The Advocate: Cartoonist Causes Controversy with ‘Male-Bashing’ Comic
Background: A couple weeks ago I asked you to write newspapers in protest of Berkeley Breathed’s new nationally-syndicated OPUS cartoon “Davie Dinkle has two moms” which, I noted “gives fathers a nice kick in the teeth Father’s Day week.”
In the comic, which appeared in many of America’s largest newspapers, two elementary school boys discuss a classmate who is being raised by two lesbian moms. One boy says, “Makes you wonder how he’ll do without a male role model in the house.” Right afterwards, the drunken, idiot father angrily throws the TV out the window, yelling “Now THAT was a pitch you @$%* moron!”
Not surprisingly, the gay press fired back at me and also at conservative religious writer Jennifer Roback Morse, who had later criticized the same cartoon in a Townhall.com column. Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker covered the controversy in her Father’s Day column. To learn more, click here.
I was surprised and pleased to see that The Advocate, one of America’s leading gay publications, covered the controversy over “Davie Dinkle has two moms” fairly and accurately in its article “Cartoonist causes controversy with “male-bashing” comic.” The Advocate writes:
“With Father’s Day fast approaching, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed caused quite a stir with a comic that appeared to criticize fathers while celebrating lesbian moms.
“The latest installment of Breathed’s ‘Opus the Penguin’ strip, which ran in Sunday’s comics, has elicited a wide range of responses from outrage on the right to bemusement on the left, according to Townhall.com.
“The strip shows two boys, with their avian companion, Opus, talking about third-grader Davie Dinkle having two moms. ‘Multiple moms,’ comments one boy. ‘Cool,’ agrees the other. ‘No dad?’ asks Opus, as they wonder how Davie Dinkle will do without a male role model in the house. Then—crash!—a television set showing a baseball game is hurled through the window by one of the boys’ foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking, beer-chugging fathers.
“‘Breathed’s message is clear—dads are useless as role models (when they’re not outright destructive), and kids have little need or use for them,’ commented columnist Glenn Sacks in the American Chronicle.
“Critics cite a growing trend of male-bashing, emphasized by the approaching holiday intended to celebrate rather than denigrate fathers.”
Read the full article here.
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