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Posted on 09/24/2004 10:51:05 AM PDT by churchillbuff
NEW YORK The decision by several newspapers, including a few major ones, to drop Aaron McGruder's popular "Boondocks" comic strip this week has set off sparks, possibly as the artist intended.
The series of daily strips this week imagines a new reality TV show hosted by rap impressario Russell Simmons, called "Can a N***a Get a Job?", with the missing letters pretty easy to discern. It includes panels showing a woman who would rather sleep than apply for a job, a knife fight between two women and a black man smoking marijuana in a board room, in a takeoff on "The Apprentice."
Among the papers refusing to run the strip this week are The Washington Post, New York Daily News and Newsday. The Daily News published notices reading, "Boondocks is on vacation and will return on September 27."
A humor columnist for The Washington Post blasted that paper's "pathetically weak and wrong decision" on the comic.
Universal Press Syndicate gave papers a choice of running the strip with the three symbols in the middle of the "N" word, or with symbols for all five letters in the word, or re-running an old strip. The most severely edited version also deletes the knives from the knife fight. This is the version carried by the Los Angeles Times.
Kathie Kerr, director of communications at Universal Press Syndicate, told E&P that at least four papers killed this week's strip entirely. She said that McGruder had not commented, adding that he is "kind of his own wild child" and that this is "not the first time" the "N" word had been used in the strip.
Greg Melvin, associate editor at Universal, called the content "defensible because it's really trenchant satire," in an interview with a St. Petersburg Times reporter.
The Sacramento Bee, which is running the strip unedited, reported Thursday that it had received 70 emails from readers, who backed the decision by a 7-1 margin. (On Monday, when the series started, the paper ran a story asking readers to share their thoughts.) Sentiments ranged from accusing McGruder of being "too young to understand" the severe pain the "N" word causes to praising its use in the strip as a way to "let go of the past."
The St. Petersburg Times, which also ran the unedited strips, considered pulling them, but Executive Editor Neil Brown explained in an email statement that he was "extremely reluctant to censor an artist just because the work is provocative."
Eric Deggans, editorial writer/columnist for that that paper, pointed out that coming from a white artist "this kind of material would probably earn the creator a swift dismissal."
Then he took a poll of "black people" in his local barbershop. He found that most loved the concept of the cartoon but when they actually looked at the strips some found it "too much." One customer said, referring to stereotypes in the cartoon, "You poke fun at that kind of stuff, and it becomes acceptable."
Meanwhile, Gene Weingarten, who writes a humor column every Sunday in The Washington Post Magazine, revealed in an online chat at the paper's Web site that when he asked permission to link to the "censored" Boondocks, which is easily available at the Universal web site, it was "denied." He said the paper "has decided that it is inappropriate to disseminate the material in any way."
Since the Post, he said, is "never in any way condescending to its readers," surely one might think the strips must compare Hitler to Jesus, or even worse. But no, they "simply make fun of black exploitation TV and reality shows by taking them to a ridiculous extreme." After calling his paper the best in the country, he added, "But man, we can sometimes be enormous, big-shoes-flapping-red-nose-honking bozos."
Later, when a black man told him in the chat that he thought Boondocks was "hilarious this week," Weingarten replied: "We made a pathetically weak and wrong decision."
Good riddance.
The cartoonist is a hack whose work is derivative, amateurish-at-best and inconsistent within the strip itself.
Go peddle your rantings, elsewhere, McGruder.
DO NOT post the strips or links to them. Do not give this guy web hits!!!!
The "Boondocks" is one of the most unfunny and uncreative comic strips ever created...I'll take re-runs of Dilbert anytime
My biggest objection to this strip is that it appears on the comics page of my local paper. It doesn't belong there.
"This sounds like it was actually funny for once. "
Funny? No. On target? Perhaps. But it's the double standard that's wrong. If a white comic strip artist had done it he would have been burnt at the stake.
It doesn't belong in my local paper either.
Do you have a link to the comic strip? ;-P
Most newspaper owners will tell you: It is extremely hard to discontinue a comic strip after a month or two of running it. People get extremely attached to their favorites, whether or not they are well-written or well-drawn.
If I ran a newspaper, I would introduce new strips only one day or so per week -- never just start running them every day. Also, I would discontinue long-running strips the same way, by deleting them gradually a day at a time.
Exactly.
I guess calling Condi Rice a murderer and depicting her as being "in need of a man" was fair game though.
Where's the lib outrage when this shill calls Condi Rice a murderer? I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
I say can the little b@st@rd.
Boondocks is little more than hateful screed and psuedointellectualpolitical commentary scribbled onto paper and put out under the guise of 'ethno-centric comic strips'.
Good riddance.
The 'comic strip' was a loser from day one.
Dave Chapelle, has a parody "World Series of Dice"....
Nor in mine!!
Ditto "Doonesbury"
Unfortunately, Trudeau's Doonesbury has more 'fans'.
So it'll be awhile before it gets dumped.
Can a Ninja get a job? I don't know - the job market for Ninjas seems to be on the decline in recent years, and they all end up working as Barristas at Starbucks...
One of my professors brings them in, LOTS of them, and we have to post them so the kids can read them. They're right across from my "Bush" door. Arrgghh!
"Where's the lib outrage when this shill calls Condi Rice a murderer? I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored"
Absolutely right! This "comic" strip often serves as free advertising for the Dems and the far left. But papers get outraged only when the cartoonist writes some strips that are offensive to some in the black community. The strips he is doing this week ARE satire, and more of an attack on reality TV, in my opinion. Meanwhile the vicious slanderous lies he tells about GWB, Cheney, Dr Rice etc don't get a word of criticism.
Who are these people that read comic strips anyways? I have never seen more drudgingly dull boring crap than when I open the comic pages. The only worth anything on that page is the chess game.
Til they go totally mad on people.
That's what ninjas do. Sweet.
Unless he happened to be Ted Rall.
"Who are these people that read comic strips anyways?"
I'll give you a clue: they support Kerry.
Somebody help me out here. Maybe I have the wrong word but the one I am thinking of has 6 letters.
So what's the big deal? A Reality TV show called "Can a Ninja Get a Job" doesn't sound too offensive to me...
"Ninja" has 5 letters.
How elitist of you, showing off your home school education.
Hmmm... so does Nanny...
My paper doesn't carry this.
It also moved Doonesbury back into the want ad section
:)
Slang. Ends with 'a', not 'er'.
He used the hip-hop friendly "nigga" rather than the word that rhymes with chigger.
The real thing is already "acceptable" or at least tolerated, that's why he pokes fun at it.
Hmmm... so it IS 'Ninja'?
The real thing is already "acceptable" or at least tolerated, that's why he pokes fun at it.
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Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
I guess this idiot is saying that he approves of "affirmative action" and "lowered expectations" where Black people are concerned, which explains why he hates Condoleeza Rice so much.
Nannies can get jobs. Can a Nanny get a job? That isn't reallu offensive either, unless you get one of those british ones that like to beat children senseless (I think you have to pay extra for that)
Get a nun for a nanny - they're cheap and really into the beating senseless thing.
Well, yeah. There is doing movies, I guess. But beyond that, people are just not hiring Ninjas in any large numbers anymore. I remember when hiring a Ninja would almost bankrupt you, but nowadays it looks like you could get an entire Ninja Army for really cheap...
Nuns... Now "Can Nuns get a job" would be funny ;0)
Especially amphibious ones.
Amphibious Ninjas Rule!
Hmmm... I never thought of that. Like when people walk up and say "Wassup, My N***a?"...
Maybe people are hiring these Ninjas to act s personal assistants, dance partners, manservants, friends, etc... Could very well be.
So I guess the answer to the question of whether N***as can gt a job is "Yes."
That's what ninjas do. Sweet.
While they wail on their guitars.
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