Ashcroft's War on C*nt -- really?

Cafe Society
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There are faint ripples in the blogosphere regarding pressure from the Attorney General’s Office compelling award-winning alternative-press cartoonist Tony Millionaire to replace a venerated Gemanic monosyllable with the word “vagina” in one of his strips.

The publisher of the strip supposedly received three written complaints from the State Attorney General’s office, and follow-up telephone calls to that office indicated that there is a directive from the Federal AGO to the individual states’ AG’s to “clean up” print media.

Here’s one example – everyone else seems to repeat this same bare details.

What, if anything, is going on here? The mention of “April Fools” in the strip in question provides some hope that it’s an early prank of some sort, but it doesn’t seem like a terribly exaggerated step for folks with a “Pay no attention to the boob behind the curtain” philosophy.

Does anyone have any more detail on this? Text of letters? Any other moves to bowdlerize alternative press comics or columns?

What’s the deal, here?

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True or not, it certainly says something about John Ashcroft that this even seems plausible.

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So, it’s a story in a blog on the 17th. It still has made NO newpaper that I can find.

Hard to believe it if it hasn’t surfaced somewhere other than a few web pages.

It would certainly be a freedom of speech issue, and warrant national news.

I say not true.

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Scott Kurtz from PVsP says hoax.

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In practice, print media and the internet have absolute first amendment protection that does not apply to broadcast media. While charges of obscenity can technically be brought upon print media, case law falls so heavily on the side of being able to print any words in any context that I can’t imagine any state attorney general even trying this.

Especially in an alternative paper. They ain’t for kiddies. The Straight Dope is published in lots of alternative papers, and look at what Cecil has handled over the years.