Monday, December 13, 2004

Recommended Reading

Col. David H. Hackworth (USA Ret.) writes about those sad letters that the Secretary of Defense (and sometimes, the President) have to send to families telling them that a loved one has died in the line of service. In the past, it has been customary for these letters to be hand-signed but the always-considerate Donald Rumsfeld has passed the job off to an automatic signing machine.

• Posted at 10:24 PM · LINK

Hart Attack

For some time, I've been a critic of Johnny Hart, the gentleman who draws the comic strip, B.C. and also writes The Wizard of Id. I have nothing against his religious views except that I think they're the kind designed to pit people of one faith against another and discourage understanding. Well, okay, I guess that's a lot...but he really does have the right to say stuff like that in his strip, just as I have the right to not read it anymore. My main objection is that he and his syndicate still claim that he is the most widely-read cartoonist on the planet (even, the most widely-read writer of any kind), which is not so. I don't think it's even close to so, as I explained a few years ago in this article.

Google has taken note of that article in a big way. If you do a search there for "Johnny Hart" and "B.C.," my article is usually among the first half-dozen hits. Once in a while, I seem to be at or near the top...and people who are looking to complain about Mr. Hart's latest strip sometimes find my page and think I'm him.

It took me a while to figure this out. For some months now, I've been receiving the occasional e-mail from some stranger telling me something like, "Your work is offensive and not funny," but they never elaborated enough for me to know they were mad at Mr. Hart and not me. I wrote a few of these folks to ask which of the many offensive, not funny things I've done had prompted their reaction, but none of them replied. I guess my messages made them realize they had the wrong guy and they were too embarrassed to write back and admit this. I also received a few that said things like, "Your strip last Thursday was stupid and rude." I don't currently write any newspaper strip but I used to write the Garfield cartoon shows, so I assumed those folks were mad about something in the Garfield strip and thought I was its author.

Well, I finally figured it out: Those folks weren't unhappy with me or Garfield. They were mad at Johnny Hart.

Last Friday, Hart did a joke in B.C. that bothered some teachers...and obviously, teachers are a little more articulate than your average offended reader. A few still got confused enough to think my e-mail address was his, but unlike the others, their complaining messages actually explained what they were upset about. I've received exactly one dozen angry messages that were meant for him, and when I sent them all a "form" reply, one was polite enough to write back and apologize...

My bad. I was so angry at Hart's latest, I wrote to the first address I found via Google. I thought it went to him. I've been angered by Mr. Hart's religious bigotry in the past but it took until he libelled my profession that I was finally motivated to write to him. Sorry to have cluttered your mailbox with my complaint.

No harm done but I can't help but think that Johnny Hart is lucky he writes a comic strip and not a TV show. The FCC fined Fox Broadcasting $1.8 million for airing "offensive" content, and in that instance, the FCC only received three complaints. I don't know how many complaints Hart got about his teacher strip but I got twelve. That's $7.2 million right there. That's a lot of money, even for the most widely-read writer on Earth.

• Posted at 10:18 PM · LINK

Bad to the Bone

Let me be the last comics/animation-related weblog to link to these clever drawings by Michael Paulus of the skeletons of famous cartoon characters. (This is one of those links I didn't post because everyone else has...but since everyone keeps sending it to me, I figured I might as well. Nice stuff.)

• Posted at 12:02 AM · LINK