Where To Find Opus On Sunday

Berkeley Breathed has a note up on his site: "Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.."

It's all too common now

[smallpaul]

Western publishers are self-censoring anything remotely offensive to Muslims. This is just evidence that threats, intimidation and terrorism work. Americans will go to any lengths to "fight terrorism" by invading countries basically uninvolved in terror, but given the chance to simply stand up and say: "we won't be intimidated by threats" the press folds like a three legged card table. Grow a pair!

Re:Danes did it first...

[CubeNudger]

Well, just off the top of my head, why were Islamic death squads not going after Christopher Hitchens on his latest book tour? He has said things about Islam that are FAR more offensive than the Danish cartoons (though they didn't "visually depict Mohammad," a crime thats committed by Muslims quite often) but there was not fatwa pronounced against him. It's predictable that the extremist Muslims get riled up by this stuff, but who knows what stuff will rile them up and what won't. Like I said, its unlikely that many of them even SAW the Danish cartoons.

Re:Bizarro Slashdot

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Usually we get left with crap like Cathy and Garfield that recycle jokes day after day.

I liked all three of the strips mentioned in the parent post for some time, but please don't forget the important part of the history of Bloom County where it was as "pat," as recycled, and as predictable as Garfield raised to the Cathy power. In its last few years (I'd say from about early 1987 on), Bloom County was recycling a lot of crap jokes. At that point, the quality of the strip ranged, depending on the day, from a high of maybe-a-slight-chuckle to a low of oh-my-gosh-did-they-really-waste-paper-and-ink-on- such-a-heavily-rehashed-and-thoroughly-unfunny-str ip. That was sad, because that high had previously been the strip's low range, with some true classics. I have to wonder if Bill Watterson's decision to quit doing Calvin and Hobbes when it was enormously popular has something to do with Watterson not wanting the strip to utterly suck like Bloom County did in its last years. I bought and enjoyed Bloom County books in the 1980s, but I had completely quit reading the strip by mid-to-late 1987. I think I gave Opus a chance when it appeared, but saw no reason to read it. There was another Breathed comic between those two, but it also blew goats like late Bloom County. I admit I had started to get disappointed in the strip before that. In the early parts of Bloom County, Opus was drawn with a much smaller and penguin-like beak. There were comments about his ugliness. As the years wore on, Opus was made cuter and cuter, and his beak grew to be too big for a frickin' pelican, let alone a penguin. It was, however, much more suited to making cute and lucrative Opus stuffed toys. In the early strips, like during the "Cockroach Revolution," roaches were drawn as little lines representing bodies with littler lines representing legs. Later, the character of "Milquetoast," the cute cockroach (I shit you not) came along. Ugh.
Watterson was right, you know. As great as the moments were that Calvin and Hobbes gave us, it did get to the point where I would say things like "OK, another week of violently killed snowmen" when I read the Monday strip. Some of the new versions of old jokes could get a chuckle or even possibly even a snort out of me, but it was typically one in a week or so of strips.
Of the three strips cited in the parent, only The Far Side didn't appear to lose anything over the years. When Larson quit in the mid-1990s, the strip was still as funny and as bizarre as it had been when I first saw it in the early 1980s. It also holds a special place in my heart as one of the greatest mainstream outlets of nerd humor. Futurama has taken that to much higher levels of sophistication (I have a Ph.D. in physics and completed requirements for a B.S. in math, and some of the science and math jokes on Futurama have blown right over my head), but The Far Side did it first and probably better. The Far Side's influence in academic circles was so great that a joke term [wikipedia.org] from a Far Side panel in 1982 has been adapted for informal use by scientists in the field. There's something to be said for nerd "in jokes" so "in" that a trained theoretical physicist, one who happens to be known for how observant he is, can totally miss them, but there's also something to be said for a single panel on the comics page that brought nerd sensibilities to the larger public more effectively, which The Far Side did. I was a kid/adolescent for most of the 1980s, and I remember lots of non-nerd adults liking The Far Side. Larson brought "our" (nerd) culture to a wider audience in a more positive way than just about all portrayals of nerds in popular culture did before or have since.

Anyone remember the South Park issue with this?

[DigitalSorceress]

Anyone remember the South Park episode "Cartoon Wars", where the show was making fun of the western reaction, and itself was censored? The irony for me was that they had an episode maybe a year or two before that where Mohammed was clearly shown as one of the super heroes in the "Super Best Friends" episode. There hadn't been a blip back then. What's even funnier is that if you watch South Park reruns, the "Cartoon Wars" episode still has the controversial scene censored, but the "Super Best Friends" has been shown since with no alterations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park [wikipedia.org]

The Cartoon Wars episode was played uncensored in the UK, and the world failed to end - go figure.

Re:Danes did it first...

[mmarlett]

I used to be the editor in chief of an alt-weekly in Wichita, Kansas. I ran all the Danish cartoons with a long editorial about how I got into the business as an editorial cartoonist and could never stand the cowardice of the establishment. There was little public outcry ... just a couple of people telling me I wasn't being sensitive to muslims, which I explained I was aware of doing in the column anyway.

A while later, I was reading a column in the major daily's newspaper about how they were not going to ever print "Opus" because when they ran "Bloom County" in the '80s and '90s it "didn't poll well with readers." Well, it just so happens that "Bloom County" is what inspired me to become an editorial cartoonist and therefore what got me into the newspaper business. It was incredibly popular with me and all my friends, so I guess it was just the newspaper wanting to hold on to the geriatric (dead and dying) readers. So I wrote the Washington Post Writers Group (the "Opus" syndicator) this story and asked them if I could get an affordable deal on running "Opus" in my alt weekly. They sold it to me for about $10 a week.

If I was still editor of that paper, I'd be running that cartoon this week. But they killed it as soon as I left. Of course, it's circulation and popularity has dropped like a rock because the new owner refuses to be controversial in any way. How can you run a weekly and not be an alt-weekly?

Re:Direct link to the first strip

[Reality Master 101]

Trying to pretend religion is the cause of humankind's problems and that people would all get along merrily if it were not for religion is just as absurd.

True, but trying to pretend that religion *isn't* a major cause of humankind's problems is just as absurd. People woudn't get along merrily if religion didn't exist, but a big source of large-scale organized violence would simply go away. There are a lot of people who hate other people solely for the reason of their religion.

To be fair, I'm not sure how to measure the good that comes from religion, and how many people need religion for stability in their lives. On balance, I believe religion is a net evil in the world, but I admit that's hard to prove.

Jesus advertises cigarettes one island away

[SL Baur]

Interesting, that's a Malaysian newspaper and Christians are a minority there. Next door in the Philippines, I've seen cigarette ads with Jesus and they're 90% Catholic. I'll try to get a picture when I'm there next week.

Actually, the most offensive thing I ever saw there was a shop with side by side posters on the wall, one of the blonde-haired blue-eyed Catholic Jesus next to Brittney Spears.

Offense is absolutely in the eye of the beholder.

Re:Bizarro Slashdot

[Artifakt]

The problem with the invisible friends routine is it's simply stupid (Note I didn't say YOU are stupid, I said the routine's stupid).

What do you believe in?

Capitalists worship a giant invisible hand (and sacrifice people to it).
Socialists believe everyone will be honest and decent if they get elected.
Democrats believe in a 300% tax rate.
The NRA wants everyone to have their own Rocket Launchers.
The ACLU never defends anybody but Scum.
The French believe everybody is male (liberty, equality and fraternity - nothing about sorority there) (Yes, some English wags actually used this line in print discussing the revolution).
Quantum Physicists all keep cats locked up in boxes, how cruel.
People who believe in George Washington all think he was stronger than the Incredible Hulk (to throw a silver dollar across a broad river)...

      There's no real belief or opinion that can't be oversimplified to the point of looking absurd. Name a few beliefs of your own, and somebody will be glad to reduce everything you stand up for to a sound-bite and try to make you look like a fool too.
      Most Christians, Muslims, etc. believe that God is a spirit - what's so strange about believing that a spirit is invisible, it would be even stranger if they thought that it wasn't. Now you want something really silly, try the trinity. That three in one business is weird enough to be part of Scientology's schtick.

      Now as a Christian, I'll gladly defend your right to make fun of us. Yes, you should be able to make either jokes or serious and realistic criticisms of my beliefs. The real question is, are you, I or anyone else actually benefiting from making this particular criticism?

Re:Thanks for missing the point

[Lemmy Caution]

Were the Columbine shooters motivated by religion when they did, essentially, the same thing?

I'm an atheist, by the way. I just find this argument against religion facile and specious.

Re:It's all too common now

[Angst Badger]

It's not just Islam. The press goes out of its way to avoid direct offense to the other major religions as well, often to the point of actively pandering to them. How many times in the past several years has one of the newsweeklies had a cover story on Jesus? And Jesus is news exactly how? How often do we see articles on the "debate" over evolution?

It's distantly possible that there is some actual fear of terrorism at work, but I suspect that most of the time, the guiding principle is what will best serve the real master of corporate media: Mammon.

Re:Bizarro Slashdot

[Lijemo]

Adults, if they feel their workplace is mentally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive towards them can quit and go someplace else. If it's bad enough, they can press charges or sue.

A kid in school can't leave. They just have to either put up with it, or lash out.

How the heck does that prepare someone for the real, grown-up world? The only part of the real-world where the bullying dynamic works the way it does in school is prison. And maybe, to a lesser extent, the army-- but nowhere else.

Oh, do please keep your fear and ignorance...

[Fantastic Lad]

to yourself.

Here's facts for you.

Bullshit. You have no facts. Produce a list of papers which have cut the strip and then you can begin to think around the word, "Fact". Produce non-isolated examples of the kind of liberal bias you are accusing of in those papers, and then you can begin to sell your point.

Since you can't do any of this, what we really have here is a typical example of Right Wing emotionalism. (The operative emotions being Fear and Hate, which the typical Right-Wing Bush supporter allows to direct his Judgment and Rationality.)

Newspapers are a collection of ideas folded together into a sheaf of reading material. The Typical Right-Wing brain is naturally going to sift out things to get angry about, regardless of how balanced the reporting might be, which in a typical newspaper today, is totally not balanced at all. I see propaganda wherever I look, and think that the so-called "Liberal Media" is an utter and complete sham designed to support the Military Industrial Complex. But I hail from the Left of Left. Can you tell?.

That's not a conscious choice on my part, by the way. It's a result.

It's the result of how I choose to live:

I choose to live with my emotions under control; to not let fear rule my thoughts and actions. --To seek rationality over knee-jerk emotionalism. --It's not that I have anything against emotions. I love emotions! They guide us and make us human. But there's two ways to be human. You can let emotions show you how to let compassion be your guide, or you can let emotions lead you through fear. Fear is easy. Fear is basic, reptillian brain stuff. It's the default setting. The one which evolution has been moving away from for a ba-zillion years.

If the media were truly 'Liberal', we would know a great deal more than we do through it. We wouldn't be at war, for starters. (Since the Bush admin keeps on repeating straight-faced, shameless lies in the psychopath's knowledge that doing so will make people believe them even with gobs of contrary evidence sitting right out in the open, one should also keep on repeating the Truth. . .

"There were no WMD's in Iraq. The Bush team LIED, saying that Saddam could launch an attack in 45 minutes. (Remember that?) They even delivered the age-old sales line, 'The Troops will be home in ten weeks.'" And people fell for it! They actually fell for it again! --And now hundreds of thousands of regular people are dead while a small group of people has made millions. You want to talk facts? THOSE are facts. You cannot dispute them unless you are insane. We do not have a Liberal media. Pulling Opus was either fear related, (editors believing their own lies and not wanting the frightful hand of Islam to blow up their offices. (Groan.) --Or it was a manipulation designed to spark outrage in people like you and play on everybody else's fears. But whatever the case, I can assure you that it had absolutely nothing to do with compassion.

As it is, we must spend enormous effort cross referencing stories and digging and back-checking just to scrape out truth from the mountain of misleading crud served up every day. I know several guys who work in journalism. Each one of them is a true liberal in the political sense, and they report (privately) the same thing. To quote one of them (as best I can from memory):

"If you speak out against the party line on anything, then you don't work. There is no truth in journalism. We're all whores or robots. This is a disgusting, juvenile, toxic industry where the only successful people in it are incredibly ignorant, back-stabbing and greedy, with no care whatsoever about truth."

-FL

Re:Bizarro Slashdot

[couchslug]

"Without arguing your point, I would simply like to know how you can reconcile that statement with the fact that an atheistic ideology (communism) was responsible for the death of 60M-100M in the last century and the enslavement of nearly half the world's population."

I view Communism as "blowback".
It only took root where decadent theistic societies failed so badly that the desperate populace wanted an alternate ideology to justify and focus their rage against those who exploited them.
The body count is merely a function of modern killing methods and the size of the primary (Russia and China) Communist countries.

Re:Fuck all panderers and Muslims

[d3ac0n]

Except that you are completely and totally missing the point.

Nobody (and I mean NOBODY) is claiming that Western society is free of injustice and evil. We have our problems and we know it. However, unlike the societies that Islam is in total control of, Western Society generally abhors and works to eliminate those problems. Wife beating (or any form of domestic abuse) is one of these problems.

We here in the west find spousal abuse of be vile and disgusting, and work to eliminate it. Islam, on the other hand, actually ESPOUSES wife beating when one's wife is "Disobedient". IE: she doesn't act like the slave she is. See The Quran, Sura 4, verses 17-34, specifically verse 34:

004.034
YUSUFALI: Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all).
PICKTHAL: Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.
SHAKIR: Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.

Contrast this to Christianity, where men are instructed to treat their wives with respect and kindness:

Ephesians 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Ephesians 5:28
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Colossians 3:19
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

There are more, but the point is, that the contrast between Islam and the other great religions of the world could not be more stark. Western society, which is generally based around the Judeo-Christian ethos also stands in contrast to Islam.

Are we in the West perfect? Hell no! Does this mean that we should not then condemn the abject barbarism of a backwards and genocidal religion like Islam? Hell no.