So, apparently, the Plain Dealer is now the judge and jury of what we can and can't read.

[HughBeaumont]

I get to the comics section and find this:

Editor’s Note: Today’s “Non Sequitur” was withheld because it was deemed objectionable by Plain Dealer editors. A replacement strip was unavailable by press time.

Translation: “The Dumbest Columnist on the Planet and Right Wing Assclown Kevin O’Brien wet his diaper and threw his binkie at Brent Larkin and Terrence Eggers in disgust upon reading today’s ‘Non Sequitur’. After changing him, we decided that it would be in YOUR (the paying customer, that is) best interest to not read this comic strip that WE find objectionable. I mean, why should it be up to YOU to decide that? Really . . .”

This is 2012, assholes. I thought we were past this sort of Nixon-era nonsense?

So, does anyone have today's Non Sequitur . . . and it's kind of moot until I get home, since work's firewall blocks pretty much everything "entertaining"?

[ZenLefty]

1. They're the judge and jury on their own website and newspaper

Just like any other privately owned website or newspaper.

See if this link gets past your firewall: http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/

[cyberswede]

3. Is it this one?

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur

[ZenLefty]

5. I think it's very funny

I can see how someone would construe that as offensive. But then again, I read DU, where every fourth word in the dictionary is offensive to someone.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. I can't work out why it could be offensive

A rabbit is at a line-up of various of its predators, and it says they all look alike to it.



Why could it be offensive?

[ZenLefty]

12. I don't want to spoil it for Mr. Beaumont who can't see it until later

I'm posting my response in white text below. Hugh, don't read...

[font color = white]I think they're worried that the rabbit could represent a white man, and the animals in the police lineup are black men or other minority. The old saying how minorities all look alike can be offensive to some people. Now, anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows Wiley is making fun of this stereotype, not promoting it. It's a stretch and I could be way off, but that's the best I can think of.[/font]

[HughBeaumont]

13. That's the problem.

The PD's editorial board doesn't get "funny".

I think two things can be implied here:

1) They didn't want to offend their urban readers.

or

2) They didn't want to offend their TeaHadist readers who say "They all look alike to me" for real.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. The "blacks look alike" cliche did cross my mind

but I thought "but that's the powerful (white, or predator) who say that about the powerless (black, or prey)", so that if this is meant to refer to that (rather than the simple "victims find it difficult to pick someone from a line-up, and say 'they all look alike'&quot , then it's been reversed, and wouldn't be offensive.

[meegbear]

4. This is what I found ...

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2012/01/13

Am I messing something in this?

[HughBeaumont]

7. Probably have to read it later, GoComics is blocked here.

It's more a commentary on the stupidity of being subjected to what others find objectionable, as if we can't decide that ourselves.

Yeah yeah, I know "their paper, their rules", but is it really THEIR paper? People pay to keep that rag in business; no one HAS to subscribe.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

8. I don't get it either.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

6. Don't know what the outrage was.

[HughBeaumont]

9. When I get to read it, it probably IS "mountain out of a molehill".

Yet the PD's editorial board are loaded with right wing asshats, so . . .

[HughBeaumont]

11. OK, I just read it. REALLY???

[font size="5"]REALLY???[/font]



COME on.

Man, I'd hate to see what would happen if they were confronted with someone like Tom Tomorrow or Mr. Fish. They'd probably have coronaries at some old Roy Crane or Guido Crepax.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

14. Of what you can and can't read in the Plain Dealer, yes!

Refusing to print something in your own paper is not the same thing as trying to censor someone else's!

[chervilant]

16. Why am I not surprised?

I stopped reading The Houston Press when they dropped Tom Tomorrow. Few of their staff writers produce anything of merit, so I'm not missing anything.