The Washington Post pulled Monday’s Barney & Clyde. I don’t think they’re issues of taste would change based on who created the strip, but I always find it interesting when the Post pulls comics it is related to. Barney & Clyde is WP humor columnist Gene Weingarten and is syndicated through the Washington Post Writers Group.
The comic was pulled due to the phrase “f up”.
Regarding the pull, Gene writes,
Time and again, the Post exercises more delicacy in comics editing decisions than other papers! We’ve had to rewrite or replace strips several times for the Post, but for none of the many other client papers. This was the one The Post didn’t run.
For the record, I have no problem with a newspaper editing the comics. It’s not censorship, it’s editing. I do find the Post’s Victorian standards a little amusing, but it’s also sort of cute.
If they had inserted a lowercase “L” in-between, I wonder if “flup” would have been flagged.
I wish I’d heard this joke 20 years ago. I f’d up my entire student film, much to the chagrin of my dad who taught me (he thought) about F Stops.
So the Post, like other newspapers, can let everyone know who says the F word in their articles by using the good ol’ F***, we just can’t make any jokes about it.
It’s a weird society we live in.
I can see why they pulled it but too bad cause it’s pretty great joke. These days it is not worth the risk of offending people “when in doubt, take it out.” that’s the matto of most newspaper and all other distributors in general.
And so, newspapers continue to be irrelevant.
I wrote a series that included a strip that reasoned the most logical person to “spank a beaver” was Ward Cleaver. WaPo asked me to change it to “paddle”. So a joke couched in the ’50’s is edited w/ the sensibilities of…the ’50’s.
http://www.gocomics.com/mike-du-jour/2013/05/24
I haven’t been around for a while, so I don’t know how long your strip’s been running, Mike. But just reading it now shows me it’s a hoot and a half.