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I go on assignment for two days and what happens? I miss the greatest letter to the editor in the history of letters to the editor.
Here’s the letter, in full:
We are outraged by the July 20 “Nancy” comic strip.
By making light of Nancy beating Sluggo to a pulp in a jealous rage, the strip trivializes relationship abuse and suggests that violence is an acceptable way to resolve personal disputes.
Domestic violence should not be a punch line for a cheap joke. You and the strip’s authors owe your readers an apology.
Judy Kahan, Chief Executive Officer
Center Against Domestic Violence Brooklyn, N.Y.
After the jump, some thoughts.
Here’s the strip in question. Let’s have a look at it:
And now, the first [x] questions that came into my mind after reading the letter and the strip, where [x] is a number between 1 and the time when I run out of jokes (1 ≤ x ≤ t):
- Wait. The Daily News runs Nancy?
- Wait. The Daily News runs Nancy and people actually read it?
- Hold up. Sluggo is Nancy’s boyfriend? Aren’t they always fighting? (Okay, clearly, they are.)
- Shit. Did I just reveal that I’ve read Nancy before?
- Let’s go back for a second. Is the entire Center Against Domestic Violence actually outraged by a Nancy strip? Is that even possible?
- This was the Daily News‘ “Rant of the Week.” Should a letter that was sent to all the papers that run Nancy (presumably) really be qualified for such a prestigious honor?
- Wait. Is the Daily News the only paper in the world that runs Nancy?
- You know, I know how the media influences how we think and blah blah blah. But could anyone, anywhere, ever read this Nancy strip and think that violence was the answer in a relationship?
- What could Judy Kahan, CEO of the Center Against Domestic Violence in Brooklyn, N.Y., have been doing instead of being outraged about a Nancy strip and writing this letter?
- That being said, if domestic violence isn’t funny and Nancy is never funny, then does this particular Nancy strip enter into some sort of black hole of unfunniness in which no humor can escape? Did it affect the other comics that day?
- Wait. You fool! You can use this to get Nancy out of the Daily News forever, to be replaced by a funnier comic, such as [insert any comic title here].
Gotcha! I kept going, even after I ran out of jokes.
Letters | Hands off sluggo! [Daily News]
Nancy, July 20, 2006 [Comics.com]
Related: Five Card Nancy
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Has Nancy ever been funny?
‘affect.’ but you are so, so right in every other way, i’d be willing to let it slide.
Argh! Thanks for the heads up. Been fixed.
From the Daily News newsroom, I add to your thoughts two of my own…
1) Apparently, we can’t ever stop running Nancy. It has some lore built up around it that the number of fingers that she is holding up in the comic predicts in some way the lottery…the daily number, I believe. If we screw up and leave it out one day we get beseiged with calls by people who say this is the only reason they buy the paper. A real boost to our ego.
2) When I saw that letter, I had this weird idea that maybe it was one of those form-letter letters to the editor that newspapers get — you know, written by some national advocacy group and sent to members all over the country who sign their name and pretend that they wrote it. You can usually spot these with a simple Google search. But I can find no evidence that anyone else ran this letter. Is it possible that we were the only media outlet to get it? Is it possible that we are the only media outlet that PUBLISHED it? (That last is very possible.)
If I actually had anys concerns about the social implications of this strip, such concerns would likely be derived from the surgically enhanced chest the lifeguard is sporting.