BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?

Subject: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 09:20 AM

The Boondocks is a great comic strip, and today (the first day of Fall) The Washington Post refused to print it, citing "content issues" - here it is, elsewhere, The Boondocks - I don't get it? At least, I don't get the content issue? Help?

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 09:34 AM

Mrrzy - I suspect the Post was afraid of comments regarding sterotypes and derogatory sterotypical images

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 09:36 AM

Jaisus, their management needs an overhaul! It's innocuous, if only mildly funny.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 09:43 AM

Perhaps the Post was worried it might be seen as referring to whether Certain People showed up when they were supposed to. But I didn't find it particularly amusing.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Gern
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 10:17 AM

Some controversy with this strip in our paper. I love it, but it does push some buttons. Last week started a series about a hip-hop entrpeneur who starts a reality program entitled "Can i n____a get a job?" Good thing the artist is black. Some papers objected to the implied title word, a certainly objectionable word in any context.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 10:52 AM

well, I'm confused...I'm sitting her looking at today's Post, and Boondocks is different than what is on that web site. Today in the paper, the boy is asking "What do you think O.J. would say to Kobe Bryant right now?" and the answer is ""Don't let all this trial business turn you off of white women"

Yesterday the Post printed the cartoon where he asks "What would Emmett Till say to Kobe Bryant?" and the answer is "You think YOU got it bad...all I did was whistle"

now, I'm not sure what 'content' is at issue!

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 12:44 PM

Interesting! I didn't even look at today's Boondocks in the paper, which I read online, as the button for it said it wasn't running (which is where I got the "content issues" thing)... so they ran a different days' strip, sneaky!
And since everybody in this strip, pretty much, is black, hirers and quitters, I doubt even The Post can claim racism...

Time to email the strip artist, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Gern
Date: 22 Sep 04 - 11:27 AM

The OJ piece was a rerun, apparently by a paper who chose to censor the strip without even telling its readers. Papers are probably worried about readers' reactions, because (a. they may think its is deliberately demeaning to blacks, or b.) may fear the sort of backlash generated by Bill Cosby's recent remarks and 'clarifications,' which Boondocks has also dealth with.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Sep 04 - 01:02 PM

the artist sure doesn't avoid controversy, but it really tests the PC limits a lot. He manages to offend almost everyone eventually....If I were black, I'd alternately be laughing out loud or trying to lynch him...

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 22 Sep 04 - 04:10 PM

Surely this can't be the paper that spawned Woodward and Bernstein?

I thought the cartoon made a succinct and careful point. It's a great piece of American sociology. The point it makes is that black people should not lower
their expectations and demand equal rights immediately. They must not succumb to the stereotypes that white people have given them for decades.

There's nothing wrong with Boondocks but a whole lot wrong with the Post for their cowardice.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 04:08 PM

They aren't running the strip the whole week! Boo hiss! If Woodstein were dead they'd be rolling in their graves!

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 07:29 PM

Stupid and mentally closed thinking, really. Censorship of the cowardly stripe.

I read this strip daily online, since it's not carried in the local paper. It's a great strip with great comment -- much like Doonesbury (which is currently dealing with BD's loss of a leg in Iraq).

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Peace
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 08:08 PM

I'm with Amos. Wasn't particularly funny.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 08:28 PM

you gotta remember that 70% or so of Wash DC is black, and the Post really hates decisions like this....do you offend more by leaving it in or taking it out?

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 08:40 PM

well, IF you can get to it, here is the transcript of an online chat hosted by a Post columnist in which he and reader comment...almost totally against the Post's decision. (as far as I can tell, there has been NO comment by the paper)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2626-2004Sep7.html

It begins:
"Gene Weingarten: Good afternoon.

Some very interesting business today.

The Washington Post has decided not to run this week's episode of Boondocks, instead substituting an old sequence. Moreover, when this chat requested permission to LINK to the censored material, which is available to any and all on the Boondocks website, permission was denied. The Washington Post has decided that it is inappropriate to disseminate this material in any way. Personally, this chat takes no position, pro or con, on this ruling, inasmuch as taking a position would amount to insubordination, a quality abhorrent to this chat. "

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 09:53 PM

The humor of the piece is, at least in my opinion, irrelevant to the censorship.

I note that the Post hasn't censored the cartoon when it has taken on Bill Cosby, George Bush, or Ralph Nader, to name but a few.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: fretless
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 10:02 AM

I think we're delving too deeply into the issue. The problem with the column is probably purely and simply the use of the word "n***a." That's a lethal and explosive term with much of the Post's readership, black and white. The Post and its readership accept the fact that the content of Boondocks is politicized and often controversial. By the way, the Post has edited its cartoons with a fair regularity in the past, most notably with the strip "B.C.," which the author occasionally uses as a platform to express his fundamentalist views of Christianity, and, of course, with Gary Trudeau's left-leaning Doonsbury.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 11:56 AM

Either BC isn't edited or the artist is more fundemental than he appears through the strip, which seems pretty christian to me a lot of the time... remember the hoo-haw about the one where they (i)slam the outhouse door?

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Nerd
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 01:02 PM

What's wrong with NAFTA? Or Bob Marley's middle name, NESTA? Or is it journalist Nedra Pickler's first name?

Honestly, isn't N***A censored enough already?

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: fretless
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 04:12 PM

Mrrzy, I think Jonny Hart, the author of B.C., is, indeed, more fundamantalist than he appears to be in most of his strips. A Google search for "B.C. Hart censorship" pulls up a number of sites, mostly referring to an Easter strip he wrote in which a Jewish Menorah's candles are extinguished frame by frame to morph the Menorah into a cross that trails a stream of blood. I vaguely recall others in the same vein.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 05:20 PM

what is funny, at least to me, about BC/Jonny Hart, is that many years ago (about 35) The Wichita Eagle removed BC from the paper for over a year because of a strip where BC asks Peter,"Do you believe in God?" "Yes..."..."Why?"..."Because there might be one..."

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 12:48 AM

My local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee ran the "Can a N---a Get a Job" series from Boondocks this week, but warned that the picture from today's strip, Sept 25, would be toned down. The online version of the strip has two women, trying to stab each other with big knoves, shouting, "B---h, I'm a stab you!" In the Bee the women's hands are empty, and they say "B---h, I'm gonna kill you."

I don't know what I think of censoring this strip. Generally, I don't find the strip funny or insightful. I'd rather not have it in the paper at all, but it seems there's something wrong with censoring out just one panel.

So, is it censorship if I'd rather not have the comic strip in the newspaper because I think it's stupid?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Nerd
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 12:58 AM

Joe, I love how the more clearly black nonstandard dialect "I'm-a stab you" is seen as less acceptable than the less racially marked nonstandard dialect "I'm gonna kill you." It's like they have to censor it out because it's so damn black.

That attitude of the Bee is in itself, arguably, racist.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 05:40 PM

Hi, Nerd - I think the alternate version of the panel from Saturday's comic strip was offered by the strip's distributor, not something done by the Bee. I think I'd give the Bee credit for running the strip tyhe whole week, except for that single panel on Saturday; and for telling people what they did (and how to view the original panel), and opening the subject to discussion on their Website.

And I still don't like the comic strip, particularly the Archie-Bunker grandfather who's obsessed about naked people and homosexuals.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 06:27 PM

my wife reads the strip religiously, but I skim it....'sometimes' he'll hit the nail real well, but most of the 'in' jokes are lost on me, and I'd sure like to hear him explain what, precisely, his target audience is...

I just don't think those values, or PARODIES of those values, need to be publicized that way.

Subject: RE: BS: What's wrong with today's Boondocks?
From: Nerd
Date: 27 Sep 04 - 01:27 AM

Interesting, Joe. I guess the distributor wanted a less black version, or was afraid that using specifically black dialect would be seen as a negative stereotype. Weird!