Steve Benson
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Steve Benson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. editorial cartoonist for The Arizona Republic. Benson is the grandson of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and LDS prophet Ezra Taft Benson.
Late in 1993, Benson very publicly apostatized from the LDS Church after charging its leadership with covering up his grandfather's senility and allowing church members to believe Ezra Taft was still in charge of the church's day-to-day affairs. Benson had for some time been feeding information on his grandfather's condition to colleagues at The Arizona Republic and in the Associated Press.
Benson and his wife, Mary Ann, have left organized religion, and Benson is now an avowed atheist.
Among Benson's most famous cartoons depicts a firefighter carrying an child from the Oklahoma City bombing similar to a well-known photo of a firefighter's futile rescue of 1-year old Baylee Almon. The child in the cartoon says, "Please, no more killing..." to which the firefighter, labeled "death penalty fanatics," replies, "quit your whining!" The cartoon, published June 11 1997, angered firefighters nationwide. Almon's mother called for Benson to apologize for using the image. Benson, however, stood firm even as his paper issued an apology for printing the cartoon.
External links
- The Arizona Republic: Benson's View (http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/benson/)
- Benson's entry on Comics.com (http://www.comics.com/editoons/benson/)
- 1997 CNN story on Benson's Oklahoma City bombing comic (http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/19/cartoon.firefighters/)
- Mary Ann Benson's From Mormon Patriarchy to Personal Peace (http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon146.htm)