It looks like The LA Times dropped “The Boondocks” some weeks ago — we noticed no explanation given — even while they continue to Fox “News”-ize themselves and add insipid, unfunny, and disinformative “comics” like “Mallard Fillmore” to their line-up. What the hell is up with that?! We guess they prefer to ensure their circulation keeps dropping. (letters@latimes.com)
UPDATE: Several readers have written to let us know that The Boondock’s creator Aaron McGruder is on sabbatical. Darrin Bell, Candorville’s creator, confirms in an email he just sent us:
About the Boondocks, Aaron Magruder is taking a 6-month sabbatical, so it’s either rerun his old stuff or run something new until he returns. I think most papers opted for reruns, but the Times and others are subbing in new strips. Boondocks should be back in September, just in time for the elections.
That’s good news. In the meantime, at least they still carry “Candorville”. For now…
Another one follows…
Magruder (sp ?) is on hiatus so the LAT didn’t really drop the strip. In fact, his syndicate is offering reruns which some papers are taking. But most seem to be opting out until the strip starts up again. That’s what "The Boston Globe" did & announced to their readers. Did the LAT make no announcement ?
This cartoonist (Pat Bagley) was a guest at our Democracy For Utah meeting a couple of weeks ago and one of the people there asked him to do a strip about the voting machines.
Whoops, just tried to generate a link (first time) and it didn’t work. Here’s the link though.
http://extras.sltrib.com/bagley/content/04232006.jpg
Whenever a change is made to the comics, LAT always posts a notice somewhere on the first page of comics and they run the notice for a week. When they added Mallard Fillmore and Prickly City a while back, they explained it as an attempt to offer some balance. It is true that there have been no true conservative comics since B.C. was removed years ago. And so the right complained. And you are correct that this is all part of an intentional shift to the right. They announced the decision to become more "fair and balanced" a while back and took some flack for it and lost a lot of subscriptions.
I don’t have a problem with some political balance in any of the opinion pages — comics, op-ed, arts, etc. But every instance of "balance" is not always "fair" or appropriate. As we know full well, reasonable progressive voices are often *balanced* in the media by some very hateful right-wing points of view.
Mallard Fillmore can be pretty rabid at times. But more often than not, the strip is obsessed with some very small and irrelevant non-issues. When Bush invades Iran, you can count on Fillmore cartoonist Bruce Tinsley to spend 2 weeks fretting about the teaching of self-esteem or why global warming doesn’t exist.
It’s was a busy day for me here in Salt Lake City yesterday. I went out canvassing for the Democratic party and had a lot of fun! I was very conflicted because there was also a protest going on. Since the protest started at noon and the canvass at 1:00 I had time grab my sign and spend 45 minutes there.
Here’s a picture of me with a similar sign which I hand painted with magic marker and have carried alone, over 400 miles around the area before, during and after the war started. Sometimes I stop at big intersections for hours. For every bird, I get 10 to 20 thumbs up and some VERY heartfelt thank you’s. Of course I also enjoy looking at the angry faces of my detractors.
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/gallery/single/se2012.jpg/
My present sign say’s “Support The Troops/Impeach Bush” but looks very similar. For the protest I added a sign on top that I made for the recent immigration rally’s here which say’s “Criminalize Sensenbrenner”. The result is a ridiculously HUGE sign. That’s why I was completely startled when a reporter for KSL (our most prominent station here), stopped me for an interview as I was leaving to go to the canvass. He asked me if I had ever served in the military and I said no but that my father had fought for freedom in WWII and I thought ours was in danger. He treated me with complete respect. When I finished, I told him where I was going and said I hoped they could fix the voting machines! Here’s what the report looked like. I think you’ll agree it is a very good piece, not balanced out with uninformed opinion! I’m the one who says “It’s gone too far. We have to do something.”
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=238444
After that I got to went to see five of the candidates running against Orrin Hatch in a debate about the Iraq war and got to ask them this question. “In the late 1960’s, the United States, using technology and computers, sent many men to the moon and brought them home safely. Today we just can’t seem to get our votes counted. The exit polls are just crazy (arm jestures) and nothing seems to work. Do you agree that, no matter what it takes, including not using technology or computers, that the American people deserve the right to know, for sure, that their votes are being counted correctly. The answers from the Constitution, Desert Greens, Personal Choice, and Libertarian party were clear. YES! The first part of the democratic candidate’s answer was not discernable because of a bad connection from his remote site, but was clear in saying he wanted paper records.
Larry I had the same problem at first creating links. I find it works if I "don’t" click on "copy HTLM to clipboard", just copy the highlighted text from the HTML text box before pasting.
there … fixed the runaway italics … carry on …
Sometimes we have to laugh to keep from screaming.
test
The Chicago Tribune bought the LAT in 2000. Their EXPRESS purpose in doing so was to MUTE the information and anger of the liberal Westcoast over the Bushovik coup, to deny local readers the benefit of the news (such as the near-nuclear disaster in Feb 2001, unreported by the Chicago LAT), to support the Riverside Countyfication of Los Angeles, and to foist rightwing LIES.
To hell with the Chicago LA Times.
(That was hard to post. Spamfilter didn’t like the word in the paragraph below)
To worry about declines in the CLAT comics page is HILARIOUS, the funniest thing I’ve read this weekend other than Steve ‘GDub’ Colber’s hot p*ker blinding of Mr. Pickles.