In a message dated 12/17/99 12:07:36 PM, carlremick at hotmail.com writes:
<<>Schulz was actually a brilliant artist, and
>created one of the most radical aesthetic documents of the mid-Sixties; he
>got real corporate in the Seventies, of course, but there was a solid core
>to his work, a resistance to the existential anomie of suburbanization and
>consumerism, which you don't find in lesser strips.
IMO, Schulz offered nothing but sappy style and sentiments. I really came to loathe Peanuts. Whatever "resistance" to consumerism Schulz may have offered in the early days was far, far offset by his relentless merchandising of more recent times. The Minneapolis Star Tribune today notes that Peanuts is "the basis of a franchise that collects $1 billion a year." The paper also has this heart-rending comment: "The only child of a St. Paul barber, Schulz spent his first 36 years in the Twin Cities. The Depression years were some terrible times, he told a Star Tribune reporter two years ago. The $20 million a year he grossed later couldn't erase the too-many pancake dinners of his childhood." No, I guess it would take a hundred million bucks a year, or more, to compensate for that trauma.
Carl>>
Sure, journalists are constrained in what they can say about wealth. Exactly how and why Charles Schulz is at fault for a Star Tribune puff piece exhibitng aspects common to nearly all puff pieces in all papers around the US you don't say and I don't know. Peanuts was profoundly meaningful to me as a child. Perhaps you could recommend an adequate punishment for this. A pioneer latch key kid, I found the Joe Shlabotnik fan club, Snoopy, Linus, and Peppermint Patty and Marcy's "Boston Marriage" quite salient. People may remember skate punks, Jodie Fosters' Army and their version of "Lucy and Snoopy." But I guess that leftists wouldn't be able to relate to Charlie Brown who leads a baseball team of misfits that always loses.
Don't even get me started on the 'beat the people' approach of some of the cartoons in Z for example.