Does decency even exist anymore? It was long a tradition in American politics that the privacy of innocent family members, especially young children, was respected — but that tradition appears to have been tossed by the wayside.
Now the young daughters of embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been seized on by the rabid anti-Kavanaugh crowd and weaponized against him.
The latest outrageous example of such came from a liberal political cartoonist who published a cartoon featuring Kavanaugh’s youngest daughter saying her nightly prayers and asking forgiveness for her father’s alleged sins.
A daughter’s prayer
One of the most poignant moments of Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing — during which Kavanaugh was able to respond to the allegations put forth by his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford — came when the nominee choked up as he mentioned how his 10-year-old daughter Liza had included Ms. Ford in her nightly prayers prior to the hearing.
Chris Britt, a nationally syndicated liberal cartoonist, took that truly heartfelt moment and bastardized it to his own partisan purposes, disgustingly flipping it to use Kavanaugh’s own young daughter against him.
The cartoon, titled “Kavanaugh’s daughter says another prayer,” featured a little girl kneeling in prayer beside her bed with a quote bubble that read, “Dear God, please forgive my angry, lying, alcoholic father for sexually assaulting Dr. Ford.”
The cartoon, which drew backlash for its utter tastelessness, was published on Friday on Britt’s personal Facebook page, yet it bore the name of the Illinois Times, an alternative media outlet for whom Britt is a regular freelance contributor.
Britt has previously been published in The Seattle Times, the Houston Post, The News-Tribune of Tacoma, WA, and the State Journal-Register in Springfield, IL.
Creating distance
After receiving a number of complaints about the cartoon, the Times released a statement distancing themselves from both the cartoon and Britt himself.
In a post to the outlet’s own Facebook page, the Times noted that Britt submitted work to them as well as numerous other media outlets and pointed out that the cartoon had been posted to Britt’s page and not published in its paper.
“The Illinois Times name should not have appeared on the cartoon in question and we have asked Chris Britt to remove it,” said the Times.
Many outraged readers, however, suggested that the Times should sever its connection with Britt altogether.
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Britt initially attempted to defend his cartoon, insinuating that Kavanaugh’s daughters were fair game because the nominee had first brought them up in the hearing, but has since changed the settings on his Facebook account to hide it from public view.
For the left, anything goes in this new age of scorched earth partisanship, where anyone and everything is apparently fair game.