Whos the Online Comics “Editor”?
To many readers, the news apparently comes as both bombshell and revelation: The Washington Post does not edit its daily choice of online comics and editorial cartoons. Yep, you read it right. Although every comic in the print edition is eyeballed before publication, the Great Wide Web is a different animal, even at a newspaper. Post comics come from the syndicates digitally via “automatic feed.” Typically, of course, this is an invisible distinction. But every so often, a cartoon is so hot-button and lightning-rod and “nuclear” — pick your fave metaphor for artwork that offends and “blasphemes” — that a white-hot light is shined upon the crucial difference. Exhibit A: Pat Oliphant and his controversial take on Sarah Palin as Pentecostal candidate. Our personal sermon today is not to attack or defend this particular cartoon. Rather, it is to examine the very mechanism by which this cartoon was published on Washingtonpost.com — and not, despite rumors to the contrary, in The Washingt
