30 The Great Cartoon Controversy of 1991

When I was drinking with colleagues on Friday night I said that I would be posting the "Cartoon Story" this week.  I had a picture in my mind of the file drawer where I had collected all the newspaper articles about the event.

Sadly, that mental picture no longer had any material support!  I went to my files and realized that some time ago I'd given away all the information I had about the great Broadside cartoon controversy from 1991.

Fortunately, my finally honed research research skills allowed me to ask Professor Google for some help.  And here's what I found.

Student Press Law Center Report (S 1991)

The controversy began with a cartoon published in the January 15, 1991 issue of the Broadside student newspaper. It parodied the "Dewar's Profile" scotch ads popular at the time.  The subject of the cartoon was "John Volunteer."  What roused people's ire, of course, was not the violation of Dewar's copyright but the "profile" section noting that the soldier "admires authority, xenophobic, alcoholic, repressed homosexual."

The next day the first bombs were dropped on Iraq in the beginning of "Operation Desert Storm."

And in Central Oregon a great controversy blew up.   Angry calls and letters rolled into the Broadside, the COCC administration, and local media outlets.   A January 29 edition of The Bulletin reported that Greg Walker, a veteran and leader of a local committee called Citizens in Support of the Troops recommended the editor be dismissed for "malfeasance or nonfeasance" and that the adviser be replaced by "someone competent."

In the same article, Helen Vandervort, head of the COCC foundation at the time, reported that the college had lost over $400,000 in promised donations because of the cartoon.  On the letters page in the same edition of the Bulletin a "cashier" wrote "I plan on doing my own protesting, starting with the businesses that help support that irresponsible piece of trash they call a 'newspaper.'  As for COCC's administration's attitude toward this matter -- I don't believe in censorship either, but perhaps these kids need some 'guidance' in what they publish.  I will think long and hard the next time the college asks my help (as a taxpayer)."   And Paula Brown, the Broadside's business manager, sounded a slightly more optimistic note when she said that advertisers had pulled out in protest but were expected to return.

Monetary threats were not the only kind being made.  The public protests were accompanied by anonymous death threats made against the families of the cartoonist, editor, and adviser.  The cartoonist mentioned these in his letter of apology, which ran in the Broadside and in the Bulletin.  Both left town for a short time out of fear.

The editor also apologized to Schenley Industries, owner of Dewar's (which is now owned by Bacardi Limited).

The new president of the college, Bob Barber, who had arrived in September, did his best to deal with the issue.  He noted that the school could not legally censor the student newspaper.  Nevertheless, he   formed an ad hoc committee of two students and two community members to look at the management of The Broadside:  institution run or independent.  Eventually the clearly illegal attempt by outside forces to have the school institute a "prior-review" policy was halted.

Both the cartoonist and the editor apologized in a special four-page edition of The Broadside and in the Bulletin.  The editor said that the intent of the cartoon was "to illustrate how much of the media has whipped up an anti-Arab frenzy; unfortunately the cartoon backfired and has instead started an anti-Broadside frenzy."  He noted that the cartoon "did not convey its intended message and publishing it was a mistake."  The cartoonist said he didn't believe soldiers were alcoholics or homosexuals.  He had friends who were veterans.  He was trying to comment on the way Arabs were depicted as "warmongering, insane criminals" in the American media.  He used "the cheapest stereotypes of the U. S. soldier to make it clear how cruel prejudice and racism is."  "Nevertheless, had I known the cartoon would miss the mark so badly, it wouldn't have been published."

There were also members of the community who spoke or wrote in support of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press, if not in support of this particular example of it.  A "law book editor" wrote to the Bulletin that, "even the shallow and ignorant are entitled to the fearless public expression of their opinions."  A "community member and former COCC student," who spoke at the February 5 meeting of the Board, said,  "We need to step back and remember what our loved ones are fighting for."

As I looked back through the "Google News" collection, I was interested to see that the January 29th  edition of the Bulletin also had an editorial calling for protection of the rights of Arab Americans who were being threatened and persecuted by the FBI.   Robert W. Chandler also was concerned about the ugly rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment.  But he made his point more clearly.

I don't remember much of this original controversy myself except a bit of a public meeting in which Bob Barber listened as many, many people spoke their minds.  I was actually out of town the day the cartoon was published.  My mom died on January 8 and after going home to help my sister with the funeral I flew back into town the day the bombing started in Iraq.   But we must have talked about the controversy in my very first section of SP 241, Media, Communication, and Society.  I was reminded that we did by a man who just last week came for an interview in hopes of getting the job I'm leaving.  He was in that media class in the cold, cold winter of 1991.  And I found my old gradebook so that I could remind him that he got the highest score in the class.

LY #100 Blogging vs Newsing

Today I had an experience that taught me one of the big differences between writing this "change of life" blog and writing news.  In trying to track down the reason for a school decision that annoyed me I found that I was talking with friends, people I like and respect, and getting answers that weren't answers that I'd accept from students.  When I question students, I want them to refer to facts and to be able to tell me their sources.  When I got information from friends I got rather amorphous "best possible sources" without any data.  And because they were friends, I didn't push it.

If I were a journalist, I'd be required and expected to push.  Same with sales.  Salespeople have to be able to push.  Now, I have a good friend who is an excellent salesperson who has a deep belief in the humanitarian activity being sold.  My friend tells me that sales is all about establishing relationship. 

Yet relationship is the very reason I'm not a salesperson or a newsman, as my father wanted me to be.  Well, until he found out I was going to be a "college" professor.  (Somehow he never was able to say "community college professor.)  Being a professor had more status, in his mind, than being a newsman.  Anyway, my big problem with any activity requiring pushiness and hustle is that I can take no for an answer.  Especially from my friends.  My foot doesn't get stuck in doors.  I'm not the squeaky wheel.   When it comes to addressing conflict, I must quote Charlie Brown:  “No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!” 

Since this is my hundredth retirement blog post, I should have a little celebration.

Boston July 4 fireworks on a TV in a Boston flat

LY #62 News Rituals of Alzheimer's

I could write about how chaotic my public speaking class felt tonight and wonder what I would have done with it when I was younger, but instead I want to mention the rituals of news.

It was at the U of U of course that I learned of the ritual function of television news, how it served to express the horror of the day only to end with a human interest story that told us that no matter how wack things seemed, the people in power had control and we shouldn't worry because somewhere something good was happening to or being done by someone.  (For more on television as myth and ritual take a look at this 1987 Communication Research Trends review article.) 

I remembered this interpretation of the function of news this weekend while listening to an NPR story about Alzheimer's.  Pansy and Winston Green, a couple NPR has been following, are dealing with Pansy's Alzheimer's diagnosis.  The story is rather dark, as the disease has been progressing and even though she keeps her spirits up and fierce, her husband looks ahead into the darkness that he will be dealing with far more consciously than she will.  The story featured recordings from a planning committee of their local Alzheimer's association.  We hear one member of the committee struggling to find words for what he wants to say.  NPRs transcript quotes Winston:

"There is still fear," he says. "Not so much denial, but fear. ... You're with people that are that much advanced, and you're thinking, oh my gosh, this could be our journey."

He sees the future in the present of the other people there.  He has an honest fear.  His wife, however, is more optimistic.  She may imagine that she will be able to keep the control that she thinks she has.  The challenge for the writer is to allow both the reality and the optimism into the wrap up of the story. The award-winning journalist Ina Jaffe (one of my favorite NPR personalities) can do that.  She ends the story with these two sentences:

"The Greenes have spent 57 years accepting each other for who they are. They have no plans to stop now."

A happy ending for a dark story.  This vision, of the couple still whole, of that wholeness having a possible future, is a repetition of the "human interest" ritual ending.  Love offers a salvation.  For the moment.  The turn toward hope is a customary ritualized performance for American human interest writers.  Still.