Censored!
We’ll take a brief departure from Microholics, the book, because I want to indulge myself by realising a minor ambition.
There’s a cartoon in my archives which I’m very fond of. (I’ll be honest with you - some of the cartoons I’ve had published I’m very un-fond of. There’s a few in Microholics I’m a bit dubious about and which you may never see). However, the cartoon in question, and the one I’ve included here has never been published, and today, for the first time it will be!
Over a period of a few years in the ’80s I had a regular weekly slot in The Times on their technology page with my computer-related cartoons. All the stuff I submitted made it to press - except for one. And that’s the one you’re seeing today. The features editor phoned me to say sorry, he loved it, but the content was considered by his superiors as “too sensitive” for publication.
O well. That’s The Times for you. I wonder if a cheapo tabloid would have been quite so pernickety!
Here it is, and you can make your own judgements:
My judgement is - if, like me, you’re agnostic-verging-on-atheist, you’ll find it difficult to accept the kind of censorship that excludes a bit of innocent humour and rib-poking aimed at any religious subject.
And what I would like to know is this: Would the same paper publish this cartoon today (or something equally “sensitive”)? Have the times and The Times changed in a quarter of a century?
Acually, I don’t really care. I’m publishing it anyway.
Trouble is, a few more people read The Times than read my blog!
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On the subject of controversial IT related cartoons, this was published in the London Metro recently and has caused a bit of an uproar.
http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2009/04/hawking-cartoon-controversy.html
Is this more offensive than the above? Would they have published a similarly bad taste cartoon when Jade Goody was on her last legs?