It’s still February.
It’s still February, it’s still snowing, people are still
shooting other people for no good reason, our lawmakers are still flaming
idiots and the right-hand division is still a mob of ball-less, pandering
expletives, and our so-called President is hard at work making himself
Emperor. And every move he makes is so –
so – so totally bizarre and so fantastical, that my brain, at least,
has fried. I don’t have any more room in it to think about solutions. I’ve
begun to think there aren’t any.
And just to frost the cake, so to speak, ‘way too many
newspapers have decided they have to stop running the comic strip Non Sequitur, because Wiley included a
thought – in pretty much illegible scribble – that most of us are thinking
several times every day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Yes, he used a good old Anglo-Saxon word that isn’t
considered appropriate in modern US newsprint, or at least, not under most
circumstances. But honestly – The Husband and I fished out the offending strip
and couldn’t see what others saw. Then we checked the Internet to discover
exactly what we were supposed to be seeing, and where it was located. We
screwed up our eyes. We twisted our heads. We turned the sheet upside down. We
stood on our heads.
We still couldn’t read it. With a lot of imagination and
encouragement from some folks with clearly more twisted minds than we have, we
could kinda, sorta, maybe make out parts of the offending words, but, jeez, ya
know? Our frickin’ (another version of the offending Anglo-Saxon word)
President boasted about grabbing women’s pussies, for god’s sake, and we blast
that everywhere. Wishing him the next step done to himself by himself isn’t, at
this point, under these circumstances, so terribly awful – or surprising.
Especially since to actually read Wiley’s wish you have to do horrible things
to your face and do some damage to your sight. If no one had mentioned it
on-line, probably only about 10 people in the country, possessors of some sort
of code-breaking super-powers, would have seen it. As it is, those 10 people
might be able to read it, but the rest of us are just pretending we can.
What is an editor to do? If the world was what it was, only
a little more than two years ago, they’d have no options, they’d have to dump
the strip, I suppose. If the world was what it was, it’s very unlikely any
comic strip writer would have written those words for a strip that goes into
regular newspapers. If the world was what it was, we wouldn’t all be so continually,
totally angry that we’d be thinking those words ourselves, every single day.
But the world isn’t what it was, and probably never will be
again. If those words had been really legible, or even easily legible, I
wouldn’t be writing this – Wiley would have screwed up badly and would have
deserved what he got. Truth is, though, that had those words been easily
legible, what he would have gotten in response would have been a blank space
where that Sunday strip should have run and
a lot of calls from irate editors demanding an apology and a guarantee that he
not do anything of the sort ever, ever, ever again. And then they’d continue
publishing his strip.
They would have continued publishing it because it is,
hands-down, one of the most, if not the
most, intelligent, articulate, thoughtful strips being written today. And the
artwork is good – bonus! Not having it in the daily paper is a huge, and in
many ways disturbing, mistake.
The Boston Globe is
still publishing the strip, I was happy to see on Sunday. And it can be read on
Go Comic’s website. But that’s not really
the point.
The point is that we’ve become too adamant about tossing the
baby out with the bathwater. Wiley was wrong – and maybe it was a mistake, or maybe
it was a foolish, calculated risk that blew up in his face: his explanations
make it unclear – but for years past, and into the future, Non Sequitur has been, and will continue to be, one of the best,
one that makes us aware of ourselves and our own errors in thought and
assumption, and has made relatively rare political commentary in a gentle, smart,
non-confrontational way. We lose much more by not seeing it daily than anyone
has from seeing its one big, goofy mistake.
I don’t know what I’d do if I were a newspaper editor. I’ve
been an editor, so I know how this particular situation would feel like a
sneaky ploy, pretty unforgivable, and something that would leave me unsure
about the validity and safety of future strips. But here’s the other thing – this
one weird strip of Wiley’s, because of its design, could have something hidden
in it, but his daily strips couldn’t. And as an editor, I’d have to
balance-balance-balance this decision, not an easy thing to do, not an easy
decision to make. If Non Sequitur
were a comic strip that aimed to amuse and only that, I’d probably dump it in a
moment. But it’s not – it’s thought-provoking, enlightening, and at its core,
editorializing.
If I were an editor, I’d keep printing it. I might move it
to the editorial page. I’d surely write something about my decision. Or I might
just keep running it, with no commentary.
Because Wiley’s sin, in today’s world, with every other
truly dangerous and scary thing that’s
going on that we have no control over, is venial, and easily forgivable. And the
good he does very much out-weighs his oopsie.
And, besides, I think the same thing. Pretty much every
single day.
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