From Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters:
Editors of the Saturday Washington Post’s Free for All section published three angry missives from readers wishing to censor the conservative-leaning cartoon strip Prickly City.
Obviously Knopf, Ushers, and Brooks are all entitled to their opinions, but it’s curious as to why the Post decided to give them a platform in their push to censor a conservative cartoonist from the paper’s pages. A search for “Prickly City” on the Post website yielded other occasions where letter writers were given space to carp about the conservative cartoon’s inclusion in the funny pages.
It’s not curious at all. Newspapers run letters to the editor. I see letters all across the country decrying Prickly City, Mallard Fillmore AND Doonesbury. We’ve become a society that dislikes any views contrary to our own – even in comic form. Any scandal here is NewsBusters generating a scandal where one doesn’t exist. THIS! is what I hate about US political/cultural dialog.
the sad part is that the complainers about Prickly City have no problems with similar topics being done by Doonesbury
This is a story? We’re talking about three letter writers, not the newspaper itself. Letter writer #1 tried to figure out what the strip’s message actually is; letter writer #2 suggested that the strip may be entering “Doonesbury” territory and that it might be a better fit for the editorial page as a result; and letter writer #3 feels that these particular strips crossed a line.
Three grumpy letter writers doesn’t equal “censorship” in any way, shape, or form. Does NewsBusters do any actual journalism, or is that article representative of their whole website?
What’s wrong with politics on the comics page? ( Said the guy with a cartoon strip that gets a bit political)
Those who agree with Scott’s point of view will find it funny and vice versa.
Isn’t funny the whole idea behind cartoons? Do they all have to be evergreen milquetoast?
I may not agree with Scott’s point of view but I think it’s funny and there is a place for it. It only needs to be countered with something left leaning for balance. Gee I wonder where they could find such a strip……:)
“Prickly City” is inoffensive pablum compared to such liberal strips as “Doonesbury,” “La Cucaracha,” “Candorville,” etc., and the now defunct “Bloom County” and “Opus.”
There is a difference between asking editors to make a change and calling for “censorship.” Just as there is a difference between wishing a website writer would remove his head from his *** and calling for “mandatory commenting qualifications.”
What a miserable, ridiculous bunch of snake oil salesmen. NewsBusters is typical of right wing paranoia-factories—-sensationalize everything, no matter how trivial, and constantly play up their readers’ misplaced sense of grievance and victimhood. Without that persecution complex, they have nothing. And few buzzwords get them revved up like “censored.” Gasp! Censored! Of all the nerve. Those libruls want to censor us!
Never mind that they seem to not understand what the word “censored” freakin’ MEANS….
JLG
Yeah, I know what you mean, in fact the next thing you know the Republican’s will start calling for a form of government licensing of reporters and by extension I imagine political cartoonist so they can stifle and control the free press…………oh wait, my bad,Democrat Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats in the Senate are doing that very thing as we speak. Only “covered reporters” will be allowed freedom of the press and the protections that ensures.
Sure, the right is just paranoid.
As for the strip, never heard of it till now, didn’t see what the hubbub is about just from the examples shown. I also agree a few letters to the editor, no biggie in short run.
I don’t have problem with comic strips being political. I have a problem with comic strips that consist of nothing more than the author’s personal opinions written into a couple of word balloons. At least Doonsbury features genuine stories and characters. You could paste random clipart into the panels of Mallard Fillmore or Prickly City without losing a thing. But hey, yay for our team.
Doonesbury uses genuine stories and characters and then writes his personal opinion into the punchlines. It’s popularity is owed to GT’s unique and witty perspective. Stantis is doing the same. If people don’t like reading it why does he have to quit writing it?
There are some newspaper readers out there who should be forced to write “I don’t have to read a comic strip if I don’t like it” 1000 times on a chalkboard. I always explain to offended readers that it’s not actually mandatory that they read each and every strip on the page.
Hip strip living up to its name…PRICKLY indeed!
@ Terry Laban:
I don’t put Prickly City and Mallard Fillmore into the same category at all. I don’t think that’s fair to Stantis, who’s a much more talented and appealing writer than Tinsley is, or at least has ever thought it necessary to try to be. I still don’t like his politics, but he’s not a right-wing drone, and he does two things Tinsley barely bothers with: continuities and characterization.
@ Mark Juhl: Paranoia is all the right knows how to work with anymore. Schumer’s move (or rather, the spin on it) not withstanding, the right long ago gave up participating in actual policy debate, opting instead for trafficking in the most outlandish victimization narratives that the most heated fever dreams could possibly conjure up. “Death panels” is only the least of them.
Yes, calling it “censorship” in any way, shape or form seems incorrect. I just looked up the word and it refers to an institution doing the act, not letters from readers. Printing the letters is just allowing the readers to express their opinion.