Newspaper bans comic over hidden anti-Trump message

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Newspaper bans comic over hidden anti-Trump message

Cartoonist Wiley Miller included the message ‘We fondly say go fuck yourself to Trump’ in the comic Non Sequitur

Sam Wolfson
Mon 11 Feb 2019 16.28 GMT Last modified on Mon 11 Feb 2019 17.12 GMT

A syndicated comic strip has been discontinued by a Pennsylvania newspaper after an obscene anti-Trump message was found hidden in one of its panels.

The offending cartoon showed a bear called Leonardo Bear-Vinci assembling a flying machine, with sketches similar to Leonardo da Vinci’s. The drawings include mostly illegible scrawled notes, but in the corner one of the scrawls reads: “We fondly say go fuck yourself to Trump.”

Link to tweet

The strip was an edition of Non Sequitur, a comic created by cartoonist Wiley Miller, which is printed in more than 700 newspapers. It has been running since 1992 and is better known for genteel political satire.

-snip-

This will be news to readers of the Butler Eagle, a conservative family-owned local paper in Pennsylvania, as the comic was missing from Monday’s edition.

The publisher and general manager, Ron Vodenichar, was incensed about the bear cartoon, writing on the paper’s website: “We apologize that such a disgusting trick was perpetuated [sic] on the reading public … The Butler Eagle will discontinue that comic immediately.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/11/comic-strip-anti-trump-message-banned-leonardo-bear-vinci

[royable]

1. Looking at the Sunday comic in my paper. While there does appear to be something there,

it seems a bit of a stretch to read the scrawled message as saying exactly that. For instance, I see no hint of an "s" where the would "say" would be. Also, not that I disagree with the sentiments expressed, but I'd rather that Wiley had left out the word "fondly."

[Initech]

2. Really? Over that? Snowflakes.

[The Blue Flower]

3. I saw that comic and didn't see it

If it was so well hidden, who cares? This paper succeeded in getting more people to look at it.

[dawg day]

4. I fondly remember the Doonesbury comic strip

... which got the strip banned in some papers-- Mark giving his considered opinion about Nixon's horrible AG John Mitchell: "Guilty, guilty, guilty!"

https://readingdoonesbury.com/2017/10/25/this-week-in-doonesbury-guilty-guilty-guilty/

[dawg day]

5. There was an updated Doonesbury (from a year ago) that hearkens back to that strip

(echo -- guiltyguiltyguilty)
"Just a flashback!"

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2017/10/22

[struggle4progress]

6. I couldn't see it

[thucythucy]

7. Sigh. And the general manager of this same newspaper.

in what was presumably a prepared statement, obviously didn't see the difference between "perpetrated" and "perpetuated."

That offends me more than any hidden message in a cartoon.

[royable]

9. and the general manager will probably continue to make the same mistake in perpertratuity. n/t

[thucythucy]

10. LOL!

[GusBob]

8. Love love love that strip

I buy the Sunday paper just to see it