What's Up, 'Docks?

Buzz is thankful for many things this holiday season, foremost among them that with The Dallas Morning News around, no bad, unsettling, evil thoughts will cross our minds, because they won't be allowed in the paper.

Now, we know Buzz is a bit late in realizing this, but we're just now getting over our food hangover from Thanksgiving, the very day the News decided to censor the comic strip "The Boondocks." The strip, which runs not on the comics pages but on the same lifestyle-section page with "Dear Abby" and Ann Landers (a.k.a. "the hard-hitting page of opinion"), was following the lead of most other comic strips on November 22 in addressing the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. But the strip's central character, Huey Freeman, is a pint-sized African-American kid/radical scholar and "eternally scornful champion of the dispossessed." Predictably, his fight-the-power attitude was not in lockstep with the day's other strips. So, the News, ever looking out for the psychic well-being of its readers, simply subbed an old "Boondocks" strip in its place.

Because we're wicked anti-American pinko commie bastards at Buzz headquarters, we'd like to show you that day's intended strip--which one editor here called "the funniest comic strip I've ever seen"--and set Dallas aflame in racial/political/social upheaval. But a Universal Press Syndicate spokeswoman says that since the DMN owns exclusive rights in Dallas, we'd need the paper's permission to reprint it. (News flash: not in Buzz's lifetime.) So we can do two things: 1) tell you to go view it at www.ucomics.com/boondocks/ (click November 22 on the little calendar under the daily strip), and 2) describe it.

In the strip, little Huey is saying grace at Thanksgiving. He says, "Ahem--in this time of war against Osama Bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that our leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents and uses war to deny people their civil liberties. Amen." To which his grandfather replies, "This is the last time you say grace, boy."

Hah! You read it! Now you're too late. Your mind is corrupt. The Dallas Observer strikes again. You lose, Dallas Morning News! [Insert evil laugh here.]