Few Irked by 'Doonesbury' Masturbation Strip

By: Dave Astor Numerous newspapers dropped the Sept. 7 "Doonesbury" mentioning masturbation because they didn't want to offend readers. So how many readers got offended when seeing the M-word in papers that did use the comic? Very few, according to a survey of editors by E&P Online.

"We didn't get one reader call," said the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News Deputy Managing Editor Steve Wright, speaking 10 days after the comic ran in his paper.

"I expected to get some reaction, but didn't get any," added Karen Hunter, reader representative at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant.

"We had very little reaction," said Margaret Sullivan, vice president and editor of The Buffalo (N.Y.) News. "There were, at most, a handful of phone calls."

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch received about 35 phone calls and e-mails criticizing the Sept. 7 comic, according to Susan Hegger, assistant managing editor for features. "It wasn't an overwhelming outcry," she said. "I was expecting a lot more" -- partly because the strip had been covered on TV and radio. In comparison, recalled Hegger, about 800 readers complained when the Post-Dispatch tried to drop the "Mark Trail" comic.

The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel received more than a dozen reader reactions, with the majority critical of the comic. "It wasn't an awful lot of response," said Public Editor Manning Pynn. "It's more than I hear on an average controversial item. But if something was really controversial, I'd get more than that."

So why weren't more people angry in various newspaper markets? One reason might be that readers aren't bothered as much as some cautious newspaper editors think by candid language in comics.

Also, Sullivan felt the comic wasn't that controversial. "To be honest, it wasn't a terribly close call for me," she said. "I didn't think it was something that would offend a lot of readers -- and it didn't."

The Sept. 7 comic -- by Garry Trudeau of Universal Press Syndicate -- showed Rev. Sloan reading a newspaper article about a (true-life) study saying regular masturbation might help prevent prostate cancer. Boopsie responded that talk about sex makes her uncomfortable. "You're dating yourself," said Sloan. To which Zonker added: "Hey, did you hear self-dating prevents cancer?"

Other possible explanations for the muted reaction? Hunter said it might have helped that the Courant warned readers about the Sept. 7 strip in a late-August story. "Because we told them the cartoon was coming and that we would run it, they already knew what the paper felt about it," she said. Five or 10 readers did complain about the Courant's decision to publish the then-upcoming comic after seeing the article.

Hunter said she also wrote about the comic in her Sept. 7 column, so readers might have felt the issue was "already addressed" by the newspaper.

Hegger said the longevity of the 1970-founded "Doonesbury" could also be a reason for the small number of complaints. "It has been in the newspaper so long that if people know they'll get riled up by it, they don't read it," she said.

Sullivan did observe that reaction to potentially controversial comics can vary by locale. "Community standards are different in different places," she said. "Editors have a good feel for what their readership will find unacceptable."

Wright added: "Each newspaper needs to judge its own market. You've got to know what your readers can handle. As we predicted, our readership was sophisticated enough to handle the word and handle how it was put in context."

Before the comic appeared, Trudeau stated: "The strip isn't really about masturbation or the prostate cancer study as such, but about the shifting nature of taboos and the inability of two adults to have a certain kind of serious conversation."

The cartoonist added: "It's a South Park world now, and younger readers are unlikely to be shocked or confused by anything they find in 'Doonesbury.'"

Indeed, many newspapers discuss sex and other potentially controversial topics in their non-comics pages. But there's still a feeling among some editors that comics sections should be "family-friendly" because they're seen as having more kid readers than most other parts of the paper. Even so, an increasing number of strips have dealt with societal issues in recent years.