According to Editor & Publisher, Coulter was speaking to a conservative group on Feb. 10 when she joked, "Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions." Rall, whose cartoons appear in several AAN member papers, asked readers of his blog if they would pledge money to support a lawsuit against Coulter. Rall said he doubts that Coulter's "claims of 'humor' or sarcasm will fly with a jury since (a) she's not funny and (b) her audiences take her literally and she knows it." In an update, Rall announced that votes were running 3-1 in favor of suing.
The impetus behind the walkout was apparently a refusal by the newspaper's publishers to print the Danish cartoons that caricature Muhammad and have caused protests and riots in several countries. In an e-mail to the New York Observer, editor in chief Harry Siegel explained that "the editorial group -- consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah ... have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running." Siegel went on to say that he had long dreamed of running the Press, thought that the staff had "come quite a ways in only a few months towards restoring the paper's tarnished editorial reputation and credibility," and hoped "that under new ownership and leadership it can again be an invaluable read for all good Gothamites."
