UPDATE at end. Monte apologizes
Unlike his father Basil Wolverton, Monte has jumped with both feet into the political quagmire of American politics over the last several years. While his father had his own unique version of subversiveness, Wolverton wears his on his sleeve.
Wolverton is also an associate editor of The Plain Truth, Greg Albrecht's version of the old Worldwide Church of God publication.
The article says:
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: The Philadelphia Inquirer has issued a public apology after publishing cartoonist Monte Wolverton's "highly insensitive" illustration that pushed "antisemitic tropes" and criticized Israel's response to the Hamas' deadly attack.
The editorial board for the big city paper put out a piece on October 18, 2023, admitting that Wolveton's cartoon "should never have been published".
Wolverton has been producing drawings syndicated by Caglecartoons for the last 25 years. He is best known for his satiric pages in Mad, his Weekly Wolvertoon website, and his contributions as an associate editor of The Plain Truth.
Later in the article, it says:
Following the outcry, the Philadelphia Inquirer released a groveling apology, stating, "In hindsight, the cartoon depicting an oversized Israeli military boot stepping on Hamas terrorists hiding among civilians in response to the Oct. 7 attack should not have been published."
"Regardless of the interpretation, the illustration reinforces pernicious anti-Semitic tropes about Israeli aggression," the apology continued.
It further added that the board had voiced an "unequivocal belief" that Israel should be allowed to defend itself and had denounced the terrorist assaults days after they had taken place.
"It is clear this cartoon was highly insensitive, particularly at the current moment when antisemitism is on the rise. We hear the outcry and apologize for the pain it caused," the statement added.
The board also pledged to review its processes for illustration selection "to prevent failures like this one from occurring again."
Twitter also erupted in fury:
The American version of The Daily Mail from the UK also ran a story:
Philadelphia newspaper apologizes for 'highly insensitive' cartoon criticizing Israel's response to Hamas' terrorist attack that killed 1,400 peopleIt never seems to fail that when there is some disaster there is a Church of God connection somewhere down the line.
UPDATE
Monte issued an apology on X/TwitterI deeply apologize for my recent cartoon depicting an Israeli combat boot poised to crush Hamas. I had intended to show Israel was soon to stomp out Hamas terrorists, but my insensitive choice of imagery effectively cast Israel as a villain. I now realize this caused pain for…
— Monte Wolverton (@montewolverton) October 22, 2023
35 comments:
The ball is in Greg Albrecht's court now.
Will he discipline Wolverton for this cartoon? Especially considering how much he emphasizes grace?
The PTM blog doesn't seem to have mentioned the "Eighth Day War" at all.
Correcting part of my earlier comment: Albrecht did in fact comment on the war.
He clearly leans toward Israel on the blog.
So the question remains.... ?
Wolveron apologized today:
https://twitter.com/montewolverton/status/1716172053215404083
Hats off to him for apologizing. I am sickened by the apologists for Hamas protesting and ripping down pictures of slaughtered children and those held captive. Sadly, there are still more in Armstrongism who support Hamas.
Who would have thought in our lifetime we would see a new version of Nazis arise in our midst. The scenes in London and Sweden are sickening as they protest with signs denying anything happened in Israel. Just how many pictures of beheaded babies, burned children, women raped so violently it broke their pelvis, parents and their children wrapped together with wire and then set afire while alive? A Doctor bragged today here in the US about overmedicating a Jewish person who was upset about the violence just to shut him up. New versions of Mengle are at work today in our midst. Hamas is vile filth and those backing them are part of their sickness. My father died to free Europe and the world from Nazis, he would be appalled to see what is happening today.
As I mentioned about a week ago, my Jewish friends in the Philly area really rescued my final two years in High School, big time!. It was actually considered to be cool to keep the sabbath and holy days, and not to do Christmas or Easter. In that environment, my personality really matured and developed, whereas it was totally throttled in my previous high school
This cartoon in that area would have been a complete outrage, guaranteed! The only way I would have thought it would ever have made it into the Inquirer would be if they were criticizing another newspaper for running it. I didn't even realize newspapers were still a thing, but if I had seen this myself, out of the blue, I'd have been totally pissed.
5:38 wrote:
“ Sadly, there are still more in Armstrongism who support Hamas.”
Where in the world did you come up with that nonsense?
There was no such teaching when I was in Pasadena. Israel was always considered in a good light.
If there are such people today, then they are NOT following what you mislabel as “Armstrongism.” Give us some proof for a change versus stubborn bias and criticism. Just another form of “Abusive analogy.”
5:56 wrpte:
"“ Sadly, there are still more in Armstrongism who support Hamas.”
Where in the world did you come up with that nonsense?"
I don't think he meant to say that Pasadena taught this. I never heard it while I was there, but I will say that there are quite a few antisemites that try and comment on here on a regular basis, some even saying that Hitler was a greatly misunderstood man.
There were quite a few in Pasadena who were anti-Jewish and tried to get people to read the Protocols of Zion. This was all on the down low though and was started by guys in the maintenance shops.
I was quite astonished when I first saw this cartoon.
It was the worst of the worst and in entirely bad taste.
As one with Jewish heritage and with family who were eliminated as ‘life unfit for life’ during the holocaust I was lost for words.
It showed a huge lack of discernment and surely those editors should of had the insight to discern what many would ‘see’ in this drawing.
I read the apology by Wolverton and believe it was genuine.
I hope Monty and the editorial board are now more ‘aware’. The pictures or drawings/cartoons, as well as news reports that bombard us daily can be easily misconstrued.
How ironic that people misunderstand the meaning of his cartoon and rush to label him as "anti-Jew" when his cartoon was actually meant to show support for Israel stomping out Hamas terrorists?!
Then again the history and actions of Israel's Zionist government and America's secularist government in recent decades has been nothing but ironic. Like Ron Paul noted in a recent speech: "...if you look at the history you'll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat. And you can say, 'Yeah it was better then and it served its purpose but we didn't want Hamas to do this'..." Sounds all too familiar right?!
I mean the US government has crazy stupidly followed the mantra, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" for decades allying with (or supporting) various governments (or organizations) only to later declare them enemies and engage in conflict with them. TBH it won't surprise me in the least if in a few years time after all the support America has given Ukraine it will end up picking sides in a future conflict and it won't be on America's side. It's like the American government is always creating its own villains that sooner or later it goes to war against and orders its sheeple to be fodder for. When will this madness-go-round end?!
6:32
Started by the guys in the maintenance shops???
What year was that?
I spent almost ten years working for AC in several departments. Not once did I hear any of that kind of talk. So, if true, it has to have started in the early 70s to 80s when a lot of new folks came in to help disrupt and bring down the church.
Sadly, a big misunderstanding here. I hope the unforgiving cancel culture folks don't throw this guy under the bus like they did to Papa John for some use of the forbidden n-word taken grossly out of context.
The thing is, Ronco, Monte apologized unequivocally, and sincerely. The people who get cancelled are usually the people who stubbornly do not apologize, or hedge the apology in some way that makes it seem less than sincere. Because of the way in which Monte handled it, I think he should be just fine. It might not hurt for him to reach out to leaders of the Jewish community.
There are a lot of delicate sensitivities in play here because of the pro-palestinian stuff going on at the college campuses, and attacks on synagogues, one in which a woman was actually killed. There has been a national resurgence in antisemitism over the past 6-7 years.
After 9-11, there were cartoons depicting massive retaliation by the USA on terrorists, but it was more evident that these were coming from a patriotic perspective.
I agree that the Wolverton apology seems sincere, and that Christians should be predisposed to forgive. However, it seems incredible to me that anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the history of the Jewish people (especially in the Twentieth Century) would not tread more lightly through such a minefield! Talk about a bull in a China shop! How we express ourselves matters, and anyone who claims to be a Christian should care about unnecessarily trampling over the feelings of others. That isn't called political correctness - In Scripture, it's referred to as kindness!
The Palestinians have an interesting history. Racially, they a very close to the Jews. You can find a genetic distance chart on Wikipedia in the article titled, “Origin of the Palestinians”. It compares Palestinian with other Middle Eastern Jewish Groups. The Ashkenazi are an exception and grouped more with the Europeans. The conclusions drawn from a couple of studies, “genetic studies on Jews have shown that Jews and Palestinians are closer to each other than the Jews are to their host countries.”
The Palestinians may seem to be disconnected from the mainstream of Middle Eastern history but that is only a Western perception. From another study, “Nebel proposed that "part, or perhaps the majority" of Muslim Palestinians descend from "local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD".
Herman Hoeh had unusual views on Middle Eastern anthropology. He seemed to take the Ashkenazi, who are 30 to 70 percent European, as the archetypical Jews. This would make sense because it fits nicely with British-Israelism. The Europeanized Ashkenazi looked much like Western Europeans which lends phenotypical credibility to BI. Then he stated somewhere that the reason why people in the Middle East were dark was because they were all mixed with Canaanites – which he took to be Black Africans. We know now from genetics that this is nonsense. If we had had genetics back in those days, there would be no BI.
This makes the war between Israel and the Palestinians more like the war between Irish Protestants and Catholics. They are all the same people racially pretty much, separated by differing viewpoints on cultural, political and religious issues.
It is important to realize that the Jew/Gentile divide does not sequester the Jews racially from the rest of mankind. All of Abrahams non-descendant relatives and some of his descendants were Gentiles.
According to HWA the land of Palestine belongs to America and Britain not to the tribe of Judah who have stolen it. The Jews have no business being there because of their sins. Somebody remind HWA's dumb followers what he said.
Cartoon really should have had the Head of either Pack, Flurry, Weinland, Thiel, or Cox etc. on the boot, and labeled "the suffering brethren" as the little people.
7.29, In The edition of the Plain Truth that came out just days after his death, HWA sided with Israel's (ie, Judah's) claim to its present land. So your claim is mistaken.
After Herbert W. Armstrong had died in 1986 and the apostate Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. had taken over running the Worldwide Church of God, Monte Wolverton wrote an article for the WCG's Youth magazine about the supposed characteristics of spiritual weirdos, and they all seemed to be obvious characteristics of HWA. Monte would never have dared to write that while HWA was alive.
Does genetics matter or is culture the main difference between the two groups?
Well, if Herbert changed his mind, it's another flip flop, and more important than the one about makeup.
"Monte would never have dared to write that while HWA was alive."
If true, that makes Monte a self-seeking fraud or shill, in which case his current statements, including apologies, cannot be taken seriously.
"It is important to realize that the Jew/Gentile divide does not sequester the Jews racially from the rest of mankind."
If you do not have Jewish blood, then the religious Jews do not consider you a Jew. And even atheists who are Jews by blood are considered Jews by religious Jews. It is about both race and religion. The two cannot be separated like they can between Catholics and Protestants in Irelad. You must be a descendent of Israel to be considered a Jew. It's not about Abraham. Ethiopians who consider themsleves Jews were kicked out of Israel a few years ago.
What the hell does Herbert W. Armstrong have to do with this???? I hope you are not suggesting that that old, dead, fraud is actually some kind of authority figure, or sage wise man that we would speculate about his approval or disapproval of things we do today!
This is incredible! All of the pseudo-apostles, prophets, and Elijahs of Armstrongism have been totally incapable of attracting anywhere near this level of national, or even international attention!
Now, all of the ACOG leaders will be calling Monte for art lessons!
BB
Off the main topic but worth thinking about: I believe Basil Wolverton had a profound effect on the theology of the WCG. This is because what he wrote in The Bible Story included books from the Deuteronomistic History portion of the Bible. It was about a transactional God who stated that if you do this I will bless you but if you do that I will curse you - the theme of the Book of Deuteronomy.
People in the WCG read the Bible Story. They also read it to their children. And, in isolation, the Bible Story presented a certain view of God. That view was not found in Jonah or Job, for instance. I think the Bible Story was not just a kids storybook. I think it formed the backbone of Armstrongist theology.
I won't go any further. But think about it.
Scout
Note: The Deuteronomistic History consists of historical books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings. It is the application of the theology of the Book of Deuteronomy in the early history of ancient Israel. I think the Bible Story may have ended somewhere in one of the books of Samuel.
Whilst I understand the reason Monte apologized what irks me more and more nowadays is the media incessantly inflating and inflaming issues stoking unjust and violent reactions of which cancel culture and street riots are just a couple I completely detest. The problem I feel is that the media has increasingly referred to internet sites like Facebook and Twitter as if comments and reactions on them to various sensitive issues are a true and accurate reflection of the national sentiment when the truth is they are not. Do media, political, educational, religious, etc organizations really think all the posts garnered in response to a divisive article or cartoon or whatever published online reflects the opinions of all 330,000,000+ people in America or even a majority of its people? And yet they act as if the number of "likes" or views expressed in the "comments section below" represents such and so they have to be seen to be doing something in response even when the "response" be it an apology or dismissal or piece of legislation etc without fail tends to be not in the best interests of the vast majority of its citizens. It's no wonder the American people are being pushed ever more into a divisive discord that sees emotions toyed with and the exacerbating of primal fears and resentments. It's not going to end well when this social experiment is complete.
What does HWA have to do with it? As you know fully well, this site is about HWA, and as you know fully well, some people still take him seriously. What a dumb question.
The media fan the flames so they can have more excuses cancel more ("hate") speech so the only voices left will be their own and those that they approve of. It is all about total mind control. They are worse than HWA. At least HWA didn't control the army and the police.
And you'll be first in the que....advice for drawing a weather map.
Thats because all the news networks went to the "news entertainment" format. Now we're supposed to care about what a bathroom janitor in Henderson, Kentucky thinks about foreign policy. If there ever was a time to apply that fifth grade exercise of "cross out the opinion statements", it is now.
"At least HWA didn't control the army and the police."
Within his churches, HWA did have his police via snitches and army via his brutal ministers. It was run like a police state. A brown shirt from the Nazi era would have felt at home in Herb's church.
We've spent decades working on getting HWA cancelled and preventing the people who are trying to preserve his crap from gaining any traction, forward motion, or growth. Why do people still revere a pedophile and invoke his name as if he were deity?
There is always both good and bad happening. In many cases, trurh comes out, and people see the error of their ways, and they come clean. I find myself tremendously encouraged by the high profile lawyers who have taken inventory of their lives and are now making some very positive changes. The American public is very forgiving when people simply apologize. It's something our mothers taught us all to do, and it is very powerful.
What producers do is try to keep stories in the cycle that attract attention for our networks, clients and advertisers. If you're screaming at your TV, you could say we've done our job. But it's a double-edged sword, sometimes it works the other way - you've got a story that you think needs attention, but you just cant get some suit to buy in.
Cancelled ? The man's been dead for decades. Obsessed much ?
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