Found links for both of these at ˇJournalista!, so perhaps you should just read them instead of bothering to come here.
First off, Putting 'The Boondocks' in the Dock from the Washington Post's ombudsman:
Followers of the comic strip "The Boondocks" were first puzzled and then angry last week. Sometimes this edgy, irreverent and controversial strip, drawn and written by a 29-year-old African American artist, Aaron McGruder, makes some readers mad, and they let the paper know.But last week it was the many fans of McGruder, and of the clever collection of precocious youngsters he has created, who were mad at The Post when they realized the paper had killed six days of "Boondocks" strips and substituted reruns from 1999.
Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. comes right to the point: "The Boondocks strips in question commented on the private life of the national security adviser and its relationship to her official duties in ways that violated our standards for taste, fairness and invasion of privacy." As for the lack of an explanation, he says: "We edit all parts of the paper every day, including the comics, and do not usually notify readers about what we are not publishing or why."
[. . .] McGruder's strip is popular and about 250 newspapers publish it. An editor at Universal Press Syndicate, the distributor for "The Boondocks," says that The Post was the only newspaper to kill this series of strips. There were no calls or complaints about it from other papers, he says.
The ombuds, Michael Getler, says at the end that he would'a run the strips if it'd been up to him. You may now speculate wildly about the motives of those who declined to run the strip.
One suggestion is given in Richard Blow's Sex And Politics over at TOMPAINE.com:
Does Aaron McGruder think that Condoleeza Rice is a lesbian? That's the question I kept pondering as I read this week's "The Boondocks," a comic strip by McGruder that The Washington Post has decided not to publish.The Post's decision raises that ongoing debate about when not to publish comic strips—most recently several papers suspended a "Doonesbury" stripwhich used the word "masturbate," apparently on the grounds that there might be someone out there who didn't actually know what it meant. In this situation the Post's reasoning appears to hinge on whether Aaron McGruder is implying that Condi Rice is gay.
Amazing how many of us saw that subtext. Possible subtext. Ok, who think Condi is a confirmed bachlorette. And we should stop. Because it's wrong.
To paraphrase Michael Stipe, I just don't think it's anyone's business what Condi does with her dick, unless they're sitting in her lap.
Also, both pieces speculate wildly about how old the main characters are supposed to be, which I think McGruder's mentioned once or twice.
Hey aaron, did you catch last week's interview with Mr. McGruder on Fresh Air? It was a great interview.
Dru, the one from last Tuesday?
No, but I'll give it a listen when I get a chance. Thanks for mentioning it. Am listening to Alison Krauss now.
And another reason for revoking my Negro card is revealed. . .
Hey, Alison is for everybody! Music has no color... ("We are the w-o-o-o-rld...")
Sorry.
As for the Boodocks brouhaha, I saw the series of strips in question. Never occurred once to me that McGruder was insinuating Condi was gay. And I'm as queer as they come. Interesting. Good for the Boondocks fans who expressed their dismay.
Natalie, I'm afraid conversations about race have descended to the level that declaring you're a Negro who listens to Alison Krauss is a political statement.
Pathetic, ain't it?
I think those of us who saw the subtext were projecting.
We did the same thing with Xena.
I ain't projecting shit first of all. And second of all I'm very proud to say that I'm a lesbian who has never seen a single episode of Xena. That is all.
I guess that means that I'm the only one out there that thinks Ms. Rice is completely asexual, as in no interest in sex with anyone male or female? I believe her entire sex drive, if indeed she ever had one, was sold off as part of her faustian bargain years and years ago.
Just a thought...
Michelle, you never watched Xena?
I'll be revoking your lesbian card now.
RedHeadDread, I always figured that oil tanker was, to quote Shrek, compensating for something.
I don't know what, and am not sure I want to.
What bothered me about the strips wasn't even so much the implication that Condi is a lesbian but the implication that there's something dangerous about a single woman, that it causes bad things to happen and that the way to solve the problem is to get the woman married, i.e. for there to be a man to keep her (sexuality?) in check.
I mean, of all the ways of explaining the dangerousness of the Bush admin to pick this very old and patriarchal myth strikes me as an odd choice.
But I really lost interest in McGruder a while ago.
Drapetomaniac, that seems like a. . . misplaced criticism, considering one of the lines in the strip is, "What I really like about this idea is that it isn't the least bit sexist or chauvinistic." That whole autocritique thang has been a part of McGruder's approach from the start, I think.
'Course, I'm a misogynist Negro, so what do I know?
Um, I think today's strip moved it out of the realm of subtext and into the realm of "ick" with the Ann Coulter adams apple reference. Acknowledging that the whole thing is sexist and chauvinistic is fine, but once you sink down into Ann COulter territory, that's a whole 'nother thing. ::shudder::
Well, I'm another dyke who never thought that the Boondocks insinuation was that Condi was gay, just completely uptight.
Her cousin Connie (who is an LA Civil Rights attorney, UC law professor, and a former head of the Los Angeles NAACP--in short a good reason never to call Condi Connie) *is* IIRC, an out lesbian. At least she's on the advisory board for the LA Lesbian & Gay Community Fund.
But for real, if *Condoleeza* swings the same way I'll donate a couple good vibrators to keep her shut in her office and away from good women.