Is another cartoon controversy.
The WaPo refusing to run the Opus cartoon is shameful.
Reader Interactions
22Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.
“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”
We’re not going back!
The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.
This really is a full service blog.
It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.
Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?
Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.
People are complicated. Love is not.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
An unpunished coup is a training exercise.
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
Republicans don’t trust women.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
Bark louder, little dog.
There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.
Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.
If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.
It’s a doggy dog world.
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
Brachiator
Great cartoon! Yeah, the WaPo’s reaction is shameful, but sadly understandable. Some (and I emphasize, some) Muslims will invariably talk about the insult to Islam or the insult to Muslims, and glide right past that pesky First Amendment thing. To be fair, other groups (for example, Catholics) will also wail when a joke is perceived as being an insult to the Church, but will generally stop short of shouting some variation of death to America or threatening to burn down an embassy, etc.
The Other Steve
I saw it over at salon, and I thought it was pretty funny.
I miss reading Opus from when i was in college. Glad it’s back. And doonesbury as well.
Our local paper has some right-wing version of Doonesbury. The only problem is, it isn’t funny. I forget what it’s called, but it just tries too hard and can’t be long for this world.
Kiva Oraibi
I dunno, just sounds…tactful…? to me.
I mean, it’s their paper, and papers routinely refuse to run various cartoons from time to time.
It’s not an act of political courage to mock Muslim women in America these days, despite all the heroic Islam-bashers among your former companions on the right who will, no doubt, splatter it across the web to show how Daring and Brave they are!
KCinDC
Newspapers refuse to run strips all the time, most often in my experience because they’re afraid of complaints from Christians and/or Republicans. Why is this suddenly a big story? Oh, that’s right, because it’s a clear indication that we’re one step away from living under sharia law as part of the new caliphate.
And I didn’t even realize “Opus” was still running. Isn’t it about time for Breathed to follow the example of Watterson and retire with some dignity?
norbizness
And yet they run Fred Hiatt editorials. Weeeeaaaaakkkkk. It is just possible that the cartoon is making fun of a particular character’s fatuousness.
As for the cartoonist’s career, he did retire.. twice… and is back again. Can’t keep a good Longhorn down!
AemJeff
It’s not particularly heroic to choose not to mock based on the broad identity of the target, either. The fact that a particular variety of unsocialized creep makes a public virtue out of racism doesn’t mean there’s nothing there worth parodying. The strip was funny and not particularly offensive. “Shameful,” however, doesn’t seem like the perfect characterization, to me. Anodyne, and rather cowardly, perhaps.
myiq2xu
Some 1-night stand stole my “Billy and the Boingers” sweatshirt!
Oh the humanity!
the dryyyyyyy cracker
Kiva, he’s not mocking Muslim women, he’s mocking belief systems. It’s what Breathed’s always done–whatever’s the big thing at that point in time, he makes one of his characters a hardcore follower of it. If it’s offensive, that’s the believers’ problem.
He’s done this with varying degrees of success, mind.
But yeah, KC’s right, and it bugs me to be on the same side of an issue as the anti-Arab dickheads who aren’t in this for the First Amendment.
yet another jeff
Still have the record that came with Billy and the Boingers. Ah, “You Stink, But I Love You” and “I’m a Boinger”
nabalzbbfr
Here’s my entry:
http://www.printedtp.com/order_form.html
http://www.waterholes.com/~dennette/1995/islam/shahada_5.gif
Mr Furious
Yawn…
Sirkowski
Then why did the cartoon get banned?
I’m a liberal, by the way, and I bash Islam all the time. Making fun of adults who still believe in Santa Claus is what sane people do.
zombyboy
the dryyyyyyy cracker, what does the first amendment have to do with this?
Funny strip. I wish they had decided to run it because it was a fairly gentle poke at an extreme belief system. But I hardly see it as shameful or tragic that a paper made an editorial decision that I would not, personally, have made.
It’s worth noticing, sure, but hardly worth getting worked up about.
Back to the first amendment bit:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I’m not sure where in there it guarantees that a politically oriented, slightly off-color cartoon should have room to run in the WaPo funny pages, but if I’m missing something I’d really like to know. I mean, there’s a whole new career waiting for me in forcing mildly offensive (yet constitutionally protected) comics down the throats of newspapers across the country.
rachel
Hairy fishnuts!
Chuck Butcher
The WaPo has lost its collective mind…and its nuts.
It would be just toooooo bad if a cartoon told the truth and offended idiots. I said idiots, not Muslims.
Lupin
The bedwetters win again.
chopper
yeah, the strip is making fun of american trend-ism far more than anything about islam. kinda dumb to shelve it.
Zifnab
It’s a common misconception that self-censor is somehow prohibited by the First Amendment. The freedom to say what you want somehow gets morphed into the requirement to say everything that pops into your brain.
But the spirit of the 1st Amendment is that you – be “you” a government agent or a powerful corporate entity – should not have the right to close off dialog in the public. If the WaPo refused to print any Bloom County strips, this would merely be a case of the newspaper doing business. But the WaPo clearly doesn’t have a problem with Bloom County, it has a problem with the author’s individual comic strip. So it doesn’t dismiss all of Bloom County, it dismisses the strip itself, effectively only letting the comic artist express himself when his views correspond with the views of the WaPo editorial board. Some people see that type of censorship the same as if the WaPo were to duct-tape the comic artist’s mouth shut when he wasn’t espousing WaPo-approved speech.
Of course, if the WaPo or some other entity shut down the guy’s website, there might be some beef here. As it stands, it just chaffs the American Spirit.
cleek
Breathed already “expressed himself” – he drew the strip.
BIRDZILLA
And yet the liberal left-wing news media are not afraid to run junk like THE BOONDOCKS,DOONSBURY FOR BETTER OR WORSE and certianly not afraid of offending liberals with other junk like GET FUZZY
The Other Steve
You forgot MARMADUKE and FAMILY CIRCLE!
Damn them! Damn them all!
Bubblegum Tate
Would that be Day by Day? Or maybe Mallard Fillmore (which America: The Book pretty much destroyed with a surgical satire-bomb)?
At any rate, this is as good a place as any to gratuitously link to Berke Breathed’s legendary AV Club interview.