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This Just In: Media

Tastelessness compounded by bad timing

By Dan Kennedy

Stop me if you've heard this one. A high-school kid named Jeremy tells his parents, "You might be interested to know that I've narrowed my career objectives to two main areas ... paramedic or professional assassin." A real knee-slapper, eh? Especially after last week's tragic shootings in Littleton, Colorado.

Trouble is, that so-called joke appeared on Tuesday in the syndicated cartoon strip Zits, carried in some 725 newspapers -- including the Boston Globe. And the Globe, which years back didn't hesitate to censor Joanie Caucus's moment of passion with Rick Redfern in Doonesbury, let the tasteless lapse run as is. "We've had no complaints as far as I can find out," says Globe spokesman Rick Gulla. Well, consider this the first.

It's not that Zits's creators, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, are completely insensitive. They submitted the strip to their syndicate, King Features, weeks ago, long before the slaughter at Columbine High School. (Not that that gets them off the hook completely. After all, school shootings have been a more or less ongoing tragedy for several years.) According to King Features spokeswoman Claudia Smith, Tuesday's cartoon was flagged ahead of time by an editor in Arkansas. At King's request, Scott and Borgman changed Jeremy's career options to "microbiologist or pilot." Smith says the four Littleton-area dailies that carry Zits were then alerted early enough for them to make that change, but adds there was no time to contact all 725 clients. "Obviously, we regret that it happened," says Smith. Of course, a reasonably bright intern and a fax machine can work wonders, but King Features apparently didn't think of that.

Ironically, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Pulitzer winner Borgman's home base, ran a rather poignant Borgman editorial cartoon on the same day as the Zits faux pas. It showed a father protectively holding his daughter, with newspaper headlines about Kosovo and school shootings scattered at his feet.

At the Globe, meanwhile, Gulla says both employees responsible for screening cartoons are on vacation this week, making it impossible to find out whether anyone considered pulling it. Asked whether anyone even looked at it after the Littleton shootings, Gulla replied: "I just don't know."