BOSTON HERALD ARTIST CLAIMS IGNORANCE IN CARTOON DEPICTING PRESIDENT OBAMA USING WATERMELON TOOTHPASTE

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

The Boston Herald artist who has the Internet in an uproar over his racially-charged cartoon featuring President Barack Obama and a reference to the stereotype that African Americans love watermelon apologized for offending readers, and said he didn’t even consider the negative implications in the drawing.

“It was completely naïve or innocent of any racial suggestion. I wasn’t thinking along those lines at all,” said Jerry Holbert, who has been drawing political cartoons for the newspaper since 1986.

Holbert made the apology during an interview on Boston Herald radio with Joe Battenfeld and Hillary Chabot on Wednesday morning, just hours after snapshots and links to the cartoon went viral.

Holbert told Chabot and Battenfeld that the idea to use “watermelon” instead of “peppermint” or another common toothpaste flavor in the text of the cartoon came after he looked through a cupboard and discovered someone had left “a kids Colgate watermelon flavor” there.

BOST“I, myself, love watermelon, and I thought that would be a great one,” he said.

After images of another version of the cartoon that were featured on a syndicate site called GoComics.com made the rounds online, there was speculation—including from Boston—about whether the Herald chose to change the name of the toothpaste flavor right before the newspaper went to print.

But Holbert clarified Wednesday that it was his intention to include the term “watermelon” in his cartoon, not thinking about the racial connotations, and the switch to “raspberry” was made by outside editors since his cartoons are syndicated.

Holbert told the radio station that on Tuesday night someone wrote to him and asked if they could change the watermelon reference, and he was “confused” by the request. “I changed it to raspberry and sent it back to them,” he said.

Why others noticed the racial implications before publishing, but the Herald didn’t, still remains unclear.

The Herald issued an apology Wednesday as conversations swirled online, gaining national attention, but they failed to address that answer, and merely stated they were sorry for “inadvertently” offending anyone who read the political cartoon.

“I also apologize to anyone I offended, it was not my intention at all,” said Holbert. “I don’t think along the lines of racial jokes, I never do. Naïve, stupid—those kinds of things I understand. But racist, I am definitely not.”