Cartoonists Struggle With Patriotism, Terror Attacks

Oct. 9, 2001 — -- Thanks to a wave of patriotism following the terrorist attacks on the United States, cartoonist Aaron McGruder's strip "The Boondocks" really has gone to the boondocks — and even disappeared — in some newspapers.

Last week, Huey Freeman — McGruder's Afro-wearing, pre-pubescent black revolutionary in "The Boondocks" — called the FBI's terrorist tip line and said he had the names of several Americans who helped train and finance Osama bin Laden, the United States' prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on America. When the FBI agent on the other end of the phone asks for the names, Huey responds, "All right, let's see … the first one is Reagan. That's R-E-A-G …"

Huey, trying to convince the FBI of his leads, then accuses the CIA of training bin Laden in terrorist tactics against the then-Soviet Union during the Reagan-Bush administration and suggests the current Bush presidency has funded the Taliban government U.S. forces are now fighting. [The CIA has denied training bin Laden or his associates in terror tactics.]

Print editions of the New York Daily News, perhaps leery of the outrage the series of strips would cause, especially in New York, decided to yank "The Boondocks" for three days that week. Long Island's Newsday also chose not to run "The Boondocks" but replaced them with previously run, less controversial editions of the strip.

Cartoonists say the controversy over "Boondocks" reflects a dilemma they face in whether and how to address attacks, especially in volatile times where contrarian views seen as unpatriotic are in danger of being suppressed.

"I find that a little scary, that just because someone can take another point of view that they're seen as unpatriotric or sympathetic to the terrorists," said Rick Stromoski, cartoonist of "Soup To Nutz" and spokesman for the National Cartoonists Society. "And that's not true at all. What Aaron's done is to try to get people to step back and ask why things have happened. Things don't happen in a vacuum, and Aaron's trying to get people to discuss why things are happening."