Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[CortJstr]

So apparently the Post decided not to run The Boondocks due to "objectionable content." You can't even get to it through the website. I found the strips in question on Yahoo. So now I ask: the hell? Please explain to me how/why this is objectionable and the Post won't run it. I mean I guess something horrific could happen Friday or Saturday but I just don't see it.

[AlohaDawg]

I thought they were funny as hell.

As a card-carrying member of the VRWC, I'm immune to Liberal White Guilt, though.

[jough]

Oh, come ON.  I can see how you may not be offended by it, since I'm not, but do you honestly see how writing about a reality show called "Can a nigger get a job?" would possibly offend people, especially since the strip suggests that black people are unable to arrive on time to work, and work hard once they get there.

I don't think it's right for the Post to censor the strip (it's running in the Philadelphia Inquirer) but damn, I can understand how they could get tonnes of angry letters about this thing.

[AlohaDawg]

Angry letters promote discourse. I think thatAaron McGruder's whole point is to get people to talk about race and the problems in this country we have between people of different races.

He's had strips pulled before, too. He's edgy in a brilliant way and one of the few black comic strip creators out there period, let alone those willing to take a few hits along the way to score some points against the prevailing attitudes of the culture(s).

Basically, it's satire. And if people get offended, they are probably being too literal about it. But if they are reading it, and getting a little righteous indignation, then he (as a satirist, at least) is definitely doing his job.

[CortJstr]

I think context is very important here. If this series of strips showed up in another artist's work I wouldn't bat an eye at the Post pulling it for the week. But this storyline isn't very unusual for McGruder. The Boondocks is controversial by its very nature, so it seems strange to me to pick and choose what's just offensive enough.

Although to be fair I've heard this problem in rampant in the comics industry. Frank Cho would often complain about the papers (and his syndicate) being contradictory from week to week about where the line was. And frankly that's why Doonsbury moved to the editorial page, to distance itself from the craziness of the comics page.

[Pedro Picasso]

Boondocks should move to the editorial page immediately.  It's a set of funny editorials with interesting characters from a black American perspective.  That's where it belongs anyway, and that would help distance it from Cathy, Garfield, Sylvia, and all the other sun-dried splooge that passes for 'comics' these days.  But we've already had this conversation.

Marmaduke is funnier if you pretend it's a two panel comic where the second panel always involves taking the dog out back with a shotgun.

[AlohaDawg]

Moving it to the editorial page would be a disservice to that artist, I think...that would take away a huge proportion of the audience even if it seems the right thing to do. I think that maybe it raises the bar on the rest of the crap (not all of it, but a lot) that is on the comic pages, by being both funny and relevant.

[CortJstr]

I dunno. It would lose audience but I think it would also cut down on angry soccer mom letters and give him more artistic freedom. People have such Disney expectations for the comics page. People were constantly getting offended by the Far Side, hell even Garfield got angry letters for saying "sucked." I'm actually shocked that Boondocks has lasted on the comics page as long as it has.

[Choop]

Boondocks already is in the editorial pages of the AJC - which may or may not be a disservice. It takes away much of the readership (and target readership at that*) but it lends it or reveals of it some certain credibility that it may not garner in the Comix Pages.

Dawg - VWRC? Please to explain.

* Part of the goal of this comic seems to me to be to get kids interested in discourse and national/world events. It's relevant sometimes and irrelevant others, so they have cause to keep checking it out.

[CortJstr]

Dawg - VWRC? Please to explain.

I think it's Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. You swapped the letters.

[Choop]

Ah. Indeed. Thx.

[St_Zartan]

I just got done reading "Birth of a Nation" (I checked it out of the fuck*ng library, and I live in fuck*ng Tom DeLay country), a comic novel co-authored by McGruder and illustrated by the terrific Kyle Baker. It wasn't everything I was hoping it would be, but a solid achievement all the same.

As far as Boondocks on the editorial page goes: pffft. I've seen the frequently politically lukewarm (although often funny) Doonesbury on many Serious Editorial Pages, while unfunny, execrable, blatantly partisan strips like Mallard Fillmore gets comics-page real estate next to gems like Get Fuzzy and Monty. You know why The Terrorists hate us? Because we create and, on a massive scale, consume comic strips in which the silhouette of an anthropomorphic duck, in between making must-be-funny-the-millionth-time jokes about the Liberal Media and Charles Darwin, sheds a single, symbolic tear or whatever over September the fuck*ng Eleventh.

Fuck you, Mallard Fillmore. Just fuck you.

[CortJstr]

I've only ever seen Mallard Fillmore in blatantly political papers like the Washington Times.

I know the Post moved Doonebury to the editorial page which is why I'm so surprised that they've left Boondocks where it is. I think the problem is that they try to be a liberal paper, a "paper of record", and a local daily all at the same time and it's just too many conflicting interests.

[arkabee]

I've only ever seen Mallard Fillmore in blatantly political papers like the Washington Times.

little po-dunk paper here-bouts has it.

it sucks.

did dude not ever see howard the duck?

i mean, c'mon dude, c'mon.