WASHINGTON – He did it again, but this time
on national TV. Aaron McGruder, a black syndicated cartoonist
who's getting his own prime-time TV series on Fox, called National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice "a murderer" for her role
in the Iraq war.
He made the remark as a guest on the nationally syndicated TV
show "America's Black Forum," hosted by syndicated columnist
and Fox News contributor Juan Williams.
The creator of the popular "Boondocks" comic strip reportedly
caused some discomfort at an anniversary dinner for the Nation
magazine here last month when he told the mostly anti-war audience,
"I've met Condoleezza Rice and called her a murderer to her
face."
In a Sunday broadcast of the "Black Forum" show,
McGruder, speaking from Los Angeles, repeated the epithet, arguing
that Rice, as one of the administration's "biggest hawks," advised
the president on a war that led to the "slaughter of innocent
people in Iraq."
Some of the black panelists assembled in the Washington
studio winced at the remarks. Conservative syndicated columnist
Armstrong Williams rebuked the cartoonist, whose strip is syndicated
in more than 250 newspapers.
"I can't get over the fact you labeled Miss Rice
a murderer," he said.
The low-key McGruder, 29, asserted that he has
a right to his opinion. "She's a murderer because I believe
she's a murderer," he said coolly. NAACP chairman Julian Bond,
another panelist, wrote it off to "satire," but added, smiling,
"I agree with his politics."
Late last year, McGruder made Rice's love life
the topic of his comic.
"Maybe if there was a man in the world who Condoleezza
truly loved, she wouldn't be so hell-bent to destroy it," one
of his "Boondocks" characters speculates in a strip. The Washington
Post pulled the series on Rice, which ran some five days. The
Cincinnati Enquirer dropped the strip altogether.
McGruder, who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, claims
Rice, also black, asked him to write her into his strip. "Boondocks,"
a hip-hop version of Doonesbury, is distributed by Universal
Press Syndicate. McGruder, who graduated from the University
of Maryland with an African-American studies degree, has written
a best-selling coffee-table collection of his strips called
"A Right to be Hostile."
He's reportedly developing with Sony a prime-time
animated series based on "Boondocks" for Fox. It's slated for
the fall.
Cartoonist calls Condi Rice
'murderer' – again This time 'Boondocks' creator levels charge
on national TV
Posted: January 27, 2004 5:00 p.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36798
McGruder faced the television cameras and said,
"I created the strip because I wanted to create a radical Black
voice that the United States government could not kill." To
audience cheers, he continued: "My politics, for those of you
who read the strip, are well known. I don’t like the president;
I don’t like the war... The strip is about getting people to
challenge what they tell you. Because they are lying."
On National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice-
But, as McGruder noted in a scathing Boondocks
strip, "She works for a man who disenfranchised thousands of
black voters!" and "She personally wrecked the world conference
against racism!" In fact, a more appropriate name for Rice’s
commendation, McGruder scoffed, would be "President Bush’s Most
Embarrassing Black Person" award.
In Whose Image?
By Jennifer L. Pozner, TomPaine.com. Posted March 15, 2002.
http://www.alternet.org/story/12633
