Newspaper cartoon pulled for hidden ‘go f–k yourself’ message to Trump
A Pennsylvania newspaper dumped syndicated cartoon “Non Sequitur” because it contained a message telling President Trump to go “f— yourself.”
The cartoon ran Sunday in the Butler Eagle and the profane comment was hidden in its lower right corner.
“A sharp-eyed Butler Eagle reader alerted the newspaper of what appears to be a vulgar shot at President Donald Trump … and it will cost the cartoonist his place in the Eagle’s Sunday comics,” Ron Vodenichar, the newspaper’s publisher and general manager wrote on the Eagle’s website.
Andrews McMeel Syndication apologized for the language in the cartoon.
“We are sorry we missed the language in our editing process,” the Kansas City-based company said. “If we had discovered it, we would not have distributed the cartoon without it being removed. We apologize to ‘Non Sequitur’s’ clients and readers for our oversight.”
Wiley Miller, who drew the “Non Sequitur” cartoon strip, said the obscenity slipped his mind.
“When I opened the paper Sunday morning and read my cartoon, I didn’t think anything of it, as I didn’t notice the scribbling that has now caught fire,” Miller told the Washington Post.
He said he wrote the remarks several weeks ago when he was angry at the White House and forgot to delete it.
“It was not intended for public consumption, and I meant to white it out before submitting it, but forgot to,” he said.
But in a tweet on Sunday, Miller appeared to confirm the presence of the profanity and urged his readers to find it.
“Some of my sharp-eyed readers have spotted a little Easter egg from Leonardo Bear-Vinci. Can you find it?,” Miller wrote on Twitter Sunday.
His message said, “We fondly say go f–k yourself Trump.”
GoComics, an online site that publishes Miller’s cartoon, replaced it with a cleaned-up version on Monday.
Vodenichar said his newspaper and other publications were tricked into running the comments because they had no “opportunity to remove it even if they had discovered it before distribution.”
He told the Pittsburgh “City Paper” that dropping the cartoon had “nothing to do with Trump,” but with publishing the F-word in “our family publication.”
Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear if other publications have dropped it.
With Post wires