The K Chronicles creator Keith Knight spoke at the University of Arizona last night to help put to rest the controversy that erupted after the student paper inadvertently ran one of his cartoons in which one of the comic characters twice used the n-word the day after the presidential election.
Keith explained the told the audience of about a 100 students that the cartoon was based on a real event and dialog.
“It was such a unique situation and such an odd and weird and slightly, slightly hopeful situation that I was like, ‘Wow this couple was willing to call this guy the worst thing that he can be called and elect him to be the most powerful person in the world.’ That’s the most bizarre thing I have ever heard”
In an interview with the campus paper Seema Patel, Administrative VP of the Associate Students and a co-sponsor of the event, said that she thought Keith helped resolve many of the lingering issues surrounding the cartoon.
“Students that still had lingering questions got them answered. I think that he brought up a bunch of different perspectives that may not have been explored before,” Patel said. “I think that a lot of the concerns that I had been hearing and feeling, I think a lot of those have been addressed.”
The student newspaper didn’t know about the context of the cartoon ? Who is running this college newspaper, a bunch of 4th graders ? No, that would be insulting to all 4th graders. When I was in college, I had an editor actually read the cartoon before publishing it.
You can see how controversial it still is by the number of students who showed up – 100, where were all the protest groups ? Why weren’t they picketing the event ?
If the charcacters were reversed, the couple were African-American instead of Caucasian and said to vote for the white guy or other colorful terms, then everyone would have laughed and maybe clipped it out of the newspaper and taped it to their fridges. Sigh.
This is actually something all too common with college newspapers and students. Perhaps it’s due to raging hormones, but college students can get pretty riled up over something rather simple. And more often than not, it gets even more stupid when you try to explain a cartoon to them, that the cartoon actually supports the position the students have gotten so upset about. You’d think they’d have a better grasp of satire, but, sadly, that is not the case. Of course, it’s usually an extreme minority that raises all the ruckus, but because they’re so vitriolic about it, the entire college gets painted as dimwits.
Common sense is not offered as a major at any school. Certainly wasn’t at mine LOL.
Great move by Keith to go down there and talk to these kids … this is exactly what I was talking about in another thread about editorial cartooning being a “dialogue.” Keith did not try to be some aloof or mysterious figure, who expected his work to “speak for itself”…