I was just gonna say, if the comic strips aren’t funny, the terrorists win, which is pretty good evidence that Johnny Hart is working for al-Qaida.
Characters looked wooden and the few I read weren’t terribly funny.
Old recycled jokes shot out from stiff emotionless characters isn’t cutting edge.
I’m a believer in freedom of the press.
I am a big comics supporter.
Given all that, this strip has little to offer, & may or may not be ironic.
The banning is not an offence against Art.
See, I don’t know if you’re Jewish, Johnny, but if you’re not then YOU ought to be banned for making me laugh with stereotypically Jewish speech patterns.
If people had read the rest of the post, I DID say that I know the school has the right to do what they want with their paper, I was just saying that it’s just stupid for them to make such a big deal out of it.
To put it another way:
If the college banned a comic because it made fun of God, would those who say the punishment was just still say so? What if it was just a little jab at Britney Spears? Do you see where I’m going with this?
Maybe the comic was offensive, but at what point do you allow certain things to be said/printed, and at what point do you not allow it?
If it was my comic that was suspended, I’d go on making it, print it out on flyers, and hand them out between classes. Of course, I’d also make it, you know…funny.
Simple answer: the point is where the editor says it is. Thats what they do. If the administration doesn’t agree they get another editor. Sure most editors suck but it is a judgement call and it’s their call. If I were the editor I would have handed the comic back and told him to be more funny or more insightful or both.
Actually, I thought some of the cartoons were quite funny. Nothing spectacular, but I chuckled. And I laughed at the original joke, because I interpreted it as making fun of how ridiculous the stereotype was. But that’s not necessarily hwo ti was intended, I admit. As an experiment, I thought of a polarising issue, and made two versions of the joke:
A: I have nothing to put in todays strip. I had a Kerry joke, but it was too offensive.
B: Worried about your reputation?
A: No, I’m just worried my hand might get paper cuts when he flip-flops.
A: I have nothing to put in todays strip. I had a Bush joke, but it was too offensive.
B: Worried about your reputation?
A: No, I’m just worried that stupidity might be that contagious.
Obviously the punchlines are telegaphed too much now, but I think they’re both funny, but for different reasons, as one negative stereotype I agree with (well, have sympathy for, though don’t believe is literally true), and the other I don’t. So it could go either way.
A vote for not funny at all, and mildly offensive. I see the logic in the explanations for why it could be considered funny, but it doesn’t work for me. Some of the others ones gave me a mild chuckle, which is pretty good, considering that writing a funny comic strip, sort of like stand-up comedy, is so much harder than it looks/seems.
I was thinking about this earlier, and your comment about stand-up made me realise where the problem is. As with any other form of joke-telling, the straightforward punchline needs timing (whether or not there’s some double-irony over offensiveness is irrelevant). The cartoon tells every joke in the same three-part manner (My dog has no nose / how does he smell / terrible). Once upon a time, that was an effective way to tell jokes. Now, it’s just predictible.
The current king of predicible comic strips is Trudeau. His punchlines are rarely less obvious than those in the OP’s cartoon. The difference is they’re led up to in unfamiliar ways - typically four frames, with five or six pieces of dialogue. Or nothing but silence between the first and last frames. Or the punchline isn’t even in the last frame, but jumps out early. That’s comic timing in use.
(Incidentally, I can think of two examples of stand-up comedians who clearly manage a similar subversion of traditional jokes - Peter Kay, who reels out a string of over-familiar jokes to the point where one runs into the next, and Bill Bailey and his fifteen minute ‘man-walked-into-a-pub’ excursions. Other suggestions welcome 
)
was about to update to say IANA ;j, since it seems when reporting offense or not, people report Jewish/non-Jewish status. I’m not, really, BUT [slight hijack] I remembered as I was writing this that about a year ago we learned that my grandfather was mostly Russian, not German, and that his father was an observant Jew. My grandfather and his brothers spoke Yiddish. What’s crazy is my grandfather never told my grandmother this - just told her he was German. He was born in Russia, which we knew.[/slight hijack]
Funny? Not so much.
Should never have got through quality control.
I know college comics are tend to be quite infantile and offensive by their very nature, but they should at least be funny.
This was just a big “meh”.
( IANJ-But I got my one Jewish grandparent’s sense of humour)
Does anyone remember Tuba Diva’s sage advice that was a sticky until recently?
It was along the lines of “please think twice about posting things which could land you in a heap o’trouble if you said it in real life”
Regarless of the intentions of the authors, telling even ironic anti-Semitic jokes proves to have easily avoidable consequences.
Were the students suspended from school for four weeks? I don’t know the particulars of school suspensions. Do you stay home and not go to class at all, and do no schoolwork? Or do you go to class but have to spend time in detention every day, and not participate in extracurriculars? I’ve heard of people being suspended for three days or so, as punishment, but a four-week suspension would simply wreck the semester for most highschoolers. As bad as the cartoons might have been, it seems excessive. A three-day suspension and a public apology would make more sense IMHO.
Or were they suspended from working on the paper?
Pith it was answered:
These aren’t equivalent situations. Most likely, none of the readers at your college are God, or Britney Spears, but some of them may very well be Jewish.
I’m half Jewish, and I thought the Jewish joke was quite funny, and not offensive… partly for the reasons already mentioned, and partly because it’s taking the stereotype to such a ridiculous degree. If it had just ended “because I’m afraid that the Jewish bankers will reposess my house” then it would be unfunny, because it’s just repeating the stereotype. But talking about the Jewish bankers beating him to death with their enormous noses? That’s obviously not an actual fear someone would actually have, thus, it strikes me as funny.
I thought I recognized that comic…
It’s from the Daily Illini of University of Illinois, if that’s useful information for anyone else, and you can read their opinion section here.
I thought the comic strip was a little bit funny. I also think the suspension is ridiculous. People need to stop being so effing PC all the time. It’s a joke! I suppose the people that suspended this comic strip writer would have a heart attack if they saw the student magazine at Auckland University. A picture of a womans genitalia instead of a cheeseburger in a parody of a McDonalds ad and nobody bats an eyelid… people need to relax, it’s just a comic strip - and making fun of stereotypes is well within the realm of acceptable - especially in a student publication.
In case you missed it, there were events over the past 70 years that caused a certain sensitivity toward jokes about Jews.
Maybe you missed it entirely, in which case we’ll let you know, but be prepared to be in for one hell of a shock.
Oh, and moronic generic jokes just aren’t funny, anyway.
This comic strip is not anti semitic. It is not displaying hostility towards the jews. It is making a joke based on a common stereotype. This is acceptable. Sure, we can debate whether it was funny or not - but, even if it wasn’t funny - that is not a reason to suspend a writer and an editor from a magazine.