A powerful political cartoon depicting the assault of Lady Justice has gone viral in the wake of recent allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Searing Image Goes Viral
Credit: Bruce McKinnon
October 2, 2018

This is seemingly where we are in the MeToo era. Are we going to take violence and abuse against women seriously or not?

Source: Washington Post

Throughout Donald Trump's presidency, Lady Justice has often been depicted as a victim of abuse and assault.

Perhaps no illustration of her during this administration, though, has resonated as strongly as the new cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon, as published this weekend in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

Some social media users have called his image powerful and brilliant, disturbing and necessary, with one adding: “I can barely breathe myself.”

In MacKinnon’s cartoon, blindfolded Lady Justice is shown being pinned by Republican hands, her scales of justice lying on the bed and her mouth covered. The art references how professor Christine Blasey Ford has described being sexually assaulted in 1982. In her Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on Thursday, Ford repeated her allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was the attacker who covered her mouth during an assault when both were Maryland prep-school students. Kavanaugh has denied the accusation.

“I watched Dr. Ford‘s testimony,” MacKinnon tells The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs, “and felt like I was being strangled the whole time by the emotions it evoked.”

MacKinnon’s cartoon had been retweeted thousands of times by Saturday afternoon.

Next week's New Yorker cover 'Unheard' by Ana Juan strikes a similar chord.

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