I've received a few e-mails asking what I think of Johnny Hart's allegedly anti-Semitic Easter installment of his newspaper strip, B.C.. My view is that, given Mr. Hart's tendency to tell interviewers that Jews are destined to all rot in Hell, I doubt it was intended as innocently as claimed in his recent "I regret being misunderstood" press release. On the other hand, I also think that to make this a big issue is to vastly overreact. I mean, on a list of rotten things that bigots have done to my people, a clumsy joke in a faltering newspaper strip doesn't even make the Top 10,000.
If you want to protest something, try this: Many of the newspapers covering this ginned-up controversy have picked up his syndicate's claim that Johnny Hart is — and I quote from the syndicate's website — "…the most widely read writer on earth." I cannot fathom on what basis they make that claim but I'm guessing they're combining the total paid circulations of all the newspapers that carry B.C. and Hart's other strip, Wizard of Id and presuming that everyone who buys one of those papers reads him. Even if all that's true, it still wouldn't make Hart the most widely-read cartoonist, let alone the most widely-read writer. (One might also note that it's now been something like 20 years since any American publisher put out a B.C. or Wizard of Id collection in book form. You'd think the most widely-read writer in the world could sell a few measly paperbacks…)