Deborah Howell, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, talks about why two recent Opus strips weren’t run in the paper, starting with the one from Aug. 22:
Executive Editor Len Downie decided to kill the strip because he felt the language and depiction of Muslim female dress could be offensive. He consulted with other editors, one of whom talked to a Muslim staff member, who believed the strip was problematic.
Comics have long featured social commentary; think back to “Pogo” and “Li’l Abner.” And comics have been killed before in The Post. “The Boondocks,” a black-oriented strip no longer being drawn, was dropped several times. Editors killed episodes of the old comic strip “B.C.” that they found anti-Semitic, Downie said. “We keep things out of the paper every day that we think are inappropriate.”
Around 100 or so people complained about the Post not running the strip, she said. About the Sept. 2 strip, she says:
The reasons that strip wasn’t published are murky. Downie said he did not kill it. Other editors thought that the Writers Group thought it would be hard to understand without seeing the first strip. Alan Shearer, Writers Group editorial director, said he made that point but did not want either strip killed.
She adds that the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, who did run both strips, also got complaints … or complaint, anyway. Each received a total of one complaint.
