'Newsday' Published a Controversial Cartoon About the Shooting of Charlie Kirk

The days following Charlie Kirk's death have been filled with both genuine mourning and some degree of censoriousness from people who don't want anything bad to be said about him. It's important to acknowledge, though, that while his death was abhorrent, Kirk was a controversial and divisive figure while he was alive, and intentionally so.

Even in light of that divisiveness, though, some are questioning whether a recent cartoon about Kirk's death that was published in Newsday was in poor taste. Here's what we know about the now-controversial cartoon.

The cartoon in question was drawn by Pulitzer Prize finalist illustrator Chip Bok and was not commissioned by Newsday, a newspaper on Long Island. The cartoon depicted the aftermath of Kirk's shooting, featuring a tent with Kirk's name on it as well as the words "Prove me wrong," which was text from the actual tent. Inside the tent was an empty chair with a blood spatter behind it, as well as the words Turning Point USA with an arrow pointing toward the chair.

Almost as soon as it was published, the cartoon became the subject of ire from those on the right. It's unclear what the cartoon's ultimate message was, as it doesn't appear to be satirizing Kirk's death, but it is also a reminder of a pretty violent image.

According to The New York Post, Newsday has clarified that they purchased the cartoon in syndication but did not publish it in-house. Nonetheless, it's receiving plenty of blowback.

“Newsday — the only daily paper for Long Island — has crossed a line. By publishing a vile cartoon about the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, the paper has mocked tragedy, stoked division, and poured gasoline on the flames of political violence,” Suffolk County Republican Party chairman Jesse Garcia said in a statement. “This isn’t journalism. It’s a reckless, partisan attack that blames the victim, silences free speech, and shames everything this country should stand for."

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman also made statements suggesting that the paper should be "canceled."

"The unconscionable cartoon in Newsday trivializing the assassination of Charlie Kirk is so over-the-top despicable that it is shocking even for the majority of us who realized long ago that Newsday abandoned any pretension of fairness,” he wrote in a Facebook post Saturday.

Clearly, then, people are truly upset about the contents of this cartoon and are questioning how Newsday wound up publishing it. While it's unclear whether the goal of the paper was to trivialize the shooting, it's clear that that's how many people are reading the cartoon.

As for the future of Newsday, that also seems a little unclear. This backlash could blow over as long as the paper doesn't do anything to reignite it, but Republicans can often be quite insistent in banging the drum around a given controversy day in and day out. All that's unclear is whether they'll choose to do that here.