[caption id="attachment_68246" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Thomas Nast."]
It's two strikes against the New Jersey Hall of Fame as far as the state's AOH is concerned.
Not only is the hall aiming to honor controversial 19th century cartoonist and illustrator, Thomas Nast, a move that has prompted an angry reaction from Hibernians, but the order, which actually has the right to vote for potential hall inductees, was never given the opportunity to do so.
In a recent letter to Don Jay Smith, executive director of the hall of fame, New Jersey AOH State President, Sean Pender, said that Nast's elevation would not fly with Hibernians in the Garden State.
Wrote Pender: "It came as a great surprise to me when I learned that Thomas Nast was a nominee for induction into the NJ Hall of Fame. While Nast, as detailed in his biography on your website, 'can be credited with creating the iconic drawings of Santa Claus, Uncle Sam, the Republican Party elephant, the Democratic Party donkey and Columbia, the image of America as a woman,' Mr. Nast was also very prejudiced towards Irish Catholics.
"His cartoons portrayed them in the most stereotypical and unflattering of ways. It is hard to believe that anyone with such a
prejudice towards a specific nationality and faith would be singled out for praise.
"Mr. Nast made no bones about his disrespect and contempt towards the Irish Catholics of the late nineteenth century. What is further hard to believe is that the procedure that your organization employs to review nominations did not come across this."
Pender also took issue with the effective sidelining of the AOH in the voting process.
"Are you aware that our organization, the AOH, is listed on your website as a member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame voting academy? Yet we have not received any correspondence for the last several years," Pender wrote Smith.
Pender added that the AOH "would be honored to resume a presence on the academy" but only if the move to elevate Nast is scrubbed.
"Mr. Smith, I believe that if your organization did a better job reviewing nominees and following procedures this admission of a known prejudiced bigot would not have happened," Pender stated in the letter.
Pender, in the letter, also pointed to Nast's Wikipedia biography which highlights the fact that Nast was hostile to Catholicism and Irish Catholics in particular
The online biography states: "Nast, a German Protestant, saw the Roman Catholic Church as a threat to American values, and often portrayed the Irish Catholics and Catholic Church leaders in very hostile terms. In 1871, one of his works, titled 'The American River Ganges,' infamously portrayed Catholic bishops as crocodiles waiting to attack American school children. Nast's anti-Irish sentiment is clearly apparent in his characteristic depiction of the Irish as violent drunks."
