The Chicago Sun Times is disgusted, and pulls no punches in their commentary:

Caricature assassination

Newspapers tend to ignore each other's faults with a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I shudder and silence. Or else they tweak their rivals in a playfully malicious way. Neither reaction is appropriate when confronted with the vile, blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon by Dick Locher the Chicago Tribune ran on its editorial page May 30.

In it, a grotesquely hook-nosed figure labeled with a Star of David--Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, perhaps--stands before a chasm labeled "Mideast Gulch.'' A kneeling figure--President Bush, apparently--is carefully laying dollar bills across the bridge. The Sharon figure gazes at the money and says, "On second thought, the pathway to peace is looking a bit brighter.''

On the other side, patiently waits Yasser Arafat, arms crossed.

The cartoon's message--that Israel's interest in peace is sparked, not by a desire to end bloodshed, but by American cash--is a lie that sails beyond legitimate comment into a baseless slur. We recognize there is a distinction between opinions critical of Israel and anti-Semitism. But wherever that line is, Locher's cartoon, with its hump-backed, balloon-handed, hook-nosed Jew, steps far over it. The cartoon is like a swastika painted on a synagogue door, an act whose hostility and use of the shunned symbols of hate dwarf any shred of legitimate meaning. Printing it was a callous offense against all Chicago.

What's next, big-lipped black people being lured with watermelon?

UPDATE: Here's Don Wycliff's column in the Trib about it. But Wycliff isn't being honest. He says that "the cartoon carried several other messages that could be seen as drawing on anti-Semitic symbols and stereotypes." Could be seen? You mean the absurdly hook-nosed Jew staring greedily at money, with the Star of David on his sleeve while the President supinely offers more cash?

"Could be seen?" Let's be honest here: The equivalent would be a blubber-lipped Jesse Jackson eating watermelon and saying "I sho' lub 'dese Democrats," while Tom Daschle beamed in the background. That cartoon never would have seen print, and the columnist would have been fired. The racial stereotyping here was just as obvious -- and, historically, tied to even worse things than Jim Crow -- and if it was really published out of ignorance, then the folks who oversaw it are too ignorant to work in the news business.