November 6th, 2009 11:36am
Linda Grist Cunningham
Sometimes I just love a tempest in a teapot. Takes my mind off the serious issues I deal with everyday. Occasionally it’s fun to get all pseudo-excited about not much. So, when Jeremy’s parents took their clothes off in the Zits strip, well, I pulled it, sent nasty-grams to the syndicate and cartoonists.
Zits is back on Sunday.
OK, yes, I was sorta serious. Some of our readers were just nuts over naked cartoon characters and didn’t “get it” that the strip was riffing off the fat cherubs of “Love Is…” fame. But, really, as I told the syndicate rep, I just don’t have time for dumb stuff. Put the clothes back on.
Bless the folks at King Features. The responded seriously and well. This from comics editor Brendan Burford:
“Hello Linda, John Killian alerted me to the unfortunate feedback you’ve been receiving about the recent ZITS comic strips. As you and John both noted, you never know what might touch a nerve with readers, and I apologize for the grief you’ve experienced as a result of the naked cherub-like LOVE IS… parodies featured in ZITS this week.
“We felt that many Americans know the characters from the LOVE IS… feature and that this was a fair parody. We also felt that the nudity of the characters in the ZITS strips was no more gratuitous than the cherubs in the original feature, and decided to allow the strips through. I assure you we did consider these strips, both from a legal stand point (the parody) and a taste stand point (the nudity) before allowing them through the pipeline.
“To my knowledge, out of the 1,600+ newspapers that ZITS appears in, your readers are the only ones who have had such a problem with the depiction. That said, these complaints don’t always reach my desk.
“The ZITS creators, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman are at the very top of their profession and we’re proud of how many people relate to, laugh with and are touched by their strip everyday. I know you can expect to see only the very best quality from them for many years to come. Although some readers may have been bent out of shape over these couple of strips, the joy and laughter ZITS brings readers throughout the year can’t be measured. It frustrates me that sometimes the noise made by a dissenting few can eclipse the overwhelming number of people who find something truly wonderful on a daily basis.”
I say, well said. Now, back to seeing what other mischief is happening in the comics.
November 5th, 2009 04:05pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
I just pulled my favorite comic strip, Zits. And, it’ll stay pulled until creators Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman put some clothes back on Jeremy’s parents.
If you don’t follow Zits, none of this will matter to you. If you do read Zits, here’s why it’s gone for now. Seems Scott and Borgman ran out of sophisticated ideas and decided to riff on the tired, goofy, pudgy “Love Is…” cherubs with a series of strips titled “Love Isn’t…”
Not original, but, hey, doing a daily strip is hard work and not every idea is gonna be great. This one careened off the table to flat out dumb when they decided to take off the clothes of Jeremy’s parents.
Since I do not have the time nor the inclination to deal with the ruckus those naked parents created among some of our comics’ readers, I pulled the strip and sent a note to King Features, the syndicated distributor. Said note said: Strip pulled until the clothes come back.
Unfortunately, the Friday strip was printed in GO before I saw the Thursday one. Don’t look if comic strip nudity offends you. And on Saturday, it’s gone and the comics pages are safe again from middle-aged, saggy cherubs.
If you can’t do without Jeremy and his naked parents, we’ll post Saturdays’ strip online at go.rrstar.com.
November 4th, 2009 09:53am
Linda Grist Cunningham
When I read this headline, I smiled — and then I was ashamed. After all, violence is never a good thing and beating up a coworker in the newsroom is the stuff of which firings are made.
Here’s the headline and the story to go with it: Washington Post’s”… Weingarten says hurrah to newsroom fisticuffs”
First of all, the word “fisticuffs” is just wonderfully delightful. Second, when all was said and done, this fight between two journalists was as much about their reporting and writing as it was about bad behavior. That much passion over the work one does is a good thing, a very good thing. Smacking around a coworker is not.
I am a child of old-fashioned newsrooms from the time decades before human resources people, legislation and victim-cultures took over the workplace. There was mostly nothing to like about those old newsrooms in which little counted except white and male. Woe be to the ones who were different. But, it was the way it was and we learned to cope, survive and thrive.
There was one good part and in today’s newsrooms it’s mostly gone, sandpapered out by the rules, the laws and the good intentions and righteousness of those who knew the workplace needed to change. Disappearing is the culture of the eccentric that drove the mythological uprisings in which journalists fought loudly and publicly over stories, sources, even the choice of words in a first paragraph. Rarely did we resort to fisticuffs, but the passion most definitely ran high.
We should say good riddance to the violence, of course. But, I am just a tad sad today knowing that gone is the eccentricity that made newsrooms ditsy, important places. The kind of places that drove one editor I know to toss a typewriter at a reporter because the reporter took his story assignment too casually and blew the deadline.
November 3rd, 2009 09:28am
Linda Grist Cunningham
We are never going to learn, so I’d pretty much decided not to run on about this ever again, but then there was last Wednesday morning.
There it was, all bright, clean concrete. Another curb cut along the Rockford side of Riverside Boulevard. Oh, I understand why it’s there. The small retailers in the strip mall have been advertising for years that they’re hard to find, but be patient because they’re worth it. I guess they finally wore down the no curb cut enforcement folks. I don’t really blame the shop keepers. They’ve got to earn a living, too.
But another curb cut along a four-lane, sort-of-divided main road? Between the stoplights and the curb cuts, Loves Park and Rockford have turned East Riverside into another traffic and pedestrian nightmare.
By the early 1990s, East State Street was already a goner. But there was still hope for Perryville, Riverside and 173. We could have done the right things, from limited access frontage roads, sidewalks and pedestrian overpasses to timed (and limited) stoplights. But, no, everyone with a hammer got a green light and a curb cut.
I remember once challenging a major player in local development to “show everyone else what it means to develop retail space and do it environmentally responsibly so it blends into the neighborhoods.” He said he thought that was a fine idea — and promptly added more asphalt to another strip mall.
Same with a former Rockford mayor to whom I had complained about the zoning variances granted at the corners of Riverside and Mulford. City needs the cash, he said. Simple as that. And up went the “mountain” and an always-failing shopping center.
We say we want open, green space and responsible development. We’re lying to ourselves. Witness that Riverside curb cut.
October 29th, 2009 10:44am
Linda Grist Cunningham
Here we are at the end of October with Christmas and New Year’s on the horizon. I could sound like a crone and wonder aloud where the heck the year has gotten to. Instead, I went back to December 2008 and dusted off my predictions for 2009. I wrote them on New Year’s Eve.You can read the whole list here; I was most interested in these:
“First, we’ll start with a brutal fact. The next six months are going to be terrible, as the global economy contracts and sheds jobs, cash, security and sanity. By mid-year, we will begin to adjust to the new realities though we will remain hunkered down; by the end of October, we’ll begin to think we will be able to manage; by Christmas we will have traded multiple gifts for a single one that means something.”
So, at the end of October, are we beginning to think we can manage? Most days I think we are. That’s good.
“By March 2010, we will be adjusted to the new way and by Christmas of 2010, we’ll understand that peace on earth is a far better goal than a new iPhone or X Box. We will make less, spend less, value quality, chose charitable over capital, and begin replacing cars, repairing the roof and buying a home.”
I remain hopeful that that will be true.
“When 2011 rolls around, we’ll feel we are back in control — sort of — and that we can handle what’s thrown at us — sort of. By 2012, assuming we do not blow ourselves away in some nuclear snit, we will begin to build again. By 2013, new normal will be “the way it’s always been.” It will be five years of hanging on as best we can, letting go of any thought that the future will be like the past. But, we will do it.”
That’s what it means to have faith; do not despair.
October 26th, 2009 04:21pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
Today those two Northwest pilots say they were so engrossed in a computer scheduling program that they didn’t realize they were past Minneapolis.
First they say they weren’t sleeping. Then, they weren’t arguing. And, now they were immersed in a scheduling program. OK, I’ll actually buy that “lost in cyberspace” thing. Been there, done that.
Get so totally engrossed in what’s happening in my digital world that I lose track of time. Makes sense. But, here comes the but …..
I still don’t understand how they didn’t HEAR all those ground folks, other pilots on radios and even some bells ringing — and presumably a flight attendant or two on the cockpit phone or banging on the door.
If they said they had their headset ears in while playing Warcraft, now that would make sense. So, guys, dribble out some more of the story.
October 22nd, 2009 06:11pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
Gee, I hope the seven CEOs can live on $500,000 a year, plus up to $25,000 in perks. Most people I know won’t see that kind of dough in 10 years, much less each year.
But that’s as far as the feds are willing to go with annual compensation for the executives at the seven companies that got the biggest bite of the federal golden parachute. It’s a complicated deal announced formally today, and, yep there are a ton of loopholes, but, still….
These are the companies whose execs-with-no-souls snatched up every nickel they could steal from the rest of us, created a thousand and one crooked, crazy schemes and then played economic roulette until we all went off the cliff last fall.
I am totally and revengefully delighted at their consternation. Imagine having to cut back on things like jets and drivers, chefs and multi-million dollar vacation homes. Crikey, they might have to recycle the plastic sandwich bags from lunch. I hope they get a taste of what unemployed Americans have been swallowing for a year now.
Here comes the but…. But, I am not so sure this “cut their pay” plan is much more than window dressing, and it could be a disaster. There’s every reason to believe that many of these soon-to-be-”poor” execs will just decamp for another company that doesn’t have salary caps. That kind of exodus could be devastating to a company. And, there’s still the “small” matter of what’s going to happen to millions upon millions of cash bonuses promised to these guys.
Just as I started feeling sorry for the poor execs and started sounding like a pro-big business shill, wondering aloud who in the world would take one of those jobs for a miserly $500,000 plus $25,000 in perks, an executive-type friend stopped me in my tracks.
Said he: Well, I’d take one of those jobs in a heartbeat. I mean, he said, I couldn’t screw it up any worse than those guys did.
Hummmmm. Maybe I’ll dust off the resume.
October 21st, 2009 09:32am
Linda Grist Cunningham
On Friday, 87-year-old Maggie was on her tractor mowing grass, pulling the summer plants and planting the fall mums, chopping down the tomatoes and taking the dog to the vet. On Saturday, she was flat on her back in the hospital’s stroke wing wondering exactly what truck had squashed her left side.
Over the past week I have learned a whole bunch about stroke, rehabilitation, hospitals and assisted living. I’ve developed a new appreciation for health care professionals and legal things like living wills, trusts and powers of attorney. And, then there is Medicare. Maggie swiped a card and instantly everything was taken care of, from admission to rehabilitation. She paid for the hairdresser to come to her room. That’s it.
So, tell me again why we ought not have a single payer, government run health care program for everyone in this country?
You can learn more about health care reform at HealthyRockford.com. I’ve made up my mind. I want Medicare and I am more than happy to pay for it. And, I don’t care if all those bureaucratic insurance companies go out of business. The care my mother-in-law is getting courtesy of Medicare and the ease with which the paperwork is handled ensures she’ll spend her engery in rehab and not in fighting the insurance companies.
October 19th, 2009 04:18pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
Surely, the reason so many men get caught with their hands in the cookie jar — and end up in headlines around the world — is because there are just so many more of them sitting around the board room tables. Maybe if those tables were filled with women and just a token guy or two, then women would be in the headlines.
That’s got to be it. Otherwise, we’d have to assume these male powerbrokers are incapable of learning that stealing is a bad thing. Take these guys, for instance. One of them is among the richest people in the world. One was headed for the CEO spot at IBM.
I mean, these guys are not your run of the mill, stop to pick up a quart of milk after work types. They are simply the latest in a long string of guys with holes in their souls who created the economic mess we’re cleaning up these days.
It’s a numbers thing, right?
October 9th, 2009 04:30pm
Linda Grist Cunningham
U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning — and the naysayers went off the deep end. Even the mildest responses were along the lines of a disbelieving “huh?”
Let me offer up another thought: Throughout his campaign, Obama’s message was hope-filled. In the months since his November election, there’s been much to weigh on that hope. The price of change can be a diluted sense of hope. That Obama wins the peace prize, while eye-popping in surprise, is a global re-affirmation of that hope.
I think what makes me feel hopeful is that OTHERS feel hopeful. Too often we come down so hard and so cynically about “our own” that we cannot appreciate the ways outsiders see them and respond to them.
Clearly, those who select the peace prize believe in their souls that this man’s singular approach to peace is one that can, if nurtured, make us a better world.
Instead of wailing that he undeservedly won it, perhaps we should be seeking the faith to pursue that peace and set aside the despair that we cannot achieve so lofty and illusive a goal.
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