In this job I’ve had to deal more frequently than I had imagined with questions about a part of a newspaper that you’d think would be the least controversial: cartoons. I received complaints about two strips that appeared in Stars and Stripes recently. One was an entry from "Doonesbury," an occasional lightning rod for reader comments. "Doonesbury" appears on one of Stripes’ opinion pages. The other strip in question was from "Meaning of Lila," which is on the comics pages. "Doonesbury" was found to be objectionable for allegedly intimating in Sept. 14 editions that some U.S. government officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, were "wanted" for war crimes. A "Lila" strip published Sept. 13 was attacked for allegedly promoting homosexuality.
The two readers, both in the military, did not want their messages published on the letters page, so I will not name them. But I’ll attempt to respond with a column in the likely event that others in the audience have had similar concerns.
First the "Doonesbury" strip. It shows two recurring characters in front of a computer, from which a voice is saying that Cheney and many other Bush administration officials are "still at large." It’s explained that these comprise "the whole torture crowd" and can be arrested "if they travel abroad." One character asks another, who may have "contacts at the CIA," to find out the officials’ schedules so local authorities can be tipped off. Then comes the kicker: The first dude had the idea from a school political science project: "If I deliver Cheney to The Hague, no way I don’t get an ‘A.’"
The reader said: "A cartoon that accuses our chain of command of using us to execute war crimes is hardly an inspiration to Soldiers who are working night and day to make this operation [in Iraq] a success."
One should be cautious about contradicting another’s vision of the truth. But it’s pretty clear that in this case, as usually happens, creator Garry Trudeau has coated his decidedly anti-administration views with humor. A slacker of a character is reducing an allegation of horrendous misdeeds to a "poli sci project."
It also seems that Trudeau is taking a cue from real news happenings, however baseless they may be. One was a symbolic vote by two Vermont towns that instructed police to arrest President Bush and Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution." Another was a New York Times report that a new book said Red Cross investigators believed administration officials who approved "torture" could be guilty of war crimes. There was no corroboration of that alleged finding.
However much credence Trudeau puts into these matters, we’re still dealing with opinions, and that’s why "Doonesbury" is seen on the opinion pages and nowhere else. To censor it would mean Stripes wasn’t living up to its mandate to provide servicemembers with an independent, open forum of ideas.
As to "Meaning of Lila," a reader said it seems to have "a homosexual agenda." He points to a strip in which a clearly homosexual character tells a lady friend that he is hanging around in a museum because he’s "lonely" and "apparently gay guys are into old art." Executive Editor Robb Grindstaff says Stripes starting running the strip in October 2005, and hints that it would contain a homosexual man didn’t appear until two years later. Even now, the homosexual angle isn’t continuous in the strip, which depicts a man and a woman as inseparable but nonromantic coworkers. I looked back nearly a month and found no other panel about homosexuality. So it seems to me, as it does to Grindstaff, that "Lila" has a homosexual secondary character but not necessarily a "homosexual agenda."
"Lila" is one of a new wave of comic strips. They are designed for an audience more mature than the one, comprised mainly of youngsters, that has been (and, to a large extent, still is) associated with general-interest newspapers. And there’s the rub. Censoring such a strip is out of the question for a newspaper espousing freedom of expression. And yet there’s an uneasy feeling about a very young child exposed to a lifestyle he or she may be too young to understand. Personally, I’d feel better if this strip appeared in a vehicle for an older and more understanding audience, like that of Stripes’ weekly magazine Scene.
If anybody agrees or disagrees with my assessment of either of these cartoons, fire away. It’s a free country, and that’s no laughing matter.
