Cartoon Controversy of the Day

So here is the Friday the 13th edition of the Get
Fuzzy cartoon which
has sparked so much controversy, dominated local sports radio, and sparked
a lawsuit by
Boston sportscaster Bob Lobel against the Boston cartoonist Darby Conley.

Conley is, obviously, a Red Sox fan, and his strips frequently reference
the team, players, and the nemesis NYY. The controversial strip has been
pulled from several papers, and in the Boston Globe Lobel’s name was
replaced by the pronoun "him". In addition, pursuant to the lawsuit,
the strip has been removed from the Get Fuzzy archives, but your ever-alert
correspondent managed to find a copy of the banned artwork.

Since Get Fuzzy is only carried in a handful of papers, you might need
a scorecard to keep the players straight.  Here they are:

This
is Rob Wilco. He is a kind of nerdy, ironic loser, who works in
an ad agency and whose social life seems to consist of talking to, and
dealing with the problems of, his "pets" Bucky and Satchel.

This
is Bucky Kat. He is egotistical, carnivorous, sarcastic, dismissive
of both Satchel and Rob, and locked in a mortal feud with the ferret
next door.

This is Satchel,
he is good-hearted, dumb, literal, who tries to be man’s – and Kat’s – best
friend but usually ends up the but of jokes he doesn’t get.

Now, it may seem that Conley has something against Bob Lobel,
(he wouldn’t be the first or only one), the preeminent TV
sports reporter and commentator in Boston for over 10 years, but any
local sports fan with a TV has noticed something weird about Lobel’s
diction
lately. He has definitely been slightly slurring his words, and looking goofy-happy, not as much
as Joe Namath on the sidelines last fall, but leaning in the same general
direction.

However, there are MANY things, temporary, permanent, ingested, organic
or emotional, which can cause the drop in muscle and tissue tension the
human ear hears as a slur. Believe us, not only are we a professional
in the
phonetics
and pronunciation of the English language, but have over the years acquired
a long and deep first-hand familiarity with many of the conditions causing
slurring.

Drawing on this vast body of knowledge, we can categorically state that
Bob Lobel has NOT been under the influence of alcohol during his recent
TV appearances.

If we had to hazard a guess, we would go for a balanced combination
of oxy-contin, a relatively unknown blood pressure medication called Lisinopril,
and a commercially available horse tranquilizer marketed as Ketaset, but
known among aficionados as "vitamin K".

This makes sense, as Lobel recently returned from covering the Kentucky
Derby, but don’t quote us on that.  And please don’t sue us….

article from the Boston Globe