In what was a “clear call” for its editors, the Oregonian next week is taking a pass on an entire week of “graphic,” abortion-themed Doonesbury comics.
Features Editor JoLene Krawczak announced the decision in a reader’s note. Comics, she reminds us, are supposed to be funny (diligently probing the lives of fat, lasagna-loving cats and midnight-sandwich-munching layabout husbands) and stay away from grown-up subjects.
In next week’s strip, “Doonesbury” author Garry Trudeau, in our judgment, went over the line of good taste and humor in penning a series on abortion using graphic language and images inappropriate for a comics page.
While we rarely pull strips for taste reasons, this was a clear call for the editors of the paper and for some other papers around the country, including the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Yes, other papers are prudes, too. But the Washington Post isn’t, and neither are some other editors. The WaPo quotes an editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer who says there’s no difference between the funny pages and the front page—and does the O one better and actually (gasp) mentions what in the strips might be deemed objectionable.
Debbie Van Tassel, assistant managing editor of features at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tells Comic Riffs that she and other top editors have decided to run next week’s strips, which feature a woman who sits in a “shaming room” as she awaits a pre-termination sonogram and a check-up from a legislator. “We didn’t deliberate long,” Van Tassel tells Comic Riffs. “We all agreed that some readers will be upset by them, mainly because they appear on the comics page, but also because of the graphic depiction of a transvaginal sonogram.”
Van Tassel cites the larger journalistic context in which “Doonesbury” appears. “This newspaper deals with those issues routinely in the news sections and in our health section,” she tells us. Our page one today, for example, carries a story about the movement by women legislators across the country to curb men’s abilities to get vasectomies and prescriptions for erectile dysfunction. I haven’t heard of any objections to that story yet.”
I’m surprised that I can still be surprised by how far the Oregonian has fallen.
Agreed Todd – however, from my perspective the ‘O’ panders to its’ readers just as much as the MERC does.
I can see their point though. The comics are typically the only section children read. I’d pull it too, as an editor, sheerly out of wanting to avoid the angry parent shit storm that would ensue.
That doesn’t mean I think it’s the right decision, however.
Yes, I’m comfortable being a contradiction with legs.
looks like they aborted that comic! hiyo!
I’m a parent and willing to take responsibility for what my kids read in random papers, magazines, movies, and yeah, even on the street. I don’t blame ANY media for being what they are, whether it is unexpected to their eyes or not. We act as if children won’t see this shit anyway, eventually.
Abortion and the subjects surrounding it is a subject any child should be able to handle without lifelong maladies.
I’d say I care but the Oregonian hasn’t been part of my household in 15 years, so at best this is a cute example of why I dumped it so long ago.
In past Doonesbury controversies some newspapers have run the strip on the editorial page. There are other options than censoring a legitimate lampooning of a moronic, repressive, oppressive social policy.
Doonesbury runs a lot of adult content, say concerning the war in Afghanistan. Some of the slaughter in Prince Valiant can get quite graphic. Much of the humor in Pearls Before Swine involves complex adult jokes including not only puns but meta-comment on bad language, censorship, and crude humor about animals eating one another. Anyone who thinks the Os funny pages fare during the week as all Garfield and Peanuts is mistaken. This is incoherent cowardice by the O.
It almost made me cancel my subscription! Most children overall don’t read Doonesbury. You just caved to the pandering few who snivel over the least little thing! As a woman, I am darned tired of the Republican party trying to tell me what to do with my body!! Why are you arfraid to show all this uproar for what it is: pure republican crap! This is censorship and I DO NOT LIKE IT!!!