http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/01/25/news-briefs/ The News Blog of Comics Culture Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:31:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.2 http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/01/25/news-briefs/#comment-43143 Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:56:35 +0000 http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/01/25/news-briefs/#comment-43143 I think there's two very important considerations to be made about that Crumb article: Crumb is not really exemplary of anyone other than Crumb (and saints be praised for that both ways), as he's said on more than one occasion that despite being adopted as a hippy poster child he didn't care for the scene too much; and no offense to the writer, but I don't think she gets that the biggest butt (ahem) of Crumb's jokes is Crumb himself. Yes, he's misogynistic and racist, but by putting as much of that as he can into his work he demonstrates acute awareness of these failings that your more PC storytellers would like to pretend they don't have. Could you imagine the Michael Richards-like uproar today if a well-regarded cartoonist did a strip with the sell-line, "Hey Mom, can we have Nigger Hearts® for lunch?"? If he didn't already live in France he'd have to flee there. I think there’s two very important considerations to be made about that Crumb article: Crumb is not really exemplary of anyone other than Crumb (and saints be praised for that both ways), as he’s said on more than one occasion that despite being adopted as a hippy poster child he didn’t care for the scene too much; and no offense to the writer, but I don’t think she gets that the biggest butt (ahem) of Crumb’s jokes is Crumb himself. Yes, he’s misogynistic and racist, but by putting as much of that as he can into his work he demonstrates acute awareness of these failings that your more PC storytellers would like to pretend they don’t have. Could you imagine the Michael Richards-like uproar today if a well-regarded cartoonist did a strip with the sell-line, “Hey Mom, can we have Nigger Hearts® for lunch?”? If he didn’t already live in France he’d have to flee there.

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