Does the comic "Family Circus" run in your local newspaper? If so, our condolences. It is a cloying and unfunny single daily panel on weekdays and a multipanel comic on Sundays. It frequently uses Christian imagery — the original cartoonist, Bil Keane, now dead, was Roman Catholic. Our battle-ax Catholic grandmother adored it ('nuff said).
Today, we cats went to war with the "Family Circus." Our local paper, the Albany Times Union, ran a single panel that played off President John F. Kennedy's "Ask Not" theme from his Inaugural Address. The comic was insipid and meaningless. But did they really have to run it on the 61st anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination?
The editor of the Times-Union instantly blamed King Features, saying that the syndicate dictates the content and dates of the comics they send — although earlier this year, that same editor had no trouble policing "Doonesbury" when Garry Trudeau dared to bring up Trump's rape adjudication in civil court. He banished "Doonesbury" to the editorial page. Not the first time in 50 years that that's happened.
"We live in interesting times," he wrote, a cliché we're sure he reaches for whether he's answering a complaint from the right or the left. We cats didn't answer him. But we did write to King Features to complain.
Are we dating ourselves? Yes, we have nine lives, but even Americans with only one life, if they're old enough, will never forget November 22, 1963. Sadly, if the people in today's newspaper industry don't remember John F. Kennedy, one would hope that at least they'd have enough institutional knowledge to refrain from printing crap. Another reason American journalism is in the toilet. We cats HISS.
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