Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 8, 1993 TAG: 9311090256
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GERALD DUMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Safire was writing about politics, but what he said could be applied to any number of topics, including the world of comic strips - a world familiar to me through ``Beetle Bailey.''
Mort Walker began the strip in 1950 and created almost all its characters, including a couple who have sparked a number of reader complaints over the years: Lt. Flap, an African American, and Miss Buxley, a sexy blonde. For more than 36 years, I've been writing gags for ``Beetle'' and have, in the process, created the latest two additions to the cast - Sgt. Louise Lugg and the Japanese-American Cpl. Joe Yo.
In the world of the 1990s, it was inevitable that the strip and Mort Walker would face a gantlet of charges: sexism, insensitivity and racism.
And that's what I find puzzling. At a time when Americans by the millions profess not to be bothered by all sorts of behavior by real public figures, readers write angry letters to their editors demanding that ``Beetle Bailey'' be dropped because it is sexist; they are offended because, for example, Gen. Halftrack cannot resist tracking Miss Buxley each time she strolls past his office door.
Editorials have blasted the strip, and some editors, responding to letter- writing campaigns, have expelled Beetle from their newspapers. But most editors usually suggest that readers who don't like the strip shouldn't read it. And when they ask whether Miss Buxley should be removed, readers endorse her presence - overwhelmingly.
What the letter writers don't seem to get is the fundamental business of comedy. Ever since there have been jokes, the jokes have been about people who fool themselves, people who are smart but not as smart as they think they are, people who are attractive but who don't know how boring they are, pompous and self-important people ... the list goes on and on. Of course, there are limits - lines that most would agree should not be crossed. But in the end, humorists write about humanity, as they see it. And the place they see it most clearly is when they stand in front of a mirror.
Barbara Meskill, of Wertheim, West Germany, is someone who seems to understand what we're up to. As she wrote in Stars and Stripes, ``All women are no more like Miss Buxley than are all sergeants mean and fat or all dogs dressed in uniform.'' But when we touch on the fact that Sgt. Lugg looks like a blimp, we receive indignant letters from overweight women who demand that we desist (or else, they threaten, they will work to destroy ``Beetle'' in their local paper). Their letters usually have a single theme: Just because a woman is fat doesn't mean she isn't sweet and lovely on the inside, so stop making jokes about fat women.
To one complainer, I said, ``For over 40 years we've poked fun at Sarge's obesity. Where were you? Why did you not spring to Sarge's defense? Please answer, this is an interesting question.'' But there was no reply.
If a cartoonist is to deal with human nature, he must people his comic strip with every facet of human nature he can think of: the sensitive and the insensitive, the lazy and the energetic, the smart and the stupid, those in authority and those who have none. Until recently, very few readers were offended. They either laughed or they didn't laugh.
So, what's been going on in this country lately? A few weeks ago Mort Walker and I were having lunch and he said, rather sadly, ``I don't know ... it seems that no matter what gag we do, there is always somebody somewhere who is highly offended.''
Thus, when Disney's ``Fantasia'' opened in San Francisco, a flock of pickets turned out. According to a Time magazine account, ``One man complained that the spooky `Night on Bald Mountain' scene had terrified his child.'' Members of an organization called Dieters United objected to the tutu-clad hippos frolicking to the music of ``Dance of the Hours.'' Conservationists were appalled at the waste of water in ``Sorcerer's Apprentice.'' Fundamentalist Christians bewailed the depiction of evolution in ``Rite of Spring.'' Anti-drug forces suspected something subliminally pro-drug in the ``Nutcracker Suite'' episode featuring dancing mushrooms.
In ``Beetle Bailey,'' too, we could show the general engrossed in his work and doing it well; we could show Sarge walking hand in hand with Louise Lugg, assuring her that she looks wonderful; we could show Beetle plugging away, never goofing off or mouthing off. But if we did, there would be no conflict, no humor, no gag and certainly no affectionate insight into human nature.
The latest comic-strip character to become a victim of those who would protect him is Cpl. Joe Yo, who was introduced to ``Beetle Bailey'' readers on Sept. 6, 1990 - and instantly criticized. ``Cpl. Yo is always trying to get in with the superiors, going out of his way to please the superiors,'' said Paul Igasaki, Washington, D.C., representative of the Japanese/American Citizens League, a civil rights group. ``In some senses that's a positive stereotype, but it's still a stereotype.''
Yo is a pest. Eager, ever-ready and ever-present, he is the opposite of Beetle and just as much of a problem. Sarge, surprised, confused and hounded, can't cope. In a comic strip filled with flawed characters, Yo is a pretty neat guy. He could have been a lot worse. And if he were, the people who write ``Beetle'' wouldn't mean anything by it, except to say that here is the way this particular person is. The general drinks too much, his wife is a bit of a shrew, Beetle is far too lazy, Killer is obsessed by girls, Sarge is boorish ... in the end they represent the best and the worst in all of us.
I think it is time for the complainer to give cartoonists the same amount of room they give to a novelist, and understand that just because we depict something doesn't mean we're promoting it.
l\ Gerald Dumas is a writer and cartoonist based in Connecticut.
The Washington Post
by CNB