Controversy
McGruder's strip has been a veritable lightning rod for criticism since it debuted in 1999, with newspapers consigning it to editorial sections, or suspending the run of the strip altogether. Favored targets of The Boondocks include BET, Condoleezza Rice, Whitney Houston, Bill Cosby, Vivica A. Fox, black political commentator Larry Elder, and Star Wars.
One infamous strip immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks involved Huey calling the FBI's terror tip line to report Ronald Reagan for funding terrorism. He further explained his views regarding the 9/11 attacks in a 2002 keynote address at the July 12–14, 2002 H2K2 conference:
| “ | Outside of the world of whackos and conspiracy theorists and all of that, very few people in the mainstream have been willing to say what I'm about to say, which is, I really and truthfully believe that George W. Bush is somehow involved, either directly or indirectly, in the attacks on New York City on September 11. | ” |
When a 2004 strip had Huey and Caesar handing out "Elder" awards for being embarrassments to black people, their namesake Larry Elder fired back with an opinion column in which he handed out "McGruders" for offensive comments uttered by black leaders.
McGruder visited Fidel Castro in Cuba with California Rep. Barbara Lee. Later, during a 2003 reception hosted by The Nation, McGruder offended many attendees by defiantly recalling his support for Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential bid. McGruder endured heckling and walkouts as he defended his commitment to left-wing causes, including, he claimed, calling Condoleezza Rice a "mass-murderer" to her face during the 2002 NAACP Image Awards. In 2009, it was reported that McGruder had told a Martin Luther King Day audience at Indiana's Earlham College that then-President-elect Barack Obama was not black. McGruder released a statement insisting he was misquoted, while maintaining he remains "cautiously pessimistic" about Obama's presidency.
A feud with Black Entertainment Television has given McGruder much material both for his strip and the animated series based upon it; he has had an adverse relationship with BET for years. Two episodes (The Hunger Strike and The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show) in Season 2 of The Boondocks animated series were never aired in the U.S. due to possible legal action against Cartoon Network's parent company Time Warner by Viacom (BET's parent company, also the owners of Cartoon Network rival Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central) because of them making fun of BET; however, they resurfaced for television airplay weeks later in Canada. The episodes in question depict BET as an evil media empire plotting the destruction of black people.
Read more about this topic: Aaron McGruder
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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