“The Comical Side of Cancel Culture”
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It didn’t take long for the decision by Gannett Co. to drop the conservative comic strip “Mallard Fillmore” from its newspapers to be decried by conservative websites as just one more example of “cancel culture.”
USA Today runs an opinion piece about Gannett newspapers dropping the Mallard Fillmore comic strip with an emphasis on the Doonesbury comic strip and its habit of running against the wall of what some editors took to be acceptable.
Every era has examples. Back in the early ’50s, Beetle Bailey was excised from an edition of Stars and Stripes for not being adequately respectful of Army officers.Just last August, some newspapers canceled the “Six Chix” cartoon because it depicted a white woman who was clueless about both COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.
The single most targeted comic strip of all time, though, has to be Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury.” Throughout its 50-year history, the often liberal comic strip has faced outrage, suspensions and cancellations.
© Garry B. Trudeau
Read the entire column here (no mention is made of the relationship between USA Today and Gannett).
Cartoonists ought to be mocking the cancel culture — not becoming victims of it!
An opposing, and outraged, view from The Family Research Council.
Comic strip histories of late are mostly about one distinct component of the art. This very slight, one paragraph look at the background of “cancel culture” as it relates to comics (in the USA Today piece) makes us think there is a book to be written about the controversy. After all the push against cartoons and comics stretches back over one hundred years. From anti-cartoon bills (1899) and newspapers dropping comics sections (1908) to today’s debates.
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