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AAEC - Editorial Cartoon News
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December 4, 2002
Editorial cartoonists and daily strips
Aaron McGruder’s edgy strip for Universal, The Boondocks, pecks away remorselessly in its verbal assaults on BET and politics. And it disappears every now and then in consequence. The Sunday strip for October 13 was dropped at the Washington Post for its questionable taste, according to Executive Editor Len Downie. The strip played off comments made by a German official who compared Dubya’s tactics on diverting public opinion with those of Adolph Hitler. "That’s preposterous," says Huey Freeman, the strip’s young African-American protagonist, "even I would never compare Bush to Hitler–I mean, Hitler was democratically elected, wasn’t he?"
At the Chicago Tribune, which ran the strip, the paper’s ombudsman Don Wycliff noted after acknowledging complaints about it that many readers believe that McGruder is permitted to get away with saying objectionable things because he is black. Said Wycliff: "It would probably be more accurate to say that he is able to see the things he sees because he is black. Loath though many Americans are to accept it nowadays, having a different historical perspective ... gives one a different perspective on life and issues. And that perspective, while not the sole determinant of a person’s point of view, will assert itself in ways and places both expected and unexpected–even, sometimes, on the funny pages."
Earlier in the month, the Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell noticed that Florida politics had made it into The Boondocks soon after Gov. Jeb Bush took a stance against a ballot proposal that would allow drug offenders to avoid jail by entering treatment programs. Huey phones Jeb to tell him how impressed he is with the Governor’s position, "considering that his daughter, Noelle, has been arrested on drug charges."
More significant than the McGruder’s outspokenness, however, is reader reaction in Orlando. After observing that McGruder’s strip frequently prompts tirades of outrage and disagreement from the Sentinel’s readers, Maxwell says the paper hadn’t received a single letter of protest about Huey’s comment in the four days since the strip ran.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Bruce Tinsely’s Mallard Fillmore, with no one in the White House to assault, took on the National Education Association and the liberal professorial establishment of American universities. "Apparently, the hottest new college degree is in something called ‘Popular Culture,’" Tinsley’s webfooted protagonist intoned in June. "Students study popular movies, music, clothes, fads, etc. Professors say it gives them ‘insight into the influences and impact of contemporary societal iconography.’ Which, translated, means ‘Finally, something American high school graduates are prepared for.’"
The strip, like The Boondocks, is highly verbal, its wit residing in speech balloons rather than in pictures yoked to words. Moreover, while the duck is an unrepentant conservative and Huey a bomb-throwing radical, characterization in these strips is minimal.
In contrast, Garry Trudeau spends a good deal of his effort on developing the personalities of his cast in Doonesbury. Ultimately, their political leanings or issue orientations may define their personalities, but the cartoonist shades his characterizations with a variety of nuances, some distinctly personal (as opposed to political). As a result of this rhetorical ploy, the characters in Doonesbury, compared to those in The Boondocks and in Mallard Fillmore, seem to run the political gamut even when the liberal point-of-view gets the best lines over-all.
–by R.C. Harvey