Controversial comics raise serious dilemmas

By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 10/22/2003

In an unprecedented move that angered readers and generated industry criticism, The Washington Post recently killed an entire week of "The Boondocks" comic strip with a story line suggesting the world might be a safer place if national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had a more active love life.

Addressing the subject in his column, Post ombudsman Michael Getler quoted executive editor Leonard Downie Jr.'s view that the strip "violated our standards for taste, fairness and invasion of privacy," before adding his dissenting opinion. "Boondocks" creator Aaron McGruder was "being mischievous and irreverent . . . about a high profile public figure," Getler declared. "And that seems okay to me."

The Post controversy is the latest in a growing cluster of recent cases in which newspapers have opted to kill comic strips that are deemed offensive. In September, a number of publications chose not to publish a "Doonesbury" installment that dealt with masturbation. Earlier this year, The Boston Globe passed on an edition of "Boondocks" -- a strip known for stinging social, racial, and political commentary -- that featured an antiwar protest message over the usual drawing space. In a similar vein, The Chicago Tribune killed a "Boondocks" strip that lampooned President Bush's "bring 'em on" message to anti-US fighters in Iraq.

They used to be called the funny pages. But it's no laughing matter for editors deciding whether such edgy and politically tinged strips as "Doonesbury," "Boondocks," and "Mallard Fillmore" violate boundaries of taste. Nor for readers who often respond to decisions to omit strips with angry cries of censorship since they can now go online to see what they were missing.

At the core of the issue is a bit of a paradox. While many observers believe the provocative strips belong on the comics pages, the consensus is that they are subject to tighter scrutiny because they appear in a more benign environment than the more freewheeling opinion pages. And some industry officials wish newspapers would be more willing to push the envelope when it comes to humor.

"I think that to have every strip like `The Family Circus' would be disastrous for newspapers and the art form," says Lee Salem, editor of the Universal Press Syndicate that distributes "Doonesbury" and "Boondocks." Jay Kennedy, editor in chief of King Features Syndicate, which handles "Mallard Fillmore," says, "I'm a believer that the scope and variety of comics should be allowed to expand. I would be happier if newspapers were more adventurous."

Some papers do find a home for the more controversial strips outside the comics pages. According to Salem, several hundred of the roughly 1,400 papers that carry "Doonesbury" place it in another location, and Kennedy estimates that about a third of the nearly 400 subscribers to the conservative-oriented "Mallard Fillmore" opt for an op-ed page position, often pairing it with the left-leaning "Doonesbury."

But many publications run them alongside such strips as "Garfield" and "Hi and Lois" and say there is no problem mixing that kind of gentler, broader humor with sharper satire.

Lou Gelfand, reader representative at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, says that other than the masturbation strip, he can only recall the paper spiking one other "Doonesbury" column in two decades. "Freedom of expression is alive on the Star Tribune comics page," he says. Chicago Tribune public editor Don Wycliff is a firm believer that comics that may offend readers "definitely belong on the comics page."

Michael J. Larkin, Globe deputy managing editor for news operations, agrees that "Doonesbury" and "Boondocks" and their ilk "are fine on the comics pages. Even in the days of `Beetle Bailey,' they were making statements about the military," he says. "Comics have been political almost going back to their origins."

Students of comics history point out that controversial strips predated the 1970 debut of "Doonesbury" and say such old favorites as "Li'l Abner," "Little Orphan Annie," and "Pogo" dealt with politics. Salem recalls that when "For Better or For Worse" introduced a gay character about a decade ago, there were outright cancellations of the strip by a number of papers. And Kennedy says that "Funky Winkerbean," which has addressed such sensitive topics as teen suicide, is now tackling a real political hot-button issue -- the death penalty.

Still, despite a professed willingness to publish sharper-edge topical humor on the comics page, there is little doubt that strips face more stringent standards and are granted less editorial license because they appear in the so-called "family friendly" section of the paper.

"We do, I think, have a heightened awareness" of what can run in the comics pages, acknowledges Larkin. Papers "look on the section as kind of sacrosanct," adds Salem. "But people who take `Doonesbury' know what they're going to get."

Mark Jurkowitz's media column appears on Wednesdays. He

can be reached at jurkowitz

@globe.com.