CSotD: The Unthinkables
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Dammit, they're called "The Funny Pages," not the "Make You Think Pages."
Which warning I offer to the cartoonists who read this blog, because your future in print is dependent on your ability to draw funny pitchers of teenagers with saggy pants staring into their phones, bearded men on tiny desert islands and women in disheveled clothing holding comically detached steering wheels.
Which advice I base on the editors who demanded replacement strips for yesterday's Non Sequitur.
It was too political for the comics page, they said.
Do more jokes about kids getting ready for school and then finding out it's Saturday.
But not getting ready for school and then finding out it's Martin Luther King Day, because that would be too political. Unless it's Jump Start or Curtis or one of those other fine Negro comic strips, of which we run one because running two would be politically correct.
And that's too political. Funny pages shouldn't offend anyone, but they also shouldn't be politically correct.
I haven't heard how anyone felt about today's Bizarro.
Perhaps they requested replacement strips. Perhaps they weren't warned about it in the first place.
And, certainly, if nobody called to complain, it won't be an issue because the brass never reads the funny pages themselves.
The fact that editors don't understand comics is such a recurrent rant here that I can hardly feign surprise over this, but I had certainly thought that people who run Non Sequitur would do so with the knowledge that it consists of social commentary and not pie-in-the-face jokes, and that it frequently plays on political issues.
Like, several times a week.
I'd wonder if they also get their knickers in a knot over the political nature of Candorville, but they probably don't see it, because that's a strip about Negroes and they already have Jumpstart or Curtis or whatever strip it is we run for Those People.
Now, see, if the executive in today's Real Life Adventures had a picture of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz on his desk instead of a yacht, it would be political. But he doesn't, so this isn't in the least political.
Not in the least.
Too bad editors never pick up their own newspaper and read the comics. If they did, cartoonists could recycle that old grafitto: "Don't look here. The joke is in your hand."
In related, but more encouraging, news
An excerpt from yesterday's announcement by Scholastic:
(January 17, 2016) Scholastic is announcing today that we are stopping the distribution of the book entitled A Birthday Cake for George Washington, by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, and will accept all returns. While we have great respect for the integrity and scholarship of the author, illustrator, and editor, we believe that, without more historical background on the evils of slavery than this book for younger children can provide, the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn
There's more, but I like the idea that the decision came on a Sunday, because it suggests some frantic off-hours bailing of water on the part of decisionmakers, which in turn suggests that voices are being heard and the previous period of ass-covering is over.
That previous period being explained in this Friday announcement, which boils down to "We hear you and you're wrong," and links to this utterly tone-deaf justification by the author.
I've just gone through the latter looking for a short excerpt to illustrate it, but the whole thing is so off-key that I can only hint at what lies within:
It is the historical record—not my opinion—that shows that enslaved people who received “status” positions were proud of these positions—and made use of the “perks” of those positions. … many of us don’t like to consider this, fearing that if we deviate from the narrative of constant-cruelty we diminish the horror of slavery. But if we chose to only focus on those who fit that singular viewpoint, we run the risk of erasing those, like Chef Hercules, who were remarkable, talented, and resourceful enough to use any and every skill to their own advantage.
Granted, terms like "Tomming" and differentiating between "house negroes" and "field negroes" is a minefield of finger-pointing and potentially very bad history, but the fact remains that the author knew up front that the guy ran away from his loving massa, and her fictional portrait of Happy Daddy/Happy Daughter kinda falls apart in that he didn't find a way to take little Delia with him.
Isolating the pleasant part of a sad story is not an honorable choice. You don't lie to kids.
It's not a matter of "political correctness." It's a matter of good education and personal integrity.
It's also an issue of lazy writing. An author who gave a damn could have readily found a way around producing this shameful, condescending drivel.
And, while I'm glad Scholastic wised up and took it off the market, I won't thank them or congratulate them until I see some evidence that they're also fixing the system that let it through in the first place.
……………………….Optional end of rant ……………………….
Three possible choices, and lying isn't one of them
Given the number of cartoonists turning to children's books and graphic memoirs and histories, I'm going to go overtime today with some suggestions, because, while this isn't about comic strips, it's important and not entirely irrelevant.
Feel free to stop reading.
1. Tell It Like It Is — The first newspaper serial I did, back in 2001, was "The Legend of Perseus," which was well geared for serialization since it is extremely episodic and breaks readily into chapters. The problematic issue came when he met, and rescued, Andromeda, because the original myth says it happened in Ethiopia.
Geography was indefinite, and it could have been Libya, and she could have been Semitic and not black, but illustrator Christopher Baldwin and I decided to hell with offending anyone and we simply went with the text.
His Andromeda is not white, and so what? I had more trouble with the "If you save her, you get to keep her" aspect, which I got around thanks to the genuinely bad behavior of her parents in the original text. I simply had her decide to leave them.
Perseus has run in several states and a couple of foreign countries and we never heard a peep of upset over the interracial aspect. Funny thing is, I did get comments that Chris's very Greek-looking Danae should have been cuter.
Can't please'em all. I've always thought Irene Pappas was a babe.
2. Change to fit the facts. Perseus was a huge success and educational directors at newspapers told me teachers were asking for more mythology. I had to find another myth that wasn't as long and complex as the Golden Fleece but long enough for a 14-chapter serial (which fits once a week between start of school and holiday break).
I came up with Theseus and the Minotaur, announced it at a national convention to great joy and then read the damn thing in detail, and discovered that Theseus was a major asshole who, after she got him through the labyrinth and his mission was accomplished, abandoned Ariadne on a desert island.
Well, my bad: I already knew I had to deal with the part where the fool sailed back under the black sails of death and caused his father to leap off a cliff. But this new fact called the traditional "Whoops" explanation into question.
So, instead of "Theseus and the Minotaur," the story became "Ariadne and the Magic Thread," about a girl who, betrayed by a charismatic cad, learns to stop relying on her thread for guidance but to trust her own instincts, and we emphasized the element of abusive relationships as a teachable moment.
Still had to deal with the fact that Minoan women didn't wear blouses under their open vests, but, okay, Rinacat and I faked that part. It wasn't a fashion story, and Minoan women had such a high level of equality that covering up her boobies seemed a reasonable compromise with modernity. And kiddie porn laws.
3. Treat history like history – Brooke Kroeger's biography of Nellie Bly inspired me to serialize Bly's life. Not only was she a gutsy, courageous woman, but a journalist, so it was a natural fit for a newspapers-in-education program.
But when I started to research her life, I found that all the "biographies" ended with the Around the World in 72 Days trip, cheering crowds, fade to glorious black. Nobody wrote that she had a long, interesting, not always triumphant life thereafter.
Or that ol' Joe Pulitzer didn't even give her a bonus for one of the biggest circulation stunts in the history of newspapers and that she ended up quitting.
Worst of all, these chipper little half-bios were full of invented dialogue and a level of cheerful pluckiness that would make a Pixar heroine gag.
So I emailed Brooke and basically said, "I can't find any other sources, so what I'd like to do is …" and she finished the sentence "… rip me off?" then cooperated and the result was "Woman of the World: The Story of Nellie Bly, based on Brooke Kroeger’s “Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist,” and, bless her heart, she read and critiqued each chapter as I wrote them.
We even went up to Lewiston, Maine, and did two days of workshops in area schools together. It was great fun!
And the kids got the true story of Nellie Bly, including the fact that she was kind of a showboat and that she really made some bad mistakes in later years, but that she was a brave, courageous, good-hearted person to the end.
And I liked the way Chris framed her life from the first to the last chapter.
Bottom Line:
Children are not idiots. They tend to be very concrete in their thinking and you have to spell some things out plainly, but you don't have to lie and you don't have to talk baby-talk to them.
If you don't think they're old enough for the truth, the answer isn't to lie. It's to tell them about "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel" or to ask them "Who Needs Donuts?"
I like those. They're fun and they don't pretend to be true.
But teaching them that history is basically cheerful and that good little girls and boys find the good things in life is not only flagrantly dishonest, but sets them up to feel that, when they see something they don't like, in history, or in today's world, it's probably their fault for being so negative.
And that good little girls and boys can find happy stories even in seemingly bad situations.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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