The Washington Post removed a cartoon that featured Ted Cruz’s children amid pushback from the presidential candidate and his supporters.
The cartoon in question featured Cruz as Santa along with his children as two monkey-like creatures. The catalyst for the cartoon was a Christmas ad Cruz ran with him reading Christmas stories to his daughters with a fresh spin like “How Obamacare Stole Christmas” and “Rudolph the Underemployed Reindeer.”
Editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes explained her reasoning for breaking the unwritten rule that children are off limits.
“Ted Cruz has put his children in a political ad — don’t start screaming when editorial cartoonists draw them as well,” she tweeted.
Telnaes added that Cruz using his children as “props” made them fair game for satire.
“When a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father’s dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game,” she wrote.
Editorial Page editor Fred Hiatt disagreed, taking the cartoon down and leaving an editor’s note in its place.
“It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it. I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published,” Hiatt wrote. “I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.”