That darn Steve Brodner

People are people [Steve Brodner letter]

Tom Horrigan

Washington Post January 20 2024: A15

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/19/biden-economy-claudine-gay-senior-fitness/

Steve Brodner's Jan. 7 illustrated Opinion essay, "These politicians denied democracy on Jan. 6. Now, they want your vote.," presented an initial shock because the full-page graphic was disturbing, and the text didn't add much clarifying content.

From the Jan. 7 illustrated Opinion essay. (Steve Brodner/For The Washington Post)

The essay unfortunately borrowed from former president Donald Trump's mockery playbook by presenting the 147 identified Republican members of Congress as cartoonish images of their worst selves. It simply presented a nasty graphic with minimal explanatory text. The cartoon images were repeated in a black-and-white arrangement with highlights of the antics of 11 of the 147.

The essay did not present an opinion. Was that intentional to force readers to develop their own opinion? If so, mine was that this did no better than Trump by mocking, demonizing and dehumanizing people, as he did recently with President Biden's stutter. By the looks of the cartoon faces of the 147 members of Congress the essay seemed to cast them as evil, against Amanda Ripley's wise advice in her Opinion column two pages later, "Want to make a decision you'll regret? Split the world into good and evil." By text explanation, the essay offered only that the 147 "formally supported objection to counting Joe Biden's electoral votes." Specific objections by members were not provided, leaving the inference that each member is as bad as the worst among them.

I'm an independent voter who was aghast by the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Republicans' continued efforts to deny it happened and minimize its adverse consequences for our democracy. For The Post, though, to devote two full pages of the Opinion section to cartoonishly vilify those 147 members of Congress was unprofessional, ugly and unacceptable. Each of the 147 members has official photos that could have been used instead to help readers recognize them. The teeth-bared, scowling, red-faced and loud graphics were dehumanizing. Is that The Post's opinion?