Letters to the Editor
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Another cartoon
I saw a similar cartoon last week with a family with two mothers, neither of whom could balance their checkbook or throw a baseball.
It was just as funny.
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Well ...
I think the whole cartoon was just an excuse to use the word "dearth" in public.
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Enh.
I have been a fan of Breathed's since I ran an Opus in '86! campaign, but I think that this one kinda flopped. I get the point (as a gay woman planning a family, I'm with it), but I don't like the angle. As someone below pointed out, the implication would be that two dads would be a problem... which I assume is not Breathed's point. And it hasn't an ounce of subtlety. Breathed can normally make his case without a sledgehammer.
--TR
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Yay!
Awesome!
I grew up reading Bloomsbury. It was one of the highlights of my week as a kid! And today, after reading this, it didn't quite make me nostalgic so much as grateful. Grateful that Breathed's clarity and humor is still a public resource. Thanks for bringing him back into my life!
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Varia
1) The "preaching to the choir" posters may not know that Opus now runs in many sunday comics sections, not just Salon, and that choir isn 't totally fine with gay parenting;
2) To someone who objected to the "Dinkle will grow up to be an unlovable loser" jest: it's a reference to another running character in Tom the Dancing Bug named Dinkle;
3) There is no need to read the strip as saying all men are bad parents. I read it as being a critique of the generalization "all children need a mother and a father," by posing *one* exmaple of a father many would not like to have. It is in no way an attack on fathering generally to say that not all fathers are good influences on children.
Signed,
One father who tries every day not to be like his father
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Sounds 'Fair' to me
I had objections when Berkeley Breathed was announced as your new cartoonist, because his comics in the old days were notoriously sexist and demeaning of women. I see he has grown up now and gotten a different perspective. I love it.
Right, now he is demeaning of men. (this of course is the way feminists see equality and fairness: demean only men)
I love Berke, but I do hope he is an EQUAL OPPORTUNITY insulter, raking some women over the coals as well as some men.
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Well I object!
...to the orange trees. What, is it fall already?
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'Twas ever thus.
If there's a bad parent, it must be the dad.
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@The Professor.
You're right that this can't be seen as saying that all fathers are bad parents. Like any work of fiction, it only deals with its own characters in their particular situations. But of course you could make the same remark about The Feminine Mystique and countless other feminist works which (rightly in my opinion) criticized popular culture as demeaning toward women. The reason the feminist writings were right is the same reason the ones of us who object to this cartoon are right now - it falls into line with an astonishing number of other TV programs and commercials, novels, short stories, advertising, etc. which denigrate men generally and make the false point that men make incompetent, indifferent and usually brutal parents. If all you do is look at individual works in isolation, you won't see a pattern, but that doesn't mean there's not one.
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Stupid, sexist, ham-fisted, blunt, and already done, several times.
In the comments under the Joan Walsh column that introduced Breathed's stint at Salon, an anonymous commentator (not me) summed up my thoughts exactly. I hope s/he doesn't mind me reposting his/her comment here:
"Between the introduction of Opus and a 'new' column by Camille Paglia, Salon continues to bring its readers roaring into the 1990s!!!
Opus sucks. Breathed came back like some kind of prima donna, demanded the strip be run no smaller than 1/2 page in any paper that carried it (meaning other deserving artists got the chop unnecessarily), and then proceeded to give us a weak, watered-dowon and uninspired recycling of Bloom County gags. (Comics fans have noted a couple of strips that appear to be straight recycling of BC strips.)
America has never been more at need of piercing political satire. And Salon runs some of the best around - Tom the Dancing Bug, This Modern World - but adding Opus solely on name recognition value is another editorial step backwards. I haven't been this disappointed in a decision (other than the Paglia column) since the hated Pink Ghetto was created."
What s/he said. He also, in a Salon interview, bitched about 'celebrity children's book authors', apparently suffering from the delusion that he himself is not one. As if anyone would have published his childrens' books if he'd never had a monster hit with Bloom County and become a celebrity.
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thanks a lot!
I'd like to thank all the people who objected to this cartoon for perpetuating the stereotype that liberals are humorless and dogmatic.
Lighten up!
Anyone who isn't mired in political correctness would understand that the point isn't that men are bad, but that the assumption that a man (and by extrapolation, any person) is automatically a more fit parent simply because of his gender is ridiculous.
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I loved it
Heh, heh. Really struck a nerve with some of the lads!
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Screen fitting
I still think this cartoon would work better if it scrolled
d
o
w
n
and not a c r o s s.
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Hattie
Sounds like some of you bitches are enjoying your man-bashing, as well.
Keep playing to the stereotype!
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yeah, right
Troll alert!
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It all comes back to
people emphasising the behavior of the worst 10% of a gender and then extrapolating out that all members of that gender are at least patrly like this bad egg.
but this only works one way.
for if a man points to the worst 10% of women, implying that all women are to some extent like that woman, woe be him.
women don't put up with that shit.
But feminism made it virtually a sacrament to paint all men based on the behavior of the worst of us.
worse yet, a generation or two of boys grew up comfortable withe the notion that they can also bash their worst 10% lessers, as Breathed does here.
dirtier secret: way too many women are attracted to bad apple douchebag men like flies to honey. The worse the guy,m the more they lust for him. So this shit gets perpetuated generationally by the women themselves- a jobs program if I ever saw one.
women always love to trash men, but few women are fair or decent enough to expect men bashing women in return. one core problem with feminism that is being resolved as we speak.