Having noticed the barrage of Viewpoint letters addressing the offensive nature of a recent "Jockular" comic strip, I feel the need to voice my opinion. Many readers have become genuinely upset with the cartoon because it portrayed Saint Mary's students as the parasites to Notre Dame's host cell. Although these people may be justified in their discontent, they are all missing the bigger issue which should be obvious when they read The Observer's comics section. Plain and simple, Adam Fairholm's "CroissantWorld" is not offensive enough. Let's analyze the strip that appeared in the March 30 edition of the paper to see where he's going wrong.
The first frame shows two characters alone in complete silence. This is a typical Fairholm mistake - no dialogue. He could have easily had one of them make a racist remark. There was enough space above their heads, and all he needed to do was draw in a bubble and put in some words. Opportunity: missed.
In the next frame, the guy on the left wonders aloud about the activities that occur within the mysterious Knights of Columbus building on campus. Instead, he could have said that Holy Cross students are stalked ciliated protozoa. Opportunity: missed again.
The third frame has a man in a top hat from inside the building giving a response to the previously-made query. He says, "It involves fun, spinach dip and bows and arrows." Fairholm probably should have had the man say, "It involves leprechauns, who accurately represent the drunken Irish ancestry of the student body." Opportunity: thrice missed.
In the final frame, one character points out that the man with the top hat was wearing suspenders without a shirt, to which the other character responds, "Yeah." This reply does not cut it. Instead, they should have recognized him as a homosexual and then immediately started praying the gay away like good Catholics. Opportunity: I've lost count.
Now that I've brought this to everyone's attention, I hope we can forget about the recent "Jockular" controversy and start focusing on more important issues, like the problems with "BagelTown," or whatever it's called.
Joe KwaczalafreshmanKnott HallApril 11
