The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and others are complaining about two "Quirksmith" comic strips that recently ran in the University of Virginia's Cavalier Daily. One has the Virgin Mary and Joseph talking about an "immaculately transmitted" rash. The second, titled "Christ on a Cartesian Plane," depicts the Crucifixion with a parabolic graph superimposed on the figure of Christ. The newspaper and university have received 2,000 letters about the cartoons.
Drawing a line
The Internet makes everything move faster. A comics controversy that began not long ago on a few blogs quickly spread to thousands of people and ended up in over a thousand complaining e-mails and phone calls by the time it made Fox News on Thursday evening.
It is unfortunate that so many people took offense to Grant Woolard's "Quirksmith" comics from Aug. 23 and 24, but we are operating under our comic censorship policy articulated in April, and will not be apologizing for the comics. We decide about censorship and apologies based on those standards, and not based on how many e-mails and phone calls we get.
Some critics have pointed out what they claim is a double-standard in our comic apologies. First of all, the apology referenced by most of the complaints -- an apology for a Nov. 29 "Schizophrenic Bosnian" comic -- was made by different editors, and thus we cannot speak to the motives for it. Secondly, earlier this year, we recognized the possibility for a double-standard in comic apologies, and developed a clear, specific standard delineating what content warrants censorship and apologies and what does not.
Another important thing to remember is that The Cavalier Daily is a college newspaper intended mostly for an 18 to 30-year-old audience. The vast majority of complaints we have gotten, however, are from people outside
Many of the people who have written us from around the country have said that they were hurt and saddened by the comics. If so, they were hurt needlessly. Our intent in letting those comics be published was never to rouse every congregation in the western hemisphere, as some other organizations have managed to do with our comics. While it may have served those groups' political purpose to work people into a frenzy over our comics, we regret being thrust into the culture war in this way. It's not a conflict we mean to take sides in, and few left-wing groups on Grounds would agree that we are biased in their favor. Just because a comic appears in our pages does not mean that the editors agree with the point or even find it in good taste. It only means that the comic fails to meet specific criteria that warrant censorship. We purposefully designed those criteria as loosely as possible to allow artists and writers the most latitude in expressing themselves. It's a level of freedom that few other types of publication are able to offer, and it's something we're proud of.
One of the most unfortunate parts of this whole saga is that University President John T. Casteen, III and other administrators have been subject to a barrage of e-mails and complaints about a matter over which they have no control. Those upset who complain Casteen may as well be writing to the Sultan of Brunei. The Cavalier Daily is completely independent of University funding and oversight -- which is the only way we can guarantee the freedom of our staff from censorship. Either those contacting him don't realize this, or they hope to entice the administration to clamp down. Fortunately, we value our freedom too much to allow non-journalists to censor our writers and artists. We will distribute The Cavalier Daily by hand on pieces of notebook paper before we ever allow that to change.
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