Easter Sunday, a holy day for Christians that this year coincided with Passover, was spent in turmoil by some Jewish readers who were angered by the B.C. comic strip that appeared in hundreds of newspapers, including The San Diego Union-Tribune. In his strip, cartoonist Johnny Hart said he intended to pay tribute to both Christianity and Judaism. However, his efforts were interpreted as anti-Semitic by some readers — and they were not all Jewish.
For those who missed it, the strip used as a theme a seven-candle menorah, a symbol of Judaism, that gradually morphed into a cross, the symbol of Christianity. By the third panel, one of the candles was snuffed out. As the strip progressed, all the flames were snuffed out until what once was a menorah became a cross.
“I noticed one day that the center section of the menorah — the sacred symbol of Judaism, bore the shape of the cross,” Hart wrote in a note on the Creators Syndicate Web site. “I wanted everyone to see the cross in the menorah. It was a revelation to me, that tied God’s chosen people to their spiritual next of kin — the disciples of the Risen Christ.”
But some readers thought that Hart intended to show that Christianity replaced Judaism, a movement that is known as Replacement Theology. The Jewish Defense League called the strip “highly crude, insulting and an example of outright Jew hatred.” The JDL obtained the strip before newspapers knew there was a problem with it. It was posted on the JDL Web site on April 8.
The strip created such an outcry that on Easter Monday the entire Letters column was devoted to readers’ comments. More letters appeared on April 17 and April 21. Some readers were appalled by the strip, but others said they understood the message.
Discussion about the B.C. strip continues. On Friday, Morris Casuto, regional director of the San Diego office of the Anti-Defamation League, and four other representatives of the Jewish community met with Union-Tribune Editor Karin Winner and others. The Jewish representatives did not urge censorship but instead asked that their point of view be recognized in an article if a similar situation were to occur in the future.
This is not the first time, nor I’m sure will it be the last, that there is something some readers find offensive in the comics. The Union-Tribune has in the past pulled strips that editors found offensive or crude. While the newspaper edits comic strips for taste, it has not, to my knowledge, pulled a strip because an idea may be offensive to some readers.
Although editors screen the daily comics, the latest B.C. brouhaha underlined a flaw in the system that appalled Winner and that has been corrected. No one at this newspaper (and at nearly all other newspapers) saw the B.C. strip or any other Sunday strip before it was printed.
For most newspapers, comics sections are printed by an outside firm and delivered to the newspaper at least 10 days ahead of the Sunday distribution. By the time Winner became aware there was a problem, the strip had already been printed and was being inserted into the Sunday paper.
“Had I had a choice, I probably would not have eliminated it altogether,” she acknowledged. However, she said, “I probably would have run it on one of the Opinion pages. When cartoonists cross a certain line and make political or religious statements and the audience is so weighted to children, I think those comics should be handled on the op-ed page the way we do with Doonesbury.”
The Union-Tribune and other newspapers were not warned by the syndicate that the strip might be controversial. They’ve been alerted in the past when syndicates distributed strips they knew would be controversial, strips that dealt with homosexuality, suicide and alcoholism. Once alerted the strips might be controversial, newspapers have had the option of warning their readers ahead of time. In some rare instances, some papers have pulled controversial strips.
Richard S. Newcombe, president of Creators Syndicate, acknowledged that he was warned by an editor that the Easter Sunday strip could be controversial. But, when he looked at it, he did not see a problem. He says now he should have consulted others, including Jews.
Hart, who has been drawing B.C. since the 1950s, has been including Christian messages in his strips at Christmas and Easter since the 1980s, Newcombe said. He doubts there will ever be another one as controversial as this past Easter Sunday, which spawned at least 2,000 e-mails to Hart.
Since the Easter strip, B.C. has been picked up by some newspapers and dropped by others, including the North County Times. The strip had already been dropped by the Los Angeles Times. Newcombe said the strip was dropped by a Las Vegas newspaper and immediately picked up by its competitor.
