Editors Censor "Doonesbury" Series

Instead of worrying about how we seem to have accepted Matt Drudge as our avatar of reporting, we are in a tizzy in our professional forums about whether a comic strip in which the words "oral sex" appears should be censored or whether it belongs on the comics pages or on some officially-sanctioned refuge of opinion, as it does in many newspapers.

"Doonesbury" even being on the editorial or Op-Ed page is a reflection of the cowardice of most newspapers, perhaps part of the reason people find us less and less relevant.

Newspapers had no problem at all with the near-fascist ideology of the "Little Orphan Annie" and "Dick Tracy" strips in the '50s or of Al Capp's various '60s diatribes. Why Doonesbury alone became too hot for the comics pages eludes me, unless publishers couldn't stand his tweaking of people like them.

My newspaper carries him on the Op-Ed page, a choice I wouldn't have made. But putting him there is like carrying "Mark Trail" or a dog strip or Cal Thomas. Once the deed is done, it's probably not worth the trouble of undoing.

It's kind of hilarious to see that Gary Trudeau can still cause a stir merely by using the same material everybody has already carried on Page 1. It's also worth noting that at least this time nobody's got their knickers in a bunch over his sourcing, since the entire news industry has abandoned all pretense of having standards for sourcing in the past month.

Periodically censoring him is ridiculous. The average intelligent reader won't call to complain; he or she already thinks we're tone-deaf idiots.

One more example doesn't matter much. Phone callers don't prove anything. Nor do Rotarians or publishers. Readers in every survey I've ever seen either love or hate "Doonesbury." Thank God. It's a reason for them to read the paper.

I think Cal Thomas, for instance, is personally charming, bright and quite mad, and would likely have people like me stuffed and mounted should he rise to power. I also think he's a brilliant writer who fluently expresses a point of view that deserves representation. I wouldn't leave him out of the paper because of what he said, even when he's carrying water for some really creepy people.

The great debate between Trudeau and that Tinsley pipsqueak is something we editors created. There wouldn't be a "Mallard Fillmore" if we hadn't moved "Doonesbury" to Op-Ed and then abandoned artistic standards in order to get yet another, inferior comic strip in the wrong place for "balance."

Trudeau does an elegant, blunt satire on declining standards of what makes a newspaper story. The other guy, the affirmative action hire, sits a duck at a computer and has him say nice things about Rush Limbaugh, addresses them to Trudeau, then says he knows he's on target because his wife's a liberal and she doesn't like it. Oscar Wilde's memory is in no danger.

Trudeau is an American treasure that we regularly disrespect because he has the gall to address things that matter.