Borderline Terroristic (Updated)
by Joey Manley
BoingBoing, Fleen, Comixpedia, Journalista and Diesel Sweeties have reported on this already, so I’m guessing you’ve already seen it, but it’s possibly a big enough deal to at least mention here, no matter how belatedly: Matt Boyd, one of the creators of the popular webcomics MacHall and Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job for making a joke about guns. He was later visited by police for making another joke, in a webcomic, about the situation.
I don’t have much to say about this, except for the standard sort of grandstanding blogger outrage, which I do feel, but which comes off as lame and cliched in circumstances like these, especially since I’m so far removed from the actual situation (don’t know Matt, don’t really follow his comic, etc.) I wish him well and hope his circumstances improve. If he needs legal representation, I hope he finds it. And so on.
Oh — and to all of you who live in the US: next time there’s a national election, keep this stuff in mind, and please vote accordingly. It is very easy to identify the party who created this ineffectual (against actual terrorists) but dangerous (to normal citizens) security state we increasingly find ourselves living in.
Updated: Fleen has an interview with Boyd, during which he points out that the woman who is in the strip in question closely resembles a good friend of his, and he is concerned that she might have been offended, and is trying to find out. This puts a finer point on the issue — one that my own gut instinct says is important. Without that context, you honestly can read that strip and the conversation it documents as being directed at the woman in the final panel on purpose — which would have been creepy, in my opinion. Not creepy enough to get the Feds involved, but creepy. Good to know that that’s not the case.
May 5th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Quibble: This is an excellent reason why you should follow state and local politics. If we elect Tom Tancredo or Ralph Nader as President next time out, stupid local officials with an axe to grind or name to make can do crap like this at will anyway.