The Sentinel of July 17 brought us the news, in a single paragraph deep inside the A section, that Australian researchers had discovered that men had a better chance of warding off prostate cancer if, in their 20s, they frequently masturbate.
Whoa! Can you write that word in the newspaper?
Apparently so. It has appeared in the Sentinel a dozen times just this year and last. It showed up in a medical column, in movie reviews and even on the opposite-editorial and religion pages.
Today it appears for a 13th time, in the Doonesbury comic strip.
(I’ll pause here so you can go see what the fuss is about.)
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Welcome back. As you could see, cartoonist G.B. Trudeau has tried to mine humor from the Australian study, focusing not on the act but rather on discomfort about the word. Several people in the publishing industry, too, felt discomfort.
In fact, Lee Salem of Universal Press Syndicate in Kansas City, which distributes Doonesbury, alerted editors July 30 that, for some newspapers, today’s strip “may cross the line.”
Diane Bacha, assistant managing editor for features and entertainment at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, polled features editors at other newspapers and found that, of the 34 who responded, 19 said they would not run the controversial strip; 12 said they would; and three weren’t sure.
Her newspaper is one of the 19; this one, as you may have deduced, is one of the 12.
Associate Managing Editor for Features Kim Marcum, who made that call for the Sentinel, saw it as a freedom-of-the-press issue and said, “it seemed absolutely hypocritical to censor a comic.” She noted that, because the strip appears at the bottom of the front of the second section of comics, “it’s not high visibility.”
I won’t sign on to the censorship argument — we have a responsibility to edit the newspaper, including for taste. But I find adult squeamishness about sex, particularly in the context of a medical study, a little foolish.
The visibility Marcum mentioned, though, takes on greater weight when we consider who reads the comics.
The Sentinel surveys only adult readers, but we know, from research conducted last year, that about a third of the 425,000 adults who read the Sunday comics regularly have children younger than 18 — most of whom aren’t yet 12.
Comics long have served as an entry point into the newspaper for children, although I doubt that many of them find Doonesbury’s political commentary appealing. I suspect that the “Just for Kids” page, part of the Sentinel’s Reading by Nine project, is more to their liking. It has comics and puzzles aimed at that age group.
The “Just for Kids” page and Doonesbury, though, appear in the same four-page section.
Whether they find it funny or not, adults can deal with Doonesbury. Unfortunately, the strip’s placement may prompt a conversation that they’ll find less amusing.
