Banker bemoans cartoonist

To the Editor:

Several years ago your newspaper launched the series “Real People,” which weekly recitates interviews with local residents. This series is terrific; it celebrates wonderful people in our small, diverse community.

It informs us of the life experiences of others, allows us to consider their backgrounds and makes us perhaps more open to inclusion of everyone. Though I am not a professional journalist or publisher, it seems to me that this sort of coverage is a cornerstone, a great asset, of community newspapers.

Conversely, and unfortunately, I find the work of your political/cultural cartoonist to be divisive and almost always insulting to various segments of this small community. The illustrations presented work in direct contravention to the strengths portrayed in “Real People.”

The cartoons are always one-sided, particularly insulting and thus not representative of the diversity in this small community. I am shocked that a small, local newspaper chooses to support insults to so many of its wonderful residents.

The recent cartoon insulting the Catholic faith is a perfect example. Though I am not a Catholic, I appreciate people of faith, I appreciate the long history Catholicism and I am particularly impressed by the worthwhile causes that Catholic charities generously support.

If your narrow-minded, mean-spirited cartoonist does not appreciate those same things, then he need not join the Catholic faith. He could find a church or faith more suited to his interests and beliefs, or stubbornly choose to ignore faith altogether.

Your willingness to allow this cartoonist to so regularly insult friends and neighbors within this small community - friends and neighbors whom we need to lean on from time to time – is not flattering to your newspaper.

Please do this community a favor. Please entirely remove your insulting cartoons from your publication. Please leave the insults and divisiveness to the big boys, like the Boston Globe or New York Times. These cartoons do not lift up this community, they drag everyone down.

Jack W. Day

Vice President

Commercial Lending

Norway Savings Bank