Blood ... and Guts.

Hello.

Yesterday, I got this question from a reader:

“In light of the recent spinal weaknesses exhibited by The Washington Post, I’m just curious: What was The Post's stance when cartoonists were drawing Muhammad and being threatened with death?” — Tom Logan, Sterling, Va.

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Good question, Tom, especially because we are right now at the ten-year anniversary of the assassinations of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and staffers in Paris. Afterwards, illustrators worldwide — but more so, their bosses — were wary of the possible consequences of provoking and antagonizing religious fanatics. Everyone was walking on eggshells. The incendiary spark had been about cartoons of the prophet Muhammad; under some interpretations of Koranic laws, this is forbidden.

After the massacre, my son, Dan, and I — and our Barney & Clyde co-creator, artist David Clark — decided to say something strong about the savagery and ignorant zealotry behind it; as cartoonists, we wanted it to be jarring and defiant and even a bit risky. We came up with an idea, wrote it, drew it, and then submitted it to our bosses.

They were stalwart. Post management looked at the cartoon and gulped and said okay. It was a different time, with different circumstances, different people. Jeff Bezos had just bought the paper, but the cartoon didn’t threaten his interests. The executive editor was Marty Baron. The editor at my syndicate, which distributed the strip nationally, was (and still is) Amy Lago. Spines intact.

That’s the cartoon, above.

It was based, in its general concept, on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte’s famous surrealist 1929 painting, The Treachery of Images, which is an image of a pipe, labeled “This is not a pipe.”

The day the cartoon ran, I was interviewed by The Post’s gifted comics critic, Michael Cavna. Michael wanted me to explain what the hell we had just done, and why.

Here’s an excerpt:

“We kept coming back to the infantile absurdity of a group of people reacting with tooth-gnashing anger and deadly violence to something as unthreatening as lines drawn on paper.

“Who is even to say for sure who or what it is [that they’re looking at]? What if it were a stick figure labeled Muhammad? Or a cat labeled Muhammad? Would that even be Muhammad? Says who?

“The idea was we’d draw a figure that was possibly Muhammad, but label it ‘Not Muhammad,’ and he’d be walking to what was definitely a mountain, but it would be labeled, ‘Not a mountain.’ And the painting would be signed, ‘Not by Rene Magritte’ — which was definitely true — it was either by Cynthia Pillsbury [the strip’s 11-year-old girl], or by David Clark, depending on how you looked at it.

“So we had deliberately combined a truth, a lie and a maybe. We were posing Magritte’s question: Who is to define truth? The artist? The viewer? Who is in charge of reality?”

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It was also a challenge, I’d add today. Are you fanatics still going to say we’ve drawn Muhammad? On what grounds? On what grounds that justify murder?

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So. Back to your original question, Tom. Would the people who run today’s Washington Post have published this, back then?

I do not know. And, honestly, that bothers me a lot.

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Here is a link to Cavna’s interview. You’ll learn a lot more from him about the art of testing boundaries.

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Okay, almost done.

First things first. If you like what you are reading, and you have the wherewithal (it’s $4.15 a month), please consider upgrading your subscription to “paid.”

Second things second: Send in Questions and Observations to the Special Orange Button now:

And finally, today’s extraneous Gene Pool Gene Polls:

Here is a story from today’s Washington Post. By all means, read it if you can, but I can summarize it here, adequately, for purposes of a poll.

Late at night, an Indiana high school principal, a dean, and a basketball coach burst into the house of a student athlete and loudly demanded that he return electronic devices and other items that had been stolen from a visiting team’s locker room. His mother, who had been awakened by the yelling, ordered the kid to return the stuff, and he did. The three men took it away and returned it to the opposing coach.

The three had tracked the contraband with a location ping from a stolen Apple AirPod. The mother felt her home had been violated and her son intimidated. She complained to authorities. All three men were criminally charged with “residential entry,” a felony, and suspended from their jobs. A conviction will likely result in jail time.

None of the facts are significantly in dispute. No one seems to contend that the men physically broke into the house. The men said that when they knocked on the door, it swung open.

The men told the mother that they had done it to avoid having to report the crime to the police, thus saving the student the stigma of a criminal charge.

The student, 17, has not been charged with a crime.

Here comes the first poll:

And the second poll:

Thanks, we’re done. See you tomorrow with The Invitational Gene Pool, featuring one of our best winners ever.

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