Vermont newspaper apologizes for ‘insulting’ Vegas shooting cartoon

The Bennington Banner in Bennington, Vermont, apologized Tuesday for a cartoon it ran the same day “in haste.”

The cartoon by Randall Enos showed a pile of bodies with the words “What stay in Vegas.” One user posted the image to Twitter, calling it “tasteless” and the newspaper’s apology “lame.”

@WilkowMajority This cartoon appeared in the Bennington Banner @banner_news Tasteless, and lame apology! https://t.co/OgZJ2Sb1E2 pic.twitter.com/nX44tZjSgp

— Tw1tT3rAc0Nt (@Tw1tT3rAc0Nt) October 4, 2017

Another user called the cartoon “one of the most callous things I have seen” and “totally devoid of humor & human empathy.”

Yet another social media user tweeted “#BoycottTheBenningtonBanner.”

Fredric Rutberg, president of New England Newspapers, which owns the Bennington Banner, released a statement saying that “many people, including me, found [the cartoon] to be insulting and in bad taste.”

Rutberg said the paper “regret[s] and apologize[s] for publishing the cartoon.

“The gravity of our error in judgment was magnified by the fact that one of victims of the unspeakable horror was a native of Dorset [Vermont], whose family and friends must have been particularly offended by this cartoon,” Rutberg continued.

Rutberg was referring to 35-year-old Las Vegas shooting victim Sandy Casey, who was a Vermont native but lived in Redondo Beach, California, according to the Burlington Free Press.

“As the president of the company, the responsibility for the grievous error is mine, and I apologize to the entire Bennington community that the Banner was so insensitive,” Rutberg added.

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