Doonesburied

Trudeau too tart for Times

What the switchboard operators heard was definitely not mellow-speak. Not laid back either. It was sheer, white-hot anger. The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and half a dozen other papers had yanked Garry Trudeau's Pulitzer-prizewinning comic strip Doonesbury, and thousands of irate devotees wanted to know why.

The answer was simple enough. Satirizing the pop politics of California's Governor Jerry Brown, Trudeau had turned his biting pen on a labor lawyer and Brown contributor, Sidney Korshak, describing him with several harsh characterizations, including "known organized crime figure." While Korshak is no stranger to criminal investigators, the newspapers felt, as the Times put it, that the cartoons were "unfair, irresponsible and unsubstantiated." Callers accused the papers of trying to protect Brown. Said the Guv: "I think it is false and libelous, but I'm flattered by the attention."

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