Apple iPhone app hypocrisy? You can ridicule Obama, but lay off of Tiger Woods

“Curiouser and curiouser,” cried Alice, as she examined the latest iPhone apps. Or she would have, if she had encountered Daryl Cagle’s dilemma. Cagle is MSNBC’s editorial cartoonist whose work is also distributed on the iPhone and iPad, among other places.
Apple recently approved his “MSNBC.com Obama Cartoons” app that shows the latest editorial cartoons about the president, but when it came to his latest submission, a similar app that presents editorial cartoons featuring Tiger Woods, Apple took a different approach.

“Apple approved our “msnbc.com Obama Cartoons” app that shows the latest newspaper editorial cartoons drawn about President Obama,” Cagle wrote today on his blog, “but Apple rejected our app on the topic of Tiger Woods. It seems that Tiger crosses an editorial line at Apple.”

Cagle includes the rejection letter he received from Apple in his blog post:

“We’ve reviewed Tiger Woods Cartoons and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.17 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:

” ‘Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.’

“If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that Tiger Woods Cartoons does not violate the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.”

Cagle is not amused.

“Editorial cartoons are the best measure of the freedom of a nation,” he wrote. “Cartoonists in Cuba have never drawn Fidel Castro; cartoonists in Egypt can’t draw their President Hosni Mubarek; cartoonists in China don’t draw their president Hu Jintao. Authoritarian regimes always turn first to control the cartoonists, and forbid them from ‘ridiculing public figures.

“I don’t want Apple deciding which public figures I may ridicule.”

Indeed, the rejection seems arbitrary and capricious, as Kramer might say.Especially considering some of the Obama cartoons that gloriously appear through the iPhone app portal. By the way, there’s also a sex cartoons app, and probably dozens more that could be interpreted as running afoul of their Developer Program License Agreement.
But the bigger question is, who is acting as St. Peter for Apple, deciding who gets in and who doesn’t? Why are they protecting Tiger, while the president is left hanging?
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Apple: You Can Ridicule Obama, but Don’t Bash Tiger Woods [Cagle.com]
Apple’s Still At It: Rejects Tiger Woods Cartoon App [Editor & Publisher]
Cartoons: Tiger returns to golf [MSNBC]