Editor: Since the right-wing and their attendant press refuse to run Doonesbury all week because Gary Trudeau is focusing the strip on women’s reproductive rights, we have decided to run them – all week. Here is Day No. 2.
San Diego U-T readers slam Doonesbury blackout, Jeff Light is in strange company, and Trudeau presents a suspected slut
By Anna Daniels
“…It is societally fascinating that a comic strip lampooning an indefensible law is suppressed when it is the law itself that is depraved….” Letter to the editor 3/12/21012
By ten o’clock last night, San Diego U-T had received an avalanche of irate letters over editor Jeff Light’s decision to pull this week’s Doonesbury. Cartoonist Gary Trudeau takes on women’s reproductive rights issues, choosing Texas as ground zero. Transvaginal ultra-sounds are already legislated there as a prerequisite to an abortion, and Governor Hair Almighty Rick Perry, unlike Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, is positively enthusiastic about the requirement.
U-T editor Jeff Light could have made the decision to move the cartoon strip to the op-ed page – as the LA Times did. That was done in the past during, the Clinton years, when Trudeau’s depiction of Newt Gingrich’s hypocritical, callous philandering was conveniently buried from the general public’s view. A number of yesterday’s readers, however, felt that moving this week’s cartoons to the op-ed page was indeed preferable to pulling the strips.
But Light didn’t choose that alternative. By blacking out the whole series on women’s reproductive health and choice, he has firmly placed himself among editorial luminaries such as the one from the Athens Banner-Herald. The editor there made the unilateral decision to pull the whole week. His reason? Georgia is considering anti-abortion legislation this week. He didn’t want the citizens to become confused about the issue, and he clearly didn’t want to hurt the chances for that legislation to pass.
Meanwhile, back at the Texas women’s health clinic, we find out what happens after the shaming room.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Are you going to put up the entire weeks worth at the same time? It’s something I’d enjoy keeping. I bet others would like the whole week together also. Just something to keep in mind RagRunners.
I didn’t even know Doonesbury was in the comics – back when I last read the dead tree edition of the paper every day (high school in the mid-nineties) it was always in Opinion, buried at the back of the local section…
That dates you Dave. Before the Clinton years, Doonesbury was on the comics page.
The right-wing segment of the U.S. population is morally bankrupt. There’s the message.
The UT should upgrade its spellcheck software. It’s “journalism” not “paternalism.”