丑化中国的漫画

这是五月十四号克利夫兰报纸 The Plain Dealer 贴的漫画。画的标题是“鼠年”，画上是一只大老鼠身上标着“中国”，尾巴上标着“地震”，老鼠在说“现在，我们怎么才能把这件事怪到达赖喇嘛身上？” (Now, how can we pin this on the Dalai Lama?)

看到这张漫画的华人纷纷提出抗议， The Plain Dealer 已经将这张漫画撤下来。请给下列这些地方送去你的想法，要求作者和报纸公开道歉。请注意语气，有理有节，短短一两句即可。不要谩骂，“辱骂和恐吓绝不是战斗”，要让人家觉得我们是有道理的。

1 ．寄给报纸编辑的申诉信 , 在这里填表 : http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/lettertoeditor.ssf.

2 ．漫画家 Jeff Darcy 的电子邮件： [e-mail].

3 ．报纸的读者代表 Ted Diadiun 的电子邮件： [e-mail].

当地华人团体准备联合签名送出的信：

Dear Ms. Susan Goldberg,

As joint response of various Chinese immigrants and students organizations in greater Cleveland area, we would like to tell you how appalled and saddened we are by the publication of the May 14^th Editorial Cartoon in Plain Dealer depicting China as an ugly giant rat with its tail broken by an earthquake, preoccupied with how to blame Dalai Lama for the disaster. The cartoon clearly refers to the recent earthquake in the Sichuan/> Province/>/> where the ensuing death toll has exceeded 28,000 and is still climbing. While the world pours its heart out to the victims of the quake, the Plain Dealer cartoon demonstrates a degree of insensitivity towards human sufferings that is beyond our comprehension. Does it have no shame in politicizing human tragedy? We are sure that many of our members have expressed their indignation to your paper, some quite emotionally.  We trust that you and your staff are capable of going beyond the anger expressed in these responses and be able to grasp the cause of such anger.

To be sure, we understand that the cartoonist, Mr. Jeff Darcy, played on the fact that this is the year of rat in the Chinese Zodiac, and that, according to him, he uses rat “as an appropriate symbol for an oppressive evil government and an evil earthquake”. In the following, we will attempt to show why his cartoon is offensive to the Chinese immigrant community at large and why he should offer an apology.

First of all, right off bat, Jeff misunderstood what Rat, which is on top of the Chinese Zodiac, symbolizes. Instead of being evil, Rat is as intelligent and hardworking as any animal and these traits may well be appreciated by a people of a different land.  When Jeff wrote CHINA/>/> across the body of a big, ugly, and menacing rat he drew, it is no wonder that his cartoon is taken by many as smearing of an entire nation.

Secondly, about the Chinese government. The fact is that since the earthquake struck China/>/> on Monday, the Chinese government has acted quickly and very responsibly in the rescue operations that drew international praises. It has dispatched over a hundred thousand troops to the affected areas in a short period of time. We can’t help but wonder while the whole world is behind the humanitarian missions led by this supposedly “evil” government, what points the cartoonist tries to make by linking the quake to the nonexistent blame on Dalai Lama? Is vilifying and alienating the Chinese government a 24/7 job? It seems that Jeff, at minimal, showed a poor judgment and his drawing could easily be interpreted far worse.

Finally, showing this cartoon two days after the quake, while your readers watched with horror the human tragedy unfolding across the TV screens and printed media, and keeping it on the web for several more days until protests erupted shows a crippling insensitivity on the part of Plain Dealer to human sufferings in a distant land. While Jeff has a right to express his view, he also has a journalist’s professional obligation to be fair, objective, and free of bias and stereotyping. We are sure that Jeff is a compassionate person sensitive to the feeling of others and the Plain Dealer is run by like minded people; we would just like the paper to show it by offering the Chinese community at large a sincere apology.