Killed Cartoons: Censorship of opinion in America

n2doc

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Mar-11-07 01:27 PM
Original message

Killed Cartoons: Censorship of opinion in America

The whole article is here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/11/INGU4OGDT11.DTL

Some exerpts:

Perhaps the specter of full in-boxes factored into the Los Angeles Times' decision to quash Paul Conrad's 1999 cartoon of an angry elephant mounting a startled donkey to symbolize the reality of "congressional bipartisanship." To slip the "Wild Kingdom" humping past his paper's decency patrol, Conrad omitted any hint of genitalia. His editor, who called it "thigh-slapping fun" in an interview with a local alterative weekly, killed it anyway. In doing so, the prudish paper deprived readers of a vintage Conrad spanking of Republicans, who were bellowing about bipartisanship while impeaching Bill Clinton over a sex scandal.
Also instructive is the 2004 decision by the clients of Continental Features, a consortium that produces a Sunday comics section for a few dozen newspapers, to drop Doonesbury. The company's president, Van Wilkerson, asked clients to vote on whether to keep or cancel the controversial strip. In a letter before the ballot, Wilkerson made his position quite clear: "I have fielded numerous complaints about Doonesbury," he wrote "and feel it is time to drop this feature and add another in its place." Papers voted 21 to 15 to replace Garry Trudeau's award-winning political strip with Get Fuzzy, which chronicles the misadventures of an advertising executive and his pets.
The silencing of editorial artists -- historically a progressive voice in the press -- comes at a time when the American media bends over backward to appease conservatives. The rightward shift became apparent after Republicans won Congress in 1994. The boot-licking increased when George W. Bush took office, and it only intensified after 9/11. In the upsurge of flag-waving after 9/11, some editorial artists lost their jobs because of their progressive politics. In North Carolina, a daily newspaper told its cartoonist that he could dissent from the paper's conservative policies only on Sundays. That once-a-week autonomy did not last long; the cartoonist was soon fired. In Pennsylvania, a paper punished its liberal cartoonist by ordering a moratorium on Bush cartoons. The cartoonist was soon out of a job.
Other cartoonists know they must pull their punches when covering the Bush administration.
J.D. Crowe of the Mobile Register, a conservative paper in Alabama -- or what Crowe calls "the Bush Belt" -- admits he treads carefully when taking on the White House and its cronies. "Any time I do a cartoon that questions the administration ... it's almost (viewed) like blasphemy," said Crowe. In 2003, amid the BALCO revelations, Crowe pitched a cartoon representing Halliburton as a bulked up baseball player shooting up from a syringe labeled "no-bid government contracts." Crowe's jab at Dick Cheney's former employer proved too sharp for the Register.

Examples from the article:

R.J. Matson's second take on the furor surrounding the Muhammad cartoons initially was killed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which later reconsidered and published it. Cartoon by R.J. Matson

and one from Conrad I hadn't seen before- Yeah!