The Conversation
Keep or Cancel Cartoon With Obscenity? P-G Editors Still Deciding
The controversial cartoon Non Sequitur was in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoon section, as editors at the P-G say they're still deciding whether to keep or can it. Last Sunday, an obscene anti-Trump scrawl in the cartoon appeared in the 700+ media outlets across the country that carry the syndicated strip. Readers of the Butler (PA) Eagle were the first to notice the "f-bomb" in the comic. The Eagle announced the next day that it would cancel Non Sequitur, and more than 40 others newspapers followed suit (read our original story here).
The offending cartoon, drawn in black and white so that readers could color in the three panel strip, had scribbles of writing throughout. Writing in the lower right corner of the second panel said "We fondly say.... go f--- yourself Trump." Sparkt won't publish it uncensored, but you can see the original here. Cartoonist Wiley Miller apologized, saying he drew the strip during a moment of frustration with the White House and forgot to take out the obscenity before it was sent for publication. His syndicator apparently didn't notice it either.
That is apparently what many newspapers have a problem with: the feeling that they can't trust Miller or the syndicator, Andrews McMeel Syndicate. "It's just not appropriate in a comics page, in which it's trying to be slipped through, unseen," said Post-Gazette managing editor Sally Stapleton in today's paper.
"That feels wrong, on a lot of levels." Sally Stapleton, Post-Gazette Managing Editor
Because the P-G prints their Sunday comics two weeks in advance, the comic was in today's editions. The paper says a decision "will be forthcoming" on whether the P-G will continue to print the strip or cancel it.
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