'Doonesbury' language gets some edits
The comic strip "Doonesbury" seems to be testing the patience of some newspaper editors.
Saturday's strip placed a salty, four-letter expletive in the mouth of Vice President Dick Cheney, and some editors said yesterday the lack of warning about the strip left them little time to decide whether to run it intact, edit it to make it less offensive, or hold it and explain its absence to readers.
By failing to warn them of the objectionable content, they said, "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau and distributor Universal Press Syndicate put them in a position they'd rather not revisit -- even if it means dropping the strip altogether.
"It sparked a conversation about keeping 'Doonesbury' or not," Sam Mittelsteadt of the East Valley
Trudeau's use of a four-letter word (an "F" followed by three dashes) would violate Tribune standards for news articles, said Mittelsteadt, the paper's assistant features editor.
The controversy is reminiscent of a "Doonesbury" strip last spring in which US Army reservist B.D. lost his leg and uttered an epithet that made many editors cringe. In that instance, however, Universal warned subscribers beforehand; many, including The Boston Globe, elected to edit the copy or substitute another strip. Two more "Doonesbury" installments this year also provoked sharp reaction -- one involving a head-on-a-platter image, for which Trudeau apologized, and the other listing all American war casualties in Iraq.
Melanie Velisek, features editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, said her main concern about Saturday's Cheney strip was lack of notification, not lack of propriety.
"Granted, people appreciate the fact that 'Doonesbury' pushes the envelope," Velisek said. "But it felt like there was not much respect shown the editors in this case. Even a phone call or e-mail would have helped." The paper might consider switching the strip from the comics page to the editorial page, she added.
Elizabeth McIntyre of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland took a peek at the Cheney strip last week and posted an e-mail message for other feature editors, alerting them to the language issue. Yesterday, McIntyre said her paper had decided not to alter the strip, since the offensive words had been uttered by Cheney (albeit in another context) and had been widely reprinted in news sections.
Nevertheless, McIntyre said: "This is the third thing that's happened in the past four or five months. So I think some people are getting frustrated" with Trudeau's choice of language.
Despite that, she added, only one reader had complained to her about Saturday's strip. And no editors had responded to her e-mail by indicating they were thinking of dropping "Doonesbury."
Saturday's strip was the last in a weeklong series lampooning a George W. Bush press conference. As the president took questions, Dick Cheney's voice was shown coming through an earpiece. Asked by a reporter to "thank your controller," Cheney's response -- "Tell him to go [expletive] himself!" -- echoed a remark Cheney made in June to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
Like The Boston Globe, the News-Journal published the strip but deleted the "F" and ran four dashes instead of three. As of yesterday morning there had been little or no reader reaction to the comic, according to Velisek.
At The Record in Stockton, Calif., editors pulled the strip and referred readers to the Doonesbury website, where the strip was available. Editor Mike Klocke said yesterday that the decision to withhold publication had nothing to do with political bias and everything to do with language standards in a family newspaper.
"Cheney's remark was fair game, even though it wasn't current," Klocke said. "But we'll choose what we want to put in our newspaper. It's not up to some syndicate."
Kathie Kerr, director of communications at Universal Press, noted in an e-mail message yesterday that of 1,400 subscribing papers, only "about 20 calls" had come in from papers that had spiked the Saturday strip.
Trudeau did not respond to a separate request for comment. However, in a Globe interview last May, Trudeau noted that in politically charged times like these, "writing about any controversial issue at all invites a certain amount of blowback." It's never personal, he added. "At the risk of sounding like Tony Soprano, it's my job," Trudeau said.
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached by e-mail at jkahn@globe.com.
