*BREAKING NEWS* *MUST CREDIT KING OF POINTLAND*
For the first time in my recollection, the Washington Post Weekend section has no Tom the Dancing Bug comic. Fortunately, I subscribe to Salon and was able to read it there. As you can see, the topic is the Holocaust. Did an editor at the Post decide not to run the comic because the topic was deemed too controversial?
I hope that's not the case, because if it is, I will have no choice but to riot.
UPDATE: I asked weekend@washpost.com about this. Their response:
Hello.
We held Tom this week because of an unexpected lack of space and not enough time to come up with a better solution. It'll be back in the section next week.
Hmmmmm. That's great, but it doesn't address my unexpected lack of not being pissed off.
You may have heard that Cindy Sheehan, invited to the State of the Union Address by Democratic Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, was arrested, led away in handcuffs, booked, and fingerprinted for wearing an anti-war t-shirt. The charges were later dropped. (Oops!) About forty-five minutes into the speech, Beverly Young, the wife of Republican Congressman C.W. Bill Young, was also asked to leave (though not arrested), in this case because of her "Support the Troops" t-shirt. The Capitol Police apparently thought "it was kind of only fair" to do so after having removed Sheehan.
Congressman Young was outraged, naturally. One might think it was the flagrant violation of free speech rights that so angered him. Well, not quite:
"When your wife is insulted and embarrassed, you do tend to get a little offended," Young said yesterday, explaining his upbraiding of [Capitol Police Chief Terrance] Gainer that night and his fervent speech on the House floor yesterday morning, when he waved the shirt and bellowed about his wife's ejection: "Shame! Shame!"
Young said he wouldn't be so mad if it were just Sheehan. "I totally disagree with everything she stands for," he said. But by removing his wife, Gainer's officers clearly "acted precipitously," Young said.
Sadly, I suspect that when it comes to the public's attitude toward the First Amendment's speech protections, the Representative's views may be representative.
