The Tribune will no longer publish the “Non Sequitur” comic because the cartoonist slipped a vulgar insult to President Trump on February 10.
The decision was not political; it was about meeting our most basic standards of decency. Cartoonist Wiley Miller dropped an F-bomb in fine print in last Sunday’s comic strip. We ban any user who uses this word on our website or Facebook page. We certainly won’t allow it on comic book pages likely to be seen by our younger readers.
We’d drop his tape no matter who Mr. Miller was directing that language at.
At least 40 newspapers have canceled “Non Sequitur” since the Feb. 10 incident, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Sunday.
We apologize for not having seen the language before it was published. Andrews McMeel Syndication, from whom we purchased the rights to the tape, also apologized.
“In regards to the Sunday comic ‘Non Sequitur’ published on February 10, which contains vulgar language, we are sorry to have missed the language in our editing process,” the union said in a written statement. “Had we found out, we wouldn’t have aired the cartoon without it being taken down. We apologize to the customers and readers of ‘Non Sequitur’ for our oversight.
The comic book pages of the Tribune being prepared more than a week in advance, we couldn’t avoid publishing “Non Sequitur” today. We examined the tape and saw no issues.
Starting next week, Art and Chip Sansom’s “The Born Loser” will perform in its place.