pain and suffering of these victims, not to mention the bombardment of visuals coming from the 24-hour reporting in Greece.

Or perhaps it’s just part of the sickening culture where you work and you’ve lost all sense of civility, decency and self-dignity.

I’m fully aware of the Murdoch-owned rags. We have some of your boss’s “media” organizations here in the U.S. too and I’m far too familiar with their divisive and crass nature.

Either way, Mr. Valdman, your disgrace of a cartoon has already started making its way around Greece and the various diaspora communities of Greeks in your home country of Australia, in North America and throughout the world — where thousands are showing solidarity by helping victims and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So I’d like to offer you and your entire organization an invitation — an invitation to not only rethink your erroneous decision to publish something so repugnant at the peak of a national crisis, but also to perhaps see if you can even offer a helping hand to the victims after already dealing such an injurious one.

Here’s a link for one of dozens of GoFundMe campaigns that have been started by people who care.

Maybe you can make an announcement on your Twitter page once you’ve donated.

Oh, and don’t worry about the amount — $10, $25, $50, $100, etc. — anything will go a long way to help those you already disparaged with your… “funny” cartoon.

*****

Since you’re here… I have a small favor to ask.

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