The previous thread on this topic seems to have gone hopelessly off the rails, so let’s try it again.
This is the thread for discussing developments in the “Funky Winkerbean” strip that parallel real life cases of a comics store owner/manager getting arrested for selling adult comics to an adult.
What’s interesting is that, within the context of the strip, the woman who alerted the police apparently had an ulterior motive…namely she wanted to torpedo the restaurant above the comic shop because she didn’t like that her daughter was going to have the wedding reception there.
If this sounds preposterous, let’s remember some stuff:
A real life comic book retailer wound up being arrested for selling adult comic books to adults because one woman felt that the store was charging too much for Pokemon cards and vowed revenge.
A real life second hand dealer of used comics was arrested after a complaint was filed against him by his ex-father-in-law (over an issue of “Elfquest,” of all things) because the dealer had custody of his son from the marriage and his ex-in-law wanted to get back at him.
You’d be amazed how often personal enmity or self-interest enters into these cases. Unfortunately, they often get left by the wayside once prosecutors get going on the “save the children!” angle.
PAD
• 
Save the children from what? It’s not like they read comics anymore.
I’m thinking we should save the children from the whales, or is it save the whales from the children?
And just structurally, this story on funky, which I’ve now been reading daily, thanks PAD, is too long. There’s been a week of story that could have been told in three days if he condensed and actaully used a full three panels. I guess it’s why I don’t read Funky normally.
“Save the children” is a convenient excuse for implementing whatever crazy-ášš idea of the day you wish to implement. It’s one of those universal excuses that nobody will disagree with, which means you can smear anyone who disagrees with you as a baby-eating monster of the highest order. And it’s vague enough that you can apply it to almost any target you want.
Other popular excuses include “freedom,” “democracy,” “families,” and “traditional values” — just stick something like “saving” or “protecting” in front, and go to town!
–R.J.
So, if one wants to “Save the children” in a comics store context, wouldn’t that involve sealing the kids in mylar snugs?
Going back to the synopsis, I didn’t even pick up that evil mother-in-law was trying to torpedo the restaurant. Or did that come out in Sunday’s strip, which I didn’t see online?
I suppose this was part of my observations from the last thread, that many times these censorship activities stem from origins other than the reasons stated. Or from local authorities just not understanding what the law says.
Where I live in Vermont, to give an example, I knew of a comic shop owner investigated and contacted on complaints that children were conducting “satanic” Dungeons and Dragons rituals in the shop, and on the Sabbath, no less!
Were that true, it’s still not illegal, but we can “save the children” if we follow thru rigorously.
The story of the Pokemon Cards was great. I”m sure all of us have experinced a similar situation regarding our nefarious local comic dealer. I remember a time when a woman walked into my local store with a 2″ stack of bronze DC’s in about VG-G and offered to sell them. The clerk graded and priced and made an offer of about $20.00 as I recall. The woman immediately exploded in front of the poor guy about what a shyster he was and how a friend had used “THE comic book price guide” to look up just one book she had and told her it alone was worth $80.00.
No matter what we ALL told her, there was no way she could understand dealer buying prices v. guide, grading or grade scale pricing. All she knew was she had a 1977 “Perfect condition” issue of Adventure comics, those were worth $80 bucks and the dealer was con man who should be shut down by the authorities for “preying on childen”.
Thanks for pointing out that stopping of the restaurant was the purpose. I missed that because it was on the day before. Sometimes readers can not get underlying meaning unless it is pointed out.
>>..get going on the “save the children!” angle.
I’d just like to say that i hate children. Covered in snot most of em are, as far as i can tell.
the funz
“Going back to the synopsis, I didn’t even pick up that evil mother-in-law was trying to torpedo the restaurant. Or did that come out in Sunday’s strip, which I didn’t see online?”
I was curious about the woman (since I don’t read the strip usually), so I scrolled back and read the week’s worth of strips leading up to it. Basically, the daughter wanted to have the reception in this particular restaurant, and the mother wasn’t happy about it. The comic shop is in the basement of the restaurant. Although it hasn’t been spelled out, I suspect the mother is hoping the restaurant will somehow be held liable and will be closed down for a while (or perhaps be painted as a supporter of obscenity and thus suffer such a downturn in customer support that they can’t stay in business.) I guess we’ll see.
PAD
Ah. Since you don’t read the strip normally, there’s a bit of history which may also end up getting factored in. The woman’s daughter had some major history with her fiance; they were an item in high school, but he was drunk driving with her in the car, there was an accident, and she lost her arm (and she had been planning to go to Julliard). He, at least somewhat out of guilt, joined the military, and went missing in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the comic store owner became infatuated with the daughter, and they were dating in a way that he was probably thinking it was much more serious than she did. He got a Queer Eye level personal makeover in fact. And he was about to ask her to marry him when they heard that her now fiance had been found. And once he got back, the two of them got romantically involved again. She probably never realized store guy was about to pop the question.
Basically, the daughter wanted to have the reception in this particular restaurant, and the mother wasn’t happy about it.
Actually the Wedding will be in the restaurant. (A double wedding with Funky and his new girlfriend and his nephew Wally and his fiance)
BTW, almost the complete “Funky” arc that Tom describes above was drawn by John Byrne!
Oh, the irony!
Peter,
Not only did Byrne draw the strip for awhile (as a favor to the creator who was temporarily disabled), but said creator actually changed his drawing style, incorporating Byrne’s. He said he liked J.B.’s more realistic interpretation of his characters, and now that the strip was evolving into a more realistic tone, he altered his own style.
I didn’t catch the anti-Montoni’s angle, either.
But I had been rooting for the comic store owner and Becky to get together during the Byrne storyline.
It would be rather satisfying if the mother’s antics wind up rekindling that romance.
From what I’ve seen of the strip, it’s not particularly entertaining. Even “For Better of For Worse,” with its one-dimensional villains (the pushy mother-in-law, Anthony’s rude and obnoxioux spouse, the bookstore worker who was lazy, helped the thief, and sued for wrongful termination when let go), it’s still sometimes amusing. The Funky Winkerbean strips (Funkys?) didn’t strike me as entertaining. The anti-comic book story may be topical, but it made me neither laugh nor think anything new.
As for “Saving the children,” it’s one of those largely meaningles slogans that still makes someone sound evil if they oppose it. Some nice parodies of this:
–Back in the early SIMPSONS, every time Helen Lovejoy would get upset she’s wail “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” No wonder her character was killed by a t-shirt-shooting gun.
–On the SOUTH PARK where the local business was using the kids’ essay to keep Harbucks from opening in town, they ran the commercial ending with “After all, you don’t… hate children — do you?”
–And for A. Greene, above, there was a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE SKETCH where someone was trying to get protesters against the Iraq war and everyone had their own agendas: “Save the whales!”; “Save the Children!”; “Make pørņ legal!” “Pørņ is legal.” “Not the kind I like.” After several tries to get them organized, this exchange happened between two protesters:
“Feed the children!”
“Yeah, feed them to the whales!”
So true, so true…
On topic: It’s good to see this topic brought to the public, and I expect Batiuk will handle it well. He tends to make things clear.
Nitpicky digression: it wasn’t Helen Lovejoy (who is the defender of “the children”) who was killed by a t-shirt. It was Maude Flanders. Helen is still alive, it seems.
jameslynch,
here I was thinking I was clever. Ah maybe next time.
And just a question to anyone, when did Funky winkerbean start becoming a serious (read:soap opera) comic strip? For some reason I remember it being funny (or at least it tried to be funny) when I was younger.
I seem to have digressed. Now, where was I? Oh yes… Leadership… (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Hope this isn’t TOO much of a digression, but what with all the talk about “saving the children,” usually leading into diatribes on “family values” and such, even more so than 1984, I think everybody needs to read The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. It’s dámņ near terrifying when you realize that the language used by the fictional government in the book is dámņ near identical to a lot of what’s been coming out of the Bush Whitehouse in relations to “family” and “Christian” values.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
-Rex Hondo-
Re: Mr. Winkerbean
You know things are getting bad when a daily three-panel comic strip takes up the call.
One would think that the news media, who always claim First Amendment protections (and rightfully so), would be all over something like this. I know these aren’t necessarily FA issues but I can imagine how these cases could have an impact on it.
What I don’t get is why people get such a hard-on to ban something. They want to ban certain types of music (and lied in their attempt to do so). They want to ban T.V. shows. They want to ban ‘certain’ publications. Shìŧ, they even want to ban hate. “Erase the hate” they tell us. You can’t ban hate. Hate is as valid and necessary an emotion as love, contenment, fear… all of them.
Meanwhile, while we’re banning hate, they tell us that those people (pick a sub-group of society) are evil because they don’t think/do/smell/taste/fart like we do. When did the world get too small to encompass different ideas and ways of doing things? If there is no definable harm/immediate threat, well, back off.
Ok, so Tommy saw a representation of a womans breast in a comic book at age 11. Here’s a bit of info for everyone who thinks that Tommy is so fragile and innocent: At age 11 Tommy is trying to catch every down every females shirt he encounters with the possible exception of his family members. And he gets a little thrill every time he does it. It called growing up. It’s an age where ones curiosity about the opposite sex gets the equivalent of a booster shot. Is it right to take away the naked “bøøbìë” drawing from Tommy? Yes it is. What’s not right, however, is having someone arrested for giving it away for free, by accident, or for selling it to an adult.
Do so many people feel so ineffective in their lives that they have to have a comic shop owner arrested because Tommy is behaving normally? Sounds like the act of someone addicted to personal drama to me.
Children are dammaged by overprotection. And I don’t just mean by their decreased ability to cope later in life.
We’re often warned about sex and violence in various media having the effect of desensitizing kids. What do you suppose happens to a kid that is so protected that it stiffles certain aspects of his/her humanity?
Sex and violence are not automatically evil even though they can be utilized for evil ends. Perhaps we’d be better off as a whole if we considered that before we act in “defense of the children.”
Sure it’s easy for me to say because I have no children, nor do I want any. Maybe it makes me a little more objective as well. Who knows?
Mitch Evans
(Not to be confused with the Mitch above)
Speaking generally, because there is no way I can remember the specific dates, Batiuk has addressed serious issuses in both Crankshaft and Funky for quite some while, meaning years.
Sorry to disagree with James Lynch, but I find both For Better or Worse and Funky Winkerbean both to be entertaining. The local paper revamped the comics page recently and the loss of Funky has been widely bemoaned. While there may not be anything new for regular visitors to this site in this story, it will be new to most of the people who read the strip in their daily paper.
ME: “At age 11 Tommy is trying to catch every down every females shirt he encounters with the possible exception of his family members.”
That’s supposed to be “catch a peek.”
Ðámņ that mid-sentence thought re-structuring!
Mitch Evans
(One Mitch shall never harm another.)
Time to play devil’s advocate on the strip
I don’t know if this was covered in the previous thread or not (too lazy/tired to look), but while it may be to torpedo the restaurant, if this were an actual case, the store owner could rightfully be charged, or at the least given a fine.
The mother pulled an “Adult Comic” off a shelf in the middle of the store. These weren’t “adult” in the sense of the max line either, the one in the front read “XXX Manga”. Maybe if they showed her slide behind a curtain or dividing wall, then yeah.
It may have just been poor writing direction or artist’s interpretation, don’t know, but if we’re to take it at face value the store owner was in the wrong. So wrong to be arrested on the spot, probably not, but still in the wrong.
Crankshaft is now a serious comic (and it’s still going on?)? Say it isn’t so! When an old cranky school bus driver stops being funny: that’s when the music died.
Isn’t anyone trying to be funny anymore? Where has all the laughter gone?
“Where has all the laughter gone?”
Webcomics.
Posted by cal at March 10, 2005 01:19 AM
Speaking generally, because there is no way I can remember the specific dates, Batiuk has addressed serious issuses in both Crankshaft and Funky for quite some while, meaning years.
From Don Markstein’s “Toonopedia” (http://www.toonopedia.com):
Another way the strip has changed over time is its increasing use of serious themes. Batiuk takes the point of view that there are enough light fantasy strips on the comics page, so, while not failing to emphasize their humorous aspects, he goes for stories with an edge. He was the first American newspaper cartoonist to tackle teen pregnancy from the point of view of an ongoing character, which he did in 1986. He followed it with storylines on dyslexia, guns at school, teen suicide, and many other hard-hitting topics. This trend reached what is perhaps its apotheosis in 1998, when Lisa was diagnosed with breast cancer. But perhaps not
Just caught today’s installment (03/10/05; the Seattle PI site updates at midnight, Pacific Time) — the charges read “…two counts of promoting obscenity by selling adult comics to an undercover policeman and a member of city council…”.
It appears that, perhaps, politics rears its ugly head…
This is going to take a while to get on point, but it will, I promise….
I recently called my dad to announce that he’s going to be a grandfather again (my first child, my brother has 2 kids). What followed of course was a nice chat, the usual “we’re so happy for you.” Then he said something I found really interesting. He warned me off Dr. Spock’s book (which of course prompted my initial reaction of “what’s he got against Vulcans?”), claiming that a large portion of his generation had obsessed over the book, and as a result had raised the worst generation of adults to come along in a long time. I’ve never read it, and only done a quick review, but the gist I get is that Dr. Spock told parents it was OK to spoil their kids. As a result, we have a generation of adults today that, through their formative early years, got pretty much everything they wanted, and more importantly, didn’t have to deal with things that upset them. Their parents strived so hard to provide for them, to insulate them from difficulty and hardship, that they’ve turned into adults that hold the same assumptions. That life is around to please them, and anything that displeases them needs to go away.
Which in turn, I think, leads to situations like that going on in Funky, or the Pokemon case, or many of the actions of the PTC. Adults that were spoiled as children are now spoiled adults. And instead of having learned tolerance and patience to deal with the things life has that the find offensive, they react they way they were taught…to get rid of it.
–Back in the early SIMPSONS, every time Helen Lovejoy would get upset she’s wail “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” No wonder her character was killed by a t-shirt-shooting gun.
Actually, it was Maude Flanders who was killed by the T-shirt barrage. Allegedly, she was killed because the actress who did her voice wanted more money.
As for Funky, in the 80s it was mildly amusing at times, but when Batiuk made the original high school cast start aging in real time, it has gotten too preachy and stopped being funny at all.
I have to agree with the general sentiment that the mother-in-law is very one-dimensional.
It’s sad though, that in real life, people with ulterior motives can bend the authorities to their purposes. Of course, prosecutors, always wanting to score points for “saving the children,” are all too willing to jump on things like that.
If we really want to “save the children” from that is seedy or offensive, maybe we should set up a “Lord of the Flies” island somewhere where children can go live until they’re 18.
Everytime I hear someone bleating “What about the children?! Think about the children?!” I recall Bill Hick’s routine about how children really aren’t that special.
As someone who has decided that he doesn’t want kids, I feel put out, to say the least, that someone else feels the need to limit my choice of entertainment for what appears to me to be the fact that they can’t be bothered to take an interest in being a parent. If you want a kid, then you dámņ well better be responsible for it. Monitor what media they intake and restrict them from accessing things you don’t feel are approrpriate. (Yeah, I think I just slaughtered that spelling…) And explain to them why you don’t want them reading/watching what ever it is. A blanket ban with no explanation is only going to whet their appetite for it all the more.
Remember the words of Mark Twain- “Censorship is telling a man that he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
Also, I haven’t been a regular reader of FW in almost 20 years, since the local paper dropped the strip. IS there a site with the series archived? I looked on Amamzon, but there only seems to be two book collections currently in print (The Breast Cancer arc and one other) and a few older collections (mid-70s publication dates) being sold used starting at $25!
Shìŧ, they even want to ban hate. “Erase the hate” they tell us. You can’t ban hate. Hate is as valid and necessary an emotion as love, contenment, fear… all of them.
I’m with Tom Lehrer on this one: “I know there are people in this world who do not love their fellow human beings…. and I HATE people like that.”
Children are dammaged by overprotection. And I don’t just mean by their decreased ability to cope later in life.
We’re often warned about sex and violence in various media having the effect of desensitizing kids. What do you suppose happens to a kid that is so protected that it stiffles certain aspects of his/her humanity?
Though that alone can be very damaging. I have this ex-girlfriend who I am still very close to. One day, in a spontaneous moment of silliness, I somehow ended up giving her a piggyback ride across her front lawn. Her cousin walks by and gets really freaked out by this. I don’t know why.
Sex and violence are not automatically evil even though they can be utilized for evil ends. Perhaps we’d be better off as a whole if we considered that before we act in “defense of the children.”
Sure it’s easy for me to say because I have no children, nor do I want any. Maybe it makes me a little more objective as well. Who knows?
Thank you, Jess, for that Lehrer quote — one of his best.
Where has all the laughter gone?
It’s still around. “Frazz” consistently makes me laugh, for example, and it’s not as though “Zits” has gone the grim’n’gritty route.
As for the pile of people saying they’re proudly childless and therefore more objective about the “we must protect the children” meme — this particular parent would prefer you not tar all of us with the same brush. Quite a few of us don’t generally put ideas in the category of “things my child needs protection from.” Idiots who drive 90 mph in residential areas, yes; copies of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” no. (Not that I’d be handing a copy to my daughter any time soon … though right now all she’d do is eat the book anyway.)
I’m not normally a big Funky fan (and I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper that carries it in, geez, at least 15 years), but I’m definitely intrigued about where the strip’s going. Hopefully it’ll be a realistic viewpoint.
TWL
The way to save the children is to teach them how to deal with material that’s distasteful. As the father of a 12-year-old girl, it’s my opinion that there are some things that could do real harm to her, particularly her feeling of self-worth and her self-esteem, or have a negative impact on her future relations with men. However, those are extreme cases. For the most part, especially cuss words and voilence, IMO, exposing them to it and debreifing them/teaching them about it will work a heck of a lot better than trying to shield them from it.
The mother pulled an “Adult Comic” off a shelf in the middle of the store. These weren’t “adult” in the sense of the max line either, the one in the front read “XXX Manga”. Maybe if they showed her slide behind a curtain or dividing wall, then yeah.
See, I find this method of separation to be down right silly.
The Sam Goody over at Cherry Creek mall has a sizable anime movie selection.
Right next to it? The adult dvd film selection… only with those white plastic cards in front of each of them.
Sure, they’re near the front, by the registers, but still. And they haven’t got in trouble yet.
But we are to expect a comic book store to act differently?
I enjoy the strip and am interested in how this story turns out.
The one thing that I do wonder about is that if you were working in a comic book store and a middle aged woman came in and bought an ‘adult’ comic, wouldn’t you at least talk to her a little when she brought it to the counter. Wouldn’t it seem like a strange choice for her to buy?
Not that it ought to be a crime to sell adult comics to adults. I’d like to think that I’m grown up enough to handle anything in a comic.
And considering the prices of comic books, are they really for kids anymore? 🙂
Heck, I don’t think I’ve regularly picked up any new books for a good decade or so, just grabbing the occasional TPB, but I recently re-read my copy of The Killing Joke, and realized that it’s over a decade and a half old. Then I thought of how sad it is that even after all this time, most of the old duffers who run things still think that the “funny books” are just for kids. They’d probably burst a vessel if they got a good look at some of the Manga that actually ARE considered kid level overseas.
-Rex-
“Frazz” consistently makes me laugh, for example, and it’s not as though “Zits” has gone the grim’n’gritty route.
Frazz and Zits have had “issue” themed strips and continuities. Even Calvin & Hobbes did the occasional thoughtful topic.
Agreed, but having the occasional serious moment doesn’t mean it’s not a humorous strip.
(But let’s not turn this into a comic-strip thread, since I think that’s not PAD’s primary issue or point here…)
TWL
The way some of you have responded here, one would think that it is immoral to question, under any circumstances, anyone’s actions, behavior or expressed ideas. In short, anything goes, and anyone who disagrees with such a stance is labeled (with equal emphasis) “a religious fanatic,” “fascist,” “censor,” “idiot” or some other over-the-top villainous sort.
This “anything goes” mentality is nonsense, in my opinion. The only reason we live in a somewhat civilized society is because there is (or used to be) an emphasis on laws, standards, levels of “acceptable” behavior, etc. Without these societal limitations, no one would have any rights. There would be no checks and balances, and in such an anarchistic environment, the strongest or biggest people at all levels would take what they wanted whenever they wanted to, with absolutely no fear of retaliation or punishment.
And while the laws of civilization aren’t perfect (and neither are the people who create them), they are, in my opinion, certainly better than no laws at all. Thus, whenever someone says to me, “I’m totally against censorship” (i.e., “I’m totally against putting any limits on expression in any situation and under any circumstances”), it just boggles my mind. Such a stance is hypocritical because it is basically saying, “If I offend you, you have no right to say or do anything about it, because that would offend me.”
There has to be some give and take — some standards of accepted behavior/decency — otherwise, we’re actually regressing from respecting the rights of others, and moving backwards in our age-old slog towards true civilization.
Thought: Once ‘the children’ ‘saved’ are no longer children, we look for ways to be saved from them.
Legal, psuedo-educational, pharmaceutical, disciplinary,….
I think the fictional retailer should have shown better sense than to put “XXX” just to the right of “HULK” (see Sunday’s strip.)
Den posted:
“Actually, it was Maude Flanders who was killed by the T-shirt barrage. Allegedly, she was killed because the actress who did her voice wanted more money.”
Well, that’s a bit questionable. The actress (Maggie Roswell) DID leave in a salary dispute, but she left in the Spring of 1999, while the episode in which Maude gets killed didn’t air until the following February. By that time, there was another actress (Marcia Mitzman Gaven) who stepped in to provide the voice of Maude in the episode in which Maude is killed. While it’s hard to tell how much time passed between the story’s animation and the voiceover recordings, it’s possible that Maude was killed off with Ms Roswell’s salary dispute in mind, though it doesn’t really sound like something that the show’s producers and writers (David Cohen, Al Jean, Matt Groening, etc) would have done just to spite Ms Roswell. (An interesting side note is that the same actresses have also provided the voice of Helen Lovejoy.)
Ms Roswell returned to “The Simpsons” in 2002.
Mr. Maheras is making a rather impressive looking straw man up there.
I don’t think anyone has said “anything goes”, or that actions and behavior can never be questioned.
First, I suspect (though others can certainly chime in) that we’d all agree that actions which cause explicit, obvious harm to another (e.g. murder, assault, rape, etc.) are ones which society has a vested interest in preventing.
Second, there is a huge difference between arguing something cannot be banned by law and that it cannot be *questioned*. Geez, question my actions all you like. I certainly do. No one’s saying that Iowa Jim, for example, has no right to feel that homosexuality is wrong. But there’s a difference between that feeling and explicit policy based on that feeling.
On the other hand, there is a certain symmetry to the posted making such an over-the-top extremist statement that’s ostensibly coming out against over-the-top extremist statements.
TWL
Sorry. That should be “postER” in the last sentence above, not “postED.”
TWL
typing too quickly
Tim, slow down, calm yourself. Feel the Force flowing through you…to the keyboard….the the screen…let go you conscious self, and feel with your emotions…
Wow, that sounds so much better then I hear it in Alec Guiness’ voice….
Two thoughts.
First, I was somewhat disappointed at the “Cool” comment by the kids as they saw the guy arrested. If he is guilty of a serious crime, then it is not cool. If he is innocent and the victim, then it still is not cool since he has court costs, possible loss of income while the comic store is closed during the trial and/or people avoid it because it supposedly sells “smut.” It is not a huge deal, but it seemed a little out of place, unless someone can explain a better reason for the comment.
Second, I wonder about PAD’s comment:
You’d be amazed how often personal enmity or self-interest enters into these cases. Unfortunately, they often get left by the wayside once prosecutors get going on the “save the children!” angle.
I agree that it is true. But it seems that if this is true in very many of these cases, then doesn’t it mean free speech is not the primary target? Let me be clear, even if it is used as a false basis for attack, I agree in the principle of free speech (even if I may disagree in its application in a few limited cases). So using an obscenity charge to get at a retailer for whatever reason is inexcusable. But it does little to prove that the current administration actually is promoting the end of free speech as we know it.
One bonus thought: I don’t understand the need for comics to be funny. If you don’t like a strip, then by all means, don’t read it. But to suggest that comic strips have to be funny and can’t just tell a story seems rather ironic when stated on the site of a writer of comic books. If we want people to take the story value of a comic book seriously, why not a comic strip? There is room for both types of comic strips, and devaluing Funky because it is not funny should not be happening on this site.
Iowa Jim
While it’s hard to tell how much time passed between the story’s animation and the voiceover recordings, it’s possible that Maude was killed off with Ms Roswell’s salary dispute in mind, though it doesn’t really sound like something that the show’s producers and writers (David Cohen, Al Jean, Matt Groening, etc) would have done just to spite Ms Roswell.
I find it perfectly plausible because TV producers have killed off characters just to spite departing actors before. Prime example: MaClean Stevenson’s departure from MASH.
Den:
>I find it perfectly plausible because TV producers have killed off characters just to spite departing actors before. Prime example: MaClean Stevenson’s departure from MASH.
Wow, really? I didn’t know that, though I found that episode the most touching and heartbreaking one of the series as a kid and to this day.
Fred
Jim, I don’t think that whether or not free speech is the primary target or not is the point. In most cases, the prosecutor isn’t setting out directly to get something off the streets, or to shut someone up. As in the Funky case, the mother-in-law-to-be has some motive, but curtailing speech probably isn’t it.
It’s more that in her effort to satisfy her own ends, she’s taking a path that could set a precedent that limits free speech. And I think that’s contained within PAD’s statement. In any invidividual’s efforts, there’s going to be collateral impacts, things they didn’t intend to happen. And sometimes, in the zeal generated by the rallying cry, those impacts get lost in the furor. Losing the trees for the forest, as it were, when some of those trees are pretty darned important.
Such a stance is hypocritical because it is basically saying, “If I offend you, you have no right to say or do anything about it, because that would offend me.”
Time for me to call bullsh!t on this. I do something that offends you, you have every right to complain about, just as I have the right to tell you to get bent. What don’t have is the right to prevent me from expressing my opinion just because you’re little darling’s ears are too sensitive to hear it.