Comic causes a stir but will stay on the page

An old controversy arose last week, thanks to cartoonist Bruce Tinsley.

He's the unashamed conservative cartoonist who draws "Mallard Fillmore." His Wednesday, Aug. 19, comic rankled some readers and four of them called or sent an e-mail to let me know about it.

Truth is, his comics rankle more than just those who took the time to complain, whether last week or any other day. His comic is an in-your-face conservative view of politics and lifestyles. It particularly hammers away at what Tinsley considers to be the left-wing, agenda-carrying, liberal-lapdog mainstream news media.

The offending comic last week showed President Barack Obama saying, "Despite a few setbacks, I'm still determined to get rid of your old clunkers..." and then, "...with my health-care plan." He is holding a photo of an elderly lady. Grandma. Get it? As in controversial and disputed claims such as those stated by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) earlier this month that a proposed government-led health care program could determine "we're gonna' pull the plug on grandma."

The depiction of either a U.S. president or the cartoon, in general, referring to an elderly lady as an old clunker offended some people. "In today's paper, this unfunny 'cartoonist' whom I usually glance at and wish I hadn't, has gone beyond stupid and unfunny, to sick, twisted, insulting and disgusting," one person wrote in an e-mail while noting that she and her husband were canceling their subscription.

This kind of complaint gets lodged from time to time about a comic strip that takes a strong point of view. Beetle Bailey has been the target of complaints through the years for its depiction of women. The same is true of Wizard of Id. Conservatives lambaste Doonesbury as favoring liberals, although that argument ignores the job Garry Trudeau does on liberals' open wounds.

Earlier this year The Gazette experimented with putting Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore on the Opinion Page. The fit was OK but we decided to move them back to the comics page in order to make more room for letters to the editor.

This will disappoint people who do not like Tinsley's acerbic duck but the strip will stay on the comic page in the foreseeable future.

 I'm not particularly a fan of the strip. It lacks subtlety and often doesn't strike me as funny. I reveal this solely because you are wondering. It doesn't alter my feeling that a newspaper should provide room for diverse voices if it is going to reflect all of its readers.

Political viewpoints are nothing new to comics pages. Some of the most famous cartoons ever printed had political messages: Pogo, Li'l Abner, Bloom County (which was drawn for a time in Iowa City when cartoonist Berke Breathed lived there) and the aforementioned Wizard of Id, for example.

I talked with Erma Lam, 81, of rural Springville about this last Wednesday afternoon. We talked about the usual things you'd expect in such a conversation, me saying the conservative voice was important for diversity and she saying she didn't like the comic.

"I object very strongly to the Mallard Fillmore comic and especially today's. I think it's disgusting and degrading of our president," she said in our conversation.

"It's not uplifting or funny or anything. It's just degrading," she said. "I think it's offensive to thoughtful people."

It was a heartfelt response to the comic from someone I found to be, in our short phone conversation, thoughtful and I appreciated hearing from her. So I gave her the last word.