I wrestled with ideas for my cartoon about the Boston Marathon bombing long and hard before finally settling on this one. At first, I thought something more poignant, like first responders crossing the finish line, might be a nice way to go. But I always try to say something with my cartoons, and as I was watching media coverage of the event, I couldn’t get over how politicians were pushing each other out of the way to declare a temporary bipartisan cease-fire.
Does it really take a horrific bombing that claimed the lives of three people, including an eight-year-old boy, for our politicians to set aside petty differences and work together?
Newsworks has a nice story up by Shana O’Malley featuring first-hand accounts of local runners who were participating in the Boston Marathon:
Doug White of the Delaware Sports Club was in the final stretch of the marathon when runners in front of him began to stop.
“I was running in like everyone else and all of the sudden, about half a mile from the finish line, they stopped us, just like a crash on I-95, we all just started backing up and nobody knew what happed,” explained White. “We heard the sirens; no one heard the explosion from that distance.”
This was White’s 40th consecutive Boston Marathon and several family members were waiting for him to cross the finish line.
“We were told there were explosions at the finish line and my two daughters, my son, my sister, my brother, my wife were all at the finish line so I was in a panic,” said White.