Thursday, February 03, 2005

DIY Censorship

I was reading the comics in The Gateway (the UofA school newspaper) at lunch today. It was the Tuesday edition, and as I am often confused by what day it is thanks to a four-day school week, I was a little behind. When I got to the comics page, I noticed that the last panel of the last comic had been torn out. I checked the back page, thinking it might have been an address or something important, but it wasn't much of anything. Someone had torn out the last panel of the cartoon. I figured it was censorship, as the previous panel had a pair of cartoon breasts, but thanks to the replacement by the Thursday edition, I had no other newspapers to compare it to.

I'd like to think that there was someone who was so outraged by the cartoon that they ripped the panel out of every copy of The Gateway in Corbett Hall. It's hard to imagine what might have been so offensive, though. I mean, cartoon breasts weren't enough to merit their outrage? Or the comic about the roommate who talked to his penis? What could have been more offensive than that?

EDIT: After a bit of surfing, I've located an online version of the comic in question. (Warning: this cartoon has cartoon breasts and grown-up language.) I'm still confused how it might have been overwhelmingly offensive; it might not make sense out of context, story-wise, but it's not THAT offensive. And I still can't think of another reason for it to be missing.

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