Tooned Out

Last week newspapers pulled Doonesbury comic strips that suggested the Catholic Church once sanctioned same-sex weddings — not the first time this has happened to cartoonist Garry Trudeau. Indeed censorship of the comics has a long and proud tradition:

1949

The Seattle Times drops Li’l Abner strips in which the hillbilly hero believes he’s eaten one of his parents. Says the Times: “Distasteful.”

1954

Pogo is pulled from the Orlando Sentinel thanks to a new character, the wolfish Simple J. Malarkey, who bears an unflattering resemblance to Senator Joseph McCarthy.

1965

$ The Hartford Courant drops two weeks of Little Orphan Annie after the pupil- less heroine is railroaded into an insane asylum. Says the publisher: “It would disturb people with relations in mental institutions.”

1968

North Carolina’s Greensboro News cancels Dick Tracy after the jut-jawed cop dispatches a miscreant with the observation, “Violence is golden when it is used to put down evil.”

1970

Lieutenant Flap, a black soldier with an outsize Afro, joins Beetle Bailey. Three Southern newspapers refuse to run any Flap strips.

1993

For Better or for Worse runs into trouble with strips about a gay teenager.” It’s not offensive at all,” admits a publisher, “but it was condoning homosexuality almost to the point of advocacy.”