The whole silly business began last week when a woman called and indignantly asked if I had seen a cartoon on the sports page of this city`s other daily newspaper.
She said, ”It`s insulting to blacks and is racist and disgusting.”
I dug out a copy of the paper and looked at it. There was a drawing of a gangly black basketball player, smiling broadly and holding a basketball in his hand.
The cartoon, which also showed a few white athletes, was promoting a story inside the paper about sports` richest players.
I told the woman: ”I disagree. It`s simply a caricature of a black basketball player. And it`s the nature of any caricature to make the subject look funny.”
She said, ”Look closely at the man`s basketball shorts.”
Ah, I saw what she meant. Upon closer examination, it appeared that the basketball player was . . . How shall I put it? Well, it appeared that he was sort of exposing himself. In other words, his basketball shorts didn`t seem to be doing a very good job of containing his masculine adornment.
”I see what you mean,” I said. ”But why call me? You should complain to that newspaper.”
”I did,” she said. ”I spoke to the managing editor, and he told me it was just an artist`s squiggle. I said, `Young man, I happen to be a grandmother. And I think I know the difference between a squiggle and a man`s sex organ. And this is not a squiggle.` But he insisted it was a squiggle.
”So I showed it to 25 friends and relatives, and all agreed that it definitely is not a squiggle. And I think that this sort of crude, racist attempt at humor should be denounced.”
I wasn`t sure that I agreed with her that it was racist. After all, a white basketball player could be plagued by loose shorts too.
But just to check on whether there was a wave of indignation sweeping the black community, I called Operation PUSH and asked if it had received any complaints.
Not even one. In fact, PUSH hadn`t noticed the cartoon. I also called an editor at the Chicago Defender, who said it received only one complaint.
It appeared that if it was more than an artist`s squiggle, most people hadn`t noticed it. Or if they had, they didn`t care.
So I decided there wasn`t anything to write about.
On Saturday a TV reporter called and said that Rev. Jesse Jackson had publicly denounced the cartoon as being racist and said I had brought it to his office`s attention.
I explained that I had simply called PUSH to check out a possible story on the black community`s reaction to the phallic-like squiggle but hadn`t found much of a reaction.
A couple of days later the Chicago Defender published a front-page story about Jackson`s denunciation of the cartoon.
And now the editor of the other paper, some New Zealand fellow, has sent an indignant letter to Jackson. He wrote:
”I am astonished by your public statement that on the back page of the Sun-Times on Aug. 28 genitalia was exposed in a caricature of a black basketball player. After prolonged study of the drawing, I cannot, for the life of me, discern a representation of a penis among the random squiggles which are part of the idiosyncratic style of the artist . . . and which are present in all his work.
”Most shocking to me, however, is your public implication that the Sun-Times is racially biased and capable of resorting to obscenity as a way of pursuing its bias. This is ludicrously false.
”May I respectfully suggest that you inquire into the motives of Mike Royko in bringing to your attention his gross imaginings about the drawing?” I don`t know how I get mixed up in such things. After all, I didn`t draw a cartoon of a suspicious-looking squiggle; his artist did.
As for my ”gross imaginings,” I have taken a survey of 50 people. All but one said it appeared to be something more than a squiggle. And the dissenter was a cartoonist. They tend to stick together on the matter of squiggles.
And as one of that New Zealander`s own reporters said: ”If you walked down State Street displaying that kind of squiggle, you`d end up in jail.”
Anyway, I think that everybody is making a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak.
But I do resent having that New Zealander question my motives and refer to my imaginings as ”gross.”
I take that as a personal insult, you big squiggle.
