Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Doonesbury: Too much for The Oregonian, Day 2


Here's today's too-dangerous-to-print Doonesbury strip satirizing the state-by-state war on the health care rights -- and the plain, simple dignity -- of women.


The Oregonian, as you may be aware, thought it was inappropriate to expose its readers to such . . . well, let's call a spade a spade here: to such honesty about the Republican party's war on women. So hard-copy subscribers will get, for example, Rich Lowry whining that the rights of women to adequate health care shouldn't be allowed to trump employers' right to enforce their arbitrary beliefs upon them, but they won't be getting Doonesbury exposing what a misogynistic sham this is.

Here's p3 friend Charles Pierce on  the confusion of utter wussiness with sound business sense that this move represents:
[T]he suggestion by the Oregonian that all that graphic language, and all those inappropriate images, are okay for their readers of experience online, but not on the sacred corpses of their dead trees, gives you some idea of why newspapers are in so much trouble these days.

All of this cowardice, of course, occurs in the context of plunging revenues and the terrible realization that nobody really knows What Comes Next, including the people who are supposed to be creating What Comes Next. Reporters are hamstrung by idiotic "ethics codes" that are really only means by which management can exercise control over the help while groping for the last golden parachutes on the shelf. Some of the bravest people I know work for daily newspapers, and very damn few of them work in management.

Once again, if you're looking for today's Doonesbury strip, don't look in The Oregonian; go here.

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