They saved me some ear abuse, so I admit to some self-interest in saying that Post editors did a good thing in response to a bad situation by giving readers advance notice of Sunday’s controversial B.C. comic strip installment. Still, almost all the readers I heard from found the cartoon highly offensive.
The strip ran on Easter, which also was the last day of Passover. It depicted the words of a dying Jesus Christ while a menorah was being extinguished and replaced with a cross. An Editor’s Note on Page 2A that day and an article on the same page last Friday (“Holiday B.C. cartoon sparks debate that it is anti-Semitic”) reported criticisms of the cartoon, demands that it not be published and cartoonist Johnny Hart’s statement that he had intended to honor both faiths. “I sincerely apologize if I have offended any readers,” he said, “and I also sincerely hope that this cartoon will generate increased interest in religious awareness.” I’ve pretty much heard it all by way of reader response since last Thursday, when news ombudsmen began exchanging e-mail about it. A typical caller here said the cartoon “projects Christian triumphalism,” and he wasn’t buying Mr. Hart’s apology. “This guy has been doing this for quite a while,” he said. “I think he knows better.”
“He doesn’t have to be politically correct,” a Palm Beach caller said. “This is a country where we value freedom of expression, but don’t forget there are Muslims and Hindus and many different faiths. He proselytizes all the time in his cartoon, which is his right, but I thought Sunday’s was highly offensive.” Would she have pulled it? “I’ve been thinking about that,” she answered. “I can’t give you a good answer. Not running it may have made him think about it, but I’m really of two minds about it.”
There was sentiment that the commentary belonged on the religion or (heaven forbid) opinion pages. I also heard from readers who hoped the paper “is not considering dropping” B.C.; one perceived Sunday’s strip “as a tribute to both faiths.”
There also was legitimate criticism of the lack of response from Post editors in Friday’s article. The article said editors learned about the controversy Thursday, that the Sunday comics section is printed more than a week in advance by an outside vendor, and that B.C. would be included in the paper as usual. “It doesn’t say that anybody in an executive position took a look at it,” one lady said. Indeed, there was more about the thinking at other papers than the reasoning of The Post’s staff.
Rather than come off as close-lipped, editors could have included Associate Editor Jan Tuckwood’s preference “to err on the side of running it and airing the debate.” Some critical readers shared that sentiment. Ms. Tuckwood, who supervises the feature sections, adds that editors didn’t see B.C. until the comics were printed. A fax the previous Monday from Creators Syndicate (www.creators.com), which distributes B.C., had warned that Sunday’s strip was controversial. But the comics were printed by then, and editors figured it was another of the Christian-themed strips Mr. Hart always does around Easter.
“We’re clearly not running from the debate,” Ms. Tuckwood said. “We’re embracing the debate. It’s obvious that Mr. Hart believes Christianity is the superior faith; he’s a devout Christian. The women we profiled in the previous Friday’s Accent – who had just celebrated their bat mitzvah and were embracing Passover as ‘women’ for the first time – clearly believe in their Judaism.”
Ms. Tuckwood would have printed an Editor’s Note next to the strip. “I can see how it would irritate readers to have a religious commentary stuck into what’s supposed to be a funny strip,” she said. If that happened every day, people would stop reading that comic, and she’d stop running it. “But an occasional surprise doesn’t bother me,” she said. Nor does commentary in the comics, “as long as the comic is funny most of the time.” Thus this rare case of debate preceeding publication date speaks less to a single installment than to the question of leaving out B.C. entirely. Says Ms. Tuckwood, “I’m not dropping B.C.”
