Tuesday’s Mallard Fillmore crosses a line

The Mallard Fillmore cartoon regularly featured by The Gazette is usually predictable: a lot of grievance and whining. I do not care for it, but it is not a big deal.

Tuesday's Mallard Fillmore cartoon was entirely unacceptable. The cartoon depicts people of the mostly African-American city of Baltimore as rats. Rats. The Gazette may have some type of agreement to print Mallard Fillmore, but you would have to assume that does not require The Gazette to print overtly racist cartoons.

I appreciate that some may claim they do not even know what expressions are viewed as racist anymore. Well, if someone is taking pages out of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda playbook to depict an entire group of people as rats, let's assume they have already taken several steps beyond the line of racism. It cannot be tolerated to depict an entire group of people, much less an entire group of American citizens, as rats.

Nate Willems

Mount Vernon